Matt didn’t get it. “How is calling somebody Big Daddy disdainful?”
“The same way Uncle Aaron isn’t a term of endearment either. He’s like Big Brother trying to control their lives because he owns half the town and therefore employs a lot of their family members. But he shows no mercy. Most people says he’s meaner than a junkyard dog. The only people who seem to love him are his wife and kids. And from what I hear they really love him. Unconditionally.”
“So what is this Charles Sinatra some old curmudgeon?” Matt asked. “Some old geezer?”
“Hell no. That’s the thing. He’s younger than you are.” Matt had just turned fifty.
“So this Jenay got her little certificate in hotel management, married the junkyard dog, and saved his struggling B & B for him? That’s her story?”
“Pretty much,” Steve said, looking over his notes. “She married some loser when she was like twenty years old or something like that. Her first marriage. He died like six years ago after a shootout with police.”
Matt couldn’t believe it. “A shootout?”
“I know, but it’s the truth. Sinatra’s ex-wife had some involvement too in all of that craziness and is now serving twenty years in prison for her part. She thought she was going to get off with a slap on the wrist, but she was badly mistaken. So Jenay and Sinatra took over custody of her ex-husband’s two teenage daughters, adopted them and raised them.”
“How did that turn out?”
“Good. Both are in college now. The youngest is at Harvard.”
Matt nodded his head. “Impressive.”
“Indeed. And the oldest is a party girl, and I mean a party hardy girl, who could only get into Berkskill.”
Matt smiled. “What the hell is Berkskill?”
“One of those colleges that caters to the wealthy and well-connected. Her grades weren’t going to get her anywhere else. But she’ll be graduating soon, so even her story turned out well.”
But Matt was not thinking about her story as an end within itself. He was thinking about what kind of leverage he was going to need if this Jenay Sinatra didn’t go along with his plans. Because he was going to have his way. Everything was on the table as far as he was concerned.
He took a sip of his wine and was about to shove another forkful of pasta into his mouth when his property manager motioned toward the entrance. Jenay Sinatra had arrived.
Matt’s fork lingered mid-way to his mouth when he laid eyes on Jenay. “Wow,” he said. “I’m surprised. This Big Daddy Sinatra has got some taste.”
“She’s nice looking, that’s for sure,” Steve agreed. “When I went over to Jericho Inn to request this meeting, I was impressed too. But don’t get too enamored. Word around town is that Big Daddy is very protective of his little lady. It’s the only thing they give him credit for.”
But Matt was not enamored with her, or even looking at her that way. She was just another pretty face to him on a nice, slender frame. He was looking at her weakness. Because it had been his experience that good looking girls always had a weakness, and that weakness was usually good looking boys. He smiled. If this meeting didn’t go his way, and the odds were that it wouldn’t, her looks alone could give him yet another weapon.
“Mrs. Sinatra, so good to see you again,” Steve said with a grand smile as Jenay approached their table. He and his boss both stood up, and Steve extended his hand.
“Good to see you again as well,” she responded, shaking his hand.
“And this gentleman right here is the man I told you about. My boss, Matt Dellum.”
“Mr. Dellum,” Jenay said as she and Matt shook hands. “Nice to meet you.”
Matt put on his best charming smile. He was not bad looking either, and he knew how to woo the ladies. “Nice meeting you too, Mrs. Sinatra,” he said. Then he decided to disarm her so that he could test her. “May I call you Jenay?”
Jenay hesitated. This guy was her competition, not some friendly acquaintance. “At our very first meeting?” she asked. “You may not.”
She could tell he didn’t like her response, as his blue eyes took on a colder hue, but she didn’t care. It had been her experience that whenever she allowed a businessman to disrespect her as a businesswoman, they took too many liberties with her that she would later have to beat back. She just as soon not even go there to begin with. Especially since he was, she once again reminded herself, her direct competition in the Bed and Breakfast trade.
Although Matt smiled off her response, she was right: he didn’t like it at all. But it gave him information. She was not a pushover. He was going to have to bring his A-game. “Please have a seat,” he said.
Jenay sat midway on the empty banquette booth seat across from them. Matt and Steve also sat down.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mrs. Sinatra,” Matt said. “But I thought Steve said your husband would also attend.”
“He’s on his way.” Jenay was disheartened when she arrived at Marymount and didn’t see his Jaguar already in the parking lot. She thought he would beat her there, but she should have known better. Charles never just went where he said he was going to go. He went ten other places, and then he arrived. “I apologize for our tardiness. I just text my husband. He’s only a couple blocks away.”
“Good,” Matt said. “We’ll wait on him then.”
They all sat back to small talk as Jenay ordered drinks for herself and Charles, and within minutes Charles arrived. Like a ball of fire, Matt thought, when he laid eyes on him. He was not especially tall, but he was compact and strong, a well-dressed man of good looks and toughness: a rare combination. If he thought Jenay might be a handful, he could already sense that that husband of hers was going to be an armful. He had his work cut out for him.
Jenay remained seated and slid further across her seat as the men stood and greeted Charles with handshakes and more small talk. Charles then leaned down, kissed Jenay on the lips, and sat beside her. The waiter immediately brought the drinks for Jenay and Charles.
“So you weren’t on time either,” Charles said with a smile when the waiter left.
“No thanks to you,” Jenay responded, reminding him by those words alone about his insistence on sex this morning; sex that went far longer than it should have, and that made her late to begin with.
Charles had a different response. His dick stiffened at just the thought of how it felt when he was inside of her. And how he wanted in again. They even exchanged a knowing glance just at the thought of it. And that, to Charles, was priceless. He had a soulmate now. And if making their competitor wait longer was the price he had to pay to enjoy his soulmate the way he enjoyed Jenay this morning, he would gladly pay it again and again.
“It’s nice to be in Jericho,” Matt said. “Lived here all your life, Mr. Sinatra?”
Jenay found it instructive that Matt did not bother to ask Charles if he could call him by his first name on their first meeting, but it was not worth mentioning.
“I was born and raised here, yes,” Charles responded.
“So it’s a nice town then?”
“It’s alright.”
“Well I’m sure it’s better than alright for you, Mr. Sinatra,” Matt said with a smile. “You own practically half of it.”
Charles didn’t respond to that fact. He stared at Matt. Although Matt thought he was getting info on Charles, Charles had his radar on him. And his radar, whom he trusted with his life, was already telling him that this was a snake that was looking to bite. “What can we do for you, Mr. Dellum?” he asked.
Matt smiled. “You want to get down to business, in other words?”
“What can we do for you, Mr. Dellum?” Jenay asked. She’d already detected the snake in him too.
Matt’s smile left. These two were no country bumpkins, that was for damn sure. “Let’s get down to it then,” he said. “As you know, I recently purchased a Bed and Breakfast here in town. It was once the town’s most successful B & B, but over the last few years it has declin
ed.”
“It hasn’t declined,” Charles said. “It remained the same. Jericho Inn outpaced it. My wife busted her ass, worked harder than everybody else, and made it the success it is today.”
“You can put it that way,” Matt said, refusing to cede even that little ground. “Jericho Inn is certainly doing better than the one I purchased, yes. But the point is, I think we both can do far better than that. We can do far greater things than running some country-ass hotels.”
If he expected Charles and Jenay to eagerly ask what those “far greater things” were, he was mistaken. They remained silent, which left Matt no alternative except to fill the quiet with his own words.
“How about a world class, first rate resort?” Matt asked. “Right here in Jericho. We can even call it the Jericho Inn. Or, even better, the Sinatra Inn. I don’t care. But it’ll be world class and will turn this sleepy little town into a hip, jumping resort town for millionaires and billionaires. It’ll be the Aspen of Maine.”
Jenay had not expected him to go there. She wanted to look at Charles, to see if he was surprised too, but she remained stoic. This was a matter of business, and Charles was the best businessman/negotiator she’d ever met. She was going to take her cues from him, not the other way around.
Matt waited for a response. But again, Charles only sat there. And again, Matt had to fill the void with his own words. He had to state his full intentions. “To make it all happen, however,” he said, “we will need to merge both of our hotels first and foremost. That’s because we simply cannot have any upscale competition whatsoever. The town’s various motels can remain, but our resort will be it in terms of a luxurious place to stay, and we will keep the city council well fed, if you know what I mean, so that nobody else can come and try to usurp that position from us. So what do you guys think? About merging our hotels I mean?”
“You aren’t here to merge any hotels,” Charles said. “That’s the last thing on your mind. You’re here to merge money. Specifically to merge my big money with your not-so-big money.”
Matt and Steve both smiled. “I’m sure that’s not it, Mr. Sinatra,” Steve said. “Mr. Dellum is a very wealthy man.”
“Mr. Dellum,” Charles responded to Steve, although his eyes remained on Matt, “used to be a very wealthy man. Until the stock market crashed in ‘07 and took a huge chunk of his change right along with it. He’s not on any critical lists, granted, but he’s not on any Fortune 500 lists either.”
Although Jenay continued to sit stoically, she was amazed. When in the world did Charles have time to do that level of research on Matt Dellum? She had only just told him about the meeting last night. She looked at her husband.
“So let’s get down to it,” Charles said to Matt. He even leaned forward in a kind of in your face, man to man response. “You need deep pockets to make this resort a reality. Very deep pockets. Pockets so deep it’s almost obscene just how deep those pockets will have to be. So you purchased that B & B for half a million as leverage, figuring we wouldn’t like the competition and therefore would be more inclined to consider such an offer. And without a lot of information, it would have been a good move on your part. But you miscalculated in one very specific way.”
Charles may not have cared for Matt right off the bat, but the feeling was mutual. “What was my miscalculation, as you call it, Mr. Sinatra?” Matt asked him.
“You assumed we were the kind of people who hated competition,” Charles responded. “It was an understandable assumption. Most people do hate it, so I can understand that feeling. But my wife and I aren’t most people. We thrive on competition. Because we know the trick.”
Matt considered him. He thought he would be the chess player at this table. He was wrong. “And what trick is that?” he asked Charles.
“We never compete with anybody but ourselves,” Charles said. “That’s the trick. We don’t give a flip nickel about what other people are doing. We just do our thing. And we’ll continue to do our thing.”
Matt frowned. “You talk as if I’m trying to swindle you! I’m offering you a great deal here. Less than fifty-percent outlay, more than fifty-percent return. I’m offering you an excellent deal!”
“You’re offering us an opportunity to buy into your vision and your dream. No thanks. That’s not our agenda and you will not make your agenda our agenda. What you’re up to has nothing to do with us.”
Matt’s suspicion about Charles being the boss of this outfit was well-founded. But Charles’s love and respect for Jenay, Matt felt, could be the wildcard. He therefore turned his attention to Jenay. “What are your thoughts, Mrs. Sinatra?” he asked her. He decided to play on what he perceived to be her own need to be assertive and no Stepford wife clone of her husband’s. “I’m sure you’re an independent thinker,” he went on. “Can you envision what I’m trying to get your husband to see? We could create a resort that could make all of us billionaires. What do you think?”
“I think you’re full of shit just like my husband said,” Jenay said without hesitation. Charles inwardly leaped with joy. He knew she wouldn’t fall for Dellum’s divide and conquer nonsense.
“I think the idea that my husband would sink his entire fortune into a maybe proposition when he’s doing great without such a risk,” Jenay continued, “is a nonstarter for us.”
“But don’t you people get it? You’ll never be a billionaire thinking that way. It won’t happen.”
“So?” Both Charles and Jenay asked in unison. “Who says we want to be billionaires?” Charles added by himself.
But to Matt that was fool’s talk. Because, in his mind, only a fool wouldn’t want to be a billionaire. After you tasted millions, he felt it was your duty to strive for billions. Such a way of thinking cost him his shirt in ’07, but he didn’t change his way of thinking. He didn’t understand these people, he realized. He didn’t understand their logic at all!
Charles and Jenay both smiled at that puzzled look that now appeared on Matt’s face. He just couldn’t figure them out, and they knew it. And both of them realized what a waste of time this meeting really was.
“Have a nice day, gentleman,” Charles said as he rose to his feet. He reached his hand out to his wife. She slid across the seat, took his hand, and rose too. Charles looked at Matt. “And just so you’ll know,” he added, “many of the business leaders around here have been trying to turn this place into a resort town for years. And I mean decades. So good luck with that.”
Then Charles and Jenay, with his arm in the small of her back, began walking out of the restaurant.
Matt, now able to show his anger, took his napkin and threw it on the table. “Gotdammit!” he said.
Steve exhaled. Upset too. “I sure hope you have a plan B, boss,” he said, “because plan A failed miserably.”
But Matt always had a plan B. Always. He just hated when he had to activate it.
CHAPTER FOUR
Charles drove up and stopped at the curb just as Robert Sinatra walked out of Charles’s downtown storefront office. Robert removed his dark shades from the top of his head and placed them over his big but sensitive blue eyes and smiled when he saw his father’s Jag. He immediately began walking across the sidewalk to greet him.
Robert was more of the ladies’ man than any of his brothers, and in his sleek Tom Ford suit, he didn’t disappoint any of those who were walking by and giving him that assessing look. But he was no soft lover boy. He was hard. Maybe, after Brent, the hardest son he had. And although he looked more like Donald with his blonde hair and blue eyes, as opposed to his father and brothers more striking dark hair and green eyes, he was more like his father than even he realized. His father saw it, but it was still so undeveloped that he barely recognized it now.
“Hey, Dad,” Robert said as he opened his father’s car door.
“Don’t tell me you’re off today too.” Charles got out of his car.
“Off?” Robert asked. “I wish. I came by to pick up that inventory list I
asked Faye to prepare for me.”
“Didn’t I tell you about using my staff to do your work?” Charles closed his car door. “Nester is your property agent. She can run inventories.”
“But every time I ask her she says it’s not her job.”
Charles looked at his son. “And that settles it? She tells you, the boss, what is and is not her job and you said what?” Of his four sons, Donald and Robert were the two he worried about the most. Not just because they were his two youngest boys, but because their level of immaturity astounded Charles. They were both coming around, especially Robert, but not nearly fast enough for Charles’s taste. Charles was only seventeen when he became a father for the first time with Brent, which he knew was too young even by his standards, but by the time he was Robert’s age he was a father of four and already owned several businesses.
“I understand your point,” Robert said, “but I don’t think you understand my position, Dad. You hired me to be your property manager, and I’m not even thirty yet. Nester has been your property agent for years and years, and she’s almost twice my age. I feel like I’m telling my mother what to do when I try to order her around.”
Charles considered his son. “When I was your age,” he began saying.
Robert rolled his eyes. “Here we go,” he said.
“When I was your age,” Charles said again, “I was telling people not just my mother’s age, but my mother mother’s age what to do. Did they like it? No. Did I give a fuck? Hell no. Because I couldn’t. Because if I wanted my businesses to succeed, they had to understand I meant business. It starts at the top, Robert. I put you in charge of my rental properties because I believe in you and I believe you can do it, but I’ll take it from you in a heartbeat if you can’t.”
Robert nodded. His face serious now. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“Now get to your office and get that woman to do her job. Make it clear to her that her job is what you say her job is. If she doesn’t like it, fire her ass and find somebody else who will. Understand me?”
Big Daddy Sinatra 3: The Best of My Love (The Sinatras of Jericho County) Page 5
