Mob Boss 4: Romancing Trina Gabrini (14 page)

“What?” Sully said with a laugh.
 
“You’re a true blue southern belle of a gal?”

Trina laughed.
 
“For real though.”

“What part of Mississippi?”

“Little town called Dale.
 
Ever hear of Dale?”

“Are you joking?
 
Sure I’ve heard of Dale!
 
I used to go to a juke joint there when I was
a young fool looking for fun.
 
Sure I
know Dale.
 
And Miss Trina’s from Dale?”

“That’s right.
 
So it’s not that it’s a hick town that’s worrying me.
 
I’m used to hick.
 
It’s what am I going to do in this hick town
that’s worrying me.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I used to manage a club, right there in
Dale.
 
Then I moved to Vegas and waited
tables for a living.
 
Then I met Reno.”

“And then you became?”

“Reno’s wife,” Trina said, without an ounce of
regret.

“And that’s all?”

“Trust me,
that’s
plenty.
 
Especially in
Vegas.”
 
Then Trina exhaled.
 
“But this isn’t Vegas.”

Sully smiled. “That is an understatement I’m
sure.”

“So now I’m looking to do some volunteer work,
at least.”

“Not paid work?”

“Not right now, no.”

“Because Reno won’t let you?”

“He’ll let me,” Trina said, although she knew
it would be a monumental battle before Reno would agree.
 
“It’s just that I think I’d rather
volunteer.
 
Blossom said they needed
people on the town’s festival committee, but---”

“But that’s not what you had in mind?” Sully
asked.
 
He was beginning to see an
opening.

“Not at all.”

“Come to Ponder,” he said, trying hard not to
sound too eager to have her.
 
“Lord knows
we can use every volunteer we can get.”

Trina looked at him.
 
“Ponder?”

“The Ponder Street Community Center.
 
We try to help kids who’ve dropped out of
school find their way back in, or take and pass the GED.
 
We really could use you.”

“So you mean you need volunteers to help
school these kids?”

“Right.”

That sounded a little heady to Trina.
 
“But what makes you think I’m qualified to
teach anybody anything?
 
I mean, I’m a
high school graduate, but just barely.”

Sully laughed. “I hear you.
 
But it’s not about whether or not you have a
college degree or any specific training.
 
It’s the heart of the matter for me.
 
And when I see you, Trina, I see a woman with a lot of heart.
 
You’ll
help these kids,
that’s
what I believe.
 
And that’s
what I want.
 
Somebody who will feel
these young people, and want to make sure they get themselves prepared for this
changing world.”
 

The idea of not just volunteering just to have
something to do, but to volunteer to do something meaningful, actually
intrigued Trina.
 
But she had to be
careful.
 
She knew about these community
centers and how they were always hard up for cash.
 
She didn’t want this man buttering her up to
hit Reno up for money.

“Will you at least consider it?” Sully asked
when it looked as if Trina would waver.
 
For some crazy reason he really wanted to see more of this woman.

“Sure, I’ll consider it,” she said.
 
“But I don’t want to commit to a place that
won’t be around for long.”

Sully looked at her, puzzled by that.
 
And then smiled.
 
“Oh, I see,” he said.
 
“But don’t worry.
 
We don’t need your husband’s money, I assure
you of that.
  
I personally bankroll the
place myself, so we don’t have a cash flow problem.
 
We have a people problem.
 
We need more volunteers.”
 
Then his eyes glanced down at Trina’s body,
and then back up into her eyes. “Like you,” he said.

Trina felt the heat of his glance, but figured
he was just pulling that little flirtatious routine he pulled on all of the
females here in Crane.
 
But she had
Reno.
 
This guy, just like any other guy
in America, would have to get up a whole lot earlier than he was getting up to
impress her that way.
 

But the idea of actually doing something that
would be of help to young people made her hopeful.
 
Although she wasn’t ready
to commit just yet.

“Maybe I’ll swing by in a couple days,” she
said, “and
check
out the place.”

Sully’s heart inwardly soared.
 
“My real estate office is right next door to
the Center, so just say when, and I’ll make sure I clear my schedule just for
you.”

Clear his
schedule
? Trina thought.
 
It wasn’t
that
serious.
 
At least not
to her.
 
But it was
,
she also had to admit, very thoughtful of him.

Then he smiled as an old school staple,
Do the Hustle
, complete with the
whistling, started blaring on the surround sound speaker system.
 

“Dance with me,” he said as he stood up.

“Dance with you?” Trina said.
 
“To what?
 
That old song?”

“Yes!
 
Come on!”
 
And Sully started
moving his hips and arms from side to side and popping his fingers the way
Carlton used to do on the
Fresh Prince of
Bel-Air
TV show.

Trina laughed out loud as he demonstrated the
old dance.
 

“You’re crazy!” she said.
 
“That’s not the Hustle!”

“But it’s good dancing,” Sully said.
 
“That’s all that matters!”
 
And then he grabbed her by both hands and
stood her up.

Just as he did, Reno came out of the house and
appeared on the patio.
 
He had lost track
of Trina.
 
First he looked at the couples
on the patio, nodded in their direction, and then he looked across the lawn and
saw Trina.
 
And she was laughing heartily
as Sully had her by both hands and was swinging her arms and doing some
ridiculous dance.
 
But it warmed Reno’s
heart.
 

This was what he wanted.
 
He wanted to see his wife laugh with that
carefree abandon he’d seen in other men’s wives.
 
Those men didn’t have Reno’s baggage, and it
showed in their wives.
 
Trina, he felt,
always carried the burdens of his baggage with her, and therefore always had to
temper her joy.
 
He felt the guilt of
that temperance every single day.
 
But
right here, and right now, she seemed genuinely happy.
 
This was why he wanted them to move.
 
This was what he wanted.

He made his way to the dancing couple.
 
As soon as she saw him, Trina broke from
Sully and ran to meet him.
 
In her short,
summery dress and sandals she looked like a fresh-faced teenager to Reno, as
she ran to him.

“Having fun?” he asked as he slung his arm
around her waist to stop her momentum.

“Sully’s crazy, Reno,” Trina said, still
laughing.
 
“You remember Carlton, don’t
you?
 
From Will Smith’s
show?”

“Carlton?”

“From the Fresh Prince of Bel Air?
 
He
played the cousin who couldn’t dance.”

“Oh, yeah,” Reno said, although he didn’t
remember any such character.

“That’s what Sully calls good dancing.
 
He thinks Carlton could dance.
 
He’s got to be the worse dancer in America,
Reno!”

“Oh, no,” Reno said as they made their way
toward a still-dancing Sully.
  
“We’ve
got us a nerd who thinks he can dance on our hands!”

“Nerd my butt,” Sully said as he continued his
Carlton dance.
 
“I’m getting my groove
on!”

“What groove?” Reno asked with a smile.
 
“You look like you’re having some affliction
over there!”

Trina bent over laughing and nodded her head in
agreement.

“Okay, okay,” Sully said as he stopped
dancing.
 
He was enjoying this, too.
 
“What you got?
 
What do you, an Italian from Jersey, know
about old school dancing?”

“Are you kidding me?
 
Man, I used to live to get my ass on
somebody’s dance floor every Saturday night.
 
And it wasn’t
no
ballroom dance floor, either.”

Then Reno placed one hand near his midsection,
lifted one leg, and slid like James Brown.
 
Trina started clapping.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” she yelled.

And as the two men battled it out, each doing
their own versions of electric slides and funky chickens and the running man
dance, the couples on the patio, and soon others from inside the house, began
to gather around.

“The battle of the over-aged teenagers!”
Blossom called it, and everybody
laughed.
 
It was a battle, all right, and
Reno, Trina was happy to see, was winning hands down.
 
Sully was almost as gorgeous as her husband,
she’d admit that all day long, too, but Reno had the edge in cool.
 
Reno was super-cool in his moves.
 
Sully came across, just as Reno had said, as
a nerd on the dance floor.

When the caterer announced that dinner was
ready, and the now hungry crowd began to disperse, Reno slapped his hand in
Sully’s hand and the two battlers gave each other a hearty handshake/half-hug.
 

“You’re all right,” Reno said to his
competitor.
 
Because he
liked Sullivan Chambliss.
 
He
liked him off the bat.

Trina liked him too, as the threesome made
their way toward the grub the others were already heading for.
 
And if this night, their first social event
in their new town, was any indication, she felt good about their prospects for
happiness.
 
Extremely
good.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jannie Winthrop hurried into Clauson’s with a
shoulder bag almost as big as her small frame, and her blonde hair almost as
unruly as her excitement.
 
She was on the
city bus, on her way to work, when she found out.
 
As soon as the bus stopped a block from
Clauson’s, she couldn’t get off fast enough.
 
She had to tell the news.
 
She
knew they were going to have a hizzy fit, when she told them the news.
 

“Good morning, Bark,” she said in her heavy
southern drawl as she scuttled past the bar and banquettes that lined the
restaurant.

“Where in the world are you going in such a
hurry?” Barkley asked the young waitress as he looked up from the beer mug he
was cleaning.
 

But she was already gone: around the counter,
crisscrossing through another set of banquettes and tables, darting past the
salad bar, until she reached the far back booth where the front-of-house staff
often congregated.
 
Shanell, along with
Mondo and Darla, were already seated back there.

“I looked him up!” Jannie said with unbridled
excitement as she interrupted their conversation and plopped down in the empty
seat next to Darla.

“Well good morning to you, too!” Darla said
snidely as she held her hand up and blew on the fingernails she’d just
polished.

“Good morning,” Jannie said to Darla, and then
turned her attention to Shanell, her supervisor.
 
“I looked him up,” she proclaimed again.

“You looked who up, girl?” Mondo, who sat next
to Shanell, asked her.

“The new owner,” Jannie said as she began
reaching into her oversized shoulder bag.
 
“I borrowed my little brother’s IPad and on the way to work this morning
I Googled him.”