CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
When Joy woke up later that morning in his bed, it felt as if she’d never had a better night’s sleep. But when she turned to look at him, he wasn’t there. And that was when she remembered this was a work day. She had to be at HR by eight a.m.
She jumped out of bed, hurried down the hall to the guest bedroom, and quickly cleaned off, brushed her teeth again, and then combed her hair and got dressed. She wanted to take another long tub bath, but that was out of the question. She grabbed her purse and phone and hurried downstairs.
But William wasn’t in the living room either.
Which surprised her. He wasn’t upstairs.
She didn’t hear a sound upstairs. And he wasn’t downstairs either?
What if he went to work and left her? What if he decided she was some no-account lay-about and left her to figure it out for herself?
What if he regretted what happened and didn’t want her around as a reminder? She was beginning to panic!
And that was when she heard voices coming from the kitchen.
The sound of people talking. When she heard William’s voice among them, her panic eased.
She was known for leaping to conclusions without knowing all the facts.
He wouldn’t have left her. What was she thinking?
He was still, right there, in the house.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t angry with her for getting up so late.
What time was it anyway, she thought, as she hurried for the kitchen.
She was so busy getting dressed, certain she was way too late, that she had forgotten to look.
But when she looked at her phone and saw that it was only a few minutes after seven am, all of her rushing and fears disappeared.
And she shook her head. Get it together, Joy.
Get it together! She even pulled out her comb and compact mirror and tried to freshen up her hair again.
She stared at herself in that little mirror.
Her hair was a natural length below her neck, and those curls still held.
It looked nice. She put on her lipstick and used her compact to put on a little face powder too, something she also didn’t think she had time to do before she actually checked the time.
Now she felt better. She felt more put together.
And even though the dress she wore was nothing fancy, it fit her like a glove. She was satisfied.
But before she went into that kitchen, she steeled herself to calm her nerves, let out a long exhale, and then walked on in.
William was standing behind the huge center island, while a black man and that Sloane lady were seated on the stools on the other side from where William stood.
Joy was surprised to see a big fat cigar in William’s hand, and what looked like a glass of wine he was sipping.
Especially at that time of morning. But maybe that was how the rich rolled. What did she know about that lifestyle?
But she did feel excited to see him again. She loved falling asleep in his arms. It made her feel so protected. But where in the world could it lead? Was she just another notch on is belt? If she was, it was her own damn fault. If he told her to take a hike, she couldn’t blame anybody but herself.
But right now, she had to face the music. She put on her best big, bright smile. “Good morning!” she said cheerfully as she made her way to the countertop.
William, Bobby, and Sloane all looked at her as she walked towards them.
For William, it was all about how she made him feel.
Which was warm and inviting and even joyful.
He was happy to see her. And the way it felt when he first went inside of her was giving him a warmth of a different kind.
He still felt those shockwaves. And although he regretted going all the way with her, he didn’t regret how she made him feel.
Because just seeing her again looking so refreshed and bubbly, with her thick brown hair bouncing against her back as she walked, and that smile on her face that lit up his heart, made him want to take her right back up those stairs and do her again. She turned him on. In every way.
For Sloane, it was a dislike that bordered on hatred. That little girl spent the night with William when even she had never been afforded the opportunity. That little whore? How could that be? It was crazy to Sloane!
But for Bobby, he was blown away. Where did this little gem come from? “Well hello there,” he said to her, putting on his best smile too.
William glanced at Bobby. Unlike him, Bobby preferred his ladies to be much-younger than he was.
Although he was thirty-five, he often dated twenty-year-olds.
His reasoning was that younger ladies were easier to please.
Give them a Birkin bag and rent money and they were happy.
But William would be damned if Bobby was going to try to add Joynetta to his long list of Birkin bag/rent money whores. She was off limits.
But although they all were looking at her, it was William that Joy was looking to see when she first walked into that kitchen.
She looked into his eyes when she first walked in to see if he was pissed with her for not being dressed and downstairs sooner.
His temper seemed to come out of the blue that way. But she didn’t see any signs of anger.
What she saw were eyes that seemed to light up with that familiar look that undercover lovers gave to each other whenever they were in a room where nobody was supposed to know their secret.
He even glanced down the length of her body when he saw her, as if he was still thinking about earlier that morning the way she still was.
He took a long puff on his cigar as he continued to stare at her body.
As if he couldn’t stop thinking about it and remembering every inch of it.
How it felt. How it tasted. Which made her blush with heat.
But as for Sloane, Joy could see the phoniness in that heifer’s smile a mile away.
She saw a designing woman who couldn’t wait to get her hooks into William.
Joy saw it last night. Even Stevie Wonder could see it.
It was even clearer that morning when she was so shocked and disappointed when Joy walked into that kitchen that a feather could have knocked her over.
Joy could also see that the black man seated beside Sloane did a double-take when he saw her, and she gave him a full look too.
Mainly because he was black like her in William’s world that, so far, seemed so ultra-white.
But also because he was a very attractive man.
Maybe even more so than William. And younger than William too.
Not exactly her age kind of young. He might have had ten years on her too.
But he definitely had the look of a man the ladies would love.
In Bridell, she would view him as one of those uptown brothers who wouldn’t give a woman like her from the wrong side of the tracks the time of day.
But she wasn’t in Bridell. She was in a rich man’s house. He probably figured she belonged there and was on his level too. “Good morning,” she said to Bobby specifically, since he was the only one to say anything to her so far, but she was looking at all three of them.
Bobby found himself staring at Joy as he stood to his feet on her arrival.
In his eyes she had a soft, clean, understated beauty about her that made her, in many ways, strikingly beautiful.
She was the kind of sister his beloved parents would love for him to marry.
“No need to bring home no white girl, they told him. “We come in every color. Pick one.”
But she looked rather young too. Like easily in her early twenties. Which would certainly disqualify her as William’s type. But why was she at his house? Where in the world did she come from? “Of whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?” he asked her as he extended his big, bronzed hand.
“I’m Joynetta Johnson,” Joy said as she smiled right back at him and shook his unusually large hand. He had a warm, alluring personality.
“Hello Joynetta Johnson. It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Bobby Latham. I’m Mr. Skeffington’s chief of staff.”
She could tell he was still confused as to who she was exactly. But she didn’t know how to describe who she was either. Before she and William had their lovemaking session, it was crystal clear to her: She was his employee and nothing more. But now, after the fact, it was a lot murkier to her too.
But she was certain it wasn’t murky to a man like William at all. She was his hire, period, but what was she hired to do? She wasn’t sure if William even knew at that point. But he knew more than she did. That was why she looked for William to answer Bobby for her.
“She’s a new hire,” William said when they both looked at him.
“On my team?” Bobby asked him.
“She’ll be a staffer, yes.”
“Oh how wonderful!” Bobby’s smile regained its momentum. “Will I be her direct supervisor or--”
“No, you will not.” William said it so definitively that Sloane and Joy both looked at him.
William didn’t mean to have that edge in his voice, but the idea of Bobby making any moves on Joynetta was untenable to him.
“I want you to assign someone to show her around, and to introduce her to all of the various staff level positions. She’ll come in as an assistant to me, and we’ll see where she goes from there. ”
“Yes sir,” said Boddy.
Then William looked at Joy. “But you’ll go to HR first and get checked in. I’ve already let them know you’re coming over.”
Joy felt relieved that he took the time to make arrangements for her hire.
“Yes, sir,” she said the way Bobby said it.
But it felt unnatural for her to say yes sir to the man that had just hours earlier been deep inside of her while they were both naked and wrapped in each other’s arms. But it was her own damn fault for not stopping it when she had the chance.
She was the one who had everything to lose if their decision to sleep together compromised their working relationship.
He’d get rid of her if that happened. Pure and simple.
Which made her wonder again how on earth could she have so easily jeopardized her future?
William grabbed a plate out of the microwave and sat it in front of the stool in between Bobby and Sloane. “Come and eat, Joy,” he said to her.
“So that’s who you were cooking for,” Bobby said.
Joy was shocked. She looked at that plate filled with bacon and eggs and toast and she gladly sat on that stool. “Thanks,” she said, said her grace, and ate.
“What would you like to drink?” William asked her.
“Do you have a Pepsi?” Joy asked.
“A Pepsi for breakfast?” Sloane was disgusted.
But Joy didn’t even give her the time of day. She wanted a soda.
William went to his enormous refrigerator, pulled out a Pepsi, and gave it to her. But she was too busy eating. Vigorously. She was hungry.
Bobby smiled. “There’s no shame in your game,” he said, and Joy, realizing she was devouring the food rather than eating it, smiled sheepishly. Bobby laughed. William smiled too. She was such an adorable human being to him.
While she continued eating and drinking her Pepsi, William wrapped up the morning meeting with his staffers and told them to get to the office. He tossed the last of his drink into the sink and smashed his cigar into a golden ashtray as he got ready to leave too.
Bobby and Sloane grabbed up their briefcases and iPads and coffee mugs as Joy continued to eat.
They were accustomed to those early morning confabs with the boss before they went into the office.
Especially after a major event like last night when one of their top-tier clients ended up in federal custody.
“Do you have your own wheels, Joy?” Bobby asked her.
“A car? No sir, not yet.”
“Then you’ll ride to the office with Sloane and I.”
“No, she won’t,” William said without hesitation. “She’ll meet you there. She’s going to HR first.”
Bobby and Sloane glanced at each other. How would her riding with them negate her from going to the personnel office to complete her new hire paperwork when HR was in the same building as their offices?
Which begged the question for them: What was up with this relationship?
Bobby knew William had nothing to do with women her age: He seemed to despise them in fact.
That was why he didn’t see it, at first, for what it now clearly was.
But Sloane, who knew William had picked her up from prison last night, knew what it was the moment Joy walked into that kitchen.
And Bobby and Sloane both knew it was a horrible idea.
But who were they to voice their opinions to the man that signed their paychecks? They said their have a good day and see you later valedictions, and left.
When Joy finished eating, she went to the sink and washed and dried her plate and fork. She finished her soda, tossed the can into the receptacle, and belched.
William laughed.
“Sorry,” she said, smiling too.
And then they stood there. He looked so handsome, she thought, in his gorgeous suit. And she couldn’t help it. “Is blue your favorite color too?”
“No. Why would you ask?”
“Because we both have on blue. It’s my favorite color.” Then she looked closer. “What kind of blue are you wearing anyway?”
“Periwinkle,” William said.
“Peri-who-kle?”
He smiled. “It’s a periwinkle-blue.”
“Oh,” said Joy, although she never knew such a color existed.
“Ready?” he said as he perused her body again. He knew he should have left her alone when she came to his room to help him. And to not use a condom knowing she was so young and impressionable and would take it for more than what it was.
And yet, despite knowing better, he still wanted her again. Which was not good. Which was insane! If women his age believed they could change him and become his number one, he could only imagine what a woman Joy’s age would believe. Marriage? Kids? It wasn’t going to happen!
He had to break this off with a hard break before it went any further, and before he ended up breaking her heart.
“I’m ready,” she said with her purse clutched against her small frame, as if she was heading to the firing squad, not to her future office job.
Which only made him even more regretful as they made their way out of the house and into his waiting Mercedes.
His bodyguard got off of the front passenger seat and opened the back door for Joy first, and then the boss. Then he got back in himself.
And they were off.