Read Just One Night. Part 3 for Free Online

to you right now, being unemployed and two months from homeless?”
    “A lot, actually!” She has some nerve judging me like this. I’m almost ready to be mad at her.
    She stands. “Try and guess how many prideful people end up eating in soup kitchens.” She’s halfway to the door before I can answer.
    “None!”
    She fixes me with a dead serious glare and drops her tone. “Think again, okay? Just … think again.” And then she’s gone.
    I sit there on the couch staring at the door. I’ve known Mia for years, but it’s clear she has a past that she keeps very separate from her current life, a past I know very little about. In some ways my best friend is an open book, but when it comes to life before we met, her memories are locked in a bank vault that no one has the combination for. This is the closest I’ve been to learning anything about it.
    Was Mia hinting that she was homeless at some point? How is that even possible?
    I stand, shaking off the idea. Ridiculous . Mia is and always has been sophisticated, confident, and balsy. No way could she ever end up on the streets. The streets are for people who have illnesses. Drug addictions. Problems way too difficult to handle alone.
    I glance over at my computer screen. Fear rushes through me as I realize that I’m not that far away from having to make some very hard choices. Mia would offer to take me in, but I’d feel terrible about taking advantage of her. I have to be able to pay my own way and take care of myself. I’m an adult for shit’s sake. I cannot end up homeless. I just can’t.
    I flop back down into my chair in front of my laptop. My fingers fly over the keyboard and without me even thinking about it, they’ve brought up William Stratford’s contact information from his company’s website. I swallow with difficulty as I stare at my phone.
    Can I do this? Can I really call the man who I’m never supposed to talk to again and ask him for a job?

CHAPTER SIX
    William

    TODAY IS A RECORD DAY for me. It is the first Monday I’ve arrived in the office before five in the morning. I’m normally an early-to-work person, but desperation has turned me into a madman. I’ll do anything to avoid bumping into Ingrid the brunch hijacker. I believe she has enough class to leave me to my own devices whilst inside my office. I hope. The only danger zones where I might bump into her are the lobby and the elevator, both of which I have studiously avoided. Being winded by a bit of stair climbing is a small price to pay for my sanity.
    The P&Ls from our overseas division reveal nothing. Not because there’s nothing to see there, but because every time I try to focus on the numbers they begin to swim before my eyes. I cannot concentrate on a single thing besides the last conversation I had with Ingrid when I dropped her off at her car following brunch.
    Sleep with her this weekend at her place? Preposterous. It will never happen. Not in a million years. Don’t get me wrong … I enjoy the opposite sex with unrivaled enthusiasm when the situation is right, but I am no gigolo. I have exactly five days to figure out how to remove her fangs from my manly parts, and I will succeed. I merely lack a few resources to accomplish this today, but certainly they cannot be that difficult to acquire. Money is no object. I will win at this game she’s playing, there is no doubt about that. And I will do it without a smidge of tarnish ending up on the company’s reputation.
    “Sir?”
    A frizzy red head has appeared in my doorway, causing me to check my desk clock. Tick tock, it’s already eight o’clock. Where has the morning gone?
    “Yes, Miss Meechum?” I press my lips together, expressing my irritation with her interruption. Can’t she see I’m busy staring at blurred figures on paper right now?
    “Is there anything you need?” she asks in a meek voice.
    I frown at her. “Have I sent you a message or an email?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Then I believe you have your