Roz could feel his anguish. She placed her hand on the side of his face.
“I bring danger to your life,” Mick continued. “It’s even worse than you can imagine. And that fact alone is more than enough reason for you to walk away from me right now and never have anything more to do with me. And I’ll understand it. But I have to do this anyway.”
Roz wasn’t following him. He have to do what anyway? Now it was her time to look anguished. Was he giving up on them? Was he willing to walk away from what they’d been trying to build up just because they had a disagreement? “You have to do what anyway?” she asked him.
Mick Sinatra, a man who bowed to no man, got down on his knees. Roz’s heart dropped through her shoe.
“Rosalind Anita Graham,” he said with so much emotion that he thought he was going to lose it, “will you do that most improbable thing, that risky and dangerous thing, and marry me, sweetheart? Will you become my first and only wife?”
He didn’t have a ring, but by the horrid look in her eyes he didn’t need one. She was not about to commit her life to a man like him. What in the world was he thinking? He wanted to die where he knelt. Here he was trying to decide if he should walk away, without realizing that she was the one who held that decision in her hands. She was the one who held his future, his very life, in her hands. And all he could do, as he held his breath in unbearable agony, was wait for her answer.
Amazingly, Roz didn’t faint. She thought she would. She thought, when this day came, she would completely lose it. That was why she was looking so distraught. She thought she was going to pass out. But she didn’t. She was too happy to faint. Her heart that had dropped through her shoe, suddenly soared with unimaginable joy. She knelt down where Mick was, and placed both hands on the side of his face. Tears were already threatening to break through, but this was past-feeling now. This was where the ride or die truly began. This was dangerous, and risky, and everything else both of them thought that it could be. And she could not have been happier.
But she had to be certain. The price was too high. She had to fully understand what led him to this point, a point she was beginning to wonder if they would ever get to. “You want to marry me?”
He nodded. “More than anything else in this world, I want you to be my wife. Yes, I want to marry you, Rosalind.”
Roz searched his gorgeous face. She had to be certain. “Why all of a sudden?”
“All of a sudden?” Mick was surprised. “I’m late, what are you talking about? I’m long overdue. I should have asked you when you first agreed to relocate to Philadelphia. I should have been man enough then.”
The idea that Mick didn’t think of himself as man enough concerning anything at all pleased her. He was showing a vulnerability he hadn’t shown to her since the night he admitted he was a lousy father who had work to do to repair his relationship with his children.
“I don’t deserve you,” he continued. “I’m no catch, believe me. But I love you so much it hurts. I love you so much I sometimes feel, with you by my side, I can do anything. And I’m not giving that up without letting you know that I’m willing to give you my all. If you agree to be my wife, it’ll be the happiest day of my life.”
Mick hesitated, but he knew this had to be said too. “And even if you say no and run away from me,” he said, “I’ll still be a better man for having known you. You’re a once-in-a-lifetime woman, Rosalind Graham. That’s why I don’t want you to be a Graham any longer. I want you to be mine in every way humanly possible. I want you to be my woman, and my wife. Mine. And every man had better know it.” Then he actually found a way to smile that charming smile of his that he rarely displayed. “Sinatra will look good on you,” he said. “Marry me. You’ll see.”
And that point of no return Roz thought she had already ventured into, was ventured into even further. She was over-the-moon in love with this man. She never thought this level of happiness was even possible for her. The tears broke free. “Yes,” she said. “I will marry you, Michello Sinatra. I’m already your woman, and every man already knows it. I’ll be happy, I’ll be proud, to become your wife.”
Mick’s heart soared through the roof of his soul. He stood up, grabbing Rosalind with him, and lifted her into his arms. “Oh, baby!” he proclaimed as he hugged her so tightly, and then kissed her so long and passionately that they both thought it would hurt. But it didn’t. It felt too good.
It felt so good that Mick put her back against the wall of that conference room, ripped the seat of her panties, unzipped and pulled out his dick, and entered her with a hard thrust that was meant to be shocking. And it was. It was the best shock to Roz’s system that she could have ever experienced. It was the first time she had a fiancé, and that fiancé was making love to her. She ran her hands through his thick hair as he humped on her and pushed deeper into her folds and fucked her pussy with precision strokes. He was fucking her so hard, and so lovingly, that his entire body was sweating with passion.
Mick had never felt this intense about anybody before, and that feeling was reflected in the way he was putting it on her. His thick legs, his tight ass, his entire body was pushing into her with an urgency that caused his muscles to ache. He wasn’t just fucking her. He wasn’t just glowing in the feeling of sliding across her wet pussy, a pussy he loved as if he’d never fucked one like it. But he was marking his territory for all eternity. Nobody was getting in between he and Roz, and he wanted every human being to know it. But he especially, right at this moment, wanted Roz to know it.
And even as she came, even as she tried to push down that wall to get away from the intensity of her own cum, to get away from his unrelenting dick, he pulled her into his arms. He usually gave her room to experience her orgasm in her own space. But this time he invaded her space. He wanted her to know that she was his, and that her cum could never be distant from his. He held her as she came. She melted in his arms.
And it was so beautiful to Mick, and felt so magnificent, that he began cumming too. Roz felt his release with a hot drop, as if a rocket had flown out of its silo and landed inside of her. And she tightened around that rocket, causing Mick to lean his head back in nearly unbearable ecstasy. Because she was marking her territory too. She was making it clear to Mick that he was hers just as absolutely as she belonged to him.
Mick knew it too. He kept pounding into her as he came. He looked at her beautiful face as her vaginal muscles kept tightening more and more around his cock. It was the best fuck he’d ever had. It was the best she’d ever had. Because it was born, not out of the lust that was surely there too, but out of the love that surpassed it all. They’d never known love like this before. It was shocking. It was freeing. It was sweet.
CHAPTER FIVE
When it was over, Mick plopped down in a chair and took Roz with him. They laughed when she fell on his lap and his penis literally stood back up. Then the laughter died into a kind of unbridled joy. And Mick looked at her. “You won’t be sorry, Rosalind,” he said.
“I know I won’t,” Roz responded. “This is going to be so wonderful, Mick. There’s no other man I could ever want.”
Mick stared at her. “You mean that?”
“Of course I do! What other man can tear my sexy panties almost every week just to get inside of them, and I don’t cuss his ass out?”
Mick laughed.
“Of course I mean it” Roz added. “I don’t want anybody but you.”
“My baggage and all?”
Roz nodded happily. “Your baggage and all. And don’t forget I’m no Miss Perfect either. I have baggage too, pal.”
“Ah,” Mick said dismissively. “Kid’s stuff.” And it was, compared to his.
And they fell into each other’s arms again. “You know what this means,” Roz said.
Mick pulled back and looked at her. He looked concerned, as if she was going to pull the rug out from beneath him. “What does it mean?” he asked her.
“It means it’s high time you mee
t my family.”
Roz could see the change in his eyes. “They won’t bite,” she assured him.
“A good girl like you marrying a guy like me? I don’t know now, Rosalind. They aren’t going to like it.”
Roz knew her father, a traveling musician, would be in her corner. But her mother, a conservative, law and order criminal court judge, was another story. “We’ll see,” she said. “Sometimes people have the capacity to surprise you.”
“Or not,” Mick responded.
“Or not,” Roz admitted. “But it’s a chance we’ll have to take. I want to have a big wedding, Mick. A big, beautiful church wedding. And I want my family, my mother, my father, and my brother, to be there with me.”
Mick placed his hand on the back of her slender neck. “Your wish is my command,” he said with a smile. “I’ll just have to make them love me too.”
Roz laughed. “With my mother? Good luck with that.”
But then Mick’s smile turned into a more serious, contemplative look. Roz noticed the switch immediately. “What are you thinking about?”
Mick paused. And then he spoke his truth. “My family,” he said.
“Your children?”
“My brother. In Jericho.” He looked at Roz. “We’ll go and meet your family, where, I’m sure, I’ll be in the hot seat. And then we’ll go and meet mine. Where, I’m sure, I’ll be in the hot seat there too.” Then he frowned. “But it’s time.”
Roz knew how powerful those words were. Mick left home when he was a teenager after witnessing his father kill his mother and then his father go to prison, on the testimony of his big brother Charles, for life. The courts eventually overturned their father’s conviction, many years later, but on the day of his father’s release, Mick took care of the bastard himself. It took a lot for him to tell her that part of his story, but he eventually told her. Going back home was nothing more than going back home to Roz. Going back home for Mick was an entirely different reality. “Why now?” she asked him. “Because we’re getting married?”
“Because I saw Joey last night. Just before I came to see you. He was trying to become a big time drug dealer, believe it or not, and was at this club buying a stash.”
Roz was floored. “A drug dealer? I had no idea! I mean, I know he has some serious attitude issues, but I never thought he would be that stupid.”
“He’s that stupid,” Mick admitted. “And I know I have a hand in that stupidity.”
“What did you do?”
“I jacked his ass up. I was going to beat the shit out of him, I really was. I may have dropped the ball, I may not have been there emotionally for him, but it was still unacceptable that any child of mine was going to deal drugs.”
“You told him that?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say? Knowing Joey, it was something flip I’m sure.”
“It was. He said I used to sell drugs my own damn self and he was following in my footsteps. What was the big damn deal? That was the gist of his reaction. But it wasn’t about his words that got to me. Or even his actions. It was that look in his eyes, Rosalind. You should have seen that look. It reminded me of the look, the hate I used to have in my eyes when I was looking at my father. And now my eighteen year old son was looking at me with that same hate.”
“But it’s more complicated with him, Mick,” Roz said. “He has some hate for you,” she said honestly. “I’ve seen it too. But he has a lot of love for you too. I’ve seen that more. It’s not as cut and dry as it was between you and your father.”
“But that’s the thing. Because I know it will be cut and dry for him one day. And my influence over him will be nothing more than kicking his ass and daring him to kick mine.” Mick shook his head. “I can’t let it get to that place.”
Roz squeezed his powerful bicep. She was pleased that he understood that.
“So I told him to take that boatload of money he had in his possession, money he claimed he borrowed from some guy I later found out, by asking around, was a loan shark, and I made him give it back. Then I told him to show up at SI this morning.”
Roz was surprised. “You’re going to let him work for you?”
Mick nodded. “I’m going to have to,” he said. “I’m just beginning to keep an eye on all of my children. But of all of them, Joey needs the most help right now.”
Roz agreed. “I think so too. And I know you’re doing the right thing. But it’s not going to be a smooth transition with him, so you’ve got to give him time.”
Mick smiled. “He’s already proven that.”
“Already? What did he do?”
“He cocks an attitude because I had him working in the mailroom.”
Roz frowned. “Where did he think he was going to work?” she asked.
“With my vice president, or some such higher up,” Mick said.
Roz shook her head. “That foolish child. So what did you do?”
“I took him out of the mailroom and placed him in the cafeteria. He’s a busboy now.”
Roz couldn’t help but laugh and shake her head.
“That will let me know if he’s in it for the long haul,” Mick said.
“Oh, he’s not going anywhere,” Roz said. “He’ll stick around. Busing tables and all. He wants to be with you that badly.”
Mick was banking on that being true. “And the other reason I feel it’s time to go back home,” he said, staring at her now, “is you. You need to understand why Mick the Tick came to be. It started in Jericho. It’s time to go back.”
Roz nodded. Months ago, he had spoken boldly of finally going back to Jericho, Maine, to reconnect with the big brother he hadn’t spoken to in decades, but he never brought it up again. And Roz never brought it up either, knowing how painful a place that had to be for Mick. Now, on the day of his proposal, he was feeling bold again. And this time, she needed to hold him to it. “I think it’s time too, Mick,” she said. “I need to know your family just as you need to know mine. And from how you described your brother, I doubt if he’ll put you on any hot seat. A pedestal is probably more like it,” Roz added with a smile, and hugged Mick again.
Mick pulled her tighter into his arms. He appreciated her hopefulness, but he knew she had no clue. Mick was hardcore. He was a thug to his soul and knew it. But his brother Charles was just hard. She had no idea what kind of raging storm Jericho held for them. But he had to face it. After all these years, after all this talk of going, he had to go and face the ghosts of his past. With Rosalind by his side, he actually believed he could do it. He never did it before because his big brother’s rejection would only confirm a harsh truth for him: nobody in this world truly loved him. But now that he had Rosalind, even with his brother’s rejection, he knew he still would have somebody to love. And somebody that loved him.
He squeezed his eyes shut and held her even tighter. Now was the time. There never was going to be a better time, he felt, than right now.
But first they had to tell his children. Mick arranged to meet them for dinner a week later, and he arrived at the restaurant ahead of Roz.
He stepped out of his car, handed his keys to the valet, and buttoned his Armani suit coat as he entered the crowded restaurant. And that was when he saw them. All four of his grown children. All smiles and happiness as if they were the regular American family. And Mick felt inadequate. This was so far out of his lane that he felt out of bounds. Give him a board meeting to preside over. Give him a roughneck to rough up. But this? He wanted to turn around and leave. But Rosalind was right. It was time, it was overtime, for him to stop running away from the emotional side of his duties as a dad, and embrace his children. It was a little late, but he knew that was his fault too.
But none of those truths made it any easier. He stood back, against the wall, and allowed couple after couple to go in front of him, as he watched his children. He watched them the way he watched an adversary. He sized them up the way he sized up an opponent. Because he didn’t know them. He d
idn’t know their strengths. He didn’t know their weaknesses. He had to rely on his instincts.
Adrian was his oldest. Handsome and strong, but Mick’s instincts could see some insecurity underneath. He should be the leader of the pack by virtue of his age alone, but he wasn’t. Teddy was their leader.
Teddy Sinatra. His second oldest son. He was a charmer, a lover, but there was a heart of steel beneath those cool green eyes. Although he looked a lot like Mick, even Mick saw the resemblance, he wasn’t like Mick at all. That unfortunate title belonged to his youngest son, to Joey.
Joey Sinatra. He was sitting there like he didn’t want to be there, but as soon as Mick made his way to the table he was certain Joey would be all smiles too. But there was pain in that boy, and bitterness. He was going to give Mick fits. He could feel it in his bones.
Then there was Gloria Sinatra. His only daughter and his only biracial child. She was as gorgeous as her mother, and her mother was a beauty. But she was in pain too. Life wasn’t going the way she had hoped it would go either. Mick knew a large part of it was his fault too.
And suddenly, seeing all that pain, made him even more determined to get out. But he held fast, and pulled out his cell phone.
“Is everything alright, sir?” The Maître d saw his hesitation.
Mick pressed Roz’s number, and then looked at the man. “I’m fine, thank you,” he said. The Maître d bowed off. Roz’s voice came on line.
“Hey babe,” she said.
“You aren’t here yet,” Mick said.
“I’m on my way. Javier tried to change the plans I laid out for the addition, as if I don’t know what I want, and I had to cuss his ass out. But I should be there in a few.”
The idea of his woman being forced to cuss somebody out bothered Mick. “Want me to talk to him?”
“No,” Roz said quickly. “I’m good. He gets me now, I think.”
“He’d better,” Mick said. Or I’ll be getting him, he wanted to add. “Where are you in proximity to where I am?”
Mick Sinatra 2: Love, Lies, and Jericho Page 7