Roz was genuinely surprised. “I thought you said what we did in bed was my,” Roz started saying.
Mick swiftly cut her off. “Forget what I said,” Mick said, but everybody had already gotten the gist of it and were laughing. Even Roz had to smile.
“Just open the damn gift.” Mick shook his head. Why did he put himself through this bullshit?
But Roz was happy again. Especially when Mick sat his phone on the table so that he could place his arm around her waist. Roz sat Kelly’s book gift on the table too, which pleased Mick.
But when Roz opened Mick’s gift and pulled out the most incredible diamond necklace her eyes had ever seen, everybody at that table gasped.
“Gotdamn, Uncle Mick,” said an impressed Sal.
“How many carats are in that thing, Uncle Mick?” asked an astounded Reno.
“One-twenty,” Mick said proudly.
“One-hundred-and-twenty diamonds?” Reno was floored. “Damn! Golconda diamonds?” Reno asked.
Mick looked at Reno. He wasn’t book smart, but he was as savvy as they came. “That’s correct,” he said.
“Shit!” said Reno. “That necklace alone is worth over a million bucks easy.”
“A million dollars for a necklace? I got to see this up close,” said Trina as she and Gemma got up and went and stood behind Roz.
There were rumors that Mick was a billionaire, although it was impossible to prove those rumors. But they all knew he was certainly richer than everybody else in their family of very rich and powerful men.
Tommy, one of the richer of the rich men in the family, leaned toward Grace. They always complained that he treatedPlain Jane Grace, as she once was called, with kid gloves. Babied her even. But he knew that wasn’t true. He just loved her and wasn’t afraid to show it. “You don’t want to go see it, honey?” he asked her.
“I can see from here it’s gorgeous,” said Grace. “That’s enough for me.”
Tommy placed his arm around her. She was the most unpretentious, non-materialistic person he’d ever known, and he loved her even more for it.
But Trina and Gemma were material girls from way back and didn’t hide that either. “Damn,” Trina said when she saw those diamonds up close. “Now this is what I call a necklace!”
But Roz was too busy checking it out herself to even notice Trina’s praise. Because Roz was floored too. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful,” she said, her eyes sparkling with emotion and delight.
“Me neither,” said Gemma. “That’s some Hope diamond level jewelry right there.”
“It’s no joke, that’s for damn sure,” Trina agreed.
Roz looked at Mick. “When did you buy this?” she asked him.
“I had it made a couple months ago,” he said. “For your birthday.”
She stared deep into his eyes. If she lived to be a hundred and three, she’d never understand that man. “Why didn’t you just tell me that upstairs, Mick?” she asked him with a baffled look in her eyes. “You knew I was upset with your little remark. Why didn’t you just . . .?” She couldn’t find the words to say. It seemed to her that he was all but pushing her away from him and into the arms of another man with his sour indifference, and then he went and did something this sweet. She could hardly believe it. “Why didn’t you just give it to me?”
He was waiting for tonight, when everybody had gone, was his reason. But it was a moot point now. “How do you like it?” he asked her instead.
She looked at the necklace again. “I love it. I absolutely love it almost as much as I love you,” she said and smiled. Their eyes met. Her smile dissolved. And she leaned over and kissed him on the lips.
Everybody sat astounded. Mick allowing anybody to show him affection in public just wasn’t done. They knew he hated it with a passion. But Roz, and only Roz, always broke his rules.
But Trina wasn’t just amazed by the beauty of that diamond necklace, she was envious too. She looked at Reno with one hand on her hip. “You need to step up your game, Reno,” she said. “For real,” she added, as they all were laughing. “Why your crusty ass never got me anything like this?”
“What I look like taking a million of my hard-earned dollars for you to put around your hag neck?” he asked her, getting her back. They all laughed at that one too.
But Trina didn’t find it funny at all as she reached over and slapped Reno so hard upside his head that he fell over backwards in his chair. Everybody, even Mick, laughed at that.
But then they heard the sound of a large truck. Mick frowned. “What the fuck is that?” he asked as he stood up and looked toward the street. His security gate was high, but he still could see the top tip of a semi on his street.