BIG DADDY SINATRA 2: IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU, Book 2 (3 page)

“Don’t
ask,” Mary responded as she hurried toward her desk.

“What
happened?” Faye asked anyway.

Mary
tossed her shoulder bag on the desk and glanced back at the assistant as she
began hurrying down the hall.
 
“Is he
mad?”

“He’s
mad,” Faye responded.
 
“He asked for you
twice already.”

Mary
let out a sigh of frustration as she stood outside of his office door, smoothed
down her skirt, and then knocked once and entered.
 

Charles
was sitting behind his desk with a cup of coffee in one hand and yet another
vacate order in his other hand.
 
Sometimes he felt as if all he did was serve notices to vacate, when
real estate was only a small fraction of his business interests.
 
From a bank and a Bed and Breakfast, to a car
dealership and out-of-state businesses that he flipped with his investment
partners, his plate was overrunning.
 
His
goal had been to turn over his rent collecting business to one of his sons so
that he could focus on weightier matters.
 
But the two sons he believed were more than capable of handling it,
Brent and Tony, viewed him more as a vicious slumlord who wouldn’t hesitate to
put poor old ladies out in the cold, and they both refused to participate.
 
His two younger sons, Robert and Donald,
wanted desperately to run that sector of his business enterprise, but were
still too immature in Charles’s eyes for him to hoist that level of
responsibility onto either one of them.

“Good
morning, sir,” Mary said as she began walking toward his desk.

“You’re
late,” Charles responded, without looking up.

“I
was having sex with my boy toy and time got away from us.”

“Try
again.”

“I
was having sex with you and time got away from us.”

Charles
inwardly smiled.
 
He loved this
woman.
 
“See that it doesn’t happen
again,” he said.

“See
that what doesn’t happen again?” Mary asked.
 
“Sex with my boy toy, sex with you, or coming to work late?”

Charles
smiled.
 
“All three,” he said, and then
looked up at her.
  
Mary Stalworth was a
tall, pretty, slim-hipped white woman who had been his secretary for over a
decade.
 
And although they were right
around the same age, she was far feistier than he could ever be.
 
Whereas his toughness was cold and
calculating, hers was smooth and disarming.
 
They made, he felt, an excellent pair.
 
“Pull Obadiah Puck’s file,” he said.

“Oh
wild.
 
You finally got that scoundrel
out?”

“He’s
out,” Charles responded, “but I need his personal belongings out.
 
Get a crew over there today.
 
But I don’t want them to place any of his
things on the side of any road.
 
Tell
them to put everything in one of my storage sheds, furniture and all, and then
notify Puck where he can find it.
 
And
tell that clean-up crew that they will be responsible for anything lost, stolen
or broken.
 
The man is down and out by
his own doing, that’s the truth, but we aren’t going to kick him while he’s
down.”

“Yes,
sir.
 
I’ll get right on it.”

“And
go on and place an ad in the local paper.”

This
surprised Mary.
 
“Even before there’s
been a damage assessment inside the place, sir?”

“Place
the ad,” Charles responded.
 
“Whatever
damage that’s been done will be repaired.
 
But I want a tenant ready to go.
 
An empty property is wasted money, and I don’t waste money.”

“My
salary can attest to that.
 
Anything
else, sir?”

“That’s
all.
 
Oh, and tell Faye her coffee is
improving.”

Mary
smiled.
 
“She’ll appreciate that.
 
She has a world-size crush on you.
 
She’s terrified of you, but she has a crush on
you.
 
Crazy girl.
 
So she’ll really appreciate your compliment.”

“Then
never mind,” Charles responded.
 
“An
appreciative employee is a good employee, but a terrified employee is a better
one.”

“Then
I must be a lousy employee,” Mary said, “because you don’t scare me a twit.”

Charles
laughed.
 
“Just get to work,” he ordered.

“I’m
going, I’m going,” Mary said with a smile of her own.
 
“Oh, and how’s Mrs. Sinatra?
 
Is she okay?”

Charles
found the question itself odd.
 
“She’s
fine,” he said.
 
“Why wouldn’t she be?”

“So
she wasn’t hurt at all?”

Charles
frowned.
 
“Mary, what are you talking
about?”

“The
accident.
 
She was in that car accident.”

Charles
jumped from his seat, spilling his coffee as he did.
 
“What car accident?” he asked her
anxiously.
 
“My wife was in a car
accident?”

“Yes,
sir.
 
I thought you knew!”

Charles
sat upright his overturned coffee cup, threw down the vacate order he was
reviewing, and grabbed his suit coat from the back of his chair.
 
“Where?” he asked as he grabbed.

“On
Cromartie,” Mary said.
 
“Across from the
Family Dollar.
 
Her car and another car
were on the side of the road, and I saw where her back bumper had been hit.
 
It didn’t look serious though.
 
I would have said something sooner, but I
assumed she had phoned you.
 
I assumed
you knew.”

But
he didn’t know a damn thing, Charles thought as he hurried out of the
office.
 
His wife didn’t bother to call
and tell him a thing.
 
Not that it was
unusual.
 
She rarely included him in what
she considered to be any of the small stuff in her life, although he wanted to
be included in every aspect of her life.
 
But if she didn’t see it as major, she wasn’t going to phone him.
 
That was why he was pulling out his cell
phone calling her.
 
It rang and
rang.
 
By the time he made it out of his
storefront building and into his Jaguar parked at the curb, his call had gone
to her Voice Mail.
 
He tossed his phone
onto his passenger seat angrily, and took off.

CHAPTER TWO

Jenay
Sinatra heard her cell phone ringing but it had slipped from her hand after she
called her stepson and then Triple A, and it wedged between her seats.
 
Now she couldn’t reach it.
 
Which was typical of the way her morning had
been going.
 
She, instead, looked down at
the baby she held in her arms.
 
She
looked down at her baby daughter with trepidation in her eyes.
 
They were in her broken down Ford on the side
of the road, on one of Jericho’s busiest main arteries, and she knew if Charles
found out he would have a fit.
 
Not just
because she had resisted his desire to get rid of her car in favor of a brand
new one, but mainly because this was her third breakdown in as many
months.
 
Although it wasn’t the car’s
fault this time, they had been rear-ended after all, but even she knew Charles
wouldn’t care about that nuisance.
 
A
good working car, he would conclude, wouldn’t completely break down over a
simple fender bender unless it was in bad shape to begin with.
 
He tried it her way, she could just hear him
saying.
 
Now he was going to do it his
way.
 

The
problem for Jenay was that whenever Charles took over any aspect of her life
was how completely he took it over.
 
As
if she was another one of his grown children and, like his children, he
expected her to understand that father knew best.
 
Forget that she purchased this car before
they got married as her statement of independence to begin with.
 
Forget that it was a good car overall, but
wasn’t brand new and therefore had hiccups.
 
But Charles was in charge in their household, and, if she wasn’t
careful, he was going to take charge of her car situation too.

She
continued to stare at little Bonita, her bouncing baby girl.
 
After she had been rear-ended, she quickly
took her baby out of her car seat and placed her in her arms.
 
She had been asleep, but the sound of the hit
had awoken her.
 
Now she was trying to
eat the knuckle on her thumb, as she stared at Jenay too.
 

Although
she had Jenay’s darker coloring that made it clear she had at least one black
parent, everything else about this little girl made her the spitting image of
her father.
 
From her green eyes and wavy
jet black hair, to her straight nose and even the way she puckered her lips
just like he did, nobody would ever question this child’s paternity.
 
And although she still a little baby, she was
already the center of the Sinatra universe.
 
From Charles all the way down to his four grown sons, Bonita was the
most loved and cherished baby on the face of this earth.
 
A fact that warmed Jenay’s heart.
 
If something were to happen to her or Charles
or both of them, she would rest in peace knowing that any one of her stepsons
would look out for baby Bonita as if their life depended on it.
 
Because given who their father was, and the
reach even from the grave they would still believe he had, it would be.

Knocks
were heard on her car’s window.
 
When she
looked and saw two young police officers, she rolled down the window.
 
“Yes, officer?”

Branson,
the younger of the two officers, smiled when she rolled down the window.
 
“We took the statement from the guy who
rear-ended you, ma’am.
 
I just need to
see your license and registration too, and get a statement from you.”

She
handed him the information she had already retrieved.

“You’re
very beautiful if I must say so myself,” he said as he took her info.
 
“I’m new in this town.
 
Brand new.
 
Applied for the job, came and interviewed, and they hired me on the
spot.”

Jenay
smiled.
 
“Well good for you.”
 
She always liked somebody excited about their
vocation.

“What
about you, gorgeous lady?” Branson asked.
 
“Are you from around these parts?
 
I doubt it, given your sophisticated nature, but what do I know?”

His
partner elbowed him.
 
He frowned and
looked at him.
 

“What’s
wrong with you?” his partner whispered in his ear.
 
“That’s Big Daddy Sinatra’s wife.
 
That’s his baby on her lap.
 
And you’re hitting on her?
 
Are you crazy?”

The
young rookie swallowed hard.
 
He was
floored.
 
He was new in town, and he
didn’t know much of anything, but he’d already been schooled on who to avoid.
 
Big Daddy Sinatra topped that list.

“Do
you need us to call a wrecker?” his partner leaned in and asked Jenay when
Branson suddenly became less assertive.

“No,
thank-you,” Jenay said.
 
“I already
called Triple A.
 
And there’s my
stepson,” she added when she looked through her rearview mirror and saw Robert
getting out of his Corvette, and heading her way.

The
officer looked back and saw a car behind the car that had rear-ended Jenay, and
he saw a blond guy in his early twenties heading their way.
 
He knew it was Robert Sinatra.
 

He
took Jenay’s license and registration from Branson, and handed them back to
her.
 
“We won’t be needing these, Mrs.
Sinatra,” he said.
 
“You’re free to go.”

Jenay
accepted her information back and reached for her huge diaper bag on the
passenger seat.
 
She would never understand
this town.
 
They seemed to despise
everything about her husband, but they were yet so deferential to him that it
sickened even her.
 
As if Charles was the
kind of man who would do them or their careers great harm if they didn’t give
him and his loved ones preferential treatment.
 
If they bothered to get to know Charles even peripherally they would
realize how utterly ridiculous that was.

“Need
help?” Robert said as he walked up to her door.
 

At
twenty-two, Robert was only thirteen years younger than Jenay, and the second
youngest of Charles’s four sons, but he was the one Jenay viewed as the
sweetest.
 
He adored his father probably
above any of Charles’s other children, although they adored him too, and he
seemed fond of Jenay.
 
They weren’t
exactly close, but Jenay felt they were in a good place.
 
She felt they were getting there.

“You
must have flown,” she said happily as he opened her car door and took Bonita
out of her arms.

“When
I get a call from my stepmother that she and my baby sister are in a car
crash,” Robert said, as Jenay got out of the car, “then I’m flying.”
 
He hugged Jenay with one hand and then looked
at her.
 
“You okay?”

“We’re
good.
 
And it wasn’t a crash.
 
Just a little fender bender.”

“Front
or back?”

“Back,”
Jenay said and Robert, with Bonita in his arms, went to the rear of the
car.
 
A dent was there, a sizeable dent,
but nothing dramatic.
 
He smiled as he
walked back toward Jenay.
 
In the
sunlight his dark blonde hair and bright blue eyes sparkled.
 
“Barely a fender bender,” he said.

“Exactly.”

“Then
why is your car completely disabled?”

“Your
father would say because it’s a hunk of junk,” Jenay said, lifting her diaper
bag onto her shoulder.

“And
what say you?” Robert asked.

Jenay
looked at her beloved Ford.
 
“A hunk of
junk,” she responded.
 
“But don’t you
dare tell your father I said that.”

Robert
laughed.
 
“I won’t.”

“Do
you need a ride to your destination, ma’am?” Branson, who had backed off when
Robert first arrived, moved back closer and asked her.

“Thank-you
officer,” Robert said, “but I think I can take it from here.
 
See that Corvette down there?
 
Yeah, that’s her transport.
 
She’ll be fine.”

Branson
gave Robert a nod, but his partner took him by the arm and they went back to
finalize matters with the driver who had rear-ended Jenay.

Jenay
looked at her stepson. He was a charmer, and adorable as they come, but Charles
didn’t worry about him and his activities for nothing.
 
“And how can you afford a Corvette?” she
asked him after the officers walked away.
 

“I
can’t,” Robert admitted.
 
“Especially
since Dad won’t give me anything above an entry level position in his
corporation.
 
It belongs to a friend.”

“A
girl?” Jenay asked.

Robert
smiled that charming smile of his.
 
“Are
there any other kind?”

Jenay
shook her head.
 
“I don’t fault you
guys.
 
I can’t.
 
A female offers up money and ass, you guys
are going to take it every time.
 
It’s
these silly girls out here trying to buy love that I blame.”

“I
know, right?” Robert agreed with a grin.
 
“I mean, all they have to do is look at me and know I’m up to no
good.
 
But they don’t believe what they
see.”

“That’s
because sometimes looks can be deceiving,” Jenay responded.
 
“Take your father.
 
First time I looked at him I took him for a
player too.”

“He
was a player, are you kidding?” Robert said this proudly.
 
“And he was great at it too.
 
I watched him and learned everything I
know.
 
He was a master player.
 
Until he met you.”

Jenay
nodded her head.
 
“Well that’s one thing
I’m pleased he’s no longer a master at.”

Robert
laughed.
 
“Ready?”

“Yeah.
Oh, wait.
 
Let me leave the keys under
the floor mat for the tow driver, and let me try to retrieve my cell
phone.
 
It slipped from my hand.”
 
She went back into the car, left the key
under the mat, and searched for her phone.
 

Robert
began making funny faces at his kid sister, causing her to look at him as if he
was a lunatic.
 
But when he looked away
from her, and saw a black Jaguar fly past him, pulled over onto the shoulder of
the road in front of them, and then began backing up, all smiles were
gone.
 
“Uh-oh,” he said.

Jenay
stood back up. “Uh-oh what?” she asked as she looked at Robert.
 
Robert nodded toward the Jaguar.
 

When
Jenay saw Charles’s Jaguar backing toward them, her heart dropped.
 
“You called him?”

“No!
 
I came straight over.
 
I didn’t want to hear his mouth any more than
you did.
 
One of his flunkies here in
town must have seen you parked on the side of the road and, instead of offering
to help the way a real man would, they probably called and told him just so
they could score some brownie points with him.
 
Pathetic pieces of shit.
 
Whoever
made that call.”

But
it was a moot point now, as far as Jenay was concerned.
 
He was here. Instead of talking about him
with Robert, which she rarely ever did anyway, she prepared herself for the
onslaught of that
I told you so
mantra
he was sure to unleash.
 

Charles
looked through his rearview mirror as he unbuckled his seatbelt.
 
His wife was standing beside Robert, and the
baby was in Robert’s arms, so at least his family was intact, he thought.
 
And that car of hers didn’t appear to be any
worse for wear.
 

But
he still didn’t like the fact that he had to find out through his secretary
that his wife had been in an accident.
 
He wanted to be Jenay’s go-to man.
 
He wanted to be the one person she called as
soon as something happened to her, good or bad, small or massive.
 
But just as he tended to handle his problems
on his own the way he’d always handled them, she handled hers the same
way.
 
And for the most part he loved that
independence she so fiercely guarded.
 
But sometimes, like right now, it concerned him too.