“Yeah, the country singer. He’s been after Josie since high school, and as soon as he found out she was free, he swooped in and took her from me.”
“That’s what she said?” Mac asked. “That she was quitting because she wanted to get with Colin Fairgood?”
“No, she said she didn’t like the way I was treating her. Said I deserve her. But that was bullshit. She split on me as soon as he showed up. Fucking Fairgood.” He tapped his empty shot glass on the bar and called out. “Bartender, I’m gonna need another one over here.”
“How much you had to drink, man?” Mac asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “A few shots. Ten. Maybe twenty.”
“Which one was it? Ten or twenty?” Mac sounded alarmed.
“You know he stole another one of my girlfriends back in high school.”
“What?”
“Fairgood. I should’ve punched him back then. Back when I could still see.” An idea suddenly occurred to him and he grabbed on to Mac’s arm. “You know what? Let’s go up to his room and beat the shit out of him. Together.”
“Uh, I don’t think so.”
“C’mon, Mac, for old times sake. Football player to football player. We can’t let the nerds win.”
“Sorry, man, my fighting days are over.” Mac tugged on his shoulders. “Let’s see if you can make it out to my car.”
Beau knocked Mac’s hands away. “Didn’t I fire you?”
“Yeah, but I’m doing this as a favor for Josie. A real big favor,” the older man muttered under his breath before trying to help him out of his seat again.
But Beau shook him off. “I don’t need your help anyway, ” he said, standing up by himself. “I’ll find Fairgood. Finish this fight and get a cab to take me home.”
And he would have, too, if the bourbon hadn’t caught up with him two steps into his mission. He staggered, felt his eyelids droop, and that was the last thing he remembered before waking up with a headache—one so powerful, he would have described it as blinding if he weren’t already blind.
“The hell…” he muttered, sitting up on his elbows.
Despite the lack of visual information, he immediately recognized that he was someplace different. The room just didn’t smell like his did. He groped around and his hands made contact with a smooth, satiny material. Also, this bedcover wasn’t the ridged one Josie had gotten for their bed.#p#分页标题#e#
Their bed. When had he started thinking of it as their bed, and where was Josie—
Memories from last night flooded over him, intensifying the headache. He sat up fully then, grabbing his head on both sides.
“Mr. Prescott? You all right?”
It was Mac.
“Mr. Prescott was my father, and I’m nothing like him,” Beau answered, thinking of Josie’s words to him last night. He then pushed through the headache and asked, “Where’s Josie? I’ve got to talk to her.”
“I don’t know, sir. She didn’t answer her phone when I tried calling her after you passed out—”
“I passed out?”
“Yeah, you’re in a hotel room right now. The manager said your family was old friends of the owner.”
Beau nodded. It had been so long since he’d been out and about in Birmingham, he’d almost forgotten how many connections the Prescotts had.
He swung his feet over the side of the bed, ignoring the resulting hammer pounding inside his head, and flung himself out of the bed.
“Mr. Prescott, what are you doing?”
“I told you not to call me ‘Mr. Prescott.’” He had to find Josie. He had to—
He tripped over something bulky and unyielding. Then he cursed a blue streak when he landed, legs and arms akimbo on the floor. “What the fuck?” he yelled. “What the hell was that?”
“I think they’re called ottomans.”
“What’s it doing there in the middle of the room?”
“That’s where most folks keep ottomans, in the middle of the room.”
“Not at my house.”
“No, but that’s because, Josie…” Mac suddenly trailed off, as if saying Josie’s name out loud was verboten.
But Beau sat up and said. “Josie, what?”
“She told me not to tell you.”
“And you’re going to stick to that promise, because Josie was the one paying your salary? Oh, wait a minute. She wasn’t.”
Still, Mac sounded all kinds of hesitant when he said, “She did a few things over the last week to make you more comfortable at the house is all.”