Now Roz looked distressed. “But my apartment is paid up for this month,” she said, “and I can easily get a thirty-day extension for next month, which will be the end of the semester.”
“Either you stay at the Carson,” Mick said, “or you will get on my plane and fly back here every night. Pick your choice.”
Roz knew she wasn’t about to get on anybody’s plane every single night, no matter how luxurious and comfortable. She wasn’t big on flying to begin with. That was a nonstarter.
She also knew the mere fact that Mick was now agreeing to let her go back to New York was a huge compromise on his part. She had to compromise too. “I’ll stay at the Carson,” she said.
But neither one of them were celebrating. Because they knew they had just dodged a bullet. They knew, if their twosome was ever going to work, they were going to have to make it through a lot more days like this. Mick picked up Roz’s luggage, placed his hand on the small of her back and escorted her out to the waiting limousine.
After they walked out, the staff continued to stand where they were. It was as if they were seeing a man they had never seen before. He not only didn’t beat her down for defying him, but he actually apologized to her! He apologized! They heard it with their own two ears! Some looked at each other with disbelief in their eyes. Some scratched their heads in puzzlement and confusion. But all of Mick’s workers, from the youngest to the oldest, went back to their duties with a newfound respect for Rosalind Graham.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Three weeks later, and Roz was back in town to spend the weekend with Mick. She entered the lobby at Sinatra Industries ready to head toward the public elevators. But things had changed dramatically. There was a time when she would enter the lobby and be just another face in the enormous crowd. But not anymore. Now, as soon as she entered the building, the lobby manager hurried from his perch near the back and made his way to her side.
“Miss Graham,” he said jovially as he arrived. “Welcome back to Sinatra Industries, ma’am!”
“Thank you,” Roz responded.
“Mr. Sinatra told me to personally escort you to his office. Please follow me to his personal elevator.”
They began heading toward the elevator. Roz hadn’t announced she was coming. She didn’t call for Mick’s plane the way she normally did, or call for his limousine. She rented a car instead and took a slow drive back. She thought she’d enjoy a drive alone-and she did enjoy it. But he apparently had people following her all the way. She never once saw any of them, and was amazed at how efficient they were, but she was certain they were there. The fact that Mick had his lobby manager meet her, when she hadn’t even told him she was coming, proved it. It also proved that it was a brave new world she was living in. Although she loved it because Mick was in it, she sometimes missed her old life too.
When she and the manager rode the elevator to the top floor, and the doors opened, she told him she could take it from there. But the manager was insistent. “Mr. Sinatra told me to bring you to him, ma’am,” he said, as he stepped off too. “I’ll have to do my job.”
Roz was not accustomed to this. Sometimes Mick treated her like the independent woman she viewed herself as, but then he’d reverse and treat her like some kid he had to constantly look out for. It was as contradictory as Mick was.
But Deuce McCurry told her she was looking at it the wrong way. Maybe it was because Mick knew about threats that not only she didn’t know about, but wouldn’t understand. “He’s not babying you to baby you,” Deuce had said. “He’s protecting you. He told me that’s his number one job now.”
Roz remembered appreciating what Deuce had said, but she still wasn’t sure if Mick sometimes protected her, or overprotected her.
He was seated on his office couch, talking with a woman who was seated in the chair flanking him, when his manager opened the door for Roz. She thanked him, and Mick waved at him from where he sat. The manager waved back, thrilled, Roz could tell, that he had done his job according to Mick’s orders.