Big Daddy Sinatra: There Was a Ruthless Man (The Sinatras of Jericho County Book 1) (9 page)

“Call
Dr. Dross,” he said to Tony.

But
Susan found the mere suggestion abominable.
 
“Call a doctor?” she asked, with incredulousness in her voice.
 
“He doesn’t need a doctor to come here.
 
Look at him!
 
Look at what Donnie did to him!
 
He needs to go to the hospital!”

Charles
looked at her with an undeniably icy gaze.
 
“You’re going to the hospital,” he said to her, “if you don’t shut the
fuck up.”

Susan
knew her father-in-law.
 
Although she’d
never, not ever seen him lose his temper, she’d seen him lose his cool.
 
And it was never in his actions, but in his
look alone.
 
Once, when Donald didn’t
heed that warning, he nearly knocked Donald through a wall.
 
She immediately stepped slightly away from
Charles, and she did shut up.

Charles
looked at Tony again.
 
“Call Dr. Dross,”
he said again.
 
“Tell him to get here
now.
 
And remind his ass that I’m not
paying him to run his mouth.”

“Yes,
sir,” Tony said, as he pulled out his cell phone and left the room to do his
father’s bidding.

“You
should have seen Donnie, Big Daddy,” Susan continued, and Charles looked at
her.
 
She was one of those pretty young
thangs that boys went nuts over, only to discover later, after falling hard for
her ass, that she, too, knew that she was a pretty young thang, and she knew
that boys went nuts over her.
 
And after
marriage, she wasn’t about to give up so much attention and adulation from all of
those boys, for the attention and adulation of just one boy.
 
Charles knew her type well.
 
His ex-wife: exhibit number one.

“He
wouldn’t listen to a word I had to say,” Susan kept talking.
 
Kept grating on Charles’s nerves.
 
“I told him everything isn’t what it seems
sometimes.
 
I told him that.
 
But he wouldn’t listen to me.
 
I told him---”

“You
told him to don’t believe his lying eyes, right?
 
You told him to ignore the real in front of
him, and embrace the unreal.
 
Right?”
  
Then Charles’s already
hard looked turned deadly.
 
“Get the fuck
out of my face,” he said to his daughter-in-law.
 

Paul,
understanding the man’s temperament even if Susan didn’t, managed to fight
through his considerable pain, and pull her away from Charles.
 
Charles knew then that he was just as smitten
with her as Donald was.

He
left the two fools and went to find the third fool, Donald, his youngest
son.
 
Just as Tony had said, Donald was
in the guest bedroom, sitting on the side of the bed.
 
When Charles saw him sitting there with his
hands between his thighs and his blonde hair matted against his forehead, he
didn’t see a hard-working married man with a child on the way.
 
He saw a child.
 
His
child.
 
His one son, besides Robert, he
worried about the most.

When
Donald looked up and saw his father, that worried look in his deep blue eyes
turned to tears.
 
“Dad,” he said as if he
was voicing his pain, and then he ran to his father.
  
Charles opened his arms, and he fell into
his father’s arms.

He
was sobbing.
 
Charles could feel emotion
welling up within him as he listened to his son’s wails.
 
And he didn’t interrupt him.
 
He let him get it all out.
 

It
took several minutes, but Donald did eventually stop sobbing and moved out of
his father’s embrace, wiping his eyes as he did.
 
Charles didn’t speak.
 
He didn’t see the point of repeating the
obvious.
 
He waited until his son did so.

“We
haven’t been married two months,” he said, “and already she’s cheating.
 
And that’s what happened, Dad.
 
I caught her in bed with that man.
 
If Tony hadn’t come home with me, and hadn’t
been here, I would have . . . I could have killed that guy!”

“You
know him?”

“Yeah,
I know him.
 
He’s Paul Lungren.
 
He was her boyfriend before she met me.
 
And she swore it was over, Dad.
 
She swore up and down it was over.
 
I wouldn’t have been with her if I would have
known she still wanted him!”

The
first order of business when that baby arrived, Charles now knew, was to make
his son get a paternity test.

“She
had other boyfriends before me, and I didn’t worry about them.
 
But this guy kept coming around.
 
All the time.
 
I never liked it and she knew it!
 
I told him to stay away from my house, and I told her to stop letting
him come over, but she didn’t listen to me, Dad.
 
She never listens to me!”

Charles
could hold back no longer.
 
“What did you
expect?” he asked.

Donald
looked at him.
 
“What do you mean?”

“You
married the trick, Donald.
 
You married
the girl most likely to fuck, and now you want to pretend she’s somebody
else.
 
Well she’s not.
 
She’s exactly who you married.”

Those
should have been fighting words for Donald, but they weren’t.
 
Because he knew his father spoke the
truth.
 
“She’s pregnant,” he said.
 
“And it’s my baby.”

“You
hope,” Charles said.

But
Donald gave his father a firm gaze. “It’s my baby,” he said.

Charles
didn’t respond.
 
Because it didn’t matter
what Donald said.
 
Baby pop out, a
paternity test was going to be ordered.
 

“You
taught me,” Donald continued, “that even if I messed up, I had to do the right
thing.”

 
Charles squeezed his son’s small arm.
 
“Yes, I did,” he said.

Then
tears appeared in Donald’s eyes again.
 
“What am I going to do now, Dad?” he asked.

“I
don’t know, son.”

Donald
looked at Charles.
 
“If it was you, what
would you do?”

Charles
didn’t mix words.
 
“Leave her,” he said.

“But
I love her!” Donald shot back.

“Then
you’re fucked.
 
Because she’s going to
fuck.
 
Don’t think this beat-down you put
on boyfriend is going to do the trick.
 
If she couldn’t keep her legs closed two months after her marriage to you,
don’t expect her to keep them closed two years after the wedding.
 
So if you can live with that reality, that
your wife is going to screw you, then stay with her.
 
If you can’t live like that, son, cut your
losses now.”
 

Charles
looked at his son, as Donald jerked away from his grasp and walked over to the
window, undoubtedly to cry again and feel sorry for himself again, and reaffirm
his love to Susan again.
 
Because Charles
knew the type.
 
Donald wasn’t going
anywhere.
 
Same thing happened to Charles
early in his young marriage.
 
He stayed
too.
 
He stayed for years after her
initial indiscretion.
 
He stayed until it
hurt too much to stay.
 
Then he kicked
her ass to the curb.

But
he knew his son.
 
Donald wasn’t going
anywhere right now.
 
And telling him to
leave his wife was like telling a baby not to cry.
 
Because that apple, no matter how delicious,
never fell far from that tree.

An
hour later, Abigail Ridge, sitting on her patio while Reeva, her assistant,
gave her a manicure, received the call she’d been waiting to receive for
weeks.
 
“Stress reliever?” she asked him.

“Big
time,” he responded.

She
smiled.
 
“I can’t wait,” she said, bit
her bottom lip, and then ended the call.

Reeva
smiled as she continued to file her boss’s nails.
 
“Big Daddy?” she asked.

Abby
grinned.
  
“Finally, yes.”

“It’s
been weeks.
 
A long time.”

“Too
long.”

“You’d
better take the pill today.
 
You know
that’s the first thing he’s going to ask you.”

But
Abby had been thinking about that too.
 
She’d been thinking long and hard about that.
 
She was thirty-nine years old.
 
In a matter of months, she’d be forty.
 
And she was still Charles Sinatra’s piece on
the side.
 
He had no main course, and
granted she was his number one piece, but she was still a piece of his
life.
 
She was still a secret in his
life.
 
She was still, if she were to tell
the truth of it, his whore.

To be
his number one side bitch at twenty-six was a cute and powerful position to
have in Jericho.
 
She was thrilled to be
that girl.
 
And she was discreet about it
too.
 
But a side bitch at forty wasn’t
cute, nor powerful.
 
It was pitiful.
 
And nothing in Charles’s DNA was going to
urge
 
him to elevate her position at this
late stage.
 
If anything, he was coming
around less and less frequently, and was staying shorter times when he did come
around.
 
He could demote her soon.
 
It was now or never.

“What’s
the matter, Abby?” Reeva asked as she continued to file away.
 
“You want to go take it now?”

But
Abby sipped more tea and decided against taking anything.
  
“I’m good,” she said, and then she
grinned.
 
“I am so good!”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Three Days Later

“Three
gorgeous hunks just sat in your section,” one of the servers said to Jenay as
she entered the restaurant’s kitchen with her now-empty tray.

“I’d better
get on it,” Jenay said as she hurriedly began to grab three menus and her order
pad.
 
“I don’t want Luke screaming at me
for not moving fast enough.”

“And
I mean he screams,” her fellow waitress said.
 
“You’d think we were the worse servers in Boston the way he ride our
backs.
 
But speaking of riding, if those
three hunks want to meet you at a hotel, tell them you’ll throw me in for
free.”

Jenay
laughed.
 
“I don’t share,” she said
jokingly, and left the kitchen.
 

But
when she rounded the bar and looked toward her station, her smile quickly
turned into dread, and her fast pace slowed considerably.
 
And then she stopped.
 
One of the three gorgeous hunks sitting in
her section, as her colleague called them, was the one man she had been unable
to stop thinking about; the one man she was certain she would never see
again.
 
But just like that, less than two
months later, he was once again visiting her world.

“What’s
wrong with you?” a voice bellowed out.
 
She looked and saw her boss, Luke Broughton, standing behind the
bar.
 
“Get your ass moving, Jenay.
 
I’m not paying you to stand there like some
prissy princess!”

Jenay
steeled herself, and then headed for the table.
 
Charles was sitting there, in his dress shirt and slacks, looking even
more muscular and strapping than even she remembered him.
 
All she could think about was his hands.
 
And how they felt all over her.
 
And his penis.
 
And how it felt deep inside of her.
 
How was she going to pull this off without
giving away her true thoughts?
 
Her only
hope was that he would do, as other men had done to her in the past, and
pretend, in front of his friends, that he never saw her before in his life.

Charles,
himself, wasn’t aware of her presence at all.
 
They were in a deep discussion about a possible merger.

“We
need your capital, Charles,” Ethan, one of his business associates said
pointblank.
 
“That’s the bottom
line.
 
We’ve tried to work this every way
we can.
 
We’ve worked it all night
long.
 
It just won’t work any other way.”

Abe,
his other business associate, elbowed Charles.
 
He looked at Abe.

“I
wouldn’t mind working on that all night long,” Abe said with a smile.
 

Charles
looked in the direction Abe was nodding, and that was when he saw her.
 
She was walking in that sexy slue-foot style of
hers he adored, and still had that sincere, disarming look he actually
missed.
 
He hadn’t seen her in several
weeks, but it felt like several years.
 
It felt as if he was seeing someone near and dear to him after a long,
difficult absence.
 
He had, in fact,
decided against looking her up when he first arrived in Boston a couple days
ago to avoid those very feelings.
 
But
seeing her now changed everything.
 

Since
his divorce fourteen years ago, he’d had one-nighters countless times.
 
And he left them exactly as they were: one
night stands.
 
But Jenay stayed with
him.
 
He thought about her many times,
and dreamed about her more than once.
 
He
even considered looking her up again.
 

But
her words kept ringing in his ears:
what
good would come of it
?
 
So he left it
alone.
 
Now, despite all of his best
efforts, she was in his orbit again.
 
And
his heart, remarkably, leaped for joy.

“Good
afternoon, gentlemen,” she said as she placed the menus on the table and pulled
out her order pad. “Welcome to Capani’s.
 
May I take your drink orders?”

“What’s
your name, pretty girl?” Abe asked her.

“What’s
your name, pretty boy?” Jenay responded, and Abe and Ethan both laughed.

Good,
Jenay thought.
 
She had the misdirection
going just fine.
 
Now all she had to do
was get their orders and get the hell away from there.
 
But curiosity was a bitch.
 
She couldn’t avoid it.
 
She took a peep at Charles.
 
When she did, she realized that he was
staring at her as if he had been waiting for her to look his way.
 
And if she thought he was going to pretend he
didn’t know her from Adam, and they had no history whatsoever, she was
dreaming.

“Hello,
Jenay,” Charles said.

Jenay’s
heart began to pound.
 
She looked into
those striking green eyes and wanted to smile.
 
She’d missed him.
 
“Hi, Charlie,”
she said.

“Charlie?”
Abe and Ethan said in unison, chiding their business associate.

Jenay
ignored them.
 
“How have you been?” she
asked.

“I’ve
been okay,” Charles responded.
 
“And
you?”

“Good.
 
Real good.
 
I graduate in a week.”

Charles
smiled.
 
“Congratulations!”

“Thank-you
so much.
 
I can hardly wait.”

“Made
a decision yet?
 
I’m certain you aren’t
planning to make this dock your home.”

She
smiled.
 
“Not hardly.”

“So
who won?”

“Econolodge.”

Charles
gave her a thumbs up.
 
It was the best
choice, he felt.
 
He glanced down, at her
breasts.
 
“Still graduating top of your
class?” He looked into her eyes.

“You
remembered,” she said with a smile.
 
“Yes.
 
I am.”

“Good
for you.”

“Yes,
Jenay very good for you,” Abe said.
 
“Now
about getting together with us later…”

“Not
going to happen,” Charles said.

Abe
looked at him.
 
“Says who?”

“Me,”
Charles responded firmly.
 
“Three beers,
Jenay,” he said.

Jenay
was relieved to be getting out of there. “Three beers coming up,” she said, and
took off.

Abe
was upset.
 
“Why did you do that,
Charles?
 
She was engaging me.
 
She was interested!
 
We could have had her tonight.”

“She’s
not that kind of girl.”

“Yeah?”
Abe asked.
 
“And how would you know
that?
 
You know her like that?”

“I
know her.”

“Intimately?”

“I know
her,” Charles said, and then leaned forward.
 
“Back to work, gentlemen.
 
I
didn’t drive all this way from Maine to talk about some girl.
 
Now either you can convince me why it will be
worth my while to be the sole financial investor in this latest venture of
yours, or I can leave and you can try to pick up a lady.
 
Pick your choice.”

As
Charles suspected, money was the loudest drug.
 
The two businessmen forgot all about Jenay and continued to try and
convince him to invest his capital in a start up in Buffalo, New York that
promised big returns if they made the absolute right offer.
 
But they were ambition big and money
tight.
 
They needed Charles to take the
biggest risk.
 

And
also, as Charles suspected, Jenay didn’t serve their table again at all that
night.
 
She changed stations with one of
her coworkers, and worked on the opposite side of the restaurant, completely
out of Charles’s way.
 
But given Abe’s
insistence that she would make a good pass-around, Charles was pleased with her
decision.
 
He knew she was avoiding him
most of all, rather than Abe’s freshness, but she was wasting her time.

He
made it clear to her after dinner, when his two partners had left the
restaurant, after he agreed to pick up the check.
 
He informed his server to ask Jenay to come
see him.

He
could tell she was hesitant, as he began placing his thick wallet back into his
back pocket.
 
But she came to him.

“Is
there something that you need?” she asked him as if he was nothing more than
another customer.

“Yeah,”
Charles said bluntly.
 
“I need you.
 
What time do you get off?”

Jenay
wanted to say how she didn’t think that was a good idea.
 
Another one night stand?
 
But she couldn’t say it.
 
He wasn’t just anybody.
 
He was the man that still haunted her dreams,
and she had to figure out why.
 
“Seven,”
she said.
 
“My shift ends at seven.”

Charles
stood up and looked at his wristwatch.
 
“Where did you park?” he asked her.
 
They were now face to face, within an inch of each other. Jenay wanted
to back up, but didn’t.

“I
haven’t purchased a car yet,” she said.
 
“I’m still waiting for the check from the insurance company.
 
I took the T.”

 
“I’ll wait in the parking lot.
 
You remember my car?”

How
could she forget!
 
“Yes,” she said.

Charles
wanted to kiss her, but he refrained. He wouldn’t do that to her.
 
Not at work.
 
He grabbed his suit coat.
 
“I’ll
see you in an hour,” he said.

“You
don’t have to wait for me.”

“I’ll
see you in an hour,” he said, and left the restaurant.

 
He made the walk across the parking lot to
his car near the busy street.
 
He was
tired.
 
It had been an extremely long
day.
 
But he had to see her again.

As he
sat in his car and leaned back against the headrest, he wondered why was it
that he was suddenly so determined to be with her again.
 
That was the million dollar question for
him.
 
She was supposed to be a one shot
deal.
 
Just another bed warmer to go
along with all of the other bed warmers he’d had.
 

But
it didn’t turn out that way.
 
He had been
thinking about her.
 
At first it was all
sexual.
 
He missed her body
mightily.
 
That woman had given him a
very nice good night.
 
But his interest
in her morphed.
 
It was still a highly
physical attraction, but he began to think about, to wonder about, her.
 
Not her body.
 
Not her face.
 
Her
.
 
The woman inside.
 
He liked how
easily he could talk to her.
 
He liked
how sincere and mature she seemed.
 
He
liked her strength.
 
But that didn’t mean
he wanted to take it in any serious direction.
 
He didn’t.
 
He wasn’t going to
marry her.
 
He wasn’t going to commit to
her.
 
But why was he going all out to be
with her right now, if there wasn’t any real end game?

He
fell asleep thinking about games.
 
The
games people played.
 
That might have
been what he liked about Jenay the most.
 
The fact that she seemed serious and too experienced for any game
playing.
 
Her ex had done her a terrible
turn, and she was undoubtedly still getting over that nightmare.
 
She knew what it was like, just as Charles
knew, to be on the receiving end of somebody else’s deception.
 

After
over an hour of sleeping, he suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder, lightly
shaking him, when his eyes slowly opened.
 
When he looked over and saw Jenay standing at his open car window, he
smiled.