“So who are you?” Felicity asked her. “Sloane is gone?”
Joy looked at her. She was a woman in her late thirties or in her forties like William, but she was still a very beautiful-looking lady who seemed to flaunt that beauty. She could easily see somebody like William with a sophisticated woman like her. But she seemed so rude.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Have you replaced Sloane as his private secretary?”
“No.”
“Then who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I’m Joynetta Johnson.”
In the kitchen, William was cutting up various vegetables to throw together a pot of soup. But he could hear their conversation.
“Joynetta?” he heard Felicity ask. He could imagine her shaking her head. “These names you people love to slap on your children. Just outrageous. But you didn’t fully answer my question. If you aren’t the help, which I assume you aren’t since you’re sitting down, then who are you?”
“I work for William. For Mr. Skeffington.”
“You work for William? In what capacity?”
Joy didn’t know how to respond to that.
“You heard me, child, answer me!”
William dropped the knife, wiped his hands, and went into the living room. “Stop badgering her,” he said to his guest, “and sit your ass down.”
Felicity smiled when she saw William, despite his tone, and sat down on the other end of the sofa away from Joy. As if Joy was diseased or something worst. But it was interesting to Joy that William sat down, not next to Felicity, but right beside Joy. Which she could tell pissed off his guest.
But she wanted William enough to overlook the small stuff. “And how are you this evening?” she asked him.
“I’m well. Thought I’d throw together a soup to eat.”
“This time of night? I can never eat this time of night. You’re going to be fat in your old age.”
“It’s his old age,” Joy blurted out before she realized it, “so who cares?”
William smiled. But Felicity was enraged. “You can go now. I’m relieving you of your duties for tonight.”
The nerve of this chick, Joy thought. Then she looked at William. William was staring at Felicity.
“She’s not going anywhere,” he said.
Felicity looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“She’s staying the night.”
“I thought I was staying the night.”
William couldn’t do it. There was no way he was going to sleep with another woman while Joynetta was in his house. It would seem like a betrayal to him. Why it would seem that way made no sense on any level. But that was how he felt. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to take a raincheck tonight.”
“A raincheck? But I came so far, William, just to be with you.”
“I understand that. But I’d forgotten.”
“You forgot? I couldn’t think about anything else, but you forgot?”
William always told them that there was no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, but they still insisted on believing they were going to change his mind anyway.
