For once in my life, I have someone who needs me!
Mick held Roz even closer as Stevie Wonder played his harmonica to the wonderfully romantic beat. He’d never been in love before in his life. He wouldn’t begin to know the feeling. He assumed he wasn’t there yet. How could he be? He couldn’t possibly declare his love for her this soon. But if love was anything like the feeling he felt for her at this very moment, if it was half as gratifying, then he was on his way. If she didn’t give up on him, if she didn’t leave him, if she stayed in his corner, he was well on his way.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Roz smiled when she entered the gourmet kitchen of the especially quiet home, and saw Mick standing at the center island. He was skimming through a newspaper. She smiled. “I didn’t know they still made those things,” she said.
Mick smiled too and turned another page. “Only for dinosaurs like me. I find it distasteful to read the news on my phone.”
“I find it convenient,” Roz said as she sat on a stool beside him.
He looked at her. She wore a sear sucker white short set with heels, her hair in a beautiful ponytail, and very light makeup. He kissed her on the lips. “You look very beautiful,” he said.
“You, on the other hand, are dressed for work,” she responded, looking down at the double-breasted dark brown suit he wore. “I thought you were going to take some time off when I came to visit.”
“I am. I have.” Then he frowned. “But something’s come up. Business I have to deal with. It won’t take all day.” Then he smiled.
“What?” she asked.
“I tell other women that they look beautiful and they gush with delight. I tell you that you look beautiful, and you ignore me.”
Roz grinned. “Thank you for the compliment. I didn’t mean to be rude. But I Googled you, remember? I saw photographs of those supermodels and rich ladies you’ve dated, all glammed-up in their furs and fancy extensions, and I’m sitting here in shorts and a ponytail. And I’m the beautiful one?”
Her response touched Mick deeply. He looked dead into her eyes. “Yes,” he said. “You’re the very beautiful one. Because your beauty isn’t just external, but it is just as pronounced internally. You will never know how beautiful you look to me at this very moment.”
Roz felt the heat as he stared at her. And she felt something else. Something deeper. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re very beautiful inside and out too. Even with that sleepy eye of yours, and that cleft in your chin, other than those issues, no man has ever looked better.”
Mick laughed, leaned over, and they kissed.
When they finished, Mick went back to reading his newspaper, and Roz looked around. Was she expected to cook? Then she thought about something. “Where’s everybody?” she asked.
“Everybody?”
“Your gigantic household staff. Your maids and butlers and Carolyn.”
“They haven’t arrived yet. They give me my morning space. They don’t live-in.”
“Not even Carolyn?” Roz asked.
Mick looked at her. “Especially not Carolyn,” he said. “She manages my household staff. That is the beginning and end of it.”
Roz wasn’t the jealous type, but she was pleased to hear that. “So what do you want for breakfast? I can throw something together.”
“Thank you, love, but that won’t be necessary. The chef is preparing our breakfast as we speak.”
Roz looked around. “The chef? What chef? Where is he?”
“He’s downstairs, in the chef’s kitchen.”
The chef’s kitchen, Roz thought. The chef had his own kitchen? Rich people. “He doesn’t live in either?” she asked.
“No. He comes in as needed. He prepares breakfast for me when I’m in town and bother to eat it. Dinner when I request it. He should be serving us momentarily.”
Roz smiled. She’d never seen Mick’s kind of wealth before. It was a tad daunting. But then she thought of something wonderful, if it was true. “Carolyn said I’m the first guest you allowed to stay in your main house.” She looked at him. “That true?”
Mick hesitated, and then turned the page. It said something about him, he knew, that he wasn’t sure he wanted exposed. But he wasn’t going to lie to her. “It’s true,” he said. Then he looked at Roz.
Roz considered him. “Why me?” she asked. “Why make me the first?”
Mick decided to be blunt with her. “My previous female guests were here for their entertainment value,” he said. “They stayed in one of the guest houses and I visited them there. You’re here for your value. You stay with me.”
He treated her better than any other man ever had. This so-called bad man. “Thank you,” she said.
Mick leaned over and kissed her again. He could get addicted to her taste.
And after breakfast, a very hearty breakfast for both of them, Mick walked Roz out of his front door, across the sidewalk, and into his warehouse-size garage. They entered from a side door, and he closed the door behind them.
“Wow,” Roz couldn’t help but say.
The garage was filled with six different cars. Four of the cars were classic cars and looked as if they had never been driven a day in their existence. The other two cars, a white Bentley and a black car that looked like a bat mobile to Roz, were not only modern, but looked brand spanking new. “What’s that?” she asked as she stared at the bat mobile.
“The full title?”
“Please.”
“That is a Lamborghini Veneno Roadster. A V12. 220 mph. A beauty.”
“It is that,” Roz agreed. “So you’re a car enthusiast, Mick?”
“On a mild scale, yes. I don’t have time to be all-in. Not right now.”
Roz smiled. “A car enthusiast who never drives a car.”
Mick laughed. “I drive.”
“Every time I see you,” Roz pointed out, “Deuce or some other chauffeur is driving you around.”
“Only when I’m working. When I am at leisure, I drive myself.”
“In the Lamborghini?”
“Sometimes,” he said, and handed her a key fob.
“Now, wait a minute, Mick. I’m no expert driver like that. That car is probably way too fast for me.”
“It’s not for the Lamb,” Mick said with a smile. “It’s for the Bentley.”
“Oh, the Bentley!” Roz shook her head. “I should have known you weren’t crazy enough to entrust your million dollar car in my inexperienced hands. I live in Brooklyn. When do I get to drive? I am so embarrassed.”
Mick laughed and put his arm around her waist. “Don’t be,” he said. “The Bentley, I assure you, is no slouch either.”
“I’ll handle it with care, don’t worry.”
“I’m sure you will. While I’m at work, I want you to go. See the city. Visit your friends.”
Roz frowned. “How did you know I had friends in town?”
“You Googled me. I Googled you.”
Roz smiled. “Very funny. But Google wouldn’t know. . . Wait a minute. Did you? You investigated me, didn’t you?”
He paused before responding, unsure how she would react. “Yes,” he said.
“Why? What was the concern? That I was FBI?”
Although Roz was joking, Mick wasn’t. “Yes,” he said.
And just like that Roz remembered who she was dealing with. He was no run-of-the-mill boyfriend. There was no telling what he could be involved in. “Just tell me this,” she said. “You aren’t into drugs, are you?”
Mick was pleased to respond. “No.”
“Have you ever been into drugs?”
“When I was a young thug, I was into everything.”
“Including drugs?”
“Everything,” Mick said.
“But you’re legitimate now. Right?”
Mick stared at her. She knew better. He could see in her eyes that she knew he was not and probably would never be one hundred percent legit. “Yes and no,” he said truthfully.
&
nbsp; Roz exhaled. “It’s like I’m living in a fairytale right now,” she said. “But there’s a part of it that’s kind of nightmarish still.” She looked at him. “It’ll take some getting used to.”
Mick’s jaw tightened. This wonderful lady was a prize to him. Because she hit the nail on the head. It was fairytale-like for him too. Only the nightmare part wasn’t on her, but him. He hugged her again.
“But that’s what I’ll do,” she said. “I’ll take your fine car right here and visit my friends. I also want to visit Independence Hall and see some of the sights. And don’t worry, you can work. I know you’re a workaholic. We’ll get together after work. I’ll be fine.”
That was what perhaps Mick enjoyed most about her. She could handle herself. He didn’t have to worry sick about her when business needed his undivided attention. He reached in his pocket, pulled out a thick wad of cash, and attempted to hand it to her.
But she refused to take the money. “Thanks, but I’m good,” she said.
“This town can be an expensive place. Take it.” He continued to hang the money out for her to accept.
But she shook her head again. “Thanks, but I’m fine, Mick. You don’t have to give me money.”
He continued to hold it out there.
“Mick!” she said, trying her best to reason with him. But she could see he was not going to bulge. She took the cash. “I’m not going to spend it,” she said.
“You’d better,” he said, and he didn’t say it jokingly. “Pick up your friends. Enjoy yourself. I’ve programmed my office address into the car’s GPS. Pick me up around two.”
“Will do.”
“Think you can maneuver around town?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve been to Philly several times. I know my way around.”
“Good. Now let me get you familiar enough to know your way around my Bentley,” he said as he opened the door and showed her the basic functions of his Bentley, including his GPS system.
Roz watched and listened and couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief. This could actually work, she thought, as she watched Mick demonstrate all of the sophisticated gadgets in his sophisticated car. And she wasn’t thinking that way because he gave her money or was allowing her to drive his fancy car. It was all in the way he treated her. It was all in the fact that he was such a man’s man when she had become accustomed to man-boys or, in a few of her more embarrassing relationships, man-babies.
But Mick was all man. He didn’t need her to pay his cell phone bill for him or to throw him a few to take care of his child support payment or to give him something on his rent. He didn’t need her to comfort him all the time and listen to his tales of woe when she could have used some comfort and had tales to tell herself. And it wasn’t a race thing. Although Roz tended to favor black and Puerto Rican men, and dated them primarily, she dated more than her share of white guys too. And they all came at her the same way. They were tough guys, she gravitated toward the bad boys all her life, beginning with her father, but they didn’t handle their business. They didn’t seem able to figure out how to be good in bed, and good in business too.
But Mick was different. These were early days still, she had to keep reminding herself, but she was beginning to feel that he could be the kind of man she’d been hoping to find all of her adult life. Not that he was the perfect guy. He wasn’t by a long shot. He had his dark side: she’d already seen a glance of that ticking time bomb temper of his. But every man she’d ever dated had a dark side. Carmelo, her last ex, was a lying, cheating, sadistic son of a bitch who put nude photos of her all over the internet. Mick was no boy scout, and probably had more than just a bad temper working against him, but at least his upside dominated his personality. At least she didn’t have to wear the pants and make all the decisions when she was with him. At least there was nothing about the way Mick treated her, or viewed her, that made her have second thoughts.
When he finished with his car gadget demonstrations, he looked at her, his green eyes piercingly intense. “Got it?” he asked.
His lazy eye was so sexy to Roz at that very moment that she wanted him to take her again right then and there. But Mick was not that kind of compulsive man. He knew how to control himself. Another sign of a real man. So she controlled herself as well. “Got it,” she said, and curbed her outward display of happiness, although inwardly she was brimming over.
“Is that her?”
Tamron Dawson looked at the top-down convertible as it entered the big parking lot and headed their way. She and Zina Klein were standing outside of the office building where they worked and were waiting for Roz Graham to show up. “In a car like that?” Tamron asked. “I don’t think so.”
But when the beautiful white Bentley grew closer and they could see, because the convertible top was down, that it was indeed Roz Graham behind the wheel, they could hardly believe their eyes.
“Wow,” Zina said with a smile. “Looks like our girl has hit the jackpot, Tam!”
“Look at her,” Tamron said with a grin. “All stylin’!”
The car stopped at the curb and Roz lifted her sunglasses and placed them on top of her hair. “Why are you two standing there like palace guards?” she asked with a smile. “Bring y’all asses on!”
Both ladies laughed and hurried to the car. Tamron sat up front, she and Roz had been friends the longest, and Zina got in back. But Zina moved to the middle and leaned toward the two front bucket seats, as soon as she sat back there. “So this is yours?” she asked as she checked out the leather seats, the elegant door handles, the thousand grids and buttons.
“It’s not mine,” Roz responded as she looked up at the office building. “So this is where you two work?”
“It’s Mick’s then?” Tamron asked, still too curious. “It belongs to the guy you came to town to see?”
Roz nodded. “Yes, Tamron, it’s Mick’s. Which floor are you on?”
“Thirteenth,” Zina said. “Which should be bad luck, right? But we’ve been doing okay for ourselves.”
“Now that’s good to hear because it’s still surprising to me. I never would have thought you two would leave Broadway, leave the place that you love, to become telemarketers.”
“Tele-associates,” Tamron corrected her. “And don’t knock it, girl,” she added as Roz put the car in gear and drove off. “I’m a supervisor and Zin’s on her way too.”
“It pays the bills,” Zina said. “It pays better than you think.”
“Like what?” Roz asked.
“Like thirty-three dollars an hour,” Zina said.
Roz was amazed. She looked at Zina through the rearview. “Thirty-three? Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack,” Tamron said.
“That’s what? Fifty-two hundred a month? Dang. I’m barely clearing thirty-two.”
“See,” Tamron said with satisfaction. “Don’t knock it. Some of these private companies knows how to pay their employees.”
Roz shook her head. “I don’t knock it,” she said. “I can’t. Are you kidding me? I need to get a job here too.”
“I’ll hire you,” Tamron said. “Come on down!”
“You’ll be bored to tears working here,” Zina said. “I know I am. But it’s different for you anyway, Roz. You can teach acting. All we could do was act, but just couldn’t get that break. You had something to fall back on to keep you around. We had nothing. We had to change course.”
Roz glanced at Zina through the rearview. Of all the people Roz had taught, Zina was one of the ones who showed the most promise. But she gave up too quickly.
“But money should be the last thing on your mind right now anyway,” Tamron said. “Your boyfriend drives a Bentley. He can’t be no pauper. You’re set for life!”
It was a joke, and Roz knew it, but she also knew how blown away both of her friends would be if they knew everything else Mick drove. Or the full extent of his wealth. But one word unsettled her. “I wouldn’t call him my boyfriend just yet,” she
made clear. “It’s not that deep. Not yet.”
“But it’s going in that direction?” Zina asked.
Roz smiled. “It’s headed there, yeah,” she said. And now, she inwardly added.
And she kept smiling as they directed her to their favorite eating spot. Roz realized as she drove, and as she and her old friends caught up on old times, that this was turning out to be the best vacation of her life. She was so glad Mick had asked her to come. She was so glad she took the chance and came.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
They didn’t understand. They were seeing a problem when they should have seen an opportunity. They were thinking immediate when they should have been thinking long term. But Mick didn’t argue with them. He let them have the floor. He sat at the conference table in his huge office and listened to three of the most powerful organized crime figures on the East Coast, three Dons who answered to him, complain about what he saw as, and they should have seen as, a minor setback.
“I say we shut it down,” Vito DeLuca said. “I say we don’t let Provensano make fools out of us by sitting back and watching it happen. We wouldn’t be able to live it down. It’ll be like open season on Poltergeist. We’ll be the joke of the town, Michello!”
“I agree with Vito,” Carp Bianchi said. Both men were fat, but Carp took the cake. “Stanislav Provensano is a powerful man. We four together, you and the three of us, owns half of the coast. But Provensano owns the other half. If he starts muscling in on us, we’re fucked. You know it, Michello. I know it. We don’t want to go down that road. We don’t want a war with a man like that!”
Mick stared at Bianchi. Like Vito, he was much older than Mick. But unlike Vito, he was Mick’s least favorite Don. “Why not?” he asked him.
Bianchi frowned. “Why not what?”
“Why do we not want war with Stanislav?”
Bianchi smiled, but only because he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “We want to live to fuck another day,” he responded. “That’s why! What the fuck do you mean why? You know why!”
Mick Sinatra: For Once In My Life Page 16
