Big Daddy Sinatra 3: The Best of My Love (The Sinatras of Jericho County) (15 page)

“Charles,
what happened?” Jenay asked again as Charles began moving her toward his
car.
 
“And I have my car here, what are
you doing?”

“You’re
going to leave it here for now,” Charles said.
 
“I’ll have one of the boys drive it home.”

But
Jenay snatched away from him.
 
“I’m not
leaving it, that’s ridiculous.
 
And what
did you do to Willie?
 
Why did you hit
that man?”

“That
man,” Charles said, “was disrespectful to you.”

“How?”

“He talked
about the good old days.”

Jenay
frowned.
 
“So?
 
What’s disrespectful about that?”

“The
good old days when he used to fuck you,” Charles added.

Jenay
could feel rage sweep through her entire being.
 
“Fuck me?
 
He never had sex with
me!”

She
tore away from her husband’s side and hurried back to Willie.
 
Willie, with Megan’s help, was just standing
up.
 
And Jenay slapped him back
down.
 
Megan continued to hold him, to
help break his fall, but he landed on his ass even still.
 
Megan didn’t know what was going on.

“I
never slept with you,” Jenay said angrily, “and I don’t appreciate you claiming
that I did!”

Charles
was standing behind her, ready to defend her, as Willie stood back up. Only he
stood up as if he was ready to attack.

Charles
moved in front of his wife.
 
“I dare
you,” he said.

Willie
rubbed his cheek.
 
The pain was so
excruciating it felt as if his face was on fire.
 
He knew he couldn’t take another hit.
 
He backed off.

Charles
looked at his wife.
 
And Jenay knew by
his look alone he was upset with her for going out with a creep like Willie to
begin with.
 
Only Jenay wasn’t buying
into that.
 
Willie was a creep, she knew
it now, but she had no way of knowing it before he told that sick lie to her
husband.
 
“Drive your car,” Charles said
to her, “but take your ass straight home.
 
No stops.
 
You hear me?”

Jenay
could have battled back.
 
She could have
told him how she had no way of knowing the kind of man Willie proved himself to
be.
 
He wasn’t that kind of man when she
knew him in Boston.
 
But she knew her
husband.
 
He didn’t want to hear it.
 
“I hear you,” she said, and got into the
Mercedes he purchased for her.
 
She
looked hard at Willie Stiles, angry with him but disappointed in him too, as
she drove away.

Charles
looked at Willie too.
 
“Stay away from my
wife,” he said to him.
 
“Megan, go back
inside,” he told the employee.
 
“Don’t
give this prick the time of day.”

“Yes,
sir,” Megan said, and hurried back into the Inn.

Charles
left.
 
But after Willie stood back up and
began heading for his car, he immediately made a phone call.

“We’ve
got to change the plan,” he said.
 
“I
just got into it with Jenay and her husband.
 
Yeah.
 
No, it wasn’t about that.
 
My stupid ass made a comment about having sex
with Jenay and that set her bastard husband off. I told you it was a stupid
mistake!
 
But don’t worry,” Willie said
as he got into a car he didn’t even own, “I got this.
 
All you wanna do is take them down.
 
Why should you care how I do it?
 
Just know it’ll get done,” he said, and
killed the call.

He threw
his cell phone aside and leaned his head back.
 
How could he have been so stupid, he wondered.
 
All he had to do was keep his cool, stay
patient, and that bitch would have been eating out of his hand.
 
But oh no!
 
He had to play the macho man with hubby.
 
Now she probably won’t ever talk to him again.
 

Unless,
he thought, and he was thinking hard, he destroyed them in a different
way.
 
Jenay talked as if her children
were her life.
 
And he’d already seen how
fast one of those girls, that Ashley, really was.
 
All he had to do was wink at her and she was
begging for some from the moment he laid eyes on her.
 
He was going to give her some all right.
 
He was going to have her eating out of his
hand so completely that she was going to be the one to bring her own family
down.

Willie
smiled. “Yeah,” he said aloud.
 
“That’s
it.
 
They win the first round.
 
I will win the next one.”

A
week later and Donald’s Jeep stopped at the curb in front of his father’s
downtown office.
 
He and Jenay stepped out,
walked to the back of the Jeep, and Donald opened his trunk.

“I
don’t know why I couldn’t just take you to the airport,” he said as he lifted
her luggage out of the trunk.

“Who
are you telling?” Jenay asked.
 
“You know
I know it too.”

“Why does
he do that?”
 
Donald asked.
 
“He makes me feel as if he doesn’t trust me
to do anything right.
 
Not even to take
his wife to the airport.”

“It’s
not you, Donnie,” Jenay said as they walked toward Charles’s Jaguar.
 
It was parked directly in front of his
office.
 
“He trusts you.”

“But
did you tell him I could take you to the airport?
 
Did you tell him I can handle it?”

“He
knows you can handle it, don’t be ridiculous.
 
And yes I told him it would make more sense if you drove me rather than
bringing me here so he could drive me.”

“What
did he say?”

Jenay
pulled out the key she had to her husband’s Jaguar and opened his trunk.
 
“He said no, that’s what he said.
 
He said nobody’s taking me to the airport but
him.”

“That’s
stupid,” Donald said as he lifted her luggage into his father’s trunk.

“It’s
not stupid, Donnie, come on.
 
I’m going
to be away from the man for an entire week.”
 
She smiled.
 
“Maybe he’s going to
miss his baby and wants to see me off.”

Donald
smiled too.
 
“He is so possessive of you,
like he’s always afraid you’re going to leave him or something.
 
He doesn’t even realize how possessive he
really is.”

Jenay
couldn’t believe the lack of insight her youngest stepson had.
 
Although Donald wasn’t all that younger than
Jenay, she sometimes felt as if they were worlds apart when it came to
maturity.
 
“It’s called being in love,
Don,” she said to him.
 

He
looked at her.
 
“Love?”
 
He closed his father’s trunk.

“Love,”
Jenay repeated.
 
Then she smiled.
 
“You should try it on for size.”

“After
I spent that year in prison for beating up my pregnant wife,” Donald said, “all
these girls around here think I’m a wife beater.”

“You
were a wife beater,” Jenay said bluntly.

“But
they forget that my so-called wife was sleeping around on me.
 
They forget that the baby my ex-wife had was
not mine and the DNA proved it.
 
They
forget all of that.”

“Because
it doesn’t matter,” Jenay said. “You beat your wife.
 
She was pregnant.
 
Stop trying to justify what you did and admit
you did something terrible, you went to counseling for it, you paid your
dues.
  
And make it clear to these girls
that you’ll never do anything like that again.”

“But
how can I make it clear to them?” Donald asked.
 
Jenay could hear the pain in his voice.
 
“How can I prove a negative?
 
Ashley is the only girl around who doesn’t treat me like I’m some
monster.”

“That’s
true,” Jenay said.
 
“She loves you very
much.
 
You and she hit it off from the
moment she and Carly came to live with us six years ago.
 
But your father and I adopted them, Don.
 
She’s your sister,” Jenay made clear.

Donald
frowned.
 
“I know that.
 
Why would you say something like that?”

“And
get that edge out of your voice with me,” Jenay said, with edge in her own
voice.

Donald
exhaled.
 
“I’m sorry, Ma.”

“I
said a thing like that,” Jenay went on, “because you’re attracted to her for
the very reason you just said.
 
She’s
beautiful, she’s fun to be around, and she treats you well.
 
I don’t want you to get it twisted, that’s
all.”

Donald
understood what she meant because it was true.
 
He was, and probably still was, attracted to Ashley.
 
“I won’t get it twisted,” he said.

A car
horn blew and Jenay and Donald looked to see a Lexus as it stopped in the
middle of the street, and a blonde pressed down the car’s window.
 
When Jenay saw that it was Theresa, one of
the ladies in town who she considered a close friend, she smiled.
 
Theresa’s husband was a major businessman in
town too.
 
“Hey, Jenay!” she yelled.

“Hey
girl.
 
How’s it going?”

“I
thought you would be gone by now.”

“I
thought so too.
 
I’m catching a later
flight.
 
Charlie insists on taking me to
the airport, so I had to work around his schedule.”

Theresa
laughed.
 
“Ah that’s so sweet!
 
He is such a sweet man!”

“You’d
better not let him hear you say that,” Jenay said.

“You mean
Big Daddy Sinatra doesn’t mind his reputation as a badass?
 
He doesn’t want people to truly know just how
soft he really is?”

Jenay
laughed.
 
“Keep talking,” she said.
 
“You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
 
Jenay also noticed that traffic was beginning
to back up because of Theresa’s decision to stop in the middle of the street to
talk, and horns were beginning to honk.

Theresa
looked through her rearview and saw it too. “Keep your shirt on!” she yelled,
although none of the drivers of the cars behind her could hear her.
 
She looked at Jenay.
 
“We’ll talk later, girl,” she said. “Have a
safe flight.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey,
Donald,” Theresa added, and then drove off without waiting for his reply.

“See?”
Donald said.

Jenay
looked at him. “See what?”

“Even
Miss Theresa doesn’t give me the time of day.
 
Nobody respects me!
 
And if you
think the older ladies are that way with me, imagine how the younger ladies
are.
 
My ex-wife and I got into it that
one time and now they’re scared I’ll do the same thing to them.
 
One of the girls around here even said to me
the other day that my grandfather killed his wife and because of that she’s not
having anything to do with a Sinatra.
 
‘You aren’t killing me,’ she said.”

“But
Donnie, don’t you get it?” Jenay asked him.
 
“She’s only saying that because that special prosecutor is in town and
everybody’s talking about your grandfather’s case right now.
 
Most of the people around here who knew him
thought he was dead, and the rest were too young, like you, to know him at
all.
 
All of the talk will die down.”

“Not
if they release him from prison,” Donald said.
 
“I asked Brent if the state released Granddad from prison would he be
allowed to live in Jericho again, and Brent said yes.
 
If that happens I’m screwed for life,
Ma!
 
I’ll have to leave my hometown just
to find a date!”

“Oh,
baby,” Jenay said and gave her stepson a big hug.
 
He used to be her staunch enemy when she
first started dating his father.
 
Now
they were close, and she was his greatest defender.
 
When they stopped hugging, she looked at
him.
 
Tears were in his small, blue
eyes.
 
She kept her hand on his
neck.
 
“Still taking your meds?” she
asked him.

Donald
nodded.
 
He suffered from Depression, and
although he used to refuse to acknowledge his condition and would fight against
taking any kind of medication, he now took his meds consistently, and did
everything he was supposed to do.
  
He
was a changed man, but nobody gave him credit for the change.

“Just
keep doing what you’re doing,” she said.
 
“You’ll be okay.
 
Keep going to
church like you’re doing. Keep praying.
 
Things will turn around for you.
 
God will send you the right girl, don’t worry.
 
But you made your own bed hard when you beat
on your wife.”

Donald
nodded.
 
“I know.”

“You
also broke your daddy’s heart,” Jenay added.

Donald
looked at her.
 
She could tell he wanted
to battle that suggestion, since his father was the most important person in
this world to Donald, but he didn’t fight the truth.
 
He nodded on that too.
 
“I know,” he said.

“Just
keep doing the right thing, you’ll be rewarded.
 
You can’t go wrong doing right.”

Donald
smiled.
 
“You sound like Tony,” he
said.
 

“Boy
bye!” Jenay said with a laugh and headed across the sidewalk toward Charles’s
office.
 
Donald headed for his Jeep.
 
He had to get back to work.

Jenay
entered the lobby of her husband’s storefront office and smiled at his
assistant.
 
“Well hello there, Faye.”

Faye
smiled at Jenay.
 
“Good afternoon, Mrs.
Sinatra.
 
Great to see you again!”

“Is
he in?”

“Yes,
ma’am, he’s here.”

Jenay
began heading toward the back.
 
“How are
things going for you today?”

“Things
are going well, thank-you, ma’am.
 
Oh,
and congratulations.”

Jenay
stopped walking and looked at her.
 
“Congratulations for what?”

“Word
has leaked that you’re going to be our Founder’s Day queen.
 
That’s quite an honor, Mrs. Sinatra.”

Girl bye
, Jenay wanted to say.
 
What
kind of honor is that
?
 
But Faye was
only repeating a rumor.
 
“No decision
yet,” she said instead, and continued down the hall that led to her husband’s
private office.

Charles
sat behind his desk and was on his desk phone when she walked in.
 
He waved her back and continued to talk as
she approached.
 
“Not until we receive
ten percent mark-up,” he said into the phone.
 
“At least ten.”
 

Jenay
wore a short print dress that made her look like a kid again.
 
He looked at her shapely legs as she
approached him.
 
“That’s what I’m
saying.
 
Ten percent or nothing.
 
We’re out if they don’t agree to terms.”

She
blew a kiss at him.
 
He continued to
watch her, but was too absorbed in his phone conversation to respond to her air
kiss.

“I
can’t,” he said into the phone.
 
“Nope.
 
I said no.
 
That’s out of the question.”
 

Jenay
walked around the desk until she was beside his chair.
 

“Already
asked and answered fifty different ways,” Charles went on.
 
“I’m not going around that bush again.
 
They either agree to terms or they can forget
it.
 
We’ll find somebody else.
 
Okay.
 
Keep me posted, Mitch.”
 
Then
Charles hung up the phone and leaned over and kissed his wife on the lips.

“Good
afternoon,” he said.
 

“Hey.”
 
She leaned her butt against the front of his
desk, beside him, and folded her arms.
 
“Your assistant just congratulated me.”

“What
for?”

“My
selection as Founder’s Day queen.”

Charles
frowned.
 
“You turned them down already!”

“I know.
 
And you know it too.
 
But for some strange reason they don’t want
the town to know.”

“What
is with them and this queen bullshit?” Charles wanted to know.
 
“Who the fuck cares?”

“Oh,
it’s a big deal, Charles, don’t minimize it.
 
There are women in this town who would give their right arm for the
honor.”