Big Daddy Sinatra 3: The Best of My Love (The Sinatras of Jericho County) by Mallory Monroe Page B

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.   “ Got dammit!”
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,