CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ricki’s parents, Mamie and Hershel Richardson, were seated at the dining room table on the far-left end of the great room. What Vince saw was a very well-dressed black businessman in glasses, and a most attractive black woman in a nice dress with an apron around her thin waist. He could easily see where Ricki got her good looks from: both of her parents were stunning.
But that might be all that recommended them as far as Ricki was concerned because as soon as she saw them she abruptly stopped where she stood. It was so sudden that Vince looked at her, to make sure she was okay. But he knew she wasn’t. He could feel her anguish.
And her father, who sat at the head of the table, didn’t stop eating even as they stood there. But he eventually looked up, and then motioned for them to come on through to the dining room.
“Hey Daddy. Hey Mommy.”
“Hey baby,” her mother said with some affection and with a slight smile on her face. But Vince noticed that when her father glanced at her mother, her mother’s smile quickly dissolved.
And that was why Ricki blamed her mother too. She could have left that man in their infancy. She could have been stronger than she was. Things would have been so different for her and all of her siblings, she believed, had her mother stepped up.
But at least her mother spoke to her. Her father gave her that critical look he always gave her. Then he looked at Vince. But Vince was already sizing him up too. “Who is this?” he asked Ricki.
But Vince, to Ricki’s shock, walked around the table and extended his hand to Hershel Richardson. “My name is Vincent Fontaine, sir,” said Vince. He was careful to addsirin deference to his age and position in Ricki’s life, even though he wasn’t that much younger than Hershel himself.
But Hershel looked at that hand, and although every bone in his body didn’t want to shake it Vince could tell, he eventually reached out and shook his hand. “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Richardson.”
Then Vince walked over to Mamie’s seat and extended his hand. “And you too, Mrs. Richardson, ma’am.”
Mamie seemed surprised by Vince’s show of respect for her. She was usually grossly overlooked. She even looked over at Hershel before she shook his hand.
“Have a seat,” Hershel said to Ricki and Vince.
Vince walked over and pulled out the chair for Ricki, she sat down, and then he sat down beside her. The tension in that beautiful home was thick and surly. He wasn’t leaving her side.
He could also tell Ricki was trying to be cordial with these people and to put on a brave face. “How have you been, Daddy? What about you, Mommy?”
She sounded like a kid to Vince. He could even hear a tremble in her voice.
“Who is this man?” her father asked her.
“My name is Vincent Fontaine,” Vince said again.
“You told me your name. But who are you? What do you do for a living?”
“I own a public relations firm in Washington, D.C.”
“Public relations?” Then it dawned on Hershel. “I knew I knew that name. Fontaine-Bachman? Is that your firm?”
Ricki was surprised that her father had heard of him. But Vince wasn’t. Every businessman worth their salt would have heard of it. He was worldwide. “Yes, that’s my firm.”
“You rehabilitate Fortune 500 CEOs or just their companies?”
“Both,” said Vince.
Hershel shook his head. “They commit all kinds of crimes and unpardonable offenses, but you rehabilitate them as if nothing never happened.”
Vince studied Hershel. He wasn’t lying. “That’s correct,” he admitted.
“I own a business of my own. A small factory. But I still read the Wall Street Journal. Fontaine-Bachman is worth billions. You’re a billionaire.”
Everybody, including Mamie and Davey, looked at Vince as if he had grown horns on his head. But Ricki was especially floored. Abillionaire? She knew he was rich, but she never dreamed in a million years he was that kind of rich! She hadn’t had the chance to even Google the man. It was a startling revelation. It was surreal to her.
But she didn’t so much as look Vince’s way. Her father already suggested they didn’t know each other very well, so she played it off as if it was no news to her. She wasn’t giving her old man an inch.
But she didn’t have to. He gave himself that inch. “My daughter is neither Fortune 500 anything, and she’s a CEO in her mind only,” Herschel said. “What is a man like you, a billionaire no less, doing with a nobody like Rasheda? And how old are you anyway?”
