Tommy Gabrini: The Grace Factor Read online

  “Bullshit!” Tommy roared. “What I do and what you’re doing are not the same thing and you know it!”

  “It is the same thing!” Liz fired back.

  But Tommy was adamant. “It is not! Unlike you, I don’t run around searching for shit to get into. That shit finds me! If I didn’t have to fire a weapon again for the rest of my life I’d celebrate that life! I don’t get any high off of danger!”

  “I don’t either.”

  “More bullshit!” Tommy said. “You’re getting some kind of high off of whatever’s keeping you here, or you’d come with me. You’re the magazine owner for crying out loud, Liz! You aren’t going to tell me you have no choice but to be on the front lines too. You tell me you want to be there. You tell me you prefer to be there. But don’t you dare tell me you must be there! Because I run things too, Liz, don’t forget that little fact. I run an international corporation. I know how it works. So don’t you dare talk to me about what you have to do!”

  “Okay, I don’t have to do it. I want to do it. Is that better? Does that make you feel better? No,” Liz said, answering her own question. “You don’t feel better because it’s not about that. It’s not about what I want, it’s about what you want for me. And I’m not having that. I love you, Tommy. You know I love you. But I run this.” She moved her hands around her body as if to demonstrate her point.

  But Tommy had already gotten the point. She loved him. But she loved her career, and her independence from him, more.

  He walked over to the side wall, grabbed his carrying bag, and began to leave.

  “Tommy!” she yelled. “Tommy!”

  Tommy stopped walking and looked back at her. He was so tired he could barely stand. But he was even more tired of her. “What?” he asked.

  “You’re going to just leave? You’re going to just walk out that door because I won’t bow to your demands?”

  “Characterize it any way you please,” Tommy said. “But you aren’t handling me. You want to wear the pants, then wear them. But you will not be wearing my pants!” He began leaving.

  Liz ran up to him, grabbed the sleeve of his pullover sweater, and angrily spun him around. “You’re leaving because I love what I do?” Her face was frowned with anguish. “Is that it, Tommy? I love what I do. How can that possibly be wrong?”

  He didn’t say it was wrong, and she knew it. “You’re passionate about your job,” he said. “I told you that was a good thing. You know what you want. That’s good. But I know what I want too. And a lady who will not remove herself from dangerous situations even when she can, is not it.” Then he frowned. “What’s wrong with you, Liz? You nearly died tonight!”

  Tommy’s voice became strained. He took a moment, to calm himself back down. “You nearly died tonight,” he said again, “and you’re running right back into the fire. And what’s even more remarkable is that you expect me to overlook that inconvenient truth. You continually place yourself in harm’s way, and you expect me to accept that uncomfortable fact. Well I can’t, Liz, and I won’t. I’ve been through this shit before with Shanks.”

  “Oh, here we go!” Liz said angrily, raising her hands and dropping them back down. “The ghost of ShoShawna Shanks rears her ugly-ass head again! Why does everything have to be compared to her? Why, Tommy? You chose Grace because she was the exact opposite of that Shanks woman. Then you chose me because I’m Shanks on steroids! Well what do you want, Tommy, because it can’t possibly be both types! They are diametrically opposed. And you wonder what’s wrong with me? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “You can pretend I’m the issue all you care to,” Tommy said. “That’s fine. But I went through that globe-trotting danger zone shit with Shanks just as I said, and I’m not going through that again. You can stay here and do your thing. Hell, go to Iraq and on to Afghanistan while you’re at it! But not with me. Do you understand that, Liz? Not with me!”

  “So you’re leaving me?” Tears were in her eyes now. “You’re going to just walk away from me?”

  Tommy’s anger went from five to fifty. “You would have been dead if I hadn’t been here, Liz! That bastard would have killed you!”

  “It’s what I do, gotdammit! It’s the risk I take! Can’t you get that through your thick skull? I’m no boring-ass housewife and I’ll never be! I have a real job!”

  “As does housewives,” Tommy said, “but that’s not the issue either.”

  “Then what’s the issue?” she asked. “Please tell me what’s at issue!” Then Liz stopped, as if a lightbulb had sudden flicked on in her brain. She looked at Tommy. “It’s Grace. Isn’t it? Is it Grace?”

  Tommy had not expected that name to come up. He didn’t respond.

  But Liz was certain now. “It’s Grace! She divorced you, but mentally you never really divorced that woman. Now I get it.”

  “Don’t start that psychobabble shit on me, Liz. Don’t even try it.”

  But she tried it. “You’re a stubborn-ass man who couldn’t deal with the fact that a woman would dump you,” she said. “So when Grace left you, you reverted back to form. You chose me because I was like all of your other women, and you were comfortable with that kind of lady. Grace was a lot of work because she was so different than what you were used to, but me and all of your other women were easy to you. Being with a woman like me came naturally to you. But the problem, Tommy, is you. Because as time went on, you began to treat me like you treated all your other women. I was nothing special to you either. I wasn’t different like Grace. I was just another body to warm your bed.”

  “That’s not true,” Tommy said.

  But Liz wasn’t playing along any longer. “It is true!” she said. “The only woman you ever gave your whole heart to was Grace, and we both know what she did to it. And that spooked you. I think a part of you refused to give yourself that completely to anybody ever again. You’ll never admit it out loud, but it’s Grace. She’s still the one you want and you can’t deal with the fact that I’m not her. I felt it for months, but since you never brought it up I didn’t either. But I overcompensated. I realize that now. I used to brag about how better I was than your ex-wife, and how you hit the babe lottery when you got me. But what my stupid ass didn’t realize was that Grace was the babe lottery you wanted to hit all along! She’s the only one you want and you aren’t going to settle for anybody else. Is that the real issue here?”

  But Tommy never shared his innermost feelings with Liz even when their relationship was at its zenith, and he wasn’t about to start now. Because the issue at this moment wasn’t how he felt about Grace, but how he felt about her. And how that last episode, and her decision to remain in the line of fire, was the last straw. “You told me you were traveling to the Middle East to check in with your bureau chief in Qatar,” he said. “You do it periodically, you said, and you were going to do it this time. Then you were coming back. That’s what you told me. You said nothing, absolutely nothing about staying for nearly a month, flying your ass to Syria and any other hotspot you could get to, and putting your ass in harm’s way over and over again. Because if you would have told me that then---”

  “Then what, Tommy?” Liz asked. “What would have happened if I would have told you that then?”

  Tommy stared at her. “It would have been over then. Just like it’s over now.” A twinge of regret appeared in his tired eyes, but he had never been more resolute. “It’s not going to work, Liz. We don’t want the same things. I’m not traveling down roads to nowhere because I’ve been there, done that, and I’m not doing that again. It’s over.”

  Liz didn’t try to get him to change his mind. Because the writing had been on her wall too. She loved Tommy, but she loved her career and her freedom more. Tommy loved her, but he loved Grace more. She wasn’t giving up her first love, and Tommy, she now realized, wasn’t giving up his. Grace was married and out of his reach for the moment. But Tommy used to always say how he didn’t think Grace and Ed were going to last. He used to alw
ays mention that. The way Liz figured it, Tommy, always a patient man, wasn’t going to run into the arms of some other woman. He was going to wait it out. She should have known all along that this day would come. She should have seen how their breakup was as inevitable as Seattle rain. Their interests were just too different! But it still hurt like hell.

  When Tommy left, and didn’t look back, Liz tried to walk around her hotel room as if she was glad he was gone. She tried to pretend that it was all for the best. But when she visualized his beautiful face, and remembered what it felt like to be Tommy Gabrini’s woman, and to have his cock deep inside of her, she couldn’t pretend. Because she wasn’t glad. And it wasn’t for the best. But nobody was standing between her and her goals. Especially not some good looking womanizer like Tommy Gabrini still in love with his ex-wife!

  She walked a little longer, and then left too. She left her hotel room, and went where she knew she could find her own brand of comfort. She went to Raj.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Three Months Later

  The guards quickly opened the security gate and waved Tommy Gabrini through. Tommy gave a quick horn blow in return and drove up the driveway that led to Grace and Ed’s Seattle lake estate. The home was a new construction home in the suburbs, after Ed decided he didn’t want to live in Tommy and Grace’s old home, but the guards and every aspect of security was on Tommy. His daughter lived there, and his daughter’s mother. He wasn’t leaving their security to anybody else.

  Tommy, for his part, moved back into his old home when Ed and Grace moved out, mainly because he wanted Destiny to have that familiarity whenever she stayed with him. But also because he felt adrift when he left his longtime home. He needed that familiarity too.

  When he pulled around the horseshoe driveway to the steps that led to the front door, he leaned back in his Ferrari and looked through his dark sunglasses at the house in front of him. It was nothing to write home about - Tommy’s estate was five times larger and far grander. But it was so suburban, and so family-oriented, that it radiated warmth to him. There were toys on the front lawn, including a big, bright pink Barbie car Tommy could just see his little girl riding around in, other assorted toys, and a discarded soccer ball. He knew most of his friends wouldn’t be caught dead living in a place like this. It was too bland, and too cookie-cutter for them. But Tommy smiled. There was a time when he would have given his right arm to be cookie-cutter too.

  What also amazed him was how anxious he was to see Grace again. Every time he saw her his heart acted strange. Every single time. He ignored those feelings when he was trying to make it work with Liz. But after their breakup three months ago, his feelings for Grace seemed to be at the forefront of his mind. Word had traveled fast that he and Liz were no longer an item, and he was back on the market, but to even his shock he didn’t participate. He knew he could have any of those women he wanted. They were blowing up his phone mercilessly. But Liz was right. In his eyes, none of them were going to match up against Grace. She was the one who got away. Grace was his measuring stick. She was now his gold standard. Because he didn’t realize what he truly had, until she was gone.

  What amazed his brother Sal and his cousin Reno, however, was how he was living his life after Liz. No sex, no other woman to warm his bed. They couldn’t believe it. They thought it was because of Liz. They thought she broke his heart. He told them differently, but they didn’t believe him. He was always taking the rap, they felt, when these women mistreated him.

  But Tommy knew better. He knew that the only reason he hadn’t jumped into another temporary relationship with yet another gorgeous, but temporary girl, was because of a gorgeous girl named Grace. He was a man who was tired of playing the short game. He was getting too old for that shit. But he wasn’t about to tell Grace about his feelings. She was a married woman trying to make her marriage work. He would never intrude on that. But it was a fact he had to stop denying. Grace still had his heart. And probably always would. In time he would play the field again. He was horny as hell even as he sat in his Ferrari. But he wasn’t ready yet. For some strange reason, and it was super-strange since he was not committed to anyone at the moment, playing the field would feel like cheating.

  But then the front door of the suburban home opened, and his daughter ran out. Early this morning his negotiating team phoned and urged him to get to Vienna. Negotiations were breaking down in the Gabrini Corporation’s merger talks with tech giant Manesco, and they needed their chairman there to smooth things over. But nothing was going to keep him from his child’s birthday. He told them he would fly to Vienna later, after the conclusion of her birthday party, but not a second before. Since he was the boss, they had no choice but to accept his terms.

  Destiny Gabrini was the prettiest child in the world to Tommy. He smiled as soon as he saw her. She was biracial, the product of his Italian genes and Grace’s African-American genes, and she was a sight to behold. Long, wavy black hair, smooth brown skin, big, bright eyes, and an elegance about her that defied her young age. She reminded him of her mother so much, even down to the shape of her ears. People would look at her and declare her a black child only. No way was her father white. But they would be wrong. She was his. Other than skin color, she, in actuality, looked like all the best features of both her parents.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” she happily cried as she ran up to him.

  He got out of his car and gladly hoisted her into his arms. “My big girl,” he said joyfully too, as he lifted her.

  “It’s my day of birth, Daddy!”

  “It’s your birthday,” Tommy said with a smile, and closed his car door. “Yes, I’ve heard.”

  “You came to my day of, I mean to my birthday!”

  “That’s right,” Tommy said as he carried her back up the steps. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. You’re my number one person in this whole wide world, don’t you know?”

  “You’re my number one person too, Daddy. You and Mommy.”

  Tommy was pleased to hear it as he carried her across the porch and into her home.

  When Tommy entered the home and looked up, he saw Grace Jefferson coming out of the dining room, which was at the far end of the large living room area. And as soon as he saw her, his heart did that double-beat again.

  “There you are!” Grace said to their daughter and began walking their way. She had a smile on her face that lit up the already bright room, and a sashay in her walk that caused Tommy’s eyes to roam down to her hips. Not only did his heart’s double-beat reveal how much he still loved her, but his penis throbbed and expanded at the sight of her, revealing just how much he missed fucking her too. It had been years since he had Grace in his bed, but now that he wasn’t fucking at all, he lived on those memories.

  “She’s been looking out of that window all morning for you,” Grace said. “She was afraid you were going to be too busy and couldn’t make it. I told her you will never be too busy for your little girl.”

  “That’s right,” Tommy said with a smile too, as he stood Destiny back on her feet and closed the front door. Grace wore an apron around her short skirt, high heels, and had her thick brown hair down her back in waves of rich, thick curls. She looked like a businesswoman and mom-in-chief all wrapped up in one. Tommy loved that combination. She looked sexy as hell to him.

  “Daddy has a new car, Mommy,” Destiny said, and began running to the window to show her. “I didn’t know it was him because the car I was looking for isn’t the car he’s driving. Come look!”

  Grace, who was just about to walk past the big, bay window, walked up to it instead. When she saw the dark-gray Ferrari, she smiled and shook her head. “Now that’s what I call a car,” she said. Then she looked at Tommy. He wore a pair of light brown slacks and a yellow Cardigan sweater. His blondish brown hair was piled high around his forehead. His greenish-blue eyes sparkled against the home’s natural light. Dapper as ever. “That is so you, Tommy,” she said. “Congratulations. But you know what’s g
oing to happen, right? You get a gray Ferrari, Sal and Reno will be getting gray Ferraris too. You’re the trendsetter.”

  Tommy laughed. “I suspected as much myself,” he said. “But I don’t mind. It’s a good ride.”

  Before Grace could respond, Destiny was pulling on her apron. “Mommy,” she said, “can I have another cupcake?”

  “Entertain your guests a little longer before we eat any more sweets.”

  “Is it time to open the presents?” Destiny asked.

  “You want that?” Grace asked.

  “Very much,” Destiny said excitedly.

  “Gather all the children and sit them around the dining room table, and then we’ll get started.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Destiny said as if she was being given sacred orders, and took off running.

  Grace laughed and shook her head. “That child.” She began walking toward Tommy. “She is always so happy.”

  “Yes, she is,” Tommy said. “Thank God.”

  “Yes,” Grace agreed. “Thank God Almighty. We have been so blessed in that department.”

  “Very blessed.” Then he thought about his gift. “You think she can see out back?”

  “No way. None of them can. Your people boarded up every back window, and barricaded the back door. She can’t see a thing.”

  Tommy nodded. “Good,” he said. Then he looked at Grace. They were close now. He could see the smoothness of her brown skin. The sparkle in her big, brown eyes. Her slender shape that seemed more curvaceous than ever. She seemed to get better looking every time he saw her. “So how have you been, Grace?”

  “I’ve been good,” Grace responded. “When my child is happy, I’m happy.”

  Tommy believed it. Grace was CEO of Trammel, her trucking company, but she was a mother first. “Where’s Ed?” he asked.