Plain Jane and Mr. Wrong (Plain Jane Series Book 4)

by Tmonique Stephens

  Harden’s mood blackened.

  Bruno eased away. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you suddenly care.”

  “Bury it.” The conversation had taken a turn Harden wasn’t prepared for. He’d changed his mind. He did not want to discuss this.

  “The kid’s cute,” Bruno said.

  That she was. The memory of Pavel holding her with Jentry beside him floated to the surface of his brain, along with all his possessive inclinations. It didn’t mean anything. Blame it on his personality. He didn’t like to share, not his things, not even his friends, and especially not his women.

  She’s not yours. Not in the biblical sense, but she was under his protection. That made her his—temporarily—and he took that shit personally.

  That’s the only reason he was momentarily obsessed. Entrusted with Jentry’s and Allie’s lives, nothing would harm them. Agreeing to house the two females, that was the promise he made to Julius, and himself.

  He should’ve let them go with Calista, but Jentry’s adamant refusal had struck a chord within him. If she didn’t want to be with her family, then she didn’t have to. Family. The word was a misnomer, particularly when families caused more harm than good. When family left a person bruised and hollow.

  It was in the strident tone of her voice when she had refused to leave with her cousin, and the way her body braced for a fight all because Calista demanded Jentry go to the Hamptons. A mansion on the beach. All your needs catered to for months. Sun, serf, servants, bodyguards, and family. Jentry had refused in favor of staying in her studio apartment with a toddler and no room for a crib, never mind a playpen. The place was a dump. Not her cluttered apartment, but the building. Pre-war, likely built in the ’40s, it needed to be condemned, not housing people. The tiles in the hallways were dingy, missing, and buckled. The walls suffered from chipped plaster and crumbling moldings, and the stairs were unleveled. Her apartment had the same neglect: warped floors, water-stained ceilings, broken plaster.

  Why would she choose to live there when she and Allie deserved better? Were offered better?

  And where was Allie’s father? What man would leave his kid in squalor? Too many men, to be honest. Including Harden’s father… Don’t go there!

  But yeah, where, and who was he? Harden hadn’t a right to ask or demand an answer to those two questions, which wouldn’t stop him from asking them.

  The car slowed for a checkpoint. The security guard went through the pretense of checking Bruno’s ID, then waved the car through. The guard double-dipped. He collected a check from the port authority and the syndicate. One taxable. One not. One deposited in a local bank. The other in an offshore account.

  They drove around the shipping containers to 343218. The numbers were real. If searched on the port authority database, it would lead to a shipment of clothing from southern China. In a week, the numbers would be changed to a shipment of leather goods out of Italy. Needless to say, they had a man in the main office.

  They parked alongside their three containers.

  “You ready for this or need more time to muse about your love life?” Bruno drawled and didn’t wait for an answer as he exited the car.

  Climbing out the car, Harden took a slow perusal of their surroundings. All was quiet. Quickly, he entered the first container to find Nick waiting. Leonid and Pavel weren’t invited because they weren’t included in this part of the operation. Compartmentalization. That’s how the syndicate survived. Only two people knew everything, Harden and Bruno. The rest were on a need-to-know basis. The docks were Nick’s baby, and he ran it with precision.

  “Update.”

  “We have trucks on the way to move things upstate. Some clients have agreed to take delivery early of the hardware. We can’t move up our exports. That schedule is fixed. We can delay the shipments heading overseas, but that seriously cuts into our profits.”

  “Risk versus reward?” Harden said.

  “Reward. We get this shipment out, then shut down until we’re sure the feds have moved on.”

  “The feds never move on.” Harden chuckled.

  Nick smirked. “True, but we have enough clean enterprises to deflect. We scrub this mess, then go clean.” Harden raised a single eyebrow, causing Nick to chuckle. “Clean enough.”

  Harden nodded. “Make it happen. Then we go dark for the winter.” A brief hug, and Harden was back in the car with Bruno behind the wheel.

  “Where to?” Bruno asked.

  “Denizen.” He needed to check on the minor renovations started. The club was still shut down due to Julius’s shooting. It was NYPD standard procedure after such an incident even though the shooting happened on the sidewalk and not inside the club. Denizen wouldn’t remain closed forever, and the reopening would be bigger than ever.

  But that’s not where he genuinely wanted to be. He wanted to be on the other side of the island, closer to the one person he shouldn’t want to be close to.

  “Afterward, Catalyst for dinner.”

  Bruno grunted as if he already knew they’d end up there. Not surprising. He did know him so well.

  Chapter Seven

  The first sitter was too young. The second sitter was too British. The third, too sexy. Her headlights were visible through her shirt. Oh, hell no. No looking for a man on Jentry’s dime. The fourth…reminded Jentry of her mother. Same height, same curves, same chocolatey complexion. The eyes were different. Less judgement. More compassion. Allie took to her. She crawled across the sofa and into the woman’s lap. The poor thing probably thought she was her grandmother.

  “How much do you charge?” Jentry asked and braced herself for the answer. If she couldn’t afford the woman, Allie would go back to Mrs. Francis regardless of what Harden said.

  “Oh, I’m very reasonable.” Ms. Vicki smiled at Jentry.

  That’s what they all say. “How reasonable is reasonable?”

  “Ten dollars an hour.”

  Jentry’s eyes nearly fell out of their sockets. No one worked as a sitter for ten dollars an hour. But the woman put it out there and she wasn’t about to argue with her. Jentry hired her and begged Ms. Vicki to start immediately.

  Jentry wanted to get to work early, hopefully make up for the time lost. Time equaled money. She didn’t get sick leave or paid time off in the field that paid her bills and put food in her stomach. Come to work and get paid or stay home and don’t.

  Jentry left Ms. Vicki in the living room with Allie while she showered and dressed in the clothing she’d washed in the washing machine. There was a bag of dirty clothes she wished she’d brought with her because everything in the apartment was state of the art, completely the opposite of the hovel she called home.

  Speaking of her hovel… It was already mid-October and she hadn’t paid her rent. The money meant to pay her former babysitter could go toward the bill. Three months behind, it would put a dent in what she owed and maybe hold off her being dragged into housing court and evicted.

  One bill rolled into the next bill, which rolled into the next bill. And they just kept coming. At first, she’d marveled at how her mother handled the finances, the kids, the marriage, the household, and not go batshit crazy or curl into a ball and bury her head in a brick wall.

  Jentry never realized how hard it was until she had no choice but to step up and handle her business. Allie didn’t ask to be here. She didn’t ask to have a half-assed father who didn’t care she was alive, or a half-assed mother who thought she knew it all until she birthed the truth after twenty-eight hours of labor.

  “I’m not going to be back until six in the morning,” she told Ms. Vicki.

  “No problem. We will be fine, won’t we, Allie?” Allie responded with a string of nonsensical words and drool.

  “Here’s a list of her likes and dislikes. If she falls asleep before eight, she’ll be up at two for a bottle.”

  “Good to know.” Ms. Vicki set Allie on her activity blanket and settled on the floor next to her.

  “She
should be ready for dinner in an hour, then her bath.”

  “A jar of meat. A jar of vegetable, and six ounces of milk, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “We got this, Mom. Allie and I will be fine.”

  Jentry believed the woman, yet she hesitated to leave her child with the stranger even though Allie seemed quite happy. She was such a happy-go-lucky baby. Other than raised voices, nothing seemed to bother her. Not even her mother leaving her with a stranger.

  “Okay.” Jentry needed a hug from her daughter to send her on the way. She picked up her baby and basked in the feel of Allie’s chubby arms circling her neck. “Love you, Allie cat. Be a good girl and I’ll see you in the morning.” She handed Allie back to the sitter and left before changing her mind.

  A different security guard was planted in front of the penthouse double doors. Silently, they eyed each other as she passed him on the way to the elevator. Once on the ground floor, she sent a text to Gerard with her plans to return to work and to please check on Allie for her. He replied immediately with acceptance of the responsibility. That’s how he put it.

  A cab to Catalyst got her there in fifteen minutes, as opposed to the city bus which would’ve taken thirty, barring they didn’t get stuck in the afternoon gridlock. She entered the club, opened her coat and unwound the scarf from her head and throat. Marilyn, the afternoon hostess, spotted her right away and hurried over after seating a customer in the restaurant.

  “Ralph wants to see you,” she whispered, a plastic smile on her pretty face.

  Well, she wanted to see him too to apologize for missing her shift yesterday and discuss overtime. But how did Ralph know she was here?

  “Is he in his office?” Jentry asked. Marilyn nodded and promptly ignored her when a customer entered the establishment.

  Jentry headed to the kitchen where Ralph’s cubicle of an office resided. The kitchen staff was in full swing, cooking and preparing for the evening rush. His office was by the walk-in freezers. She spotted him behind his cheap plywood desk, his feet up, the chair tilted back. Yeah, he was such a hard worker.

  He saw her approaching and didn’t change his relaxed stance. Feet remained up. Chair remained tilted. He was the king of his tiny domain. “Hello, Mr. Luce.”

  “Come to beg for your job back?” he asked.

  Startled, all she could say was, “Excuse me?”

  “You didn’t show up yesterday. Didn’t call. Left us in a lurch. For that, you’re fired.”

  Harden said he would take care of it. He said… Fuck! Once again, she had proof positive to never trust anyone whose genitals dangled outside their body. Pissed to hell and back, she glared at Ralph. She wasn’t one to drop names, but damn it, this bullshit wasn’t her fault.

  “I was with Mr. Gage.”

  That got Ralph’s feet on the ground and the tilt out of his chair. He lumbered to his feet and loomed over her. “You couldn’t come up with a better lie than that?” He shook his head then shoved her into the wall and kept her there, his heavy hand to the center of her chest. “You’d be better off saying you went to the moon than you were with Harden Gage. Now leave before I get security to take you into the back alley for lying about the boss.”

  WOW. She was lying because Harden Gage couldn’t possibly want her? It’s not that she didn’t already believe that Harden didn’t have any inkling of interest in her—which she was not in the least hoping for—but hearing it come out of someone else’s mouth, not locked between her ears for her consumption alone, hurt. The area beneath her sternum ached, which had nothing to do with Ralph’s hand between her breasts, keeping her to the wall.

  “Now, if you want your job back…you can be nice to me and take your coat off, put your purse down, and make yourself comfortable on my lap.” His hand moved down to cup her breast and squeeze.

  Jentry knocked his hand away and stormed out of the office and into the kitchen. It wasn’t the first time she’d been pawed and made to feel like nothing more than a piece of meat. And it wouldn’t be the last. Men like Ralph populated every square inch of real estate on the planet. They were roaches. Where there was one, there were thousands. The price of being a female. No use getting mad about it when it was a losing battle.

  In her peripheral she spotted Hillary whispering to Nicole. So much for her being a friend. Jentry exited the building as fast as her feet could manage. Fresh air slammed into her, seared her lungs, and grounded her.

  She had no job, and she wouldn’t go running to Harden and beg him to get her job back. As long as her daughter had a roof over her head and food in her belly, Jentry had her pride. Yeah, she currently lived in a penthouse suite owned by the head of the New York syndicate as a favor to his friend. That was her current situation. Her real-life situation was a studio in Queens awaiting her return as soon as whoever wanted to hurt Calista was caught. That could be in an hour.

  Her real life was iffy. Always had been since she left her mother’s house at seventeen. She thought she was grown and knew all she needed to know about the world. Phhleeasse. The awakening was brutal. And continued to be brutal every damn day.

  Money tight—nothing new there—she took the subway to Queens, walked up her stairs to her apartment, and froze at the notice taped to her door.

  EVICTION NOTICE. Proceedings had begun to evict her from her home.

  Shit! She ripped the notice off the door, confused. It took four months to evict a tenant in New York City. She wasn’t that far behind. Only three months. She thought back to the beginning of the year. It took effort to remember the months she paid and the months she skipped because she didn’t have enough. There was February and March. She worked at the strip club and paid that off, but then May was a rough month. She missed August. But then caught up in September. Then there was this month.

  When she did the math, it was four months. She paid nine hundred per month to live in one room. Twenty-seven hundred dollars, and November was only a week away.

  She opened the door and went inside. Back to square one, she went to her closet and pulled out her duffle bag, the bag she started to throw away when she got the job at Catalyst but didn’t because she knew how her luck ran. It was a rock rolling downhill on Mount Everest, gathering steam every second of the day.

  She checked inside the duffle to make sure she had everything. Yep. It was all there, except for her clear heels which she’d hidden under the bed. Just looking at them made her feet hurt, but in the duffle they went. The task complete, she slung the bag over her shoulder and headed out. Back to the grind on the loneliest stage in the world.

  ∞∞∞

  “Good evening, Mr. Gage.” Marilyn greeted him. A modern-day version of the ’50s blond pinup goddess, the name suited her. She smiled. He didn’t return it. His mood was too foul, and he was starving. Coat off, he handed it to Marilyn and headed for his table. Bruno joined him. They both remained silent as the server rushed over. She had his usual already on a tray, whiskey neat, plus a glass of ice water.

  “Good evening, Mr. Gage. What do you desire tonight?” She leaned over, the low-cut uniform he approved highlighted her sparse assets.

  Any other time he would’ve enjoyed the mild titillation. He had no problem being the center of attention. Tonight, it grated on every single nerve even though that’s exactly how the staff was instructed to interact with the customers. “Porterhouse steak. Medium rare with sauteed onions, truffle mac and cheese, broccolini with prosciutto.” He downed the whiskey and handed her the empty glass. “Bring me another.”

  “Yes, sir.” She turned to Bruno. “What do you desire, Mr. Neritti?” Same level of titillation.

  Bruno didn’t spare her a glance. “Same as Mr. Gage.” He waited until she was gone. “Something new eating you?”

  Harden grunted and scanned the room. “We’re losing money.”

  “That wasn’t your speech on the docks. And since when do you care about money?”

  “I never stopped caring about money.”
>
  “Liar. It was never about the money, not for any of us. It’s about the power.”

  True. The server returned with their food and fresh drinks. That was too fast. She must’ve stolen it from another table. The customer always came first. Harden should ream her, but he was hungry and pleased. She knew what side her bread was buttered.

  The steak was perfect, as was everything else. And Bruno was finally silent as he stuffed his face. No more damn questions. Enjoying his full stomach, Harden sat back with his drink in his hand and studied the crowd, again. The restaurant was full, half were club members. He met their respectful glances with a tip of his head and a salute with his glass. The night would be profitable. He tossed back his drink and returned the glass to its place next to his plate. Rolling his ring around his finger, he continued to eat.

  Thirty minutes, that’s how long he held out, struggling not to fidget like a teenager with his first erection. Quite proud of himself for not looking for Jentry, he turned his attention to the bar.

  Where the fuck is she? Though he hadn’t actively looked, in his peripheral, he’d kept his eye on the bar since he took his seat, waiting to see her, but not once had she appeared. Where was she? His stomach tightened and his pride at not seeking her out vanished.

  Something wasn’t right. He slid out of the booth and was on his feet, weaving his way between the tables. People stopped him with their greetings, comments, stealing moments of his time. After the third person waylaid him, he stopped pretending to care what they had to say. Even a state senator got sidestepped.

  At the bar, the pink-haired cutey rushed over. “Mr. Gage, is there something you desire?”

  He studied her as he did everyone because his patience was thin. If one more person asked him if there was something he desired, they’d eat a bullet. “Where’s Jentry?”

  Pink cutey blinked. “Um….”

  Um wasn’t an answer. Ralph chose that moment to exit the kitchen and swagger over to the bar, glad-handing everyone whether they wanted to or not. He hadn’t a clue Harden watched him until Harden stepped into his path.