“Sanchez?” Joy was genuinely confused. “Sanchez locked up.” Then a little panic swelled up inside of her. “Are you telling me he’sout?”
“He will be in three weeks. You ain’t heard?”
“No! This is the first I’ve heard anything about it.” Then she settled back down. “But who cares?”
Contessa glanced over at Joy again. She and Sanchez were together for three years. It was the longest relationship either one of them ever had. She wasn’t fooling Contessa. A part of Joy still cared deeply for that gorgeous hunk of brother. “I’m just shocked they’re letting him out after only a couple years. I saw what he did to Jasper’s mama.”
“Can we please talk about something else?” Joy asked. “That boy and his troubles ain’t got nothing to do with me anyway.”
“That’s not what he told Tony.”
Joy looked at Contessa. “I didn’t know your boyfriend was all tight with Z.” But she was too curious. “What he told Tony?”
“He said he’s pissed with you for not coming to see him one single time the whole time he’s been locked up.”
Joy frowned. “He beat up a little old lady because he had a beef with her son and she almost died. What I look like going to see that fool? Besides, we’d already been broke up for months when he got arrested. We weren’t even together. He can be pissed all he wants. I’m not thinking about no Juan Sanchez.”
“But he’s been thinking about you. For real though. He told Tony he wants you back. You may not want him, but he wants his Joy back.”
Joy dismissed such nonsense. She wasn’t trying to hear that foolishness. She was so over Z it wasn’t even funny. But now, all of a sudden, he wants her? When he had her he treated her like a dog was better than her, but he wants her now? “He can kiss my gritty grits,” she said, and even Contessa laughed as her van backfired again, with a thick plume of blue smoke spewing out of the tailpipe, as she turned another corner.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Is he alone?”
The secretary was typing on her desktop computer and didn’t bother to look up. “Is who alone?”
“Who do you think, Rita? The man on the moon. Is the boss alone?”
“I have no idea. He hasn’t come in yet.”
Sloane Drummond froze in place. “He’s not here?” Her voice belied her panic.
But Rita heard the panic and looked up. “That’s whathe hasn’t come in yetusually means. What’s wrong with you?”
But Sloane didn’t have time to say another word. She hurried out of the secretary’s office and downstairs, to the thirty-fifth floor, to the chief of staff’s office.
Bobby Latham, standing behind his desk, was just putting his desk phone back on the hook after a long conversation with HR. When he looked up and saw Sloane rushing in, he smiled. “There you are!”
“Have you heard from him?” Sloane was asking the question even before she made it all the way to his large desk.
Bobby didn’t understand the question. “What do you mean have I heard from him? You were supposed to fly in with him this morning.”
“I flew in last night. He decided he was going to drive.”
“Drive?” Bobby’s baritone raised an octave. “All the way from New York? That’s a twelve hour drive!”
“You don’t think I know that?”
“Well where is he now?”
Sloane hated to admit it. “I have no idea.”
“No idea?” Bobby couldn’t believe it. “Gotdammit, Sloane!” He quickly picked back up his landline desk phone and pressed a button. “Meeka, get Mr. Skeffington on the phone and I mean right now.”
“Yes sir!”
Bobby put the phone back on its hook and then looked at the woman whose very job was to keep up with the boss. “All you had to do was phone me. Why didn’t you phone and tell me there was a change of plans? Why didn’t you tell me he decided to drive, Sloane?”
