BIG DADDY SINATRA 2: IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU, Book 2 (19 page)

The
door was finally opened by Quince.
 
But
instead of letting them in, he stepped outside and closed the door.
 
“I really appreciate the fact that you took
the time out and came, Jenay,” he said.
 
“You look beautiful, by the way.”

Charles
stared at Quince.
 
If he was expecting to
bait him into some kind of rise, then he didn’t know Charles.
 
Even Jenay didn’t respond to such vacant
flattery.
 

When
Quince realized her coming didn’t automatically mean that she could be easily
wooed, or that her husband was going to be coaxed out of his button-down
sternness because of some lame comment, he moved on.
 
“I don’t want any drama,” he said.
 
“My girls have been through enough.
 
I haven’t told them you were coming, Jenay,
after you called and said you would be here, because I didn’t want to hurt them
in case you didn’t show.
 
That’s how
serious I am about my girls.”

“And
what do you think Jenay is?” Charles asked, a little perturbed with Quince
already.
 
“You think she’s
unserious?
 
You think she came all this
way for laughs?”

“I
just don’t want any drama,” Quince reiterated.

“You
don’t give any, there won’t be none,” Jenay said.
 
“Are the girls here?”

Quince
was taken aback by how confident she now was.
 
She was not that same girl he used to know, whose sweetness sometimes
irritated him and whose devotion he missed. This was not going to be nearly as easy
as he had hoped.
 
“They’re here,” he
said.
 
Then he opened the door.

Jenay
placed her hand in Charles’s hand, exhaled, and then she and Charles walked
into the home.
 
Quince walked in behind
them, and closed the door.

“Girls!”
he yelled.
 
“Somebody’s here to see you!”

Jenay
braced herself as Ashley and Carly entered the living room.
 
But as soon as she saw them, and as soon as
they saw her, it seemed as if time had stood still.

“Ash!
 
Carly!” Jenay cried, and broke free from
Charles and ran to them.

“Jenay!”
both girls cried and ran to her.
 
Their
father told them to put on the show of their lives when they saw her, but now
that she was here, in the flash, they didn’t have to pretend at all.
 
They were overwhelmed with joy!

Jenay
fell onto the sofa with them in her arms.
 
Charles was amazed at how big the girls were.
 
Both were almost as big as Jenay.
 
And they were such beautiful girls.
 
He was touched by the genuine affection and
love they still had for Jenay.

“It’s
been so long,” Ashley said through her tears.

“It’s
been too long,” Jenay responded.
 
Both
girls were hugging Jenay and crying, and Jenay was hugging them and crying too.

Even
Quince was pleased with their reaction.
 
He could not have scripted it better.
 
Although, he suspected, given his daughters’ very emotional outburst,
they weren’t completely on script.

“I’m
so happy to see you again,” Jenay said, wiping tears.
 
“I never thought it would happen!”

Charles
pulled out a handkerchief from his coat pocket, walked over, and handed it to
his wife.
 
He was thankful that the girls
still cared for her.
 
He knew how much
she cared for them.

“Who’s
that?” Carly asked Jenay.
 
Charles could
already see that she was the younger of the two girls, but she was definitely
the more outspoken.

“That’s
Charles,” Jenay responded.
 
“He’s my
husband.”

Ash
and Carly looked at each other.
 
Then
they glanced at their father.
 
His stern
look reminded them that this was not reality, but a game.
 
And if they expected to make him proud, they
had better play it well.

“Charles,
this is Ashley,” Jenay said, introducing him to them.
 
“And that’s Carly.”

“Nice
to meet you,” Charles said.
 
He was not a
man easy to smile it up, and he didn’t bother here.

“Hey,”
Ash said.

“Hi,”
Carly said.
 
“You’re white.”

Charles
couldn’t help but smile at that.
 
“So
I’ve heard,” he said

“Oh,
Jenay,” Ash said, “it’s so wonderful to have you back!”

Charles
sat in one of the flanking chairs, and Quince sat in the other one, and they
watched Jenay and the girls have a love fest.
 
For long minutes on end she and the girls talked and reminisced and
laughed and cried.
 

But
as Charles sat there and watched the love fest, something felt fake and phony
to him.
 
He couldn’t say what it was,
since the girls affection for Jenay seemed real, and he knew her affection for
them was.
 
But something was off.

He
looked at Quince.
 
He was staring at his
daughters as if he was inwardly coaching them, and the biggest girl would
occasionally take peeps at him.
 
Maybe
she was just seeking his approval, or maybe he was coaching what was not as
real as it seemed and was actually a performance.
 
But Charles couldn’t be sure.
 
But he was certain something was off.
 
He was certain something wasn’t quite right.

But
Jenay was so thrilled to be around the girls again, girls she once raised and
thought of as her own daughters, that she could barely see anything else.
 
That was why Charles knew he couldn’t get
caught up in the hype.
 
He had to be her
eyes.

“It’s
been so awful after you left, Jenay,” Ash said.
 
“Everybody left us.
 
Then Mom just
passed away.”

“I
know,” Jenay said.
 
“Your father told
me.
 
I am so sorry.”

“She
never came around anyway,” Carly said, and Ash looked at her as if she had just
spilled some great secret.
 
Even Jenay,
despite her emotions, noticed that look.
 
Charles certainly did.

“It
still hurts,” Ash said.
 
“She was our
mother.”

“Yes,
of course,” Jenay agreed.

“We
don’t know what to do,” Ash went on.
 
“We
don’t know who to turn to.”

“What
do you mean?” Jenay asked.
 
Charles was
staring at Ash.
 

Quince
knew this was a big moment.
 
He looked at
Charles sitting there in his high-dollar suit and shiny dress shoes.
 
And they were some big-ass dress shoes,
Quince noted.
 
Which meant he had a
big-ass dick.
 
And on top of that, if
Quince were to be objective, Charles Sinatra was a very attractive man.
  
The idea that Jenay would give all of that
up just to be with his girls didn’t feel possible to him.
 
She would try to get the girls, but keep
Sinatra too.
 
But Arianna said she would
dump him if the girls played their cards right.
 
Arianna was so convinced.
 
Quince
was feeling less convinced the longer he stared at Charles.

 
“What I mean is,” Ash said, and then she
glanced at her father.
 
Quince looked at
her and eyes encouraged her.
 
She looked
back at Jenay.
 
“We need to talk to you
in private.”

“In
private?” Jenay asked.

“Yes,”
Carly echoed.
 
“We need to talk to you
away from everybody.”

“Sorry,
but I don’t keep any secrets from my husband,” Jenay made clear.
 

“It’s
not a secret,” Ash said.
 
“It’s just that
it’s . . . private.
 
We can go in the
backroom and talk, or your husband can wait outside.”

“No,
her husband cannot,” Charles said pointedly to Ash.
 
“I go where my wife goes.
 
Nobody will be taking her into any backrooms,
and I will not be excusing myself.
 
Jenay
came here because she cares about you girls.
 
I came here because I care about Jenay.
 
We didn’t come all this way to separate.
 
So whatever you need to say to her, you need to say it.
 
If you don’t want to say it in front of your
father, then that’s between you and him.
 
He can leave.
 
But I stay with
Jenay.”

The
girls seemed upset by Charles’s lack of cooperation.
 
Jenay found it odd that they would be more
interested in getting her husband out of the room than telling her what was
really going on.
 
“What is it?” she asked
them. “What do you need to tell me?”

There
was a hesitation, but then Carly decided to say it.
 
“Dad told us to tell you,” she started, and
quickly caught herself.
 
“I mean, we
wanted to tell you how much we missed you.”

Jenay
smiled and pinched Carly’s cheek.
 
“Oh,
baby, I miss you too!”

“And
we want you to know how much we need you now,” Ash said.
 
“How much we need you to come back to us.”

Charles
and Jenay exchanged a glance.
 
Then Jenay
looked at Ash.
 
“Come back?
 
I can’t . . . I’m not. . . I’m here to help,
and I’ll be happy to do what I can, but I have a husband now, girls.
 
I have children.”

“His
children?” Ash asked.

“And
my own child, yes.”

“But
what about us?” Carly asked.
 
“And what
about Dad?”

The
doorbell rang just as Jenay was answering that.
 
“I’m here to see you girls because your father gave me permission to see
you.
 
I would have been here for you
years ago,” she made clear, “but your father wouldn’t allow it.”

“That’s
a bald-faced lie!” Quince blared out.

Charles
looked at him.
 
“Are you calling my wife
a liar?
 
It’s the truth!
 
You court-ordered her to stay away from those
girls.”

“Is
that what she told you?” Quince asked.
 
He would never let his girls know the truth of why Jenay stayed away so
long.
 
“Another one of her tall
tales.
 
That’s why I had a vasectomy,
man.
 
I never wanted her to be the mother
of any child of mine.”

Jenay
looked at him.
 
She and Charles both were
floored.
 
“You had a vasectomy?” she
asked him.

Quince
smiled.
 
“You wasn’t having any child of
mine.
 
Not your black ass.
 
You weren’t good enough to have my children.”

Jenay
stared at her ex-husband. What a snake, she thought.
 
It hurt her to her heart to hear him confess
it.
 
During the entire time she was
 
married to him, he insisted that she was the
reason she never got pregnant.
 
He had
two daughters, he would say, so it couldn’t be him.
 
It had to be her.
 
When he had rigged the results all
along.
 

But
even through her pain, she nor Charles were going to rise to his bait.
 

The
doorbell rang again.
 

“I
don’t know what game you’re playing, Quince,” Jenay said, “but you won’t be
playing it with me.
 
You
 
know and I know that you court-ordered me to
stay away from your daughters.”

But
it didn’t matter.
 
The girls had his
back.
 
“Court-order or no court-order,”
Ashley said, “if you really loved us you should have found a way to come and
see about us.”

Quince
smiled.
 
He was their universe.
 
They weren’t about to take her side over
his.
  
“Get the door, Ash,” he ordered.

Ash
stood up and headed for the door.
 
Jenay
looked at Charles.
 
Charles, however, was
staring at Quince.
 
It was a game he was
playing all right.
 
Charles just didn’t
quite know what the stakes were.
 
That
question was answered, however, when he heard a voice at the front door.