As soon as Sal saw them kissing that way, he immediately jumped up and made his way toward them, causing some of the females to elbow each other and snicker. But Sal didn’t care how it looked. Gemma’s father had emasculated his masculinity enough. Not this punk too.
“You look wonderful, Gem,” Marvin was saying by the time Sal arrived.
He saw him and sat Gemma down. “You must be the man of the hour,” he said as he extended his hand.
“And you are?” Sal asked, without shaking that hand. Marvin was tall, slender, good looking, like all of Gemma’s friends and relatives.
“Sal, this is Marvin. He’s one of my closest and dearest friends.”
“Funny you never mentioned him.”
“Ooops,” Marvin said with a smile. “I’d call that a read. Anyway, girl, let me go and say hey to your folks. I don’t want to be rude, after all.” He added this and looked at Sal.
Gemma smiled. “Sure thing, Marv. We’ll talk.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, still staring at Sal, and then he walked away.
Gemma hit Sal on his arm. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked him.
But Sal would have none of it. “What’s wrong with me?” he asked with incredulity in his voice. “What’s wrong with him kissing on you like that? Disrespecting me like that.”
“Disrespecting you?” Then Gemma smiled. “You didn’t see it?”
“See what?”
Gemma shook her head. “You are really a trip, you know that? Sal, when Marvin was little, you know what we used to call him?”
“How should I know that?”
“We used to call him Marvin Gay. Without the E.”
Sal frowned.
“He’s gay, Sal. Marvin is gay, Sal.”
But instead of Sal smiling it off, he looked even more alarmed. “And you let him kiss you like that? Do you realize where that mouth of his has been?”
It was Gemma’s time to frown. “What are you talking about? Where has it been?”
“On a man’s dick, that’s where!”
Then Gemma smiled. “Does he know where my mouth has been?”
At first Sal looked at her, wondering if she was confessing some indiscretion. Then he realized she meant him. His dick. He had to smile at that one.
She took him by the arm. “Just relax, will you?” she implored him, and they started heading back for the party.
Sal eventually did relax and felt completely at home. It was turning out to be the best time he’d had in a long time. He enjoyed compliments, some harmless criticisms about his Jersey accent and Italian roots, and some great ribbing. Especially from Gemma’s female cousins and Marvin too, whom Sal quickly warmed to and realized why Gemma loved him so much. They sat around that deck ribbing so much that Sal, enjoying the attention immensely, started ribbing back.
“Be careful, Gem,” he said to his lady, who was seated beside him. “You have so many beautiful women in your family, I might be tempted now. Might want to kick your ass to the curb and pick up one of them.”
They all laughed, including Gemma, but not before she hit him so hard on his muscular bicep that he fell out of his deck chair, which brought on even more laughter. It was a festive time.
But Sal also knew he had unfinished business. With the patriarch. And this time, Sal wasn’t holding back. He was going to talk man-to-man with Rodney Jones, not man-to-boy, and he was going to talk to him in his own words, being his own self.
While the rest of them continued to joke and enjoy themselves, Sal broke away and walked over to the grill, where Rodney was standing. Gemma saw it, and could only hope they didn’t come to blows, but she didn’t try to interfere.
Rodney, who seemed to want to make amends too, saw him coming. “I see you’re enjoying yourself,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s my crowd over there. My kind of people.”
Rodney wondered what kind of people he meant, since all of them back there were black. “Young people?” he asked.
“Happy people,” Sal said. “Good people. People who don’t have judgment and hate and superior airs and attitude all up their asses.”
Rodney couldn’t help but smile at Sal’s phraseology. “Unlike me, I suppose?” he asked.
“Yeah, unlike you,” Sal said honestly. “I don’t know what’s with you.”
“I love my daughter, that’s what’s with me.”
“And I understand that. But loving your daughter don’t give you a license to disrespect me.”
Rodney looked at him. “I wasn’t disrespecting you.”
“You were fucking around with me so bad a stranger would have thought we were in love.”
The language threw Rodney, but the meaning didn’t. And he had to laugh. “Okay,” he said. “Point taken.”
“You don’t have to like me,” Sal said, “but you sure as hell have to respect me. I’m not about to hurt your daughter. If anything, she’ll . . .”
Rodney studied him. And he finished Sal’s thought for him. “If anything she’ll be the one hurting you?”
Sal looked back at Gemma, who was joking around with Marvin. “If there’s any hurt to be had, yeah,” he said.
Rodney took sip of beer, staring at Sal as he did. “So that’s your hesitancy?” he eventually asked.
“Hesitancy? What hesitancy?”
“The reason why you’ve been dating my daughter this long and kept turning down our invitations to have a meet and greet?”
“Oh. That bothered you?”
“Of course it bothered us! Gemma isn’t the one-night-stand type. She committed herself to you, we could tell that easily. But we didn’t see any evidence that it was being reciprocated. It automatically raised red flags.”
Sal smiled. “So what you’re saying is that if I would have met with you guys sooner, your hot seat grilling would not have been necessary?”
Rodney laughed. “Something like that, yes.”
“And I was avoiding it to avoid the grilling, but by avoiding it I was inviting the grilling.” Sal shook his head. “That’s me. Always a day late and a dollar short.”
Rodney considered him. “I know you’ve had challenges in your life, Sal,” he said. “With your father,” he added.
Sal looked at him. Gemma had apparently told him about his less-than-stellar parents. “Yeah, you can say that.”
“She believes it’s affecting how you can respond to her. But she believes you love her. Do you?”
“I’m not used to it,” Sal said. “Love I mean. And I’ll be the first to admit that, most of the time, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. But yeah, I do love her. A lot. And coming from me, that’s saying a lot. Trust me.”
Rodney considered this man called Sal. “If I may be honest with you, Sal, also?”
“Please.”
“You’re nothing like the kind of man I had hoped would want to be with my daughter.”
“You mean because I’m not black?”
“That’s a part of it, sure. I’m sure your folks weren’t urging you to get with non-Italian ladies.”
Sal smiled. He certainly had that right.
“But that’s only part of it,” Rodney said. “I expected Gemma to marry a professional man. A doctor or a lawyer like her, or a businessman, yes, but not one so . . .”
“Italian?”
Rodney decided to be blunt. “Suspicious,” he said.
Sal didn’t fight it. He nodded instead. “I got you,” he said. “But you’ve got to understand that I’ll never do anything to hurt Gem, or to put her in harm’s way.”
Rodney looked at him. Then he extended his hand. “Do I have your word on that, Mr. Gabrini?”
“Yes, sir,” Sal said, gladly shaking his hand. “You have my word.”
It wasn’t everything for Rodney Jones, he still would have preferred his daughter hook up with a man who looked more like him and behaved more like him, but he’d heard from many different sources that Sal Gabrini, if he was anything, was a man of hi
s word. So it was something.
ELEVEN
The plane landed back in Vegas late that Sunday evening. Gemma was on the seat across from Sal, her feet up and her eyes closed. Sal was working on paperwork, his reading glasses on and his eyes tired.
He looked at her over his reading glasses. “Babe,” he said, waking her. When she opened her big eyes, he smiled, felt a warmth inside. “You’re home,” he said.
“We’re here already?” she asked, stretching and looking out of the window.
“We’re here.”
She looked at him. Loved the way he looked so serious and professional in those reading glasses. “I wish you could stay another day. Do you have to go back tonight?”
Sal considered her. He’d never had any woman love him the way Gemma did. “Come here,” he said to her.
Gemma unbuckled her seatbelt and made her way over to Sal. He placed his papers onto the seat beside him and pulled her down onto his lap. He looked in her eyes.
“There’s no other place I’d rather be,” he said, “than to be with you. You know that. But Tommy will kick my ass if I stay away from the office another day. Because believe it or not, there are actually certain clients who won’t do business with anybody but me.”
It was nothing hard to believe to Gemma. “They trust you,” she said.
“Yeah,” Sal said, pleased that she understood. “They trust me.”
“Like I trust you.”
This touched Sal. “Yeah,” he said. “Like that.”
Gemma smiled and kissed him. “Stay worthy of that trust, big guy,” she warned, “or there’s going to be situations and complications.”
Sal laughed. “Oh, yeah? And what you’re gonna do, with your little self?”
“I’m telling you now. You don’t want to see that side of me, pal.” Sal was laughing up a storm. “Let a heifer touch my man,” Gemma continued. “They’ll be circumstances and situations.”
“I thought you said situations and complications.”
“Those too,” Gemma said, unable to suppress her own smile.
Sal pulled her against him. “You’re a mess, you know that?”
“But your mess, right?”
Sal stared at her. And his smile was gone. “Yeah,” he said. “Mine.”
Gemma saw the seriousness in his deep blue eyes. It was daunting. She kissed him. “Call me when you land,” she said, and stood up.
“Let me walk you to the car,” he said, moving to stand.
“No need for that,” she said.
But Sal, being Sal, stood up anyway. “There is a need, what are you talking? You think I’m gonna let you walk off of this plane alone and I just sit my fat ass back and watch you?” He took her by the elbow. “You know me better than that,” he said.
Gemma smiled as he escorted her off of the plane while the plane attendant carried her luggage to the waiting limo.
But as soon as he walked her to the waiting limousine, kissed her again, and then stood there until the limo pulled off and she was clean out of sight, his phone that had been buzzing ever since he got off of the plane, started buzzing again. But this time, walking back to the plane, he answered it. It was Chazz.
“What is it now?” Sal asked him.
“We know who ambushed us in Jersey,” Chazz said.
Sal’s walk hesitated, but he kept going. “Who?”
“You aren’t gonna believe this, boss.”
“Who?”
“Danny Bronco.”
Sal stopped in his tracks. “Whatta are you toying with me? What are you fucking with me for?”
“Danny Bronco, boss. I’m telling you the facts.”
“Danny Bronco had a contract out on Patty’s kid. We iced him already, I witnessed it myself. Now get your facts straight!”
“I’m telling you what I know. Danny Bronco set it up. That’s what the word is on the street, that’s what every one of our sources are telling us, and you know they know what they’re talking about.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“I’m working on it. Give me a couple days, I’ll take care of that too.”
Sal was still too stunned to respond. What kind of crazy shit was this, he thought.
“Your people iced somebody all right,” Chazz went on, “but it wasn’t Danny Bronco.”
Sal still just stood there, on that tarmac in Vegas, on a cool Sunday night, thinking.
“When we eyeball him,” Chazz asked, “want us to bring him in?”
“What?” Sal asked. His mind had left the conversation and was focused on that hit, and how it all went down.
“I said when we get Bronco, do you want us to bring him in?”
Sal began walking again. “No,” he said. “Get me pictures of him. This could be some kind of set up. Get plenty of pictures.”
“Something’s going down, boss. We don’t know what, but something funny’s going down.”
“Yeah,” Sal said. “And the joke’s gonna be on those motherfuckers. Whoever they are. Get me those pictures,” he ordered again, and then killed the call.
When he boarded his plane, he sat down, leaned his head back, and then angrily took his papers and flung them across the cabin.
After his conversation with Sal, Chazz Charski killed the call too and then turned toward his host. The man behind the desk, Fabio Menza, was leaned back. But unlike Chazz, there wasn’t a smile on his face. This was too important for laughs.
But Chazz was animated. “Didn’t I tell you he’ll go for it?” he asked. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“You done good,” Fab said, “I’ll give you that. You got us in. But this is just the opening round. This is just the fuck with his mind round. We got him thinking about Danny and if it’s true or not. We got him distracted.”
“I still don’t get it,” the third man in the room said, and Fab and Chazz both looked in his direction. The third man was Patty Pacheco, who had broken out of prison, who had just gotten a hundred thousand dollars from Sal to get lost.
“What you don’t get?” Fab asked him.
“He wants pictures,” Patty said. “How are we gonna get pictures of a dead man?”
“We won’t need pictures. Trust me on that. He thinks a dead man ambushed him, what do we need pictures for?”
Patty laughed. “I got you, boss.”
“And the beautiful thing about all of this? Me, you, and Chazz, we aren’t even on his radar screen of suspects. And you and Sal, he’s still taking your calls. I know what I’m doing, you got me? I didn’t break you out of prison because I like you, and I didn’t hire Chazz to double cross Sal because I think he’s worth a shit. I don’t give a fuck about either one of yous.”
“But what is all of this about?” Patty asked. “When are you gonna clue us in?”
“You’ll get in when you get in,” Fab said. “This ain’t got nothing to do with you. You’re free, you got that guilt money from Sal, you just lay low like you’re doing and wait for my next order.”
“What about me, boss?” Chazz asked. “What am I supposed to do?”
“You lay low too,” Fab said. “And tell Will to do the same. I didn’t hire him for the hell of it either. He has an inside connection to Sal Gabrini, that’s his only claim to fame as far as I’m concerned. The day he lose that connection and try to double cross me the way he’s double crossing Sal, will be the day he dies. You remind him of that. Remind yourselves of it, too,” Fab added to both Patty and Chazz. “Sal’s reach in the legit world may be further than mine, but he ain’t got shit on me in the underground world. And that’s the world that counts. That’s the world that can sneak up on you when you least expect it, and turn your entire world upside down.”
Then Fab finally smiled. “And when that happens,” he said, “I’m going to enjoy every second of it.”
As soon as Gemma walked into her quiet home, there was a different dynamic. Sal had been here all week, and now he was gone, and his absence was as tangible as the flesh on
her body. But she didn’t dwell on it. She parked her suitcase in the foyer and got busy cleaning her house. She collected all of the glasses they had used, cleaned off the center island in the kitchen, and turned on the dishwasher. By the time she made it upstairs, and was about to head to the bathroom, to freshen it up too, she noticed a wad of cash on her nightstand.
She walked over to it and picked it up. After flicking through it, she realized there were two thousand dollars in that wad. At first she almost panicked, as she wondered if Sal had mistakenly left it. But then she smiled. He left it, all right, but there was no mistake in it. He knew exactly what he was doing.
Then she thought about him. And the good man she was beginning to know for certain that he was. She always dreamed of finding somebody special, but she never dreamed he would come in a package quite like Sal. But there he was. The one man she once thought might have been a racist, turned out to be the best man of them all. And so thoughtful, she thought, as she looked at that money again. He realized it was too soon for him to be paying off all of her bills like that, and forcing her to be completely in his debt, but that wasn’t going to stop him from looking out for her. He wanted to take care of her, even if he had to sneak and do it. This was all so new to Gemma. She wasn’t accustomed to anybody doing anything for her. But as she took that wad of money and put it away, for a rainy day, she knew she could get used to this level of care. Easily, she thought.
Then she plopped down on the bed and smiled. At least it went better than expected with her parents. There was some stress, especially between Sal and her father, but he didn’t reject Sal outright or anything. He’d come around, Gemma was convinced of it.
But she missed Sal. She even grabbed the pillow that he had slept on, and smelled it. It smelled like Sal’s cologne. Her entire bedroom smelled like Sal’s cologne. Then she hugged the pillow, laid back on her bed, and closed her eyes.
She missed her man.
Three hours later, her man stepped out of the limo in front of the luxurious Wingate apartment building in downtown Seattle, buttoned his suit coat, and walked across the sidewalk.
“Welcome back, Mr. Gabrini,” the Doorman said, opening the door wide. Sal mumbled that it was good to be back as he entered the elegant lobby. He was too tired for niceties and the Doorman smiled. He was accustomed to his moods.
Romancing Sal Gabrini 2: A Woman's Touch Page 11