Life Begins (4 page)

              Her whole body tensed as she kept her attentions on the browning meat in her skillet. “Almost ten years.”

              “And your husband is the only man you’ve had.” He wondered if she would answer, because even if she didn’t he knew the answer. And obviously, it must not have felt good from her lack of body awareness.

              “I don’t know how that’s any of your business.”

              “It’s my business if you desire to get through this rough time as a divorced woman. Your group will not give you the help you need.”

              “And how do you intend to help me? Besides giving me a ride and wrangling my son into behaving himself. I don’t see how you can do anything that they can’t.”

              “I can be honest about your chances. You are a wife, a woman used to be dependent on her husband for finances. You like being a mother taking care of her family. You are a woman that needs husband.”

              “Is that your way of saying I’m passive,” she asked, turning all the way to him. The smell of her cooking set his stomach to rumbling and he wondered how long it had been for him to have a woman cook for him. His poor daughters wouldn’t know what home cooked tasted like, they ate out so often these days.

              But first, he had to set the stage for Josie’s thinking. “Housewife is not passive. Housewife has job that takes much skill and knowledge. Not every woman in this world can be a good housewife.”

              Josie turned away from him, but not before he could see the tears shining in her eyes. “Yeah, well a housewife still needs a reliable husband.”

              “You will write down bills and current finance situation and we will see what is necessary.”

              She smiled a bit. “What are you, a financial advisor?”

              No, but he was the man with a plan and the right kind of money. What he needed from her was simple, a housewife and a mother. As long as she gave his children the care that he desired of them, he would be willing to pay her bills. It really was a simple trade and even as he explained it to her, he knew that she would do it for him. Just as he needed a housewife, she needed someone who would provide for her like a husband. He was willing to do it, even if he didn’t get any immediate personal benefit out of it.

              “Kids, why don’t you go wash your hands so we can eat,” Josie said. She then turned to him and said, “You can use the sink in here.” While he stood to do that, she began taking out plates and portioning out food. “I’m going to have to think about what you said. It’s crazy and you’re insane, but I think that I have to be crazier for even considering it. I don’t know if I can even trust you96555.”

              He didn’t have to say anything else. She would do the rest of the work for him.

Chapter 4

              Žarko and his girls had left after helping her clean up after dinner and taking care of Jason. It all felt very surreal when she thought about it, a tall white man and two little white girls doting on a black toddler. She couldn’t think about the meaning behind her son not fighting going to bed when told to. Even now, he lay peacefully in his crib, dreaming whatever little boys dreamed while his mother remained awake thinking about an offer that just sounded illicit.

              She had to wonder what it would mean to have another man take care of her, to pay for all her bills and not expect her to hop into bed with him. They wrote news stories about stuff like this, a stupid girl just trusting someone that eventually takes advantage of her. Žarko reeked of alpha male and all she could see when he looked at him was sex, the hard stuff that would ruin her for anyone else. And with him, she didn’t doubt that he would eventually leave her a wreck, always craving him, but never being able to have him.

              She’d be a fool to say yes. As much as he frightened her now, she could only imagine how he would behave once he had her dependent on him. Even scarier, she wasn’t sure she could resist sleeping with him, he was just that gorgeous. She had no idea what to do, because her finances screamed how much she needed the financial help. Maybe that’s why he insisted, because he knew how much she needed him. He wasn’t far off base about the fact that she was used to being a housewife. Every part of her craved that comfort of staying home so that she could have the time to be with her babies.

              She buried her face in her hands. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t. It was impossible.  Then came the knock on the door that she had kind of been expecting. She answered immediately, knowing who it was. What she hadn’t thought she’d find was a shirtless version of the neighbor she was just getting to know. Still, she allowed him inside without question. She wore her own night outfit, which was a short pair of shorts and a fitted t-shirt, no bra like she knew she would have worn.

              “You did your finance?” he asked, immediately heading to the kitchen where the light was on.

              “Yes, but I’m not sure that it’ll be necessary. I’d have to be insane to just let you give me money.” Her name was not Ruth and his most certainly wasn’t Boaz for him to feel responsible for her.

              But, she held her words as he took a look at her list before writing down some numbers of his own. The first thing she noticed was that his bills were almost nothing compared to hers, but then, he obviously didn’t have lawyer’s fees and hospital bills hanging over his head like she did.”

              He stared crossing out some of her financial obligations and proceeded to calculate the two of theirs together. He circled the price she still owed her lawyer. “What is this?”

              She took a seat beside him, nervous. “Court costs from the divorce. My ex-husband hasn’t paid them and I can’t afford to take him back to court.” He made a notation of what she just said.

              “Then we will pay this and take him to court to pay. Once this is out of the way, your bills will be nothing. What is this other thing?”

              She leaned to see what he talked about. “The hospital cost for my daughter. I lost health coverage after the divorce because he didn’t want to pay for her and I just didn’t want to keep fighting it.” Again he made notation. When she looked at those numbers, she saw a never-ending cycle of payments, but for whatever reason, he didn’t seem to see the same. “You aren’t going to pay that off are you? That’s way too much money.” And something that would place her firmly in his debt for the rest of her life.

              “Is not too bad.” How much money did this man have and why was he willing to spend it on her? “You do not have car payments?”

              She shook her head. “No. It’s a crappy car from when I graduated high school.”

              He scratched at his shadowy beard. “You will need better one for kids.”

              He was going to buy her a car, too? He was too much for her to deal with. “You’re insane.”

              He glanced in her direction. “Not crazy. Motivated. My girls will need transportation to and from school. You will need vehicle too for groceries and doctor visits.”

              “And you aren’t trying to make me sleep with you?” She couldn’t imagine a man like him doing all this for nothing. “This all seems too one sided on my end.”

              He leaned back in the seat, watching her. “I will not require it, but I also will not deny you if you gave yourself. I am more interested in what you can give to my daughters.”

              She didn’t know that she believed him. He was too perfect, with his thick dark hair and that golden skin covering thick muscles. No one would think that she wasn’t sleeping with him and if there was one thing she couldn’t abide, it would be people thinking she was a mistress. “How can I take you seriously?” She took a deep breath. It was just so much money, too much to allow another person to cover. “I can’t.”

              “You will do it because you love your son and are tired of fighting with him. You will do it because you are tired of feet hurting and keeping you from being the best mother. What kind of job do you expect to keep with no college education and no work experience other than supermarket? I offer you something better. Feed girls. Take and pick up from school. Help them with homework. Maybe I will give you bills.”

              “You promise?” She didn’t ask how he knew her history. She was more than smart enough to figure it out through their brief conversations.

              He nodded, writing a quick note on piece of paper they used. Then then signed the bottom of it and passed it to her. When she looked it over, she found that he had written everything they had discussed, including her deciding to give him her body. If this moment weren’t so serious, she would have been amused by the fact that he wrote in a way that assumed that she would be sharing a bed with him. Probably because he gave her the option to move her family into his apartment. “Why would I move in with you?” she felt the need to ask.

              He crossed his arms over his chest. “I have more space. You will not have to sleep on couch.”

              Then she really would be at his mercy. He tapped in the space he’d left for her to sign. “Hurry. I have to get back to my girls.”

              She signed it and wrote down the date. He then slid the paper from beneath her. “I will take you to work in the morning like before. We will talk deeper about the terms then.”

              She walked him to her door, eyes focused on the tattoos covering his back. Her mind felt blanked. She was actually going to do this, behave as some man’s unofficial wife. She had no idea how this was going to affect future chances of gaining a relationship with the right kind of man, but, God she had no idea what she was doing. She just prayed that she didn’t live to regret it.

              “Are you coming to the meeting this week?” Marisol asked over the cell phone. “We’ve really missed you and have been wondering where you’ve been.”

              Josie chewed on her fingernail, wondering what she should say. Two weeks ago, she would have been honest, but now, she couldn’t really tell her church friend that the man paying her bills didn’t see a need for her to go to group meetings and had pretty much laid down the law about them going. “I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “Things have been a little crazy, but I definitely miss you guys and will try to see what I can do.”

              She’d been procrastinating in allowing Žarko to take her to pick up a vehicle, but now that she was at the end of her two weeks’ notice at the grocery store, she had to make getting a car a priority. Žarko had specifically taken off work to force her into going. So getting a call out of the blue from Marisol wasn’t exactly welcome while she stood in the middle of the car dealership. She turned to see the salesman and Žarko looking around one of the vans. Jason stayed at his side, officially making it clear that he was a little traitor.

              At least with Jane strapped to her chest, she could keep her little girl from falling under the snare that was the tall Serbian man paying for everything.

              “Is the problem that you don’t have a car?”

              Josie sighed. “No. That’s not the problem.” She had to get off the phone. Žarko approached, his lips turned down slightly as if he knew she talked to Marisol. “I have to go, but I really will try to make it to group tonight, but I do have little guys so I don’t know how they are going to act.” Everyone would just have to understand.

              “Fine. You’ll tell me if you need help right? I mean that neighbor of yours isn’t causing any trouble is he?”

              Josie forced a laugh. “I’m fine. I’ll talk to you later, though.” She hung up the phone before he reached her and she felt kind of bad for lying to someone who had been there for her.

              “You need to see car to know if you will like it,” he said, staring down at her.

              “I know, but honestly, I don’t care what vehicle I drive. As long as it’s safe and can carry everybody.” It was his money after all and she trusted that he wouldn’t want to put his daughters in danger and that’s the conversation she hoped her eyes conveyed.

              He stared at her, making her heart pound with a fear unlike any other. “You trust me to pick car?” She nodded. She actually preferred it.

              “I just want a blue one, but I’ll let you have the final say.” By his expression she could tell that her answer pleased him. And it was truly evidenced by the fact that he and the man began to talk without ever asking her personal opinion. He chose a nice deep blue minivan to take for a test drive while she stayed behind with the kids. For once, she allowed Jason to indulge in an iced chocolate donut hole because it kept him quiet and incapable of disturbing the other visitors to the car center.

              Once Žarko and the nice older car salesman returned from the drive, there was the brief matter of signing all the paperwork. She had no idea that Žarko would pay cash until he had the money transferred over from his bank. She tried to keep quiet, but she had to wonder again, why he wanted to have any dealings with her. Maybe there was some cultural thing that she was missing. Considering his thick accent, it shouldn’t have been difficult to remind herself that he was foreign, but for whatever reason. She had trouble figuring him out.

              Once payment had been confirmed, Žarko had the car seats transferred from his vehicle to hers and then, they were on their way back to the apartment and on to the next phase of his master plan. She hadn’t quite yet decided to give up her apartment, but for the sake of sanity, she did agree to cook all meals in his apartment, mostly because he did have the bigger space, including the dining room that her apartment was missing. Because she had agreed to that, she had to set his kitchen up to her specifications. Easy, when the man who lived here didn’t actually cook anything.

              “Is there anything special that the girls would like for dinner?” With the extra money from her last paycheck, she’d decided to splurge and bought a Serbian cookbook online, figuring that was something that his family was used to. She didn’t bother to look at Žarko as she pulled the book out of her diaper bag and began to rifle through it.

              Of course, he saw what she had and pulled it from her hands to look through it. “You will make Serbian cuisine?” He didn’t look as if he believed her, but Josie had faith that she could do anything, as long as she could find the right items.

              “I can make anything with a recipe,” she told him. She tried not to allow his smile to affect her.

              “Let’s see what you can do.”

              She would not be intimidated. “If you like it, we have to go to life group tonight. And you have to be honest.” He looked like he would disagree, but finally, he nodded.

              “What will I get if I don’t like?”

              “I don’t know. What do you want?”

              He moved toward his living room where her kids were. “You will live here and learn to cook like real Serbian.”

              “Why would living here make a difference?”

              He didn’t answer, but that smile of his was pure devilish and she decided she didn’t want to find out. She turned toward her cookbook, hoping to find something that she could make. She had to be successful, even if it killed her because she refused to live under the same roof as temptation.

              “I will pick up the girls while you make Serbian dish. When I get back, I will then taste. I will even take children with me so you are not distracted from meal.”

              “Ha ha. I will have you know that I am great in the kitchen. You are going to regret making fun of me.” She hoped her mouth didn’t get her in trouble because looking through the book, she wasn’t sure she could pull off the recipes most likely to impress him.

              He had no problems getting her children dressed and ready to head out the door. But just before he made his exit, he turned to her and said. “I will help you pack after meal.”

              “You wish.” After that last exchange, he left. Josie took one last look at the cookbook and really regretted her decision to try and make a Serbian meal. She really didn’t want to have to move.