CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Mercedes drove through the security gate and stopped at the top tip of the circular driveway of the large mansion on the outskirts of Chicago.
With acreage as far as the eye could see, Joy couldn’t stop staring at the vastness of the property.
Even after the bodyguard got out and opened the back passenger door for them, she was still staring.
Especially at that house. She could not believe how magnificent it was. “This is where you live?”
“Yes it is.” He got out of the car and then offered his hand. “Come on.”
She took his hand and got out too.
She tried not to act as if she wasn’t used to the finer things in life, but she couldn’t pull it off. She was amazed at the fortress-like mansion, with its round towers that made her think of a castle, and it’s super-tall windows that lined up in triple form stacked beneath each other.
But she was even more amazed at the inside of the place.
From all of the different sitting rooms with their fancy fireplaces, to the magnificent staircases - three in all - as they spiraled upstairs and with a side staircase and with a downward staircase that led to the basement.
If she thought that marbled floor in the lobby of his building was beautiful, the magnificent hardwood floors in his house took her over the top. She was in awe.
“This is amazing,” she said as she looked up at a chandelier that was bigger than her entire apartment and on a ceiling that was as high as she’d ever looked up inside a building. And the windows in that house went as high as the ceiling. “Wow.”
“Glad you like it,” William said as he removed his suit coat, tossed it on the sofa of the main sitting room, and then made his way to the back of the room where a full-sized bar was located.
It had been a long time since he brought somebody to his home that was mesmerized by its beauty. It was nice to see.
But when Joy saw where William was headed, she smiled. “Who keeps a bar in their living room?” she asked as she followed him.
William glanced back and was pleased to see that she was still that happy-go-lucky Joynetta whose joy returned while they were in Bridell. “I don’t impress you as a man who would have a bar in his living room?”
“Nobody impresses me as somebody who would have a bar in their living room. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“No?”
“No!”
It was quite common in his circles. “Who do you think keep bars in their living rooms, Joynetta?”
“Drunks maybe?” she said as he went behind the counter and she sat on one of the bar stools.
He laughed. “I’m no drunk,” he said, “but I like my occasional champagne. Don’t you?”
Joy found it odd that he would think she had access to champagne. He had no clue about her lifestyle if he thought that! “I’m not much of a champagne drinker,” she said.
“Are you old enough to drink?” he asked her jokingly.
“Are you?” she fired back as she pulled out her phone and William laughed out loud.
“She’s back!” he said happily.
Then he saw her making a phone call. “Who are you calling this time of night?”
“Gramps,” she said. “Just to make sure he’s okay. I spoke with him earlier, but his memory isn’t the best.”
“He lives alone?”
“No, his granddaughter stays with him. But he likes to hear my voice.”
William watched her as she spoke on the phone with her grandfather. She had the call on Speaker, that was how transparent she was, and they talked about her coming to see about him tomorrow.
But William still couldn’t believe he took her all the way to Bridell tonight and was able to convince her to come right back with him.
But he knew it was needful. She had to get out of Chicago, even if for a few hours.
She had to put distance between herself and the place of her trauma.
And then, once out of this place, she was able to see her situation more objectively. Thank God, he thought.
“You’ve gotta go to the doctor, Gramps,” she said over the phone.
“No thank you very much. Them doctors charge too much. They ain’t taking my money.”
“I told you Medicare will pay for it.”
“Not all of it! They wanna make me pay a co-pay of two-hundred dollars, I already checked. You got two-hundred dollars laying around somewhere?”
Joy rubbed her forehead as William continued to stare at her. He could see the stress still all over her face. “No sir,” she said to Gramps. “I don’t have two-hundred dollars laying around.”
“Then don’t be talking to me about no doctors. My stank ass okay. How’s yours?”
“Not stank I hope,” Joy said in that deadpan way she had, and so out of the blue that William laughed out loud. Which made Joy, who never seemed to realize she as being humorous, smile too.
“Anyway, Gramps, I better get off this phone.”
“I heard that man laughing. You on a date? That’s why you couldn’t call me? Is he the reason you got arrested?”
Joy felt embarrassed. “No, Gramps, he had nothing to do with it. And I’m not on a date.”
“You oughta be. I wouldn’t be mad at you for that. You don’t never go on no dates. That’s what’s wrong with you. You need a man.”
For some reason William’s throat constricted when her grandfather said those words. She didn’t even date? Then he remembered how many hours she often worked. Not to mention she had been incarcerated for the last five weeks.
“Call me tomorrow,” Gramps said.
“I will. Have a good night, Gramps.”
“You too,” he said, and ended the call.
William handed her a glass of champagne. “Drink this,” he said to her.
She took the glass, but no way was she going to take a sip.
“Paternal or maternal?” he asked her.
She looked puzzled. “Excuse me?”
“Is your grandfather from your mother’s side of the family, or your father’s?”
“Oh! Neither.”
Now William was puzzled. “Neither?”
“He’s play-play.”
“Play-play? What on earth is play-play?”
“He’s my play-play grandfather. We’re no kin. He’s just somebody who looked out for me when I was a little girl.”
This interested William. “What about your parents?”
Joy shook her head. “Didn’t know my father, and my mother loved to party with her men friends.
Still does. But when I was little and every time she got paid, which she was paid in cash, I would go to her job and get the money we needed to pay the rent and the utilities and to get food to hold us until she got paid again.
Then I’d go to Gramps, he was this older man who lived down the street from us, and I’d give him all the money and he would take care of our bills and buy us groceries.
That was the only way I ate and kept a roof over me and my mama’s heads. ”
“How old were you then?”
“Ten.”
William was blown away. “A ten-year-old with that level of responsibility?”
She nodded. “I didn’t want the responsibility. But if I wanted to eat and have a place to stay, I had to do it.”
“Thank God you could trust Gramps.”
“For real though. He was all I had.” Then she scrunched-up her face. “And still is.”
William hated that such a pitiful thing was probably true. And the idea that a sweet young lady like her was in jail the entire time he was gone, still cut him deep. “Drink your champagne,” he said.
“I told you I don’t drink champagne.”
“I don’t care. Drink it. You need it.”
“No I’m good.”
Then William realized what she was doing. “You think I spiked your drink, don’t you?”
She looked at him. “You could have.”
William laughed. “Good for you,” he said. “I would never do that, but how are you to know? Right?”
She nodded and smiled relieved too. “Right.”
Then, as William drank his own glass of champagne, Joy wondered if she should ask him the question. So she just asked it. “Are you the Skeffington in Skeffington PR? When I was being arrested, that was who they said you were.”
“That’s accurate.” He stared at her. “Is that problematic for you?”
“Me? No sir. But what does PR mean? Does PR mean public relations or something like that?”
“That’s exactly what it means, yes. We’re a consulting firm. Among other things.”
“Does that mean you own that whole building then?”
William smiled. “And the company inside of it, yes.” Then his look turned serious again. “I’m sorry your visit to my organization wasn’t what you had hoped it would be.”
“But that’s not your fault. That’s not even your company’s fault. It’s the fault of the people who treated me badly. That’s who I blame.”
“I’ve taken care of every one of them involved,” William said.
Joy looked at him. “You have?”
“You’d better believe it. I saw what they did to you. Those security guards are no longer with my organization, and charges have been filed against the one that body-slammed you. My team showed the video to the DA.”
“Good,” said Joy, nodding her head. “He took my breath away.”
William was still seething about that one. “And that crooked cop that they bribed to take you in was fired as well.”
“I’m glad about that too. I don’t usually like people losing their jobs, but he had no business taking me in in the first place. But he only listened to them. He didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. Prayerfully, it won’t happen to anybody else.”
“Right.”
And then his intercom buzzed.
“What’s that?” Joy asked.
He looked at the buzz pad on the wall. The origin of the buzz was his front gate. He went over to the bar and pressed the button beneath his bar counter. “Yes?”
“Miss Felicity Feldman is here, sir.”
As soon as he said that name, William remembered their date.
Shit, he said angrily within himself. He had forgotten that she was coming over that night!
He already knew she wanted more than a night with him.
She wanted to be his go-to girl for every night of the week if she could swing it. Which wasn’t going to happen.
But then again, he thought, maybe her presence tonight would be a good thing.
He was wholly inappropriate with a young lady seventeen years his junior when he was never attracted to young women even when he was young!
Their maturity level was never up to his standards ever.
And although Joy, at times, showed signs of great maturity, he was relatively certain she would prove to be no exception either.
And she was soon to become his employee, and he never fooled around with anybody on his payroll.
“Wave her through,” he said to his gate security, and released the button.