Roz continued. “I realized how people can put you in a spot you never wanted to be in, but you either fight out of that hole or get buried in it. I’m glad you did what you did. I’m glad you convinced Margaret Hammer to hear my side of the story.”
“I’ve known her a long time,” Mick admitted. “She’s a politician through and through. She’s not the shrewdest DA I’ve ever known, but she has a sense of fairness about her.”
“But what if she wouldn’t have gone along with what you wanted?” Roz asked. “What if she would have gone along with the police and filed those charges against me?”
Mick hated to be blunt, but he knew no other way. “Then I would have given her an offer she wouldn’t be able to refuse, Rosalind,” he said.
Roz stared at him.
“I play dirty,” he went on. “When it comes to me and mine, I do not play by the rules.”
Roz would continue to play by those rules. That was who she was. That was how she was raised. But she was glad she had somebody like Mick, who wasn’t above skirting them, in her corner. “Good,” she said.
Mick looked at her with a smile. “Good? Why you’re a regular little gangster lady, aren’t you?”
“Not at all,” Roz said, managing to smile too. “But it doesn’t hurt to have a Ray-Ray and a Big Joe in your corner, hear what I’m saying?”
Mick laughed. “I hear you,” he said. And he did. He heard loud and clear that this lady here was exactly the kind of lady he needed.
Then Roz thought again. She looked at him. “She was in your pocket all along. Wasn’t she?”
Mick wondered if that would change Rosalind’s perspective. “In a manner of speaking, yes,” he said.
Roz shook her head. “And there she was acting as if it was such a hard decision for her, when it was all a big act.”
“Margaret Hammer is a public figure. All of those clowns are actors.”
“It was Hammer-time,” Roz said with a grin, and Mick smiled. “All she needed were some pirate-looking Hammer pants, and all she needed to do was start sliding side to side, shaking her hips, and we would have had a show for real. A showstopper no less!”
Mick laughed, and pulled her closer. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
“I know. But lovable, right?”
“Oh yeah,” Mick said. “Totally that.” Then he stared at her. “Are you really okay?”
“I will be. I just hate what happened to Barry. I wish none of it would have happened.”
Mick kissed the top of her head. “I know, babe.”
“He seemed as if he was obsessed with you. You should have heard him. Maybe that bisexual thing isn’t far off.”
“Who knows what was in his mind? I just thank God you’re safe and sound and back with me. Which brings me to my issue again. You still haven’t addressed my issue.”
Roz leaned her head against his shoulder. “Yes, I have,” she said. “You just weren’t listening.”
Mick looked at her. “Meaning?”
Roz exhaled. Change always brought about an upset for her. “Looks like I will be moving to the city of brotherly love.”
But Mick didn’t jump for joy yet. “Not by choice?” he asked her.
Roz looked at him. “Yes,” she said with a smile. “I need you, Mick. Being with you is where I want to be.”
Mick pulled her into his arms. And he frowned. Because he knew he had to verbalize what he had been feeling for some time now. “I need you too, Rosalind,” he admitted with what sounded like pain in his voice. But it wasn’t pain. It was emotion. It was the first time Mick Sinatra had admitted something that vulnerable, that exposing, in his entire life.
Roz understood the significance. That was why she was wise enough to remain silent, to let his heartfelt words, to let his monumental words, speak for themselves.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A week later and the house hunt was on. Mick had to work, but he gave Roz the Bentley and told her she should take her two friends along for company. But Roz never took friends along when she was handling her business. She flew solo.
At least that was how she thought she was flying. But just as Mick had a detail of inconspicuous men on her while she was in New York these last months, he had an every greater detail on her now that she was in Philly. Even Leo, his chief of security, was surprised by the amount of coverage Mick wanted.
They were in Mick’s library the night he and Roz returned from New York. Mick was beyond exhausted, and Roz had gone to bed. He called Leo over, even though it was in the middle of the night, because this matter, he felt, couldn’t wait. Leo understood the urgency. What he couldn’t understand was the number of men Mick wanted deployed.
“But boss,” he said, still trying to wrap his brain around such a number, “that’s more security than we have on you.”
Mick was shirtless and leaned against his desk, with his muscular arms folded and one hand rubbing his chin. He even had on flip flops. But his eyes belied the casualness. “Are you suggesting we don’t have the manpower?” he asked his chief.
“Oh, no,” Leo said. “We have the manpower. We always have that. But . . .”
“But what, Leo? Speak your mind.”