CHAPTER THIRTEEN
His Mercedes was waiting out front, and his bodyguard hopped off of the front passenger seat and opened the back passenger door.
Sloane, who was now seated on the backseat, slid all the way over when she realized William was allowing that same hood rat from the lobby to get into his beautiful car. It still didn’t make any sense to her.
But her opinion didn’t matter as Joy got into that fancy car and slid to the center to make room for William to get inside too.
She was about to speak to the white woman that was sitting on the backseat already, but as soon as their legs accidentally touched and the woman quickly moved away from her, she knew what time it was.
Which only magnified how crazy this all was.
She didn’t want to have anything to do with these people any more than they wanted to have anything to do with her.
If they could just take her to the bus station, she’d be cool. She just wanted to go home.
“This is Sloane Drummond,” William said when he got on the backseat too. “Sloane, this is Joynetta Johnson.”
Sloane suddenly put on a smile so fake even Joy knew not to fall for it. “Hi, Joyneishetta.” She purposefully mispronounced her name. “So nice to meet you,” she said as if she was the kindest person in the world.
But Joy knew better. That was why Sloane didn’t extend a handshake. She didn’t want to touch a woman she viewed as inferior to her.
But if she wanted to put on her golly-gee, happy-is-me act for her man or her boss or whatever William was to her, then Joy was going to take it all the way. She extended her hand for a handshake. “Hello.”
Sloane didn’t want to touch that woman, but Joy’s gesture, in front of William, gave her no choice.
She shook Joy’s hand, with her smile still plastered on her face.
But Joy, who had to turn away from William to look Sloane in the eye, gave her hand the hardest squeeze she could possibly give.
Which caused Sloane to grimace in pain. But she still kept on smiling.
And they rode back to the Skeffington building in silence.
When they arrived at the office building, Joy assumed he would put her off and leave her to her own devices, which would have been finding a homeless shelter for the night since she didn’t have enough money on her person, or in any bank, for any motel room. But he did something she didn’t expect.
“Have a good evening, Sloane,” he said to the woman Joy thought was his woman.
Sloane behaved as if she was his woman because she was floored that he was letting her off, and not Joynetta. “Sir?”
“That’ll be all. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Oh. I mean. . .” She glanced at Joy. “Yes sir.” Sloane got out of the car.
Joy should have been pleased the bitch was gone.
And a part of her was. She couldn’t stand people like that.
But as they drove away and she looked back at that massive Skeffington building and then looked at the man who just might own that entire structure, she wasn’t so much as pleased as completely confused.
After Sloane was dropped off, they rode in silence again.
But whereas William didn’t speak with Joy while Sloane was in the car, mainly to keep Sloane out of Joy’s business, he was staring at her after Sloane was gone.
With her little purse in her lap and her little hands on her purse, she still looked lost to him.
She still looked traumatized to him. His presence, he realized, wasn’t making her feel safer.
“I’m sorry about what happened to you at my office, Joynetta,” he said to her.
She said nothing.
“You were here at my invitation, and I failed you.” She looked at him. “For that I apologize.”
But she continued to stare at him. “Why didn’t you look back at me?” she asked him with puzzlement in her extra-large eyes.
But he didn’t understand what she meant.
“I was calling your name. I was screaming your name. Why didn’t you look back?”
He could have said he didn’t hear her, but that wouldn’t be entirely truthful.
He didn’t hear his name specifically, but he did hear a commotion.
But even hearing his name would not have been unusual for him.
People in need of help from a man with what they perceived to be loads of money to spare would go to any length to get his attention.
Including showing up in his lobby shouting his name.
That was why he never turned around. “I didn’t think it had anything to do with me,” he said.
“I had no idea it was you until I got back from Europe a few hours ago.”
“You were in Europe?”
“The entire time you were incarcerated I was out of the country and knew nothing about it.”
That made Joy feel much better. The idea that he would let her rot in jail and do nothing about it was the part she would have had the hardest time getting over.
He just didn’t seem like he would do that to her.
But it still stung. “I was here to get a job. All I wanted was a job. But they said I was here to beat you up.”
William frowned. “Beat me up?”
“To assault you,” said Joy. “But that’s not true.”
“Of course it’s not true!”
“But they didn’t believe me. They were so mean to me. I even missed my bus.”
Ed Rivers, his driver, glanced at her through the rearview. The idea of the boss bothering with a woman that relied on bus transportation was amazing to him. But then again, they did pick her up from jail.
But William was confused. “What bus are you talking about?”
“The Greyhound bus I took to get here. Bridell is three hours away from Chicago.” Then she scrunched-up her face. “But that was five weeks ago.”
William was confused. “They didn’t offer you bail?”
“They offered it. Twenty-five-thousand-dollars was what they offered. They said I only had to come up with ten percent of it, which would have been two-thousand-five-hundred dollars. But they might as well have set that bail at a million dollars because I didn’t have that either.
And everybody I knew couldn’t pull together no two hundred dollars, let alone two thousand. ”
William could not have felt worse. He wanted to take her hand and reassure her that she was in good hands now, but he was certain she wouldn’t believe him. She was upset enough. He wasn’t going to compound her pain.
“Where are we going?” Joy asked him. “To the bus station?”
William found that an odd question. “The bus station? No. We’re going to my home. I have a guest room…”
“But . . .”
“But what, Joynetta?”
“But I wanna go home.” She didn’t want to spend another night in Chicago.
“The last bus to Bridell doesn’t leave for another forty minutes.
I have my bus fare.” She looked in her purse for the first time to make sure.
But it wasn’t there. And they didn’t hand her any money either. She looked at William in anguish.
“Your money’s gone?”
She nodded. “Yes sir.”
“Why don’t you come to my house tonight and--”
“No.” She was shaking her head. “I wanna go home. If you can lend me enough to catch the bus, I think it’s like fifty-five dollars, then I’ll mail it back to you as soon as I get back to working at Maylene’s.”
When he said nothing, she felt that her asking him to lend her money had crossed a line. “Or you can drop me anywhere and I’ll figure it out.”
William’s heart dropped. “Edwin?”
His driver looked through the rearview mirror. “Yes sir?”
“Drive us to Bridell, Indiana.”
Ed was shocked. The bodyguard too. But they knew who buttered their bread. “Yes sir,” he said and quickly made a U-turn.
But Joy didn’t understand. “You don’t have to drive me. I can catch the Greyhound. You don’t have to--”
William could hear the surge of panic in her voice. He quickly took her by the hand. “It’s okay, Joynetta. It’s okay. Driving you home is the least I can do.”
She stared at him. This was the man she remembered. This was the man she would have loved to work for.
But it didn’t work out.
William held onto her nervous hand for the entire three-hour drive to Bridell.