RENO AND SON
DON’T MESS WITH JIM
By
MALLORY MONROE
Copyright©2014 Mallory Monroe
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This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely accidental. The specific mention of known places or venues are not meant to be exact replicas of those places, but are purposely embellished or imagined for the story’s sake.
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MORE INTERRACIAL ROMANCE
FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR
MALLORY MONROE:
THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND
SERIES IN ORDER:
THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND
THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND 2:
HIS WOMEN AND HIS WIFE
DUTCH AND GINA:
A SCANDAL IS BORN
DUTCH AND GINA:
AFTER THE FALL
DUTCH AND GINA:
THE POWER OF LOVE
DUTCH AND GINA:
THE SINS OF THE FATHERS
DUTCH AND GINA:
WHAT HE DID FOR LOVE
FOR THE LOVE OF GINA
BOOK EIGHT
THE MOB BOSS SERIES
IN ORDER:
ROMANCING THE MOB BOSS
MOB BOSS 2:
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
MOB BOSS 3:
LOVE AND RETRIBUTION
MOB BOSS 4:
ROMANCING TRINA GABRINI
A MOB BOSS CHRISTMAS:
THE PREGNANCY
(Mob Boss 5)
MOB BOSS 6:
THE HEART OF RENO GABRINI
RENO’S GIFT
BOOK 7
RENO GABRINI:
A MAN IN FULL
BOOK 8
RENO AND TRINA:
GETTING BACK TO LOVE
BOOK 9
THE GABRINI MEN SERIES
IN ORDER:
ROMANCING TOMMY GABRINI
ROMANCING SAL GABRINI
TOMMY GABRINI 2:
A PLACE IN HIS HEART
SAL GABRINI 2
A WOMAN’S TOUCH
ADDITIONAL BESTSELLING
INTERRACIAL ROMANCE
FROM MALLORY MONROE:
DANIEL’G GIRL:
ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN
ROMANCING MO RYAN
ROMANCING HER PROTECTOR
ROMANCING THE BULLDOG
IF YOU WANTED THE MOON
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SOME CAME DESPERATE:
A LOVE SAGA
ADDITIONAL BESTSELLING
INTERRACIAL ROMANCE:
A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP
YVONNE THOMAS
AND
BACK TO HONOR:
A REGGIE REYNOLDS
ROMANTIC MYSTERY
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TERESA MCCLAIN-WATSON:
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AND
AFTER WHAT YOU DID
COMING SOON
FROM
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STAND-ALONG
INTERRACIAL ROMANCE NOVELS
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BOOK THREE
ROMANCING SAL GABRINI
BOOK THREE
RENO AND TRINA:
THE MOB BOSS SERIES
BOOK ELEVEN
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PROLOGUE
She stood quietly, at the foot of her son’s grave, and waited. From dust to dawn she waited. She walked around, looking at other graves, wondering if he was still the youngest one. And he was. Nobody came close. She sat in her car, when tiredness came, but she could still see the grave from where she sat. Then she was up again, looking at his tombstone again, removing a leaf, a twig, a whatever that had blown onto the grave again. And still no Reno. He used to come. Years ago. He used to make it his business to come. But after Trina gave birth, not once, but twice, everything changed. Now he didn’t come at all. He had moved on. Moved on, he once told her. And she needed to do the same. She needed to move on too. As if her own child’s death could be movable from her heart. As if he was replaceable the way a car, a home, a pair of shoes were replaceable. That one didn’t work out, so let’s get another one. Let’s be happy. Let’s enjoy this trip called life. Let’s move on.
But she waited. She didn’t move an inch.
She waited until it was too dark to see.
She waited, to give him the benefit of the doubt, before she finally concluded the obvious.
He didn’t show up.
He was never going to show up.
He had moved on.
And for Marcy there was only one answer for it.
She pulled out her cell phone, found that familiar face, and pressed the Send icon. It almost went to Voice Mail, but then he answered.
“Is it time?”
“It’s time,” she said. “Set it up.”
ONE
Jimmy Gabrini stood at the dust-smeared window inside the vacant roadside restaurant and waited for his father. Across the highway he could see two homeless-looking men rummaging through a brown paper bag and arguing over its contents, and an overweight woman in spandex walking fast and dragging along a little boy as she hurried for the bus stop. Compared to his father’s hotel and casino on the Vegas Strip, this place, near the outskirts of town, was a dump in every sense of the word. Why was his father even bothering? Why would he want this headache?
Valerie Wellstone was waiting inside the restaurant too, seated at one of the tables in her skirt suit and heels, as she reacquainted herself with the particulars of the listing. If Reno Gabrini liked the place and agreed to purchase it, such a purchase would represent the biggest deal she’d ever struck in her real estate career. But as they waited, and she looked over at her brooding boyfriend, it wasn’t her career that was on her mind. She worked for her father, and their realty company was doing just fine. Whether this deal succeeded or failed was of little consequence in the big picture of her life. But Jimmy concerned her. He was right around her age, they both were in their early twenties, but she’d never met a young man that seemed so old the way Jimmy seemed to her.
She sat her smartphone on top of her clipboard, stood up, and walked over to the window beside him. She looked out at the parking lot as it sat abandoned and neglected, with high weeds coming out of the cracked concrete and her lone BMW parked against the speed bump, and then she looked at Jimmy. She first met him when she was showing him a house he was interested in buying
, and she thought he was just the cutest guy. He was obviously a biracial young man, half-white and half-black, with beautifully thick, curly hair, yellow-toned skin, big greenish-gray hazel eyes, a tall, slender body, and a quiet strength that belied his youth. But he was different too. She couldn’t put a finger on it at the time, but in the nearly year-and-a-half that she’d known him it was as if she still didn’t really know him. She felt more in tune with his parents, who were outgoing souls the way she was, than she ever felt toward their much more reserved son.
“Going to let me in on it?”
He glanced at her, and then looked back out of the window. “In on what?”
“The conversation you’re having in your head.”
He smiled and looked at her again. When they first met, he was drawn to her too. It wasn’t just because she was shapely and pretty and had that dark-chocolate skin he always found sexy, but it was mainly because she seemed so comfortable in her own skin. So self-assured and self-possessed. And even when he eventually told her that his father owned the PaLargio, to see how she would react, she didn’t flip out like all those other girls did and immediately want to meet him. She couldn’t care less about meeting Reno Gabrini. Jimmy loved that about her.
But that was over a year ago. Now she was tripping all over herself about Reno too. Reno even took her out once, to get to know her better he claimed, and ever since then she’d been what Jimmy called a Renoid: an unabashed, bona fide Reno lover. It changed their relationship.
“I’m going to ask him,” he said to her.
She folded her slender arms and waited for Jimmy to clarify what he meant. But, as usual with Jimmy, he didn’t bother. “Ask him what?”
“If I can run this restaurant for him.”
Val’s heart sank. Why was Jimmy always testing his father this way? Why was he always setting himself up for such rejection? “That’s a lot to ask, Jimmy,” she said honestly.
“I don’t think it’s so much to ask. He’s my father.”
“But you don’t have that level of experience. To run an entire restaurant, I mean. And you know how your father is when it comes to his business.”
For some reason her chumminess with his father was beginning to annoy him. “No, I don’t know,” he said snappishly. “Why don’t you enlighten me about my father. He’s my father, mind you, but why don’t you enlighten me?”
Val didn’t like his tone. “Don’t be mean, Jimmy.”
“What am I being mean about? I’m just telling the truth. You’re a Renoid now, let’s face it. You can take it.”
Val frowned. “I’m a what?”
“A Renoid. A Reno lover. He can do no wrong in your eyes. But me? Everything I do, everything I say, is wrong.”
“That is so not true and you know it.”
“But you know him, right? You know how he handles his business, right?”
Val looked at Jimmy. She knew where his anger was coming from. Every woman he’d been serious about in the past always ended up more interested in his father, and his father’s great looks and vast wealth no doubt, than in Jimmy himself. And although Val knew she wasn’t like that, and Jimmy knew it too, sometimes he would still try to lump her in that same gold-digger category. Which irritated her no end. But if he thought for a second she was going to be one of those girlfriends who told him what he wanted to hear just to stay in his good graces, he thought wrong.
“I was making a statement of fact,” she said to him. “And the fact is, the ideal that your father would let you run this entire restaurant is a far-fetched pipedream. It’s not going to happen.”
Jimmy looked at her. She was different from his previous girlfriends, he’d admit that. But lately, when it came to praising Reno, she was right up there with the rest of them. And what was worse in Jimmy’s eyes about Val’s infatuation with his father was the fact that, unlike all of those other females who had their eyes on Reno, Reno seemed just as infatuated with Val. If not more so, Jimmy thought.
“I don’t see where it’s all that far-fetched,” he said. “I work for him now, at the PaLargio. This place is a drop in the bucket compared to that.”
“But you’re a pit-boss at the PaLargio, Jimmy. You’re a floor manager. You’re in charge of a tiny section of a massive casino. You don’t run the casino. You’re talking about running this. And yes, I am telling you that your father is not going to go for that.”
She kept it real with him, and he appreciated that about her. He even inwardly smiled. “Maybe if you ask him, he’ll say yes.”
Val looked at her boyfriend. She couldn’t tell if he was being serious or sarcastic. She pointed at him. “Now you’re being ridiculous,” she said.
Jimmy laughed. “It’s not so crazy! You’re the one who’s claiming to know him so well. And we both know how much he loves and adores you.”
Val looked at Jimmy as if he was nuts. “He loves me?”
“Hell yeah my dad loves you. And you know he does. He asks about you all the time, and every time he’s around us he can’t take his eyes off of you.”
“Oh, Jimmy,” Val said dismissively. She wasn’t about to feed into Jimmy’s paranoia. Although, if she could inwardly be real about it, she knew she and Reno did have a friendly connection. There was something intoxicatingly powerful about him. Something so in your face that created an excitement all its own. But in a quieter way Jimmy had that same quality, he was absolutely his father’s son. He just didn’t realize it.
“Admit it, Val, you know it’s true,” Jimmy said, smiling now. “My father loves my girlfriend.”
“He may love me like a daughter,” she admitted. “But that’s it.”
“A daughter? Yeah, sure, Val, his daughter. Yeah, right. His wife just had a daughter by him, why would he need you to be his daughter too? He’s got a daughter. Why would he need to view you that way?”
“I can ask you the same thing, Jimmy. Why would he view me the other way? The way you mean?”
“Because he likes the ladies,” Jimmy quickly retorted. “He loves the ladies.”
Val stared at Jimmy. She’d heard about his father’s reputation around town as a ladies man, but she always assumed that was the way he used to be. Before he met his wife. “You mean he cheats on Mrs. Gabrini?”
“That’s not what I mean at all,” Jimmy responded defensively. “He doesn’t love anybody more than he loves Ma. But he loves the ladies.”
What does that mean, Val wondered. Did he love the ladies and Mrs. Gabrini? Then she shook her head. “That’s why I’ll never get married,” she said.
Jimmy looked at her. Because he had a very different thought in mind. “Why not?”
“You can’t trust men. You just can’t. They all cheat.”
“Not all of them,” Jimmy said sincerely. “I don’t cheat, and never have.”
But that was what they all claimed as far as Val was concerned. “Yeah, well, keep living.”
But Jimmy wasn’t backing down. “That doesn’t make any sense, Val. I didn’t cheat with any of my other girlfriends. Not with one of them. Why would I cheat now with the woman I love? Why would I cheat when I have you?”
Val’s heart melted. And she remembered why she loved Jimmy so much. He could infuriate her sometimes, and their relationship was hardly smooth, but he always had the right words to say when she needed to hear them most. She rubbed his arm. “You’re different, that’s for sure. If any man can pull off that faithfulness thing, it’ll be you. You’re the total package, Jimmy. Good looks, good mind, good heart, and very good. . .”
She squeezed his arm and glanced down, at his mid-section. Jimmy knew what that meant. She was thinking about last night, when he did her last.
“And very good what?” He asked this as he looked at her and started thinking about last night too.
“And very good, mind-blowing, never had it so fantastic sex. Okay, I said it. Satisfied? You’re excellent in bed, James Gabrini. But you know that, don’t you?”
Jim
my smiled that half-cocked smile she loved. “I’m not one to brag,” he said in a bragging voice.
“Sure you aren’t. You’re Mister Humble. I forgot.”
“I’m not talking humility,” Jimmy said, looking down at her breasts, and at the way her mounds were just a little bit exposed out of her white, frilly blouse. She handled her business and dressed conservatively in a brown skirt suit, but the skirt was just above her knees and her blouse was open at the cleavage just enough to give her a sexy edge too. Jimmy loved her style. He moved closer to her, as his penis began to awaken.
“If not humility, what are you talking about?” She felt the sudden heat too.
He unbuttoned the top buttons of her blouse, pulled down her bra until her nice, dark melons popped out. “I’m talking a big, juicy steak of a cock stuck up a narrow, juicy peach of a pussy. That’s what I’m talking about. I don’t brag about that.” He lifted both breasts and began sucking the juice out of each one.
Val, at first, closed her eyes and enjoyed the sensation of his mouth on her nipples and his hands squeezing her mounds. Man did she love his touch! But she just as quickly realized where they were. In front of a huge window for crying out loud! She pushed him away from her. “Not here, Jimmy,” she said, buttoning back up her blouse. “Anybody can see us.”
But Jimmy wasn’t about to be denied. His young penis was already expanding and his young mind was already anticipating.
Reno and Son: Don't Mess with Jim (The Mob Boss Series) Page 1