Big Daddy Sinatra: Carly's Cry (8 page)

“Not to mention that big, fat bank
account she brought back with her from Boston,” Ashley added.

“It wasn’t all that fat,” Carly
interjected.

“But it’s fat enough to buy a car,”
Ashley said.
 
“If I can buy a car on the
salary Dad pays me, I know you can buy one from all that big money you were
making in Boston.”

“Leave her alone,” Jenay said again
without looking up from her reading this time.
 
“She has a car.
 
It’s just in the
shop.”

“She doesn’t have a car, Ma,” Donald
said.
 
“She has a hunk of junk.
 
That car is as old as I am.
 
She needs a car and we all know it.”

“And she’ll buy one when she’s good
and ready,” Jenay said and then looked at Donald.
 
“Leave her alone.”

Donald knew when to cool it with his
stepmother and boss.
 
But he also knew
how to change the subject without changing the subject.
 
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said, “since
Dad let’s her drive his luxurious Jaguar all over town like she’s his
equal.
 
He never let me drive it
once.
 
Even when my car got---” Donald
hesitated.

Ashley looked at her brother and
smiled.
 
“Go on and say it, boy.”

“Even when my car got
repossessed.
 
Okay?
 
I said it!
 
But I’ll get another one when I’m back on my feet again, so it’s no big
deal.
 
But even then, when Dad knew I was
struggling, he didn’t come to my rescue.”

“Perhaps because you had no business
struggling,” Carly said.
 
“You made more
than enough money as General Manager at the Inn to pay your bills.
 
You chose not to.”

Ashley smiled.
 
“She’s right about that, Donnie.”

“But regardless of all of that,” Donald
said to Carly, as he was never willing to face his own demons, “Dad didn’t
offer to help me.”

“He even offered to buy her a car
when she first came back home,” Ashley said.
 
“Did you know that?”

“Hell yeah I knew it,” Donald
said.
 
“And for reasons I’ll never
understand until the day I die, Miss Carly turned him down.”

“Yeah, right?” Ashley said with a
smile.
 
“That amazes me still!
 
Let Dad offer to buy me a new car.
 
Man, I’d be at that car lot hours before it
opens.
 
I’ll spend the night there
waiting to get my new ride!”

“But it’s true,” Donald said to
Carly.
 
“You, Tony and Brent get
preferential treatment, I’m telling you.
 
Dad treats the three of you differently than the rest of us.”

“For real though,” Ashley said.
 
“Mom at least lets us drive her Mercedes.
 
She treats all of us the same.
 
But Dad doesn’t allow me nor Donnie anywhere
near his car.”

“Bobby either,” Donald added, still
looking at Carly.
 
“Yet you can just pop
up from out of nowhere when me, Ash, and Bobby have been living in Jericho all
along.
 
We’ve been working for Dad and
Mom, doing what they need us to do.
 
But
you show up and he all but turns the keys to the kingdom over to you.
 
He treats us, especially me, differently than
he treats you.”

“Maybe it has less to do with the
fact that he treats you differently, Don,” Carly said, “and more to do with the
fact that you have no job and haven’t shown yourself responsible enough.”

“I do have a job, for your
information,” Donald corrected her.
 
Then
he added, in a more subdued tone: “Just not the same job.”

Ashley laughed.
 
“Don’t try to sugarcoat it, bud.
 
Your little antics with Biker Chick got your
butt demoted.
 
You went from General
Manager of the Jericho Inn to desk clerk supervisor.
 
That’s a hellava fall, my brother, even in my
eyes.”

“He better be glad Ma didn’t fire him
altogether,” Carly said.
 
“If he worked
on my staff and pulled a stunt like the one he pulled, where he didn’t show up
for work for three days straight without even calling or letting someone know where
he could be reached, I wouldn’t have demoted him.
 
I would have terminated him immediately.”

“That’ll never happen,” Donald said,
“because I’ll never work for your stuck-up butt in a million years.”

“Since I’ll never hire yours in a
zillion years,” Carly retorted, “then I guess neither one of us have anything
to worry about.”

“Stop arguing,” Bonita said.
 
“You and Donnie argue too much.”

Ashley laughed.
 
Donald rolled his eyes.
 
Carly picked back up her IPad to continue to
read her book, and occasionally eat.

Then they all heard the loud voice of
their father yelling down from upstairs.
 
“
Jenay
?” he blared.
 
“
Jenay
?”

Jenay didn’t bother to look up.
 
“
What
?”
she blared back as she began signing Bonita’s paperwork.

“
Come
here
!
 
Jenay
?”

Jenay handed the paperwork back to
Bonita.
 
“Don’t lose that,” she said,
took another sip of her coffee, and then made her way upstairs.
 

“I don’t get it,” Ashley said.
 
“All Dad has to do is tell her to come, and
she drops everything and take off.”

Donald looked at Ash.
 
“So?”

Ashley looked at him sidelong.
 
“So?
 
If that was my husband, I’d ask him what was wrong with his two
legs.
 
And then I’d tell him to bring his
ass to me.”
 
Donald laughed.

Carly shook her head.
 
“That’s why not one of those men you date day
in and day out has asked you to marry him.”
 
Donald laughed even harder.

“No, you didn’t say that to me!”
Ashley responded, smiling too.
 
“At least
I have prospects, Miss Bookworm.
 
All you
have are books!”

“Read one,” Carly said.
 
“You might actually enjoy it.”

“Kiss this,” Ashley retorted, lifting
her butt toward her sister.
 
“You might
actually enjoy it.”

Donald laughed again.
 
He loved both of his adopted sisters
fiercely, although he made it his mission to never let that uppity Carly ever
know his true feelings.
 
“You’re always
good for a laugh, Ash,” he said heartily.

“Charlie, aren’t you going to be
late?” Jenay asked as she walked across the landing into the master
bedroom.
 
But she stopped talking and
walking when she looked up.
 
When she saw
Charles naked and lying across the bed, his feet on the floor, rubbing his
dick, her vagina tingled.

“Lock the door,” he said.

If he was up to anything else, Jenay
would have protested vigorously.
 
They
both had jobs to get to.
 
But Charles had
a way of bringing out the lust in her unlike any other man ever could.
 
On sight he could give her a rise.
 
And just seeing him, just seeing his penis,
made her so filled with lust that she could hardly get to him fast enough.

She locked the door and walked up to
him.
 
He opened his legs.
 
She stood between them and untied her robe,
revealing her own naked body.

“That’s right, baby,” Charles
said.
 
“You know what I want.”

Jenay knelt down, placed his cock in
her mouth, and began to lick it.

Charles leaned back and felt the
sensual texture of her tongue as it slowly slid over the ridges of his
penis.
 
And when she put it into her
mouth, he could feel the muscles of his thighs tighten.
 
He never dreamed he would want to be with a
woman as badly as he wanted Jenay.
 
In
his player days, he was not a kind lover.
 
He was good in bed, but not kind.
 
And he always knew there was a difference.
 
Because with Jenay, he was living the
difference.
 
The way she made him feel
could not be verbalized.
 
Just felt to
the roots of his hair.
 
And he felt her
now.
 
He felt her tongue, her touch, her
mastery of his body and mind.

And when she looked up at him, as if
she could instinctively feel the emotions he was feeling for her, and he saw
her big, brown expressive eyes, he took her by the arms and pulled her up the
length of his body, until she was sitting on his lap.
 
Her legs were on either side of his thighs,
as he pulled her further down, and began sucking her breasts.
 
Then he moved up to her mouth, and kissed her
for a long time.
 
Until he knew he
couldn’t hold out much longer.

He lifted her ass so that when she
came back down, she was sliding down on his rod.
 
He let out a heavy sigh when she slid down
and down and down until his cock was all the way deep inside of her.

Jenay felt it too as she slid down
his long rod.
 
And when she began to move
up and down, along the length, she closed her eyes and enjoyed him.
 
Her breasts were bouncing so much as she rode
him, that he took his hands and squeezed them.
 
But they continued to bounce in his hands.
 
They were that big.
 
And he loved it.
 
He loved it so much that he pulled her down
again, and sucked her as she fucked him.

When they came, it was as magical as
it could ever be.
 
They came hard and
they came together.
  
Charles pulled her
in his arms and took over.
 
His strokes
increased as he poured into her, and she wanted to cry out with joy.
 
But she knew the children were downstairs.
 
She held her peace.
 
And he continued to fuck her hard.

Downstairs, Ashley had finished eating
and was grabbing her purse.
 
“I’m out,”
she said as she began to leave.
 
“Bye,
Nita.”

“Bye, Ashley,” Bonita responded.
 
“Be good.”

“Why are you leaving all of a
sudden?” Donald asked, still stuffing his face with food.
 
“Aren’t you going to drop me off, Ash?”

“Then come on!
 
Dad said if I’m late one more time I’m
fired.
 
He can be late all the time, but
if I’m late he threatens to fire me.”

Carly could hardly believe it.
 
“He owns the company, Ash, why are you
comparing yourself to him?
 
He owns the company.”

“So?” Ashley asked.
 
“What does that have to do with
anything?
 
Late is late.
 
What’s the difference?”

If she didn’t know that difference,
Carly thought, then she would be wasting her time explaining it.
 
So she didn’t bother.

“Come on, Donnie, I mean it!” Ashley
said, as she hurried out of the door.

Carly watched as Donald drank the
last of his juice and hurriedly ate another spoonful of egg.
 
“If I were you,” he said as he ate, “I’d take
Dad up on his offer and get that new car.
 
You’re crazy not to.”
 
Then he
kissed Bonita goodbye, and took off.

Carly shook her head.
 
If that boy only knew how little she cared
about some car, or any other material thing right now, he’d stop bringing it
up.
 
But she didn’t try to enlighten him.
She let him go.

Bonita looked at Carly.
 
“They are always late,” she said.

“Yes, they are,” Carly agreed, with a
smile.

“That’s why I like you the most,”
Bonita said.
 
“You’re never late.
 
You never make mistakes.”

Carly had a sudden flash of that
knife coursing through Ethan Campbell’s back, and the way his knees bent when
she pulled it out.
 
And Nita thought she
was the perfect one?
 
“Finish your food,”
she said to her kid sister.

Charles and Jenay, showered and fully
dressed in their respective business suits, arrived downstairs some ten minutes
after Ashley and Donald left.
 
When
Charles saw Carly sitting at the center island, staring at seemingly
nothingness, he touched Jenay on the arm and pulled her back.
 
When Jenay looked at him, he nodded toward
Carly.

Jenay saw the staring and nodded
too.
 
“She’s been doing that a lot
lately.”

Charles looked at Jenay.
 
“Does she talk to you about it?”

“That’s the sad part,” Jenay
said.
 
“She won’t tell me a thing.
 
She won’t tell anybody.
 
She keeps it all locked in.
 
Sometimes I wonder if she’s still reliving
that hellish night, and reliving it over and over and over again.”

Charles opened his suitcoat, placed
his hands on his hips, and exhaled, as they both continued to watch their
daughter.
 
“I’m worried about her,
Jenay,” he said.
 
“I’d be lying if I said
otherwise.
 
She seem so normal when I’m
talking with her and when she’s one-on-one with others.
 
But when she’s alone, and she doesn’t know
that she’s being watched, she seem to be in such pain.”

“Poor baby,” Jenay said.
 
“There’s a lot going on inside of her, but
she won’t say what.
 
I still think she
should go to therapy.”

Charles looked at Jenay.
 
“And say what?
 
She can’t tell them anything about what
happened that night.
 
She can’t even hint
about it.
 
And please don’t hand me that
nonsense about how they can’t tell.
 
They
can tell the authorities if a crime has been committed, or something like
that.
 
Therapy is out.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” Jenay
said.
 
“But she doesn’t have to talk
about that night.
 
I think Carly had a
lot going on internally long before that night in Boston.”

Charles nodded.
 
“That’s true.”

“But it doesn’t matter.
 
She tells me no repeatedly when I ask her to
at least consider seeing a therapist.
 
Or
even Tony.
 
He’s a clinical psychologist.
 
I asked her to at least go and talk to him.”

“She refused?”

“Yup.
 
She declares she’s fine.
 
She’s
real good at declaring that.”

Charles nodded.
 
“Yes, she is,” he admitted.

“Anyway,” Jenay said.
 
“I’d better go.”
 
She leaned over and kissed Charles on the
lips.
 
Charles pulled her back, and
kissed her again.

Jenay then walked toward the front
door.
 
“Bonita?” she yelled.
 
“Come on!”

Carly broke her stare when she heard
Jenay’s voice, and Bonita jumped down from her chair, grabbed her book bag, and
hurried toward her parents.

“My baby!” Charles said as he lifted
her into his arms.

“Bye, Daddy!” Bonita said.
 
“You be good today.”

Charles laughed.
 
“If you will, I will,” he said as he put her
down.

“I will,” Bonita said.

“Then I will,” Charles responded.

“We’re leaving, Car,” Jenay yelled
toward the kitchen, and Carly turned toward her.
 
“See you tonight.”

“Have a good day,” Carly said,
rising, and Jenay and Bonita hurried out.

Carly began grabbing her purse and
IPad.
 
“Ready, Dad?” she asked as she
headed his way.

“I’m ready,” Charles said as he
watched Carly head his way.
 
She was
smiling now, as if her somber mood never happened.
 
When she arrived, they hugged.

“Thanks for letting me use your car
today,” she said when they stopped embracing.
 
“Milt said mine should be ready in a few more days.”

“No problem,” Charles responded.
 
He kept an arm around her waist.
 
“If I hadn’t left my truck at the office, you
could have already been on your way.”

“How did that have happened
anyway?
 
How could you leave your truck?”

“Your mother picked me up at the
office because we had a meeting to attend.
 
After the meeting we got lazy and decided to just come on home.
 
But you don’t mind dropping me off first, do
you?”

“Not at all!
 
We’re late, but it’s no big deal,” she added.

Charles was surprised.
 
“Late?
 
But I thought you didn’t have to be to work until 9?”

“I’m not talking about me,” Carly
said with a smile.
 
“I’m talking about
you.
 
I said
we
so you wouldn’t feel bad.”

Charles laughed and pulled her
closer.
 
“You’re a good kid, Carly,” he
said.
 
“I’m proud to have you as my
daughter.”
 
Then a serious look came onto
Charles’s face.
 
“Don’t you ever forget
that.”

Carly looked at Charles.
 
Here was a man, she thought, who took an
entire month out of his life to spend it cooped up in her house in Boston, all
for her sake.
 
Here was a man who was not
even a blood relative, but yet treated her better than her biological parents
ever did.
 
And her heart swelled with
emotion.
 
He was the very reason she
hadn’t completely given up on men.
 
“Thanks, Dad,” she said heartfelt.

But Charles continued to look at her
with concern in his eyes.
 
“You’re okay?”
he asked.

At first it seemed as if she would
crack, and tell him how she really felt.
 
But then she reverted back to form.
 
“Oh, yes,” she said bluntly, as if it was an obvious fact.
 
“I’m great.”
 
Then she smiled again, and headed out of the front door.

She was a long way from great, and
Charles knew it, as he followed her out.