BIG DADDY SINATRA 2: IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU, Book 2 (5 page)

“No,
you
own the joint,” Jenay said.
 
“I just run it.”
 
She moved to get off of him again, but he
pulled her back.
 
And she could see a
stinging fierceness in his eyes.

“It’s
all still new to you,” he said to her, “I know that.
 
And I understand how my excessive and
complicated business ventures can be overwhelming to a newbie like you.
 
But that Bed and Breakfast you’ve been
running so admirably for me, is yours too.
 
You’re my wife.
 
What’s mine, is
yours.
 
What I own, you own.
 
Got it?”

Jenay
smiled.
 
“I’ve got it.”

But
Charles wanted to make himself clear.
 
“Don’t you dare walk around this town acting as if you don’t understand
that little fact, Jenay, or the people in this town will act as if they don’t
understand it either.
 
They will
disrespect you and treat you as if you’re less than them every chance they
get.
 
I will not tolerate that.
 
Nobody’s disrespecting you.
 
I won’t allow it.
 
You’d better not allow it either.”

Jenay
nodded her head.
 
He was serious, and she
became serious too.
 
Because she was only
just getting to know the town of Jericho, but she knew enough to appreciate
that he spoke the truth.
 
“I own it,” she
said firmly.

He
nodded.
 
“Good.”
 
But he still held her tightly in that oddly
clingy way he behaved sometimes when he didn’t want to let her go.

“And
as the owner of Jericho Inn,” she decided to say, “I have to set an example for
my employees.
 
And being late is not a
good example to set.”

Charles
looked at her and smiled.
 
“You always
get the last word, don’t you?”

Jenay
smiled too.
 
“It works out that way,
doesn’t it?

“Yeah,
it works out that way.
 
You get the last
word.
 
But guess what?”

Jenay
looked at him, sensing he was up to nothing good.
 
“What?”

“I
get the last lick,” he said, and slapped her viciously hard on her bare
backside.
 

“
Ouch
!” Jenay screeched in pain, and
Charles rolled from under her, laughing as he rolled.
 
She made him feel like a kid again!

But
he didn’t make her feel exuberant, but pained.
 
She pushed him. “Not funny,” she said, although she couldn’t help but
smile herself, as she got up and got out of bed.

By
the time she showered yet again, dried off yet again, and entered the bedroom
yet again, Charles was once again fast asleep.
 
Jenay shook her head.
 
That man
, she thought.
 
He could sleep through a typhoon!
 
But she didn’t delay.
 
She finished getting dressed.

CHAPTER FOUR

Anthony
“Tony” Sinatra looked at the pretty, brown-skinned waitress standing at his
table, and he smiled.
 
He’d been seeing
her all week whenever he came by the Jericho Inn Bed and Breakfast café for
breakfast, a café they called the Hot Spot, and had been playing around with
her as often as he could.
 
Although, he
thought mischievously, he wasn’t entirely joking.
 
“Will you have my baby?” he asked her again.

“Will
you quit playing?” she responded again.

“I’m
not playing!
 
That’ll be one hell of a
great looking kid.
 
People would pay good
money to get a look at our awesome child.
 
Just have it, you’ll see.”

Denise
Donahue looked at Tony Sinatra with a
get
real
look.
 
He was a fun-loving
jokester, and was cute as a button, but the last thing on her mind was rolling
in some hay with him.
 
Especially since
he was her best friend’s stepson.
 
“For
the third time,” she said, with her order pad in hand, with her pen ready to
write, “what are you having?”

“And
for the third time,” Tony said with a grin, “why can’t I have you?”

She
almost smiled at his silliness, but she knew that would only encourage
him.
 
“I’m not on the menu, Tony.”

“Well
you ought to be!” He started looking around as if he was highly offended.
 
“What’s wrong with this place?
 
What’s wrong with these people?”

He
won.
 
Denise couldn’t help but
smile.
 
She was waitressing at the Hot
Spot, and she didn’t completely hate being there.
 
Which was a shocker to her.
 
She had finally called it quits with her
refused to stop cheating
ex-boyfriend
Mark, and was waiting for some sort of response from the dozens of job
applications she had submitted across the country, when she got the call from
Jenay.
 
Jenay, along with Norm Morgan,
were her closest friends in this world.
 
The threesome met when they attended the Boston Hospitality Institute
together and were often referred to as
The
Three Oddateers
.
 
Mainly because, at the time, Jenay was a thirty-two
year old divorcee from a well-to-do family, Norm was a forty-three year old gay
white guy from a trailer park family, and Denise was a nineteen year old free
spirit from the hood.
 
All three
graduated a few years ago, with various hotel management (Jenay), Culinary Arts
( Norm), and hotel administration (Denise) degrees, but they had remained in
touch.
 

When
Jenay phoned and told her that she needed a chef in the restaurant section of
her husband’s B & B, and had therefore hired still struggling Norm for the
job, Denise was happy for him.
 
But when
Jenay asked if she wanted to come to Maine too, Denise didn’t hesitate.
 
She had been sleeping on Norm’s couch in
Boston, after Mark kicked her out of his house.
 
She jumped at the chance.

It
wasn’t nearly as bad as she thought it was going to be, she felt, as she stood
near the pickup window with Stephie, another waitress, and waited for Norm to
cook their orders. Stephie was a fun lover like her, and many of the customers,
even that jokester Tony Sinatra, kept the mood light and relaxing.
 
And it remained light and relaxing by the end
of her first full week in Maine.
 
Until
this morning, when another Sinatra walked into Hot Spot.
 
But this Sinatra, unlike Tony, was no joke.

Denise
didn’t see him coming.
 
She was looking
in the opposite direction.
 
Two
bald-headed jocks were arm-wrestling at one of the tables near the backside of
the cafe, and they had her undivided attention.
 
Both guys were gritting their teeth as they refused to let the other one
win, but Denise was betting on the bigger guy.
 
He was just too big.
 

“Wow,”
Stephie said as her small blue eyes stretched wide.
 
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in the Hot
Spot before.
 
Denise, I don’t think he’s
ever come in the Hot Spot before.”

 
“Who?”
 
Denise asked, although her attention was still
focused on the arm wrestlers.

“Brent!”
Stephie said as if it was obvious who she meant.
 
“This is his first time coming here, at least
the first time I’ve seen him here.”

“Oh,
yeah?” Denise answered, but her attention was still diverted.
 

“They
say he’s mean like his daddy,” Stephie kept talking, “but he’s not mean.
 
He just doesn’t let these crooks and
criminals get away with anything.
 
He’s
always nice to me when I see him at the grocery store, or walking down the
aisles at Walmart.
 
My sister went to
school with him, and she said he was nice then too.
 
She even dated him once!”

As
Denise suspected all along, the bigger guy won.
 
He stood up and threw his muscular arms in the air and started jumping
around like Rocky, as if he’d won more than mere bragging rights.

“You
heard me, Denise?
 
Brent’s here.”

Denise
finally shifted her gaze back to her coworker.
 
“And who exactly is Brent supposed to be?
 
You have a very bad habit of talking about
these people as if I was born and raised here, Steph.”

“You
know Tony, right?” Stephie asked her.

“Yes,
I know Tony.
 
Everybody knows Tony.”

“Brent
Sinatra is his older brother.
 
Only he’s
not that much older than Tony, but he acts miles older.
 
He just walked in.
 
Over there.”

Denise
looked where Stephie was pointing.
 
And
there he was in a policeman’s uniform, as imposing a man as Denise could hope
to see in this small town, standing head and shoulders above the small,
breakfast crowd.
 
And even sensible
Denise, who never went nuts over good-looking guys, and who thought love at
first sight was an overblown fairytale, had to do a double take.
 

“Isn’t
he
dreamy
?” Stephie’s freckled face
lit up with a smile.

“Isn’t
he a cop?”
 
Denise asked.
 

“Yeah.”
 
Stephie looked at her.
 
“So?”

“I’m
just saying,” Denise said and both women continued to look at the new
arrival.
 
Denise didn’t know how
dreamy
he was, since that wasn’t a word
she would ever use to describe anybody ever, but she had to agree on one thing:
the man was fine.
 
He was tall and lean
and built like a track star.
 
He wore a
washed-out gray looking uniform, but his physique was undeniable.
 
From those powerful biceps, to those ripped
abs outlined beneath that tight shirt he wore, to those thick thighs: the man
was fine.
 
Denise looked down, at that
midsection bulge that even his uniform pants could barely contain, and she
could actually feel her vagina tinkle.
 
How would it feel to be with him, she wondered, between the sheets?
 

And
his face.
 
She marveled at his intense,
chiseled face.
 
He had wavy black hair
that dropped down to his shoulders, and piercing green eyes that, even from
across the room, shocked in their fierceness.
 
Tony had those same green eyes and that same jet-black hair, but it
worked differently on Brent.
 
Tony’s
features were attractive, even inordinately beautiful in a soft sort of
way.
 
But Brent’s features were
hard.
 
In
every
way.
 
And Denise liked
it.
 
Hard men made soft beds.
 
Or so she’d heard!

But
even with a body as hot as his, it was his face, his stern, no-nonsense,
to hell with small talk
face, that
actually made her smile.
 

“Wow,”
she found herself saying as she checked him out too.
 

You better leave that boy alone
.

It
sounded almost like a warning from a distant place.
 
Denise looked around first, and then turned
around.
 
And there was Norm, standing in
the kitchen at the pickup window, sitting the food he’d just plated onto the
countertop.

“You
said something, Norm?”
 
Denise asked her.

“You
better leave that boy alone,” Norm said again.

“What
boy?” Denise asked.

Norm
gave his best friend one of those
don’t
play with me girl
looks.
 
Denise
smiled and turned back around.
 
“Who says
I’m bothering him?”

“Your
big-ass eyes say it.
 
And I’m telling you
don’t even think about it, Dee.
 
You’ve
got too much going for you to be a plaything for any of those Sinatra boys.”

Stephie
looked at Norm.
 
“What do you know about
the Sinatra boys?
 
You’ve only been in
town a week.”

“And
I’ve heard all I need to hear about them,” Norm made clear.
 
“I get around, okay?
 
I know how all of these foolish girls are
throwing themselves at those brothers like they were rock stars.
 
But not you too, Dee.
 
You just got out of a train wreck of a
relationship.
 
You don’t need to go into
another one.”

But
Denise continued to peruse every inch of Brent Sinatra.
 
Because if she did go down that road with
him, and she had enough confidence in her seductiveness to believe she could if
she wanted to, it wouldn’t be about having any relationship with the man.
 
It would be sexual. Pure and simple.
 
And she would make no bones about it.

“Why
is food just sitting there?” a voice asked and they all turned to the
sound.
 
It was Jenay, walking toward them
in her beautifully tailored Chanel pantsuit and heels.

“I was
just getting it, ma’am,” Stephie said nervously, sat the plates of food onto
her tray, and hurried away.

Norm
smiled.
 
“You show up and they suddenly
want to work.
 
Go figure.”

Jenay
smiled.
 
“Good morning, Norm.
 
“How are you this wonderful morning?”

“Blessed
and highly favored,” Norm said.

Denise
laughed and high-fived him.
 
“I know
that’s right!” she said.

“And
how are you, Miss Dee?” Jenay asked.

“I’m
good,” Denise said.
 

“Good.”

“Still
want to waitress, or have you decided to take me up on my offer?”

“No,
I still want to waitress,” Denise said. “Being your assistant sounds too
challenging.
 
I want nice and easy right
now.
 
At least until I can figure out
what Mark is going to do.”

“What
do you mean what he’s going to do?” Norm asked her.
 
“He kicked you to the curb.
 
That’s what he did.
 
You need to go on with your life, girl.”

“Norm’s
right,” Jenay said.

“Are
we still on for lunch today?” Denise asked, changing the subject.

Norm
and Jenay glanced at each other.
 
“That’s
dinner tomorrow, Dee,” Norm said.
 
“Nobody’s got time to have lunch with you.
 
She’s a busy woman.”

“We’re
still on for tomorrow,” Jenay said.
 
“Charles hope to join us too.”

“Oh,
good!” Denise said.
 
It’s about time
, she wanted to add.

“But,
in the meantime,” Jenay added, “let’s get back to work.”

Jenay
left.
 

“That’s
right,” Denise said to Norm. “Where’s my orders anyway?”

Norm
smiled.
 
“I thought you’d never ask,” he
said, and put her orders that had been in the warming station, up on the
countertop.

She
rolled her eyes at him as she grabbed the plates.

“What?”
he asked.
 
“You were talking!”

Denise
placed her plates on her tray.
 
Norm
laughed, and then went back to work.