Sal began walking toward Tommy. “But you like those sophisticated ladies, that’s what I mean. Ladies accustomed to getting what they want. And I don’t see gals like that giving you up so easily.”
“They have nothing to do with this,” Tommy said with a little annoyance in his voice. He looked over at Sal. Sal’s breath caught when he saw the strain in his brother’s eyes. “There’s nothing for them to give up anyway. I haven’t been with any of those females in months, not since I made a commitment to Grace.”
“But you understand what I’m saying, right?” Sal asked as he leaned his elbows on the center island. “Those women expect there to be times when you don’t phone or come around. They expect cooling off periods. But in those open relationships like every single one you’ve ever been in before Grace, they figure you’ll be back. Give you some cooling off time and you’ll be back. But for them to find out that it’s not just that you have your attention on some new chick, but that you’ve asked that chick to marry you?” Sal shook his head. “Hell is about to go in session, big brother, and you’d better get Grace ready for that.”
Tommy grabbed his wallet off of the top of the island. Up close the strain was even greater in his brother’s big eyes, as if he was concerned about far more than females from his past.
But it was Sal, once again, who spoke up. “What I don’t think you’re remembering is that, yes, they did accept your engagement to Shanks when you were engaged to her, and they didn’t make any big deal over that. But that was because Shanks was your oldest relationship. They figured she would be first in line if it ever came to that anyway. But this new chick? This Grace McKinsey? They figure she should be last in line, not first. And some of them aren’t going to stand for it, I’m telling you, Tommy.”
“They’ll have no choice,” Tommy said as he put his wallet in his back pocket and began putting on his Rolex. Sal was talking like there was this cabal of women plotting and scheming as if they had nothing better to do with their very busy lives. Tommy never fooled around with insecure females. Every single woman he’d had in his bed had a full, productive life of her own. Like him, she just wanted that occasional good sex. Nothing more, nothing less.
But Sal wasn’t convinced. He watched his brother carefully. In Sal’s mind, Tommy always had this monumental lack of insight in the power of his beauty. He viewed himself as just another decent looking guy who won all the beauty queens because of how he treated them. He might have kept them because of his treatment, Sal would admit. But he won them because of his looks.
Then Grace came along, a real sweetheart who managed to do what none of those supermodel types had ever been able to do: she not only won Tommy’s body, but she won his devotion. Tommy cared deeply about Grace, Sal was convinced of it, which made him all the more worried. Grace was an innocent guppy compared to the piranhas Tommy normally swam with. Those women were going to eat her alive.
“When’s the big day?” he asked his brother.
“Well damn,” Tommy said with a smile that pleased Sal. “I just asked her last night. We haven’t set a date yet.”
“And why the hell not? If you’re gonna do this, and you’re sure about it, I think you should get married right away. The sooner the better. Because the sooner those bitches see just how serious you are about your commitment to Grace, the sooner they’ll move on with their lives.”
“Will you stop worrying so much?” Tommy asked this as he turned toward his brother. At thirty-five, Sal was four years younger than Tommy, but their relationship was such that it might as well have been a fourteen-year difference. Mainly because of the way their parents treated them when they were younger, with Sal being considered the black sheep of the family, and Tommy considered the golden child.
But Tommy wouldn’t stand for the treatment and would always go into protect Sal mode as early as either one of them could remember. Their parents would place their uncommonly good looking and smart son Tommy on every pedestal, parading him around as if he were a peacock, but Tommy would always reach down and pull Sal right up alongside him. Tommy hated their favoritism with a passion, especially since it meant ill-treatment of his baby brother Sal, and he never forgave his parents because of it.
For that very reason, Tommy was Sal’s hero early on, the one human being he loved above any other, and remained his hero today. But their relationship reversed on them. Now, as grown men nearing middle age, it was Sal who was even more protective of Tommy.
“I worry,” Sal admitted, “because I don’t want to see you get hurt, and I don’t want Grace hurt.”
“Understood.”
“But did you at least warn her about your, whatta you call, rich history with women?”
“Yes, Sal, I warned her.”
“And she still wants to marry you?”
Tommy laughed. “Yes, Salvatore, she still wants to marry me.”
“Then what’s the big holdup? Why not do it right away?”
Tommy had been thinking about this a lot longer than Sal realized. “Because,” he said, “if there is to be any unexpected drama I want it out in the open before she walks down that aisle.”
Sal frowned. “Why would you want that?” he asked with puzzlement in his voice.
“Because I want her to have a chance to change her mind,” Tommy said, and Sal could see the sudden pain in his brother’s greenish-blue eyes. “I want her to understand what she’s getting herself into.”
Sal nodded. Tommy had thought this through more than he had figured.
“And besides,” Tommy continued, walking out of the closet, “she’s now the majority shareholder in Trammel, and she needs time to get adjusted to that big-ass headache of a challenge.”
Sal, who was following his brother, stopped in his tracks. “Majority shareholder? How could she hold the majority of the shares in Trammel? You have the majority of the shares, although I don’t see why you even bother with that tiny little piss-ass company when we have a conglomerate to run.” Then Sal got it. “Are you saying you gave it up? Are you saying you gave Grace your shares?”
Tommy exhaled. “That’s what I’m saying, yeah,” he said.
“All of them?”
“Yes. She already owned ten percent of her own, thanks to her deceased father. Now she’s the majority owner of Trammel outright.”
Sal could hardly believe it. “But . . . what about your chairmanship? You’re still chairman of the board, though, right?”
Tommy nodded. “For now, yes.” Then he smiled. “Unless Grace wants to make a change.”
“But what about Jillian? What’s Jilly saying about all of this?”
“We have a board meeting Monday morning over at Trammel. That’s when Grace is due back to work. Everybody will be notified then.”
“Including Jillian?”
“Including Jilly,” Tommy said with a nod.
But Sal could hardly believe it. He was thunderstruck. “I’ll be damn,” he finally said, staring at his older brother as if he was seeing him for the first time. To give a female an entire company? Yeah, it was a company barely on Tommy’s radar screen in terms of his holdings in various ventures, but it was still an entire company he just gave to her. And Sal was floored by that kind of devotion. He’d never seen anything like it before in his life. “You aren’t shitting around, are you?” he asked his brother. “You really love this girl.”
Tommy ran his hand across his forehead. Although he was smiling, Sal could still see that strain in his eyes. “Is it that obvious?” he asked with a laugh that even Sal, his biggest supporter, just couldn’t return.
CHAPTER THREE
Grace stood in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom and turned side to side as she looked at the deep gray skirt, and blue blouse tucked-in, that she had just put on. The skirt was just above her knees, tight and snug and tailored to fit her small, curvaceous body. She placed her hand on her stomach. She remembered Reno Gabrini, Tommy’s cousin and best friend, joking about how Tommy
loved his women to be tiny and if she gained so much as an inch he would kick her to the curb. But while they were in Vegas, even Tommy noticed that she had gained a few pounds.
But he, instead, said it was a good thing.
“I don’t want you skinny,” he had said. Which was a remarkable thing to say to Grace, since most of the previous girlfriends she’d ever known him to have were actual models or had very small, model-type figures. She was the lone exception.
She looked at her smooth, dark-brown skin and her big, brown eyes in the mirror before her. She looked at the way her hair rolled down to her shoulders in waves of big curls and bounciness that framed her face in a way that made her almost look sexy. Almost, she thought with a smile.
Then she thought about last night. And looked at that rock again. After their trip to Vegas, where ShoShawna Shanks, Tommy’s ex-fiancée and a woman who had been causing all kinds of trouble for them, was killed, she had expected Tommy to be cautious. She had expected him to reassure her about their relationship and that she was the one he wanted, but she expected him to take it even slower. But he, instead, got in a hurry.
“Will you make a decent man out of me, Grace,” he had asked, “and marry me?”
She remembered staring at him, as if she was weighing the question, although she wasn’t. She was weighing him. She was taking the measure of this man’s core and was deeming him to be exactly the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. And she said yes. Without reservation.
And then, later still, after they had made love like two teenagers and she had fallen asleep, she woke up briefly to find him seated in a chair by the bed. He was half-dressed, in his pants, but his shirt was wide open, and he was staring at her. What she loved about Tommy was that he didn’t try to smile or pretend to be insanely happy when she opened her eyes. His look was too grave. And she understood why immediately. This proposal was a major undertaking for him, and he undoubtedly feared, as she did, that he could blow it.
She, instead, decided to not even go there. “You’re still here,” she said.
“Yep, I haven’t left yet.”
“It’s only Thursday night. You aren’t due back to work until Monday. Why don’t you spend the night?”
“Would love to. But I need to check on some things at the office early in the morning. You need your rest. Between giving you those shares in Trammel and the proposal, that was a lot I laid on you last night. I want you to rest. I’ll come over to get you tomorrow morning, after I leave the office.”
Grace smiled. “What are we going to do?” she asked. “I haven’t had a Friday off work in so long I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”
“I know what to do with you,” he said with a smile, “so don’t worry about that.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
“How did you sleep?”
Grace stretched her naked body beneath the sheet. “Fabulous,” she said with a grin. “The best fuck, I mean sleep, I’ve ever had.”
Tommy grinned and then laughed outright. “Yeah, me too,” he said with a lift of his eyebrows.
“So, Mr. Gabrini,” Grace asked, “what time should I be ready tomorrow?”
“Be dressed and ready to go by noon.”
“Oh, okay. I get to sleep in for a change. Wonderful.” Then she stared at him. He looked so sexy, she thought, so buff, as he sat there. “I’m going to miss you while we’re apart,” she said with a smile.
Tommy looked at her soft, pretty face. He wasn’t smiling, however. This was all too real for him. “Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.”
He looked at the outline of her naked body beneath those sheets. And just like that he began to get an erection. “Come and show me how much,” he said with that hooded look she knew so well.
Instead of playing around with him or pretending to need clarification, she got her naked brown body out of bed and walked over to Tommy. He pulled her onto his lap, and held her in his arms. Grace remembered how comfortable she felt. How relaxed and protected. And although he eventually unzipped his pants, pulled his already aroused penis out, and guided it deep inside of her yet again, she was more in tuned with his arms around her. She loved his arms around her. His cock might have warmed her insides, but his loving arms warmed her all over. And that warmth caused her to fall right back asleep, with the feel of his dick massaging her pussy, while the feel of his arms massaged her heart.
When she woke back up, she was back in bed, her pussy cleaned and dry, and he was gone. She thought she remembered a kiss on the forehead, and the sound of Tommy talking and then the door closing, but she wasn’t sure. She fell asleep again. And then Nayla’s early morning banging on her front door woke her right back up.
Now she had prepped and showered and was fully dressed, ready to face the world, not alone anymore, but with her future husband at her side. On Monday morning she would be in the board room facing the astonished, maybe even hostile faces of the people who used to be her superiors. On Monday morning she would assume command of Trammel Transport. It was a company she worked for, as Jillian Birch’s assistant and later as her chief of staff, ever since she graduated college. It was a company, thanks to Tommy’s generosity, that she now controlled.
And even as she continued to admire her ring in the mirror, despite the fact that she should have been in the lobby of her apartment building five minutes ago, her phone rang.
“Hi, Tommy,” she said without waiting to make sure it was him.
“Are you ever on time?” he asked her irritably.
“Sorry. I was daydreaming. I’m on my way down now.”
“Daydreaming about what?” he asked.
She looked at the ring again and smiled. “I’m on my way down now,” she said again.
“Then get on your way, Grace. Don’t make me come up there and get you,” he warned.
She laughed, but she knew Tommy. She grabbed her purse and hurried out of her apartment, just the same.
She was surprised to see him standing in the lobby of her apartment building when the elevator doors opened. He usually waited in the car, usually because he was on the phone handling some business, whenever he came to pick her up. But not this morning. This was the morning after his proposal, and already Grace could see that change, that elevation, in her status.
To see him standing there waiting for her thrilled Grace so much that she couldn’t even try to hide her glee. He looked so elegant to her, in his tailored silk suit and undeniable beauty, and it amused her even more when she noticed the women around the lobby taking sly glances at him. Some were even blatant and not sly at all. But she didn’t even sweat it. That ring gave Grace all kinds of courage. He was hers. And she could hardly contain her happiness.
“About time,” he said with a big smile of his own as she hurried over to him. He loved the way she seemed so thrilled to see him. He loved that.
He placed his hands on her arms and kissed her on the lips. Last night, after he made love to her for the second time and cleaned her up and put her back to bed, he lingered before he left. He felt a strong need to pray. And he did. He prayed for the wisdom to take care of her right. But even after that he remembered how burdened he felt. How afraid he felt. Now he was looking her dead in her sparkling brown eyes, glad to have her in the flesh once again. “How did you sleep?” he asked her.
“Great,” she said. “You?”
“Great,” he said too, showing no signs of regret about his monumental decision last night, which pleased her. “Ready?” he then asked as he glanced down at her outfit.
“I am,” she replied.
He placed his hand in the small of her back and escorted her, to many prying and envious eyes, out of the lobby and up to his waiting limousine. She knew her dress style wasn’t exactly up to his standards yet. Tommy didn’t own a stitch of clothing that wasn’t high fashion and ultra-expensive, when almost her entire wardrobe fit just the opposite description. And that worked for her, for all of her adult life, ju
st fine. She loved her simple tastes. But now that she wasn’t just Tommy’s girlfriend anymore, but was now his fiancée, she knew she had to step up her game. She didn’t only represent herself anymore. She now, without any shadow of any doubt, represented him.
After they sat in the limo, and the driver closed the door, got back in behind the wheel, and then began driving them in a slow drive, Grace sat patiently beside Tommy as he answered what he said was a call he had to take. He even pulled a file from his briefcase, and then put on his reading glasses, as he reviewed figures in the documents for whoever was on the phone.
Grace looked at him as he talked on that telephone. Although he was a lean man, his biceps were so muscular that they showed through the contours of his suit coat. And although he was a very wealthy man, he was one of the hardest working human beings she’d ever known. He earned every dime. Which made her respect him even more. She knew what she had on her hands. She knew that this beautiful man with EVERYTHING going for him had chosen her above all the others, and had chosen her for reasons she doubted she’d ever figure out.
Her friends had their theories, of course. Every one of them seemed to believe it was because she wasn’t like any of his other women. They’d never admit it to her face, but they were convinced it had everything to do with her looks. She was pretty, they’d all quickly point out, but she had more of an untarnished, innocent vibe about her than pure attractiveness. And purely good looking men often got tired of fucking purely good looking women. And since Tommy had previously only gone for the tall, lithe, black beauty supermodel types in the past, he was now starved for something different.
Grace believed that might have a little to do with it. She was, after all, of a different variety than Tommy’s previous preferences. But there was more to it than that. There had to be, she thought, as he finally concluded his phone conversation.
When he hung up the phone, he pulled a flash drive out of his briefcase. “Here,” he said as he handed it to her.
“What’s this?” she asked.
TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART Page 3