Big Daddy Sinatra: Charles In Charge (Big Daddy Sinatra Series Book 6) Read online

  “How did it go?”

  “It didn’t. He found out he lost the bid late last night, and he was pissed, as you can imagine. I told him not to try and drive all through the night to get home, but you know your father.”

  Tony smiled. “He can’t stay away from you that long, Jenay, come on now. When his business is over, Dad comes home.”

  Jenay knew it too. And it warmed her heart. But seeing Tony with Sharon warmed it too. “Speaking of coming home,” she said to Sharon. “You’ve just got in town yourself. You aren’t going straight to Saint Cat’s, are you?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. I feel I must. Knowing my staff the way that I know them, I’m sure I’ll need to reestablish order as quickly as possible.”

  Jenay smiled, and poured them both coffee. Sharon was a slender black woman with a face most would consider ordinary, although she was sharp as a whip and the first female head of Saint Catherine’s, or of any private school in the region, which was no easy feat.

  She was also one of the sweetest women Jenay had ever known. She’d love for Tony to marry Sharon! Even now she saw how he was taking peeps at her, as if he was just besotted with Sharon. But he was not the kind of man to go that deep. Tony told it straight to everybody, even when they couldn’t handle the truth. Everybody, Jenay thought, except himself.

  After more conversations about conventions, including the three Jenay was slated to host next week, Bonita arrived in the kitchen with a sad look on her face.

  “Have you forgotten how to speak, young lady?” Tony asked her. He was her older brother, but there was such a large age gap that all of her siblings, except for maybe Ashley and Donald, behaved as if they were her parents. Especially Brent and Tony.

  “Good morning, Miss Flannigan,” she said to Sharon.

  “Good morning, Bonita.”

  “Good morning, Tony.”

  “Good morning. That’s more like it.”

  But Jenay could tell something was bothering her daughter, who had dressed and brushed her hair beautifully. “What’s wrong, baby?” she asked her.

  Tears appeared in Bonita’s big, green eyes. “I went upstairs to get my bookbag, and heard Daddy snoring.”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s back home.”

  “He just got home not too long ago.”

  “But he’s asleep, and you said I couldn’t wake him up when he’s sleeping. But I haven’t seen him in three days, and I miss him. And I’ll be in school when he wakes up, and he might be gone again when I get back home.”

  Jenay’s heart went out to her child. She went to her and took her by the hand. “Come on,” she said, and headed upstairs with Bonita.

  Tony smiled and shook his head. “Even at her age,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sharon asked.

  “All of my father’s children are so infatuated with him. Even when we were kids, we all wanted to be like Dad and be around Dad and jockey for position to sit next to Dad or stand next to him. Whenever he would go out of town, we would cry and throw tantrums and beg him not to leave us. I mean it was crazy. I used to think it was because we were raised without our mother around, and didn’t want to be abandoned by him too. But that craziness continued in our adulthoods. We’re still infatuated with our father!”

  Sharon laughed.

  “We’re still jockeying for position around him,” Tony continued, laughing too. “Now Bonita’s picking up that torch and running with it. I’m a clinical psychologist,” Tony went on, “but even I can’t come up with a clinical term for that level of behavior.”

  Sharon smiled. “It’s called love, Tony,” she said. “You guys love your father. That’s all.”

  Tony had to smile himself. Maybe it was as simple as that. Then he looked at Sharon as she took another sip of her coffee. His friends loved to tell him how he was nuts to want a woman that plain when a man like him, with his supposedly boyish great looks and smoking body, could have a different beauty queen on his arm every day of the week. But what they didn’t seem to understand about Tony was that he felt he had a beauty queen on his arm already: Sharon was beautiful to him. And she was beautiful to him inside and out. He couldn’t help it if they couldn’t see it. He was seeing it more and more with each passing day.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Upstairs, Charles was still asleep by the time Jenay, with Bonita, entered the bedroom. Jenay hated to wake him up. She knew how exhausted he had to be. But she also knew they had a daughter at a very impressionable age who wasn’t seeing her father very much lately. They didn’t get a second bite at that apple called raising her right. They had to get this right the first time.

  Jenay woke him up.

  She shook him until he finally opened those gorgeous green eyes. But he woke up with a start, which, she knew, was yet another sign that he was bone tired. But when he saw Jenay’s beautiful brown face, he managed to smile.

  But when Bonita saw that her father was awake, she smiled too, and ran to him. “Daddy!” she said excitedly.

  Charles was smiling greatly when he lifted his little girl into his arms. “Hey, baby,” he said as he held her.

  “You stay away too much,” Bonita said bluntly. “Why do you stay away so much?”

  “Work, babe,” Charles said, now looking into her eyes. “I have to work, and sometimes I have to work out of town.”

  “Why don’t you get Donnie and Ashley to help you work. Then you don’t have to work so much. Why don’t you use them more?”

  Charles smiled. “Because I want my business to be successful,” he said and Jenay admonished him.

  “Charles, quit!” she said with a smile.

  “Just kidding,” Charles said to Bonita. “But you’re right,” he said. “I’ll try to do better.”

  Satisfied, Bonita went on to tell him about her numerous adventures.

  Jenay leaned against the dresser, and watched the reunion.

  After several minutes of Bonita going on and no about how much she missed her father and how great she’s doing in school and how some of the girls in school thought he was dreamy, although they thought Tony was dreamier, Jenay had to put a stop to it or Bonita was going to be late for school.

  “Okay, Kido, time to eat your breakfast so you can get going,” she said. “Tell Daddy goodbye.”

  Bonita did just that, as she also got her father to promise to still be in town when she got out of school. When he promised, she and her mother began heading out of the bedroom. But Charles motioned for Jenay to hold back.

  “Go on down and eat,” Jenay said to Bonita. “I’ll be down shortly.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bonita said, waved bye to her father again, and left.

  Jenay, knowing all too well why Charles wanted her to stay, closed and locked their bedroom door.

  He removed the covers off of him, revealing his naked body. “Come here,” he said to her, as he rubbed his dick.

  Jenay walked over to him as if she had no clue what he could want. But when he untied her bathrobe, revealing her own sleek, naked body, and removed it altogether, she couldn’t pretend any longer. Especially when she saw his penis begin to stiffen right before her very eyes.

  “Get up here,” he said to her, and she gladly got on top.

  He began sucking her breasts even as he was lifting her up. It had been several days of not being able to see her in the flesh, and now he had her in his arms. And as soon as his mouth moved from her breasts, and up to her sweet lips, and he kissed her, his control broke immediately.

  They moaned and groaned as they kissed uninterrupted for several long minutes. Charles had not felt the touch of his wife, the warmth of her body and her kiss, for longer than either of them preferred. And they were showing it.

  Jenay felt his hands move down, with one hand fingering her and another hand coupling her ass, as they kissed. And he was getting bigger as they kissed.

  She knew he would be home, later that afternoon, but to have him back early was a tr
eat for her. A treat before work. And she aimed to enjoy that treat.

  They kissed and grind against each other for several minutes, and when he entered her she was wet and ready.

  “I miss you,” Charles said as he entered her. “You don’t know how much.”

  Jenay missed him too, and told him so, but soon they were grinding so hard that neither one of them could speak. Their actions spoke for them.

  And they made long, passionate love. Even the bed was moving in rhythm, bouncing and creaking, as they fucked hard. They felt the fullness and the elation of finally being together again, and couldn’t stop kissing, and gyrating, and experiencing each other. Charles’s dick felt like gliding warmth to Jenay, and Jenay’s vagina felt like tight sweetness to Charles.

  Until their passion reached a crescendo, and they both knew there was no going back. They came with an outpouring from Charles, and constricting pulsations from Jenay, that only made them come harder. They came and came together.

  When it was over, they laid there, still arm in arm, both on their sweat-filled backs. Charles was breathing so heavily that Jenay felt a need to turn sideways and place her hand across his chest to help regulate him. But she understood it. Their lovemaking was becoming more intense with each passing year. But that wasn’t necessarily a good thing, Jenay felt. Mainly because it involved too much pinned-up stress to release, which meant there was too much stress to begin with. And there was definite strain in their marriage lately. All was not as well as it could be.

  When it appeared as if he was back in control of his breathing, she spoke. “I thought I told you not to drive through the night to get here,” she said to him.

  “You did tell me that, didn’t you?”

  Jenay inwardly smiled, but she didn’t show it. She wanted him to know she was serious about this. “But you came anyway,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Why, Charlie? You could have fallen asleep at the wheel. Why would you risk it?”

  “Because I wasn’t going to fall asleep. Because I wasn’t spending another second away from you.”

  Jenay looked at him and smiled. How could she argue with that?

  “So negotiations fell through?” she asked.

  “Their lost,” Charles said, pulling her closer. “They had me so angry, wasting my time like that, that I nearly beat the shit out of one of them.”

  Jenay was concerned. “Charles, you didn’t.”

  “I most certainly did. A bunch of assholes with such outrageous demands that it did something to me. But cooler heads prevailed, and I got the hell out. But that’s the nature of venture capitalism. You win some, you lose most. And then you’re off to the next deal, and the next negotiation.”

  “Where next time?”

  “Wilmington.”

  “Delaware?”

  “Yup.”

  Jenay dreaded to ask it. “When do you have to be there?”

  Charles hated to admit it. “This weekend.”

  Jenay hated that! “That soon? But you just got back! I don’t hardly see you anymore. The children don’t hardly see you. Tony said poor Bonita asked him the other day if you still loved us the way you used to.”

  Charles let out a hard exhale. Then he exhaled again. “Things will slow down soon, Jenay,” he said. “I’m just trying to make sure this family is on firm financial footing for generations to come when I’m not around anymore.”

  Jenay looked at him. His big, green eyes were tired. “I know, babe,” she said. “I know everything you do you do for us. It’s just at a cost, you know?”

  He nodded. He knew.

  Then it was Jenay’s time to exhale. She patted him on his chest. “High time I make a start,” she said, rising to get up. “I’ve got to shower again, thanks to you, and dress and get my behind to work. We’re hosting three conventions next week. I need everything to be perfect. I want every single one of those organizations to come back over and over again.”

  But when she slid on top of him to get off of the bed, and Charles smelled her fresh scent, and felt her bare breasts brush against his bare chest, he couldn’t help it. She gave him a rise just like that. He pulled her back, and back into his big arms. “One more kiss before you go,” he said.

  But Jenay was already feeling his erection beneath her, and, to amplify that feeling, Charles grabbed his cock and placed it between her legs, ready for reentry.

  She was getting wet at just the thought of him inside of her again. And once again as always, when it came to this man, that hotel he owned before he married her, but gave to her to run, would have to wait.

  She gave him another kiss. He eased his cock inside of her again. And he gave her so much more.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The dust kicked up behind Charles’s Jaguar XJ as he made his way to the shack near the end of the narrow road. It wasn’t a shack when he first rented it out ten years ago. It was a cute bungalow that the previous renter kept up beautifully. But then Jesse Colbert and his teenage daughter took over as tenants, and the beauty of the place, Charles thought as he stopped his car behind an old Chevy pickup, rolled downhill fast.

  He lifted his sunglasses when he stopped his car and frowned at the condition of the place. A trail of trash was the only way he could describe it, that led from the front porch, down the wooden steps, around both sides of the house, toward the back yard. He shuddered to think what the backyard looked like! And they called him a slumlord. They called him an uncaring landowner when all he was doing was renting good, solid properties to sorry-ass individuals who didn’t give a shit.

  He placed his shades back over his eyes, grabbed his repair requests booklet off of the dashboard, and stepped out of his car onto the dirt yard that was once a lawn, dirtying his expensive dress shoes as he did. But it was all in the job. He was a hands-on landlord. He came to see for himself before he sent his men in. But as he made his way toward the front steps, what he was already seeing disturbed him mightily.

  A horde of old furniture, old clothes, and big, black garbage bags, all filled with old beer cans, clogged up almost every inch of the front porch. Other than a small path to the front door; a path that could only be maneuvered by walking sideways, you could barely see the flooring. It was so over-the-top that when Charles made it to the steps, he couldn’t help but stop walking and shake his head again. “This shit makes no sense,” he found himself saying out loud as he stared at the cumulative mess. He was getting angry.

  “What’s that you say, Big Daddy?”

  He turned when he heard that voice and saw Jesse and his daughter Shania (named, Charles was told, after the country singer Shania Twain), as they walked toward the front from the side of the house. Both had firewood in their arms. Jesse was tall and muscular with long blonde hair that flapped around his head as if he was a Chippendales dancer. The girl, who looked to be around sixteen, was short and chubby with long blonde hair too. They both had those strong features of slightly protruded foreheads, small eyes, and practically non-existent lips that led any onlooker to believe they were related. But the ladies loved Jesse Colbert because he was buff.

  “I said this shit makes no sense,” Charles responded as he turned toward his tenant. “What the fuck is all of this, Jesse?” He motioned toward the pile of trash on the porch.

  “All of what?” Jesse asked. He was playing dumb, but Charles wasn’t. He didn’t respond.

  “It’s something I got to put away,” Jesse went on to say as if he was surprised that anybody would find his horde offensive. “It’s just our stuff. I don’t know why you’re making a big deal about it.”

  That was why Jesse, and a lot of other tenants, didn’t like Charles Sinatra. He always expected them to be at the top of their game every time he saw them, when it wasn’t even possible to be that perfect. Big Daddy’s children weren’t. His wife wasn’t. Big Daddy himself for damn sure wasn’t. But he expected everybody else to be that way.

  “Don’t worry, Big Daddy,” h
e felt a need to say. “I’ll square it away, don’t worry. This ain’t normally how it looks.”

  Charles had too much still to do to let this man get his temper flaring. “You phoned and said you had a leak?”

  Jesse began walking up the steps. “If you wanna call it that.”

  Shania stayed close on her father’s heels, but kept staring back at the man in her yard. Big Daddy Charles Sinatra was, by far, the largest landowner in Jericho, and the most powerful man to boot. He came across as cool and nice and oh-so good-looking in his fancy suit and those dark shades that covered what she knew were his gorgeous green eyes, but everybody always told her to never fall for that. He was a bastard on two legs, she’d heard, who would chew you up and spit you out. And that was exactly the way they described him: a bastard on two legs. She hurried to stay close to her father. She wanted no parts of that man.

  “That’s not what I wanna call it,” Charles responded to Jesse as he followed them up the steps. “That’s what you called it when you phoned my office.”

  Jesse glanced back and smiled that smirk Charles knew was nothing more than fake charm from a man who was anything but charming, and kept walking. “Come see for yourself,” Jesse said as he and his daughter walked sideways through the porch path that led to the front door. “But I’m telling you now it’s not what you would call a leak. It’s more like a hole.”

  “A hole the size of a basketball,” Shania said with a grin.

  But Jesse wasn’t grinning. He quickly turned around and backslapped his daughter hard across her rosy cheek. She stumbled back, forcing Charles to grab her by her waist and almost drop his repair booklet doing so.

  But Jesse was fuming. “Who asked you?” he asked her angrily. Then he frowned. “And what are you following me for, anyway? Sit that wood down and then you and Babe finish bringing the rest from the back. Winter’s coming and we ain’t nowhere near ready! What you following me around for? Get your ass out back!”

  “Yes, sir,” Shania said with shame all over her plump face. She avoided Charles’s eyes as she hurriedly squeezed past him and ran off of the front porch, down the steps, and around the house. Charles didn’t like what Jesse had done to his daughter, but getting all caught up in these yahoos and their generations-old abusive treatment of their children wasn’t something he was going to get involved in on any day. Especially not this busy day. He followed Jesse inside.