Jenay shook her head. “The way you treat some of these people around here, the way you show such lack of compassion sometimes. Even with your own son.”
“My son? Did you see what that boy did to his wife? His pregnant wife?”
“Yes! It was awful. No matter what the reason, it was awful. But what you did to him was awful too, Charlie.”
But Charles was still livid. “I didn’t raise a punk,” he said. “No son of mine is going to beat up a girl, a pregnant girl, and get away with it.”
“He was arrested,” Jenay said.
“I couldn’t let him get away with it,” Charles yelled. “I’m not talking about the law. I’m talking about me! I couldn’t let him get away with it.”
Jenay realized that such a father-son problem went far deeper than that one night.
“I’ve always been there for my boys,” Charles went on. “But Donald was constantly in trouble. Always in a jam. And I always got him out of it. But when I saw what he had done to Susan, and I saw the rage still in his eyes, as if he didn’t give a fuck, I knew right then that if anybody was going to finally scare him straight, it was going to have to be me. It had to be me. I’m the one he listens to. But the problem is, instead of telling him what to do, I smothered him. I ruined that boy.”
Jenay stared at him. “Why him, and not the others?”
“He was four years old when I divorced his mother. He loved her so much. The rest of my sons wanted to stay with me. But Donald wanted his Mom so the courts gave her custody of him, and gave me custody of the other three. A year later, she fell in love with some guy she met on the internet, and brought Donnie back to me. You would have thought she had died, he was so devastated. But she left town, and went and started a brand new life with her new man. She would phone the boys periodically, not nearly as often as she could have, but Donald wouldn’t take the few calls she did make. He was through with her. And I stood in that breach.”
“And overcompensated?”
“Big time,” Charles admitted.
“But . . . you called the police on him yourself, Charlie.”
“Damn right I did. A man has to pay for what he does. If they would have arrested me, I would have paid too. Don will face that music all on his own this time. He’s a man now. He’ll either get better or he’ll get worse. But that’s entirely up to him now.”
Jenay could see the drain in Charles’s eyes. She went up to him, and took him by the arm. “Let’s sit down,” she said.
They walked to the sofa and sat down. He was so emotionally spent, he leaned back.
“How was your trip?” she asked him.
“Surprisingly productive,” he said. “We sealed the deal.”
“That’s good news.”
“Yeah,” Charles said, then looked at her. “But not the kind I was hoping to get.” He turned toward her. “What’s going on with you, Jean? What’s going on with us?”
“It’s going to take time is the answer. Time will tell.”
Charles rubbed the back of his hand on the side of her face. “I missed you.”
She smiled. “I missed you too.”
Charles leaned over and kissed her. They allowed the kiss to linger. When he opened his eyes, he looked into hers. “You, our relationship, means a lot to me. I’m committed to making this work.”
Jenay nodded. “So am I,” she said. “Just because I need my own space, doesn’t mean I don’t want it to work. I do.”
“So you haven’t left me?”
She smiled. “No! I found myself, but I didn’t leave you.”
Charles smiled. “Good,” he said. “Then I don’t see how we can lose.” And he kissed her again. But this time far more passionately.
When he was done, she moved to get up. “I’ll get us something to drink,” she said.
But he pulled her back down. “Not yet,” he said, and began kissing her again.
Jenay missed him too, and began returning his kiss. But there was something more potent with Charles. More heightened. He demonstrated that more urgent need when they finally stopped kissing, and he hurried to his feet.
“Which bedroom?” he asked as he grabbed her by the hand, and began all but dragging her toward the back of the house.
“Any one,” she responded, feeling a sudden sense of urgency too. He hurried into the very first bedroom they got to.
He had her back against the wall, and was kissing her again, as soon as they walked in. But he was undressing as he kissed her. By the time she opened her eyes again, after enjoying his kiss so completely, he was naked.
“Oh, Charlie!” she moaned, as she looked at him, as he rubbed his penis against her.
“I want you, Jenay,” he said, as he continued to kiss her and began undressing her too. “I want you. Every inch of you!”
He had undressed her too, in record time, and then he lifted her into his arms. She wrapped her legs around him in such a sensual way that he could feel her pussy hug his penis. And that feeling, of her rawness on his rawness, undid him. He began sucking her breasts, as he carried her to the bed.
When he got in bed on top of her, he slid his finger between her folds and began stroking her until she was good and wet. When he pulled his finger out, he licked it, and then went down and started licking her.
Jenay smiled and sighed and pulsated all over as she experienced what she now knew was his well-honed experience. He didn’t just go down on her, he went down on her as a man who wrote the book on going down on a woman. She was arching and panting from his oral alone. And she was still aware just how much more intensity he seemed to possess. It had been several days since they’d been together sexually. But he was making it seem like several years.
And when he laid her on her stomach, and he got on top of her, she thought just the way his penis was rubbing between her cheeks was intense enough. But he began entering her raw, for the very first time, and intensity wasn’t the word. When she felt his uncovered dick ease inside of her, she felt as if her passion had morphed into fire itself. She was on fire. And as he began stroking her, as his dick began sliding and gliding across her wetness, she became so hot, and so inflamed, that she thought she was going to pass out.
Charles held his breath when they first made raw contact. He’d never felt anything so alive and vibrant than the feel of her skin on his skin. And the further in he pushed, the deeper down he went, it felt as if he was having an outer body experience himself. Sex he knew. He considered himself a master at having sex. But love and sex together were new to him. To make love to somebody he was growing to care so deeply about made him feel heady, and exhilarated, and terrified all at the same time.
He laid down on her, as he fucked her from behind. The feel of her tight ass against his hard abs alone made him drunk with passion. And then that magnificent feel of his penis inside her pussy, caught him unprepared. He knew it would feel great. He was expecting their usual wonderfulness. But he didn’t know it would feel so tender and sweet too.
“Baby,” he kept saying as he did her. “Baby.”
He made it sound like the most melodic word in the world to Jenay.
“My baby.”
He fucked her for a long time. She came, but he kept on fucking her. He came, but his strokes would not cease. Jenay understood. She understood that it was more than just sex to Charles. It was possessiveness. As if he was marking his territory. As if he had no more points to prove, but he was proving more anyway.
By the time he had pounded her relentlessly, and he once again had no more points to prove, she felt as if she was fully and completely his. They were both so overwhelmed with emotion that they could hardly speak. He got off her, and laid beside her. And they stayed that way, their hands interlocked, their hearts still racing, until they both had found a way to accept the beauty of their new way of life, and fall asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The next day, Charles was in his office. It was an unusually quiet morning of work for him. He wa
s able to work peacefully in his office for nearly three straight hours before any interruptions whatsoever. It had turned out to be a very good night with Jenay, as if they had turned over a wonderful new leaf, and it was shaping up to be a very good morning.
And then his cell phone rang. It rang for the first time that morning. When he looked at the Caller ID, and saw that the call was coming from the Jericho Jail, he almost ignored it. But it had been four days now. He answered.
“Dad? It’s me.”
“What do you want, Donald.”
“You’ve got to get me out of here, Dad. I can’t take this another day. You’ve got to put up the bail!”
“I’m not putting up anything. I told you that.”
“But I don’t like it here! I don’t want to t be here.”
“You should have thought about that before you beat your pregnant wife.”
“Just pay the bail. Please? They made it three-hundred-thousand just because I’m your son.”
“They made it three-hundred-thousand because you nearly killed that girl, and the baby. She’s in the hospital still in Intensive Care. You’d better stop worrying about making bail, and start praying she doesn’t die.”
“She’s not going to die. But I will if I have to stay in this horrific place.”
Charles shook his head. His son was so immature it was astounding to him. “I’ve got to go, Donald. Talk to you later.”
“You can get me out on bail. You know you can.”
“Goodbye, Donald.”
“You got that thief bitch out on bail, but you can’t get me out? Your own son? What about me!”
Charles ended the call. He knew he should have never answered it in the first place.
Moments later, as if that phone call got the ball rolling, another interruption. “Excuse me, sir,” his secretary said as she opened his office door, “but Ms. Ridge is here to see you.”
Charles hesitated. Abby never came to his office. Not ever. And he didn’t like her starting now. But he needed to set her straight anyway. “Send her in,” he said.
She came in, and closed the door behind her. Other than Jenay, she was still the most beautiful woman in Jericho to him. Like him, she was almost forty now, and that age was beginning to show, but not even years could take away an ounce of her beauty. She was also discreet. Legendarily discreet. She was any man’s asset, including his for many years. But not anymore.
“Have a seat,” he said, when she began heading toward his desk.
He used to stand when she entered a room. The fact that he did not this time spoke mountains to her. But she didn’t quiver about it. She had far more pressing matters to attend with him. She sat down in front of his desk.
“It’s been a while, Charles,” she said. “Over three months, to be exact.”
Charles remembered their last night together. A sex-filled night that got almost too rough. He leaned back. “What do you want?”
“I want to know why you haven’t been over. I want to know why you haven’t mentioned to me about this new lady you supposedly have in your life. She’s the talk of the town, you know.”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“Her arrest was the hot topic for days.”
Charles didn’t respond to that.
Abby hated when he treated her this way. “She stole jewels from your hotel guests, yet you keep her around?”
“You know she didn’t steal shit, so cut the crap, Abby. What do you want?”
“I want answers. I want to know why you haven’t at least given me a phone call. I heard about Donnie’s new troubles, and I wanted to reach out to you, but I knew you would be upset if I did. So I waited. And waited. But you never phoned. I was expecting you to come over, so I could relieve that stress.”
“No thanks,” Charles said, and leaned forward. “There won’t be any more visits like that.”
She stared at him. “No more visits?”
“None.”
She frowned. “And when did you intend to tell me this, Charles?”
Charles exhaled. “I hadn’t gotten around to it,” he said. “But I was going to tell you.”
“Is it because you weren’t sure? Is it because you had to make certain she was worth the sacrifice? Is that more like it? Is that why you’re telling me now?”
“What difference does it make?” he barked. “I’m telling you now. I’ll put the house in your name, and I will continue your monthly allowance payments, but it goes no further than that.”
Abby looked at him with anger in her heart. But she maintained her cool. “I’m afraid it goes much further than that,” she said.
“No, it does not,” Charles corrected her. “I’m not having a lady on the side. It’s over, Abby.”
“It won’t be over until I say it’s over,” she said. Then she pulled a sheet of paper out of her dainty purse and handed it to him, to prove her point.
“What is this?” he asked her. It looked like lab results.
“The results of my pregnancy test,” Abby said. “As you can see, I am in the family way.”
Charles’s heart rammed against his chest, and he looked at Abby. “What are you saying to me?”
“I’m pregnant, Charles, and you are most certainly the father.”
Charles felt as if he was going to melt with rage. “After all this time, after all these years, you mean to tell me you picked this time, this year, to pull this shit?”
This angered Abby. “What shit am I pulling? You were right there with me!”
“Your ass agreed to take those pills and to take them faithfully every single day!”
“And I did do that,” she lied. “Nothing’s one-hundred percent foolproof, Charles, and you know that! I didn’t plan this. I didn’t pull this. This didn’t just happen to you. It has happened to me too! What about me?”
Abby was so distraught, not by the pregnancy, but by his reaction to the pregnancy, that she could barely contain herself. She hated revealing her true emotions! But nobody angered her more than Charles. Nobody! She stood up. “You call me when you’re ready to speak to me civilly,” she said. “Because I will not stand here and be accused of something I did not do. I’m as devastated as you are.”
She said this and left his office. But Charles’s mind was in a different place. Not how he felt about the news, or even how he felt about Abby. But how Jenay was going to feel about it. They were just hitting their stride. It had been bumpy enough. And now this.
He leaned back, and let out a harsh exhale.
“It will need to go too,” Jenay said to Roy, her maintenance supervisor, as they stood on the side of the Inn and looked at the rotted wood beneath the deck. The landscapers were all around them, beautifying the grounds, and it was a bright sunny day in Jericho. The Inn had several decks, and all of them, Jenay had concluded, were in need of serious work. Today, Roy was taking notes.
“Could we at least save the railings?” he asked.
“We’ll have to see what the contractor says tomorrow,” Jenay said, “but I want it closed to public use right now, at least until I get his assessment.”
“Not even to walk across to get to the pool?”
“Not even that,” Jenay said. “Not until I get that assessment.”
Roy looked past her. He began to close his notebook.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Here comes, Mr. Sinatra,” he said. “I’m sure he’s here to see you. Is that a wrap?”
Jenay turned around and saw Charles coming their way. He had his suit coat off and looked every bit the handsome, muscular man that excited her. But he didn’t look happy. “Yes,” she said. “We’ll pick it back up after lunch.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Roy said, and began to leave. He threw his hand up at Charles. “Good morning, sir!” he yelled.
Charles waved back, and Roy left the area.
Jenay smiled as Charles made his way toward her. She remembered the wonderful night they had together,
and in her new place of all places. It was tremendous. They were in a good space when they went their separate ways this morning. But something appeared to have changed his mood since then.
“I didn’t expect to see you over here this morning,” she said.
“What are you doing?” he asked as he approached her.
“Deck review. They need to be replaced.”
“All of them?”
“All of them,” Jenay said. “At least that’s my preliminary assessment. The contractor comes tomorrow. We’ll see what he says.”
Charles nodded halfheartedly as he made it to her side. He placed his hands on either side of her arms and kissed her. The landscapers elbowed each other when they saw them kissing, but Charles didn’t care. For good measure, he pulled her into his arms. He remembered last night too. He remembered it vividly.
“You’re okay?” she asked. “Or did you miss me just that much?”
“I always love to feel you in my arms.”
Then they stopped embracing. But Jenay was not persuaded. “That would be a no,” she said. “You may love to feel me in your arms, and you may miss me something terrible, but that’s not why you’re here. That’s not why you came.”
Charles exhaled. He glanced around. The workers were within earshot. “Let’s walk,” he said.
Jenay, with her clipboard in hand, allowed him to place his arm around her waist and walk her, very close against him, toward the lake at the edge of the property. She waited for him to talk, but it wouldn’t be until they were sitting on the bench before a word was spoken.
She sat back, and sat her board on her lap. He leaned forward, clasped his hands, and kept his eyes on the rippling lake. Then he looked back at her. That look on his face troubled her.
“Before I met you,” he said, “I had lady friends. You’re aware of that.”
“You mean friends with benefits like Paige Springer?”
“Not only Paige,” he said, “but yes. Like that.”
“Okay,” she said.
There was another long pause. He turned his attention back to that lake.
Jenay was increasingly concerned. When he still wouldn’t say anything more, she jumped in. “Okay, now what is this about, Charlie? What’s going on? You’re beginning to worry me.”
Big Daddy Sinatra: There Was a Ruthless Man (The Sinatras of Jericho County Book 1) Page 19