But Charles wasn’t convinced. “Was it something I said?” he asked her.
“No,” Jenay said firmly. “What you said was the truth. You call it like you see it. That’s a good way to be. Too many men love to flatter us ladies with sugary words, and then their actions tell the harsh truth after they get what they want.” She smiled and extended her hand. “It was nice talking to you, Mr. . . .”
“Charles,” he said as he shook her hand. “Charles Sinatra.”
“Nice meeting you, Charles Sinatra.” She attempted to retrieve her hand from his grasp, but he placed his other hand on top of hers, sandwiching her in. Her eyes met his gaze, and she was transfixed.
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
“Jenay Franklin,” she said.
“Je-nay,” he said. “I like that name.”
“Thank-you.” She moved to release from his grasp, and devastating gaze, but he kept talking.
“But you know what? You look like a woman with a nickname. Only very special people have nicknames. Do your friends call you Jean, or Nay for short?”
He really was a very perceptive man, she thought. “Both,” she said.
“Depends on the friend?”
She laughed. “Right,” she said, and then, with considerable effort, slid her hand out of his enclosure. She had work to do, and not even a charming man like him was going to distract her. “I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening,” she added, and then she quickly walked away.
Charles looked at her as she walked away. That ass was on fire, as it sashayed beneath that tight skirt she wore. His dick was still throbbing at just the sight of it. And she thought it was over? She thought he was going to enjoy that kind of view, and the joy he felt being around her, and just forget about it? Charles finished his remaining slither of a drink in one gulp, and then buttoned his Versace suit. She was out of her beautiful mind if she thought this night was over. It wasn’t over by a longshot.
He began mingling again, doing his due diligence as the father of the groom. And although he was attentive to the needs of his son and his new daughter-in-law, and to their friends and the bride’s obnoxious family, he also kept an eye on Jenay Franklin. She was moving through the crowd, making sure everything was going well, being the hospitality expert she was learning to be. But she wasn’t fooling Charles. Every time he was within a few feet of her, she moved further and further away. She was avoiding him like the plague. He found it amusing that she would think she could.
CHAPTER FOUR
Later that night, when the bride and groom were off on their honeymoon and only the stragglers remained at the reception, he proved his point. He found her, or, as he liked to think of it, cornered her, in the kitchen. She was standing there, listening to an older man in a chef’s get-up as he went on and on about the complaints he received about the food. Charles perched himself beside the exit, folded his arms, and listened.
“But only a handful complained,” Jenay was saying. “Out of hundreds of guests, only a handful. You can’t please everybody.”
“But I worked my butt off, Jenay!” He was much older than Jenay, by ten or more years, and seemed awfully sensitive for a chef. Charles wondered if he was an intern at that school too. All of these old-ass interns!
“We all worked our butts off, Norm,” Jenay reminded him. And rightly so, Charles thought.
“We all work hard, yes, we do,” Norm responded. “I know that. But I don’t have great grades like you. I have to pass this internship or I won’t graduate!”
“You’re going to pass,” Jenay assured him, squeezing the man’s arm. “You passed this mid-term with flying colors today. Dr. Lander can’t fault you because every single person wasn’t pleased.”
Norm looked at her, his blue eyes blazing with concern. “You really think I passed? You really think so?” Although he was miles older than Jenay, Charles thought he acted more like an intern than she did. Jenay looked like a seasoned, experienced hand compared to him.
Jenay smiled. “You passed, Norman. You received rave reviews from most of the guests. I heard them singing your praises myself.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Will you tell Dr. Lander then? About them singing my praises, I mean?”
Jenay found his insecurity off-putting, Charles could tell, as any strong person would, but she managed to smile. “Of course I will,” she said, and then began to move away. “Stop worrying, Norm. You’re going to be fine.”
But when she started walking toward the exit, and saw Charles standing there, it was her face that suddenly looked worried.
“Charlie,” she said, surprised to see him in the kitchen area.
He smiled. No-one had ever called him Charlie before. No-one had ever dared. But he liked the name on her lips. It sounded like a far more affectionate name than Charles. “Thought you had a clean getaway, didn’t you?”
She smiled, and then glanced at Norm, who was staring at them. She began walking out of the kitchen, and out of the earshot of her colleague. “I thought you left with the other guests,” she said, as she began walking out.
“That would have been nice,” he said as he followed her, “but I’m spending the night at this hotel. I have some business in town tomorrow before I head back home. What about you? You have a room here?”
“I live in Boston,” she said. They were in the nearly empty ballroom, near the back bar. “I attend school here. BHI, remember?”
“Boston Hospitality Institute. How can I forget? You’re interning now, and then you graduate.”
“In two months, you are correct.”
“That soon? Is everything contingent upon you passing this internship?”
“Well, you certainly can’t graduate if you fail your internship.”
He smiled. “But knowing you,” he said, even though he didn’t know her really at all, “you’re pretty confident you passed.”
“I had zero complaints filed, zero problems or incidences in all of my time at this hotel. My grades are otherwise good. Why wouldn’t I pass? Why wouldn’t I be confident?”
“But I have it on good authority there was one complaint. Today as a matter of fact.”
Jenay’s heart pounded. “A complaint?”
“Yup. And it wasn’t a minor one, either.”
Jenay looked at him with eyes so worried he almost wanted to take it back. “What was the complaint?” she asked him.
“You were ignoring a particular guest all evening. Going out of your way, in fact, to ignore that particular guest. Some would call that rude and insulting. But who am I to judge?”
Jenay realized what he was talking about immediately. And she smiled. And relaxed. “I wasn’t ignoring you. I wouldn’t call it ignoring you.”
“Oh yeah? What would you call it then? Avoiding me?”
“Avoiding distractions,” she said instead.
“Oh, so I’m a distraction now?”
“You know what I mean.”
He looked down the length of her, and then into her eyes. When she looked into his eyes too, he held her gaze. “I know exactly what you mean,” he said. “Why don’t we go upstairs, to my room, and further discuss the meaning?”
Jenay could feel the heat again. “What if I’m still on duty?” she asked.
“Then get off duty. And come with me.”
“I’ll get off duty. But I’m going home. It’s been a long day.”
Charles was disappointed, but he wasn’t about to give up. “I’ll drive you home,” he said.
She began to walk away. “I have a car. But thank-you.”
Another blow. But he still wasn’t ready to throw in the towel. He wanted her. “I’ll walk you to your car then,” he said, and began walking with her.
Jenay knew they were playing with fire, but she didn’t see where allowing him to walk her to her car could do any harm. So she agreed, clocked out, and they headed out into the chilly Boston night.
“So what
are your plans for the evening?” Charles asked her as they exited through a side exit and made their way along a bush-lined walkway that led to the parking lot.
“I don’t have any plans,” Jenay admitted. “Other than to get some serious rest.”
“It’s been a tough day?”
“A very long day,” Jenay replied. “I was in that ballroom since six this morning making sure everything, on the hotel’s end, was in place. I am so glad it went off without a hitch. You don’t know how glad I am.”
Charles liked her enthusiasm. “You did a good job. My daughter-in-law’s family, who bankrolled this wedding, were very pleased.”
“They were?”
“Oh, yes. No complaints.”
“Not even about me ignoring them?”
Charles smiled. “Not even that.”
They continued walking. Charles felt a closeness to her as they walked, and he wanted to touch her somehow. But his pride wouldn’t allow him to go there. She wasn’t interested. He wasn’t going to beg her.
“This is it,” she said when they arrived at the driver’s side door of a maroon Honda Accord. It looked kind of boxy to Charles, but otherwise appeared to be in pristine shape.
“This your car?”
“This is my baby,” Jenay said proudly. “It was only three years old when I bought it. I purchased it with the alimony payments my husband was forced to make. Although, in truth, it was his new, wealthy bride that was doing the paying. But just as long as I got paid.”
Charles laughed. “Good for you,” he said, and meant it. “A car like this doesn’t give you any trouble?”
“Now that the half-ass warranty is off, it’s been trying to, but nothing major so far. Thank God.” She unlocked and opened her car door, and then stood between the door and the driver’s seat. “Well, Mr. Sinatra,” she said, “goodbye again.”
Charles hated to say goodbye to this woman. For some strange reason he just hated it. But she sat in her car. She didn’t seem to share the same angst about leaving him. “Goodbye, Jenay,” he forced himself to say. “Have a good evening.”
Then he stepped back as she closed the door, cranked up, and then drove away.
Jenay had mixed feelings as she watched Charles in her rearview, but she was a firm believer in fate. He backed off, she was about to graduate and begin her career, why bother with the aggravation of even a one-night stand? He was a man of means. She heard people at the wedding talking about how wealthy the groom’s father was. What would he want from a woman like her, a woman of decidedly modest means, anyway?
That was why, as she stopped at the stop sign that led out onto the busy Boston highway, she stopped looking back. She did that before, and all it got her was a lot of wasted time. She wasn’t going back that way again.
Charles, too, stopped looking back as he walked toward the hotel’s entrance. Not that he was looking forward to a night alone, he wasn’t. But he was getting well acquainted with lonely nights lately. It had been a long time since he saw a woman who caught his interest the way Jenay did tonight, but what was he going to do about it? She wasn’t interested enough to say yes, and he was too proud to beg. They had no choice but to go their separate ways.
But as soon as he made his way to the side door entrance, he heard a bang so loud it actually startled him. He turned around quickly, and hurried back up the walkway, looking across the highway. When he saw that there had indeed been an accident, and saw that one of the wrecked cars was Jenay’s little Honda, he took off running.
CHAPTER FIVE
He wasn’t in shape. He was a man blessed with an appealing physique, a very muscular physique, but it was more from the activeness of running several businesses than hard earned in some gym, and running as fast as he was now running nearly took his breath away. But the thought of Jenay involved in that crash gave him the strength, the raw determination, to get there and to get there fast.
The man in the SUV that had t-boned her car, was getting out just as he arrived on the scene. The man was angry, as if he had no fault whatsoever in the crash, but all Charles could think about was getting to Jenay. When he saw her car door open, even before he could get to her, and saw her step out of her vehicle, his heart soared.
When she saw Charles coming her way, she, too, felt relieved. “Charlie,” she said as soon as she saw him.
He hurried to her. “Are you alright?” he asked her anxiously as he hurried up to her. He immediately placed his hands on either side of her small arms.
“I’m ok,” she said. “Thank God, I’m okay.”
Charles wanted to hold her he was so relieved. He wanted to pull her into his arms. So he did. He embraced her with a vigorous embrace. Any other time Jenay would have been surprised by this level of affection from a man she barely knew, but not this time. She was shook up. She needed the warmth of his embrace.
“It’s all your fault, lady,” the man said as he approached the hugging couple. They stopped embracing when they heard the nearness of his voice. “You are going to pay for my damage! You’re going to pay for this!”
“First of all,” Charles said, releasing Jenay from his grasp, “calm your voice.”
“But it was her fault!”
Charles grabbed the man by the catch of his collar. “I said calm your voice! You don’t talk to her in that tone!”
When the man saw that chilly look in Charles hard, green eyes, he settled back down. This guy didn’t look like just anybody to him. He looked like one of those Italians that could cause him serious trouble, if not serious bodily injury. “I don’t want any trouble,” he made clear, as Charles released him. “But it wasn’t my fault. She drove out into traffic as if she didn’t see me. She nearly gave me a heart attack!”
Charles was about to go at the man again, but Jenay moved in front of him. “It’s okay,” she said, because the man was right. She thought she had a clearance and went for it. She didn’t even see his vehicle coming. “I have insurance,” she added. “I’ll take care of it.”
And as the police officer arrived, and the small crowd began to disperse, everybody seemed to calm back down. Except Charles. His heart was still hammering. He kept looking at Jenay. He kept wondering why in the world did the thought of her coming to any kind of harm nearly did to him what it almost did to that other driver. It nearly gave him a heart attack too.
After phoning Triple A and having the car towed to a local mechanic’s shop Jenay frequented, and after the other driver and the police were both satisfied with the statements, Charles drove Jenay to her home. She leaned back against the headrest as he drove through the busy Boston streets, and soaked in the smell of leather, and of his cologne, inside his Jaguar.
He looked over at her, and then back at the road. “Take off your shoes,” he said. “I’m sure your feet are still hurting.”
“You’re right about that,” Jenay replied, and gladly removed her heels.
“Sure you didn’t want to go to the hospital and get yourself checked out?”
“I’m positive, Charlie, thanks. I’m okay. I’m a little shook up, I’ll admit that, but I’m okay. I’m just glad my insurance company is going to take care of his car, and mine.”
“You stay on them though,” Charles advised. “They can tell you anything over a phone. You make sure they keep their word.”
She nodded. “I will,” she said.
“So what happened out there? You got distracted?”
“Or wasn’t paying full attention to begin with, yeah. It was totally my fault.”
“How old is that Honda?”
“Five years old now.”
“And you said it was three years old when you purchased it?”
“That’s right. And didn’t have a day of trouble out of it while it was under warranty.”
“Yeah, but that’s how they do you. It’s all about lining their pockets with other people’s money.”
She looked at him. “What about this car? Bought it new?”
He smiled. “Yes, I did, actually.”
She looked around. “It’s nice.”
“I’m glad you approve,” he said, and then looked at her. “I certainly do.”
She ignored his remark, and kept looking around at the car’s interior. “It looks so rich and elegant. Like a real luxury car.”
“Like me, right?” He was kidding.
“Exactly like you.” Jenay was not. Then she turned serious. “Listen, Charlie, I want to thank you.”
Where did that come from? “Thank me?” he asked. “For what?”
“For being there for me tonight. You helped to calm me down. You certainly calmed down that irate driver. But you really helped me.”
“The least I could do. You gave me a little excitement.” She laughed. “Before your accident, the most I could hope for was a comfortable, lonely bed. Now I get to talk to you a few minutes longer. I say I should be thanking you.”
She smiled. “So what do you do, Mr. Sinatra? And if you say you’re a singer, I’ll jump from this car right now.”
Charles laughed. “No, I’m not that Sinatra. I buy and sell several businesses actually.”
“Ah. A venture capitalist.”
“There you go.”
“Own any businesses in Boston?”
“A couple, yes. And quite a few across the country. But primarily in Maine.”
“A Maine man,” she said with a nod. “I got you. You like what you do?”
“Love it. Or hate it. It depends on what I’m doing. My businesses are so vast, and so different, that my enjoyment runs hot and cold. Good and bad. Black and white. I try to sell the ones I don’t like, but it rarely works out that way.”
“I think I’m going to love my job,” Jenay said.
He looked at her. “Oh, yeah?”
“I think so. I don’t have a lot of hands-on experience yet. At least, not the kind I would have liked to have.”
“What about that internship? Isn’t that hands on?”
“It is, yes, and it helps, but is has mainly been event-driven, rather than day-to-day. But it’s a two-year course and I did what they required of me. So I’m graduating, on time, with an associate’s degree in Hotel Management. And I’m graduating at the top of my class, I might add.”
Big Daddy Sinatra: There Was a Ruthless Man (The Sinatras of Jericho County Book 1) Page 4
