“Daddy’s home. He got here a couple hours ago.”
Roz, and everybody else, were floored. “His ass home and he didn’t even come back here to wish me a happy birthday?”
Duke hunched his shoulders. “You know how he is.”
“Where is he?” Big Daddy asked.
“He went upstairs all I know. I thought you knew he was home, Ma.”
“I didn’t know shit about it,” Roz said with anger. Then she started nodding her head. “But let him keep on. Let himkeep on. I’m gonna get up out of here and get me some dick, that’s what I’m gonna do.”
Duke, Gloria and Teddy were shocked. “Ma!” said Gloria.
“Don’t you Ma me! He can get his piece, I can get mine! And it ain’t gonna be no old-ass dick either. It’s gonna be fresh and new. That’s what I’m gonna do. See how he feels about that!”
Although Reno and Sal were laughing so hard that they jumped up from their seats and started running around the patio. The ladies were falling against each other laughing too. But Duke and Gloria found it disgusting and hurried to go hang out with their cousins. Teddy and Nikki weren’t laughing either. They remembered that scene at that restaurant a couple weeks ago.
Big Daddy couldn’t find the humor either. He was staring at his sister-in-law. He was very concerned. “You’re talking crazy, Roz,” he said to her.
But Roz wasn’t backing down. “Oh yeah? You think that’s crazy for me to pull that same shit he’s pulling?” That head was nodding overtime. “Watch me. Just watch me.”
“You mean watch him kill your ass,” Big Daddy said, and when he said it all of the gaiety stopped. As if they suddenly realized who Mick was. As if they failed to realize that Roz was a hothead when she wanted to be, but Mick was the one human being you didn’t want to be hot around.
But Roz wasn’t thinking about Mick and his ticking time bomb temper. Her ass had a temper too. That was why she got up and went inside the house.
“Uh-oh,” said Sal. “There’s about to be some situations and consequences up in that bitch.”
But Grace was astonished. “She sobers up quick, doesn’t she?” And they all laughed.
But Big Daddy looked at Amelia, and Amelia looked at him. They knew their brother and they knew Roz. And both of them could be combustible. But if anybody could stand toe-to-toe with Mick, it was Roz.
They didn’t intervene. She’d handled him this long without them coming to blows. They had to let her take it on home.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Grace was right. She sobered up quick. Because by the time Roz had climbed that staircase and made it to their master bedroom, her tipsiness was a thing of the past. She was too enraged to be drunk.
She flung open the double doors of their bedroom with such fury that she didn’t even realize Mick was lying in bed, under covers, in the middle of the day. All she saw was red.
“Your ass been out of town for two whole weeks, and when you come home you can’t even be bothered to come outside and wish me a happy birthday? Are you for real right now?”
Mick was lying on his back looking at her.
Which only angered her more. “And I’m not even talking about Bella Caine. I haven’t even gotten to that yet.”
Then she got to it. “How do you think I felt, Mick, knowing that her slick ass was in Rome with you? How could you do that to me?”
But Mick just laid there.
“You got nothing to say for yourself?”
Then he looked at her. “When you calm your ass down.”
But as soon as he said it, with his smug look, Roz didn’t calm down. She became more furious.
She hurried over to him and began beating on him with her fists. “How could you do that to me? How could you, Mick? How could you?!”
The only way Mick could stop her from beating on him was to grab her by her arms and hoist her on top of his body. Shewas yelling for him to let her go and fighting against him with all she had. But his strength, even lying in bed, was far more superior to hers. He easily subdued her. “Now calm your ass down, Roz!” he ordered her.
