“Damn right you aren’t.”
“Even though I got locked up, that doesn’t mean my dreams disappeared. I still have my dreams. I still want my dreams to come true like everybody else. I don’t really wanna go back to Maylene’s and that dead end job. I don’t wanna be fifty years old and still waiting tables. Still barely getting by. But that’s what will happen if I give up.”
William was so touched by her that emotion swelled inside of him.
“What do you think is the best answer?”
“I can’t let those few people in that lobby that day who put me in handcuffs, or those people in that courtroom or at that jail, make me quit on my dreams. I can’t allow them to do that.”
The way she was able to come to such a mature, well-thought-out conclusion about her horrific situation made William feel such a deep, abiding respect for Joynetta that it warmed his heart. He knew she was different when he first met her. Her resilience, her smarts, her toughness was reminding him why he felt that way.
“If you go back to Chicago with me tonight, then first thing tomorrow morning you can walk into HR and claim your dream.”
“But I don’t take nothing for granted.” It was as if she didn’t hear him. “I know I have to prove myself. I know I’m not qualified like those people I saw coming and going in that lobby. I know they went to those Ivy League schools and have all that great education and have great background and breeding while I’m just a poor girl from across the tracks with a GED who don’t even know what background and breeding is, but I’ll work harder than twenty of them put together and I’ll do the best---”
William quickly placed his large hand on her small hand. He could see how her mind tended to race in all directions whenever she felt she had to prove her point. “Joynetta?” he said in a soft voice, to calm her back down.
She looked at him. “Sir?”
“No need to worry about any of that. You’ve got the job.”
Joy was about to burst with happiness. But she had to be sure. “I do?”
“You do.”
“But I have a record now. I’ve never been in trouble with the law in my whole life before, I declare I haven’t, but now I--”
“You’re not in trouble with anybody,” William said. “I refused to press any charges, so all charges were dropped.”
Joy wanted to jump for joy. “Really?”
“Really.”
“That easily?”
It wasn’t so easy, William thought. He had to order the District Attorney to reverse course entirely. “Yes. That easily.”
“And you promise on a stack of Bibles that if I go back to Chicago I’ll definitely have the job?”
“I give you my word.”
“Oh, William!” she said so heartfelt that William felt it to his soul. “I thought that chance had passed me by.” She was so overwhelmed with gratitude that she jumped up and hugged him with so much gusto that he fell backwards on the bed, taking her with him. She ended up on top of him.
When she realized what her overreaction had done, and that she was actually laying on top of the man, and that he was getting so hard beneath her that she could feel his erection, she quickly moved to get up. “I am so sorry,” she said to him. She was afraid he was going to change his mind on the spot.This lunatic! he was going to yell.
But he pulled her back down on top of him. “I rather like it down here,” he said to her. Then he looked into her eyes. Her sweet, compassionate, beautiful eyes. He rubbed her soft hair. And his voice softened. “Don’t you?”
Joy was so enthralled with the deepness of his sincere blue eyes too, even though they weren’t large like hers, that she couldn’t remember what he was talking about. “Don’t I what?”
William lifted slightly as his aroused penis continued to expand. “Don’t you like it down here?”On top of me, he wanted to add, but wasn’t about to.
Joy thought about her brand-new employment status and forgot about that rock-hard rod that was pushing against her. “Now that I have the job,” she said, “I’d like it down here, up there, and anywhere!”
Her humor was always so sudden and unexpected that William couldn’t help but laugh. The last thing on her mind was his arousal, and it should have been the last thing on his mind too!
But then her look suddenly turned so serious that William thought something had happened. “What is it, Joynetta?”
“The job.”
