“The inner workings of Trammel in a nutshell. Study it so that when you go in on Monday, you’ll go in with some pre-knowledge. There’s more materials to come, I have my secretaries compiling them now. But that intel on that thumb drive will give you a running start.”
She smiled. She knew Tommy would look out for her. “Thanks. I’ll review it very carefully.”
“Good,” he said, closing his briefcase. “Now put it away. You’re still on vacation with me.”
Grace laughed and placed the flash drive in her purse. Tommy placed his briefcase and folder in the seat across from them, and Grace leaned against him. He removed his glasses, placing them back in his coat pocket, and gladly put his arms around her. He kissed her on the forehead, pleased that she was no longer shy about showing her affection for him.
“So,” she said. “Where are we headed?”
“To Calli,” he said.
Grace looked at him. “Excuse me?”
Tommy smiled. “California. We’re going to California.”
Grace was floored. She expected them to go to the Space Needle or something around town like that. But to California? “Not that I don’t want to go, because I do,” she said. “But why in the world are we going to California?” she asked.
“Because, my dear, I want to take you shopping.”
A part of Grace was elated. She loved shopping as well as anybody. But another part of her was saddened. Was her appearance that bad that he felt a need to take her all the way to another state to remedy the situation?
Tommy could see the clouds of doubt began to form in her expressive eyes. “You’re fine exactly the way you are, all right?” he said to her. “Don’t think you aren’t, because you are. But . . .”
“But what?” she asked, her heart still faint.
“But I want you to have the best,” Tommy continued. “When we were dating I allowed you to be yourself and dress the way you preferred, based on what you could afford. But things have changed now, Grace. I’m not going to turn out in the best clothes money can buy while you, my woman, turn out in the best clothes the least amount of money can buy. Those days are over. They have to be. I understand you were on a tight budget and you dressed based on that budget, I fully appreciate how well you did turn out based on what you could afford. But it’s no longer what you can afford, but what I can afford. And I can afford the best. That’s why we’re going to California.”
“To shop?”
“To shop, yes. Unless you disapprove.”
Grace stared at Tommy. There was a part of her that wanted to be independent still. He either take her as she was or not at all, the more prideful part of her wanted to say. But he was right and she knew it. She was about to become the man’s wife. Although she dressed nice and knew she dressed well, she didn’t dress expensively. Although people in her circle probably wouldn’t know the difference, she was certain that people in Tommy’s circle would.
She smiled. “Why would I disapprove?” she asked. “I love to shop, are you kidding?”
Tommy looked at her. He knew what it took for her to go along with this. She’d been her own woman, in control of her own destiny, every day of her thirty years on this earth. Now she was his woman, and he was in control. He knew it would take some getting used to. “Thank-you for trusting me,” he said, kissed her again, and rolled his eyes when his cell phone started ringing yet again.
They boarded Tommy’s private plane, flew into Beverly Hills in right around three hours, and ended up on Rodeo Drive in less than an hour after that. Grace thought she was living a dream as Tommy took her around that famed street, from the Giorgio Armani store to Agent Provocateur to Prada to Robert Cavalli’s to Etro, Fendi, Salvatore Ferragamo. And from every store there were boxes and bags of clothing all for Grace. Clothes that even felt luxurious just to the touch. And the shoes. Tommy went all out. Grace even joked that he seemed to have a high-heel fetish. He laughed, but made her buy two additional pair of heels just the same.
By the time they checked in at the Beverly Wilshire on Wilshire Boulevard, she didn’t think her day could have gone any better. Tommy lifted her and carried her over the threshold of the penthouse suite, laughing as he did, but, to her surprise, he didn’t carry her to bed. He, instead, carried her to the balcony where they had cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, and where they held hands and watched the sun go down.
She looked over at Tommy. He seemed as content as she was. “Guess what I feel like doing?” she asked him.
Knowing Grace, he thought, it wasn’t going to be what he was thinking. “What?”
Grace smiled. “Dress up.”
Tommy laughed. “But you tried them on in the store,” he said.
“I know.”
“Now you want to try them on again?”
“I do,” Grace said.
To her surprise, Tommy began rising. “Let’s do it then,” he said.
And that was what they did. Tommy laid on the big, king-sized bed, crossed his legs at the ankle, and watched his woman try on outfit after outfit as if she was a kid in a candy store. He loved that lack of pretense about her. She was happy and thrilled and wasn’t ashamed to show it. The women he knew were often so jaded that a day of shopping for them, on his dime, was their right, not their privilege. But Grace was different. She was so grateful, and so excited, that it warmed his heart. And made him love her even more.
“Now that’s the one I want you to wear tonight,” he said when she came out of the dressing area in a gorgeous Armani evening dress and heels. “That’s most attractive.”
“Tonight?” she asked. “Where are we going tonight? Dancing maybe?” She said this as she shook the dress from side to side, letting the frill hem swing freely.
“A friend of mine is having a dinner party tonight in your honor,” Tommy said.
Grace immediately stopped swinging. She looked at him. “In my honor?”
“Yes.” Then he smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m not sending you to the firing squad. It’ll just be a few couples, that’s all. Old friends of mine. Whenever I’m in this area we get together. They want to meet you.”
Grace knew this day would come, she just didn’t expect it to come this soon. She sat on the edge of the bed. “So they’re friends of yours?” she asked him.
“Good friends, yes. You’ll wow them I’m sure.” Then he rubbed her arm. “Don’t worry, babe. Be yourself. You’ll be fine.”
But Grace was a long way from fine. Even after she dressed, and Tommy stood in the living area pleased by her entire look, from head to toe, she still felt a sense of dread. But the way he stood there, in his white evening jacket, looking about as perfect as perfection could get, made her know that she was in his world now. And she had better get used to it.
It wasn’t easy when the limo drove up to a Beverly Hills mansion that made Tommy’s house look like a cottage. And this was where his “good friend” lived? In a mansion half a city block wide?
But once she got inside, and was introduced to Brody Childress, the home’s owner, who joked that she looked as if she was entering a prisoner-of-war camp, she relaxed. And actually enjoyed herself.
Although Tommy said there would only be a few couples there, it was more like ten or twelve couples, but each and every one of them were kind. Although Grace was the only African-American in sight, she worked the room with little effort. Mainly because all of the ladies were girlfriends too, as if the only people Tommy really hung out with were bachelors just as he was. But as it turned out, Grace was the only girlfriend in the room with an engagement ring. The girls, instead of being envious, wanted to know, to a person, how she did it.
“How I did what?” Grace asked as the females congregated on one side of the room while the men hung out on the opposite side.
“How did you get a rascal like Tommy Gabrini to ask you to marry him?” Sheila asked. Sheila was the ringleader. At forty-five, she was the oldest of the girlfriends and the one who had been trying for years to
get Brody to put a ring on it. She was particularly curious.
“After his debacle with Shanks where she all but left him standing at the altar,” Sheila went on, “we were absolutely certain he’d never go down that road again. And then Shanks is killed and right away he’s engaged. When Brody told me that this morning, I was floored. Absolutely thrown. I did not believe it. I had to call Sal Luca for confirmation. Sal was still reeling from the news himself.”
Grace smiled. She liked Sal Luca. He was a mess in a lot of ways, but she liked him. “I was a little thrown myself,” she admitted.
“But how did you do it?” Carrie Lynn asked. She was right around Grace’s age and was one of the prettiest of the pretty ladies. “What’s your secret?”
Grace laughed. “I don’t have a secret, Carrie Lynn. Tommy just asked me.”
Sheila shook her head. “You must be putting it out with dynamite attached to it,” she said to laughter from all of the women, including Grace. Tommy and Brody looked over, wondering what could be that funny.
“No, no,” Grace said as the laughter died down. “There’s no dynamite attached. We just hit it off. I fell in love with him, and he fell in love with me.”
“Yeah, but what about all the others?” Sheila asked. “He just asked you last night, but I guarantee you this news is going to spread like a cancer in our circle. And he has many, and I mean many lady friends in our circle.”
“I know,” Grace said. “And I’m sure some of them will be disappointed.”
“Disappointed?” Carrie Lynn said. “I have a word for it, and it ain’t disappointment.”
“Oh, yeah,” Grace asked, trying with all she had not to show her concern. “What word would you call it?”
“Anger,” Sheila answered for Carrie Lynn, “mad, ready to kill somebody. Oh, you’d better watch your back. Those black girls love them some Tommy, and Tommy love him some black girls.”
“She’s black too,” yet another one of the white girlfriends, whose name Grace couldn’t recall, pointed out.
“Yeah, but you know what I mean,” Sheila said. “Grace is sweet. Tommy’s ladies can be very territorial. They’re more like Shanks than Grace, and I know what I’m talking about because many of them are good friends of mine. They’re just like me. Let Brody propose to some new thang that just hit the scene, please. She and him both will be laid out in caskets.”
“Sheil!” Carrie Lynn yelled. “Don’t say such awful things. You don’t mean that.”
“But that’s probably how those ladies are going to feel about Grace. Excuse me, dear,” Sheila added, looking at Grace, “but you’re new to our circle. They may not feel you’ve earned the right to be Tommy’s number one yet. That’s all I’m saying.”
Grace nodded, although she felt she could easily handle those females. “I know what you mean.”
“So Tommy’s talked to you about it?”
“There’s really nothing to talk about,” Grace said, not at all about to get into her conversations with Tommy in front of this group. “We’re together, he gave me a ring, end of discussion.”
Sheila and Carrie Lynn and all of those other ladies looked at her as if she was clueless. But she didn’t even care. She continued to laugh and talk and enjoy herself. She was so over worrying about Tommy’s fidelity that she couldn’t even express how over it she was. He gave her a ring. That changed everything in Grace’s eyes. Tommy wasn’t a petty person. Why would he give her a ring, which is the epitome of promising to be faithful to her and her alone, and then not be faithful? It made no sense to Grace. Those ladies could say whatever they wanted, but until Tommy showed her differently, she was believing him.
But as the night wore on, her problem became less about gossiping ladies, and more about a certain man, Gavin somebody, who took an interest in her that bordered on creepy.
First he came over and had general small talk with her, which was fine. It kept the night moving. Then he asked if he could dance with her. Although Tommy was across the room in the midst of some football debate with his mates, she didn’t see where that was a problem either. So they danced. But it was after that dance when the inappropriateness started. First he began asking her about her waist size.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“I don’t mean it like that,” he said. “I just think you and my ex-wife are the same size.”
“Oh,” Grace said, but she never answered his question.
Then he continued, asking all kinds of too personal questions that she refused to answer. But when she got away from him and he found her again, and placed his hand on the small of her back, perilously close to the top tip of her ass, she turned on him. She wasn’t going to make a scene in Brody’s home, but she was going to straighten this Gavin fellow out.
“If you don’t get your grubby little hand off of me,” she whispered in his ear, “you may very well need a hand by the time the night is through.”
“Oh, really now?” the brazen Gavin replied with a grin. “So what’s a little lady like you gonna do?”
“Not me,” Grace said. “But I think Tommy might do a little something-something.”
Grace looked across the room. Gavin looked too. Tommy was sipping wine and staring at them. Gavin swallowed hard. He knew how crazy Tommy could get when his temper was unleashed. And besides, Reno Gabrini was his cousin. No female was worth getting entangled with the Mafia over.
“Talk to you later,” he said politely and hurried away from her side. Grace smiled and looked at Tommy. But Tommy was still staring at her. And she knew what that look meant. He wasn’t thinking about Gavin. He was thinking about her. She knew she was going to be in for a workout for real when they got back to that hotel tonight.
And sure enough, she wasn’t in bed ten seconds before Tommy was on top of her. He had already stripped her down, and was naked himself, as he wrapped her in his arms and began kissing her long and slow. He hadn’t said a word about Gavin until he stopped kissing her passionately on the mouth, and started tracing kisses passionately up and down her face.
“What was his problem tonight?” he asked her as he kissed her.
“What problem?” she answered as she lifted her chin and enjoyed every touch of his lips on her sensually sensitive skin.
“He touched you tonight.”
“I know,” she said, too involved in his kisses to really care. “I set him straight.”
Tommy continued kissing her. “What did you tell him?” he asked, growing more breathless with every kiss. He moved down, to her neck.
“I told him if he didn’t leave me alone, you were going to come over there and beat him up.”
Tommy wanted to laugh, but his sensuality was too intense. “That’s right, sweetie,” he said. “You always refer them to me.” He moved down even further, to her breasts, and began licking and sucking her there. Grace was just beginning to enjoy it when he moved back up to her mouth. “You know what I want?” he asked breathlessly.
“What?” she replied, equally breathlessly.
“I want you to give me some. Can you do that for me, baby?”
“I can do it,” Grace said, to Tommy’s delight.
He slid his body up the length of her body until his dick was at her lips. She began to lick him and suck him, until he began putting it in her mouth. He moved slow at first, giving her just the tip for several rounds, and then more and more he moved it in until it was completely in, and she was mouth-fucking him.
Grace was always least comfortable in this position, because she always felt as if she was on the verge of getting lockjaw, but she gave it in a way that Tommy just loved. She might have viewed it as being awkward, but he viewed it as being the best he’d had. Not because she was doing it any differently than anybody else had ever done him, but because it was Grace who was giving it to him. And that, for Tommy, made all the difference in the world.
It felt so good that Tommy got on his back and positioned her on top of him, with her face toward his knees
, and her ass in his face.
She continued to give him head while his tongue buried itself inside of her folds, sucking and licking and giving her a workout that had her cunt raw and hot. It felt so wonderful to Grace that a few times she had forgotten that she was pleasuring him and had to refocus her attention. And then she took him in full. When she took him all the way in, Tommy’s control broke. He almost came in her mouth.
He therefore leaned her body back, where her ass was now against his stomach and her back was lying on top of his chest. Then he shoved his fully aroused dick inside of her pussy, moving deep inside with one hard thrust. Grace cried out from the pain and pleasure, and Tommy held her tighter as he fucked her. He kept his hands beneath her thighs, keeping her legs up in the air, as she rode his cock, with his guidance, until they fell into a rhythm that lasted nearly half an hour. They both were saturated as he moved her body up and down on his cock, up and down. Her back rubbed up and down against his chest also, and he managed to turn her upper body enough that his mouth could reach her breast. And he sucked her as he fucked her in the quiet room of their Beverly Hills hotel, until the elaborate bed itself couldn’t take it anymore and began to make noise. But they kept on fucking.
When they finally came, when Tommy’s penis was so engorged that he couldn’t help but release, he had to hold onto Grace, whose small body began to buckle from the pressure of her own cum. She tried to slide his dick from out of her, to lessen the intensity, but he wouldn’t let it out. He wanted her to go there. He wanted her to experience that heightened sensual place. And she did. She lifted her entire body up, nearly dislodging his dick from her cunt, as the sensations rolled through her body like shocks of electricity, and she nearly passed out.
It stunned her, the fact that she nearly passed out. He’d never done it to her like this before. He wrapped her into his arms as she fell back against him, satisfied but drained. She eventually turned around, still on top of him, and hugged him too. He knew he had taken her there, and he knew it spooked her because of just how hard he had put it on her, but this was one time he couldn’t hold back. Every time they made love, it became a ride steep in intensity. They were accustomed to intensity. But he couldn’t recall a time with Grace when it had been this intense.
TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART Page 4