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’!”