“What?”
“Girrl! A real, honest-to-goodness Mister McSexy just walked through that door. I’m telling you that man is fine!”
Sophia was certain that Porsha, a fellow coworker with such poor judgment that she thought getting a job in a woman’s clothing boutique would be just the place to find herself a husband, was exaggerating big time. But she was bored unpacking boxes so she hurried out of the stock room in back of the checkout counter to check him out for herself. It was a running joke between her and Porsha because they could never agree on who looked great on those rare occasions when a man walked through their store doors.
And when Sophia followed Porsha out of the stock room to the checkout counter, and she saw who the man was that was slowly walking towards that counter, she realized just how crazy Porsha truly was. It wasn’t some random sexy man that had walked in. It was Mick Sinatra!
“Uncle Mick?” There was shock in Sophia’s voice as soon as she saw him. She could not recall the last time she saw her uncle in Champagne’s. If she ever did.
When she was younger she and the other children in the family always wanted to run and jump in his arms the way they did Uncle Tommy and Uncle Sal and even his big brother Big Daddy Sinatra, but they could never bring themselves to be thatfamiliarwith Uncle Mick. They were mostly scared of him. Terrified even.
Like now. He looked bigger than the store to Sophia. “What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“Where’s your mother?”
That was her Uncle Mick, she thought. He always seemed to answer her questions with a question of his own. “She’s upstairs in her office. Want me to call her down?” She picked up the landline phone.
“No,” he said, and began making his way toward the stairs.
Sophia hung up the phone. She could hardly believe he was there.
Porsha could hardly believe it either, but for a very different reason. “McSexy is your uncle?”
Mick the Tick sexy? Sophia used to actually have a crush on him. But not because she thought he was sexy. She thought he was tough. And that, to her, was sexy. “Yes, he’s my uncle,” she said.
“That white man? But how?” asked Porsha. “You and your mama black.”
“You have seen my father before, Porsha,” Sophia reminded her.
She looked harder at Sophia as if she was confused. Then she realized Reno Gabrini was Sophia’s father. “Oh, that’s right!” she said, and then she laughed.
But then she shook her head as Mick disappeared up those stairs. “That fine man is your uncle. Wow. My uncles don’t look nothing like that girl,” she said, and Sophia laughed too.
But upstairs was no laughing matter as Trina, seated behind her desk, was forced to listen to an irate franchisee complainad nauseumabout the new rules Trina and Gemma were forced to put in place to protect their investment. She even put the call on Speaker and put the desk phone on the hook. Andhe kept going on and on as if all that complaining was going to change anything. It wasn’t and he had to know it wasn’t. But she let him air it out.
When Mick walked into her office her caller was still going strong. By the time Trina looked up and saw Mick, and after her heart dropped because she knew why he was there, she knew she had to wrap it up. “In any event, the rules will not be changing. Have a nice day!” Trina said, lifted up the phone, and then sat it back down on the hook: effectively ending the call. “Hey Mick.”
Every time Mick saw Trina, a small part of his heart squeezed. She was still near and dear to him even though she was never his. He sat down in the chair in front of her desk. And crossed his legs. “What’s going on, Katrina?”
“You were in Rome on business?”
“Vacation.”
Trina was shocked. “Vacation? Mick! Was Roz with you?”
“And the twins, yes.”
“Mick! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“But you still came anyway? Even though you were on vacation?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
There was a slight hesitation, but he answered her. “You don’t phone me unless you’re at the end of your rope.”
