ROMANCING TOMMY GABRINI

by Mallory Monroe

  He made his way to his plane, boarded the plane, and then took a seat in the cabin. The crew knew Tommy’s moods well, and knew to leave him alone. He placed his hand on his chin, looked out of the window, and couldn’t stop thinking about Shawnie. But his anger, and disappointment, and the searing pain couldn’t be quenched. Not this time. Because he knew like he knew his name that there would be no break-ups to make-up this time. He couldn’t allow it. Not this time.

  He removed his shades. Tears had already welled up in his drained blue eyes. By the time the plane lifted up into the wide blue yonder, he could hardly see the world for the tears.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Five Months Later

  “Happy birthday, girl,” the voice on the cell phone said and Grace McKinsey smiled as she drove swiftly beneath the overcast skies of Seattle, Washington. Her cell phone was on her car’s dashboard, in its holder, on Speaker.

  And her best friend, Nayla Santiago, had just phoned her.

  “Not so fast,” Grace replied to Nayla’s well wishes. “My birthday isn’t until tomorrow, thank-you very much.”

  “And in one day you’ll be thirty years old, thank-you very much. You’re kicking the mess out of the big three-0. You’re about to be just that age when you start looking around and wondering where all those years went.”

  “I’m already looking around and wondering where all those years went,” Grace replied. “And I’m already wondering why I don’t have more to show for all those years.”

  “Oh, you need to quit,” Nayla asked with her usual bite. “You’ve got plenty to show. You’re the chief of staff to the renowned Jillian Birch, the owner and operator of one of the oldest transport companies in the northwest, and you don’t think that’s something to show? If I had that much going for me I’d be shouting it from the rooftops. ‘Hey, all you suckers, look at me!’ But of course you’re sweet Grace. You wouldn’t dream of making a show of yourself like that. That’s probably why you’ll far more ahead in your career than I am in mine. But don’t be selling yourself short, girl. That ain’t attractive, either.”

  But Grace didn’t mean it that way. “I’m not talking about my career,” she said. “I mean personally. I’m man-less and childless and about to turn thirty. I haven’t accomplished the main thing I always wanted to accomplish by now. I’ll be thirty and don’t even have a prospect for a husband, forget having a baby. I’m going to be a woman alone on my thirtieth birthday.”

  “Forgive me, please, if I don’t whip out the string quartet,” Nayla said.

  Grace laughed. “I’m serious, Nay!”

  “I’m serious too! You’re tall and gorgeous and got it going on in every department. And that creamy chocolate skin of yours that most women would die for, give me a break! The only reason you’re going to be alone at thirty is because you wasted all those years with Cam’s sorry ass and wouldn’t give any of those other men a chance. I told you he wasn’t worth a damn, didn’t I tell you? But would you listen? No, you wouldn’t. If you hadn’t caught him in bed yourself with those two skanky females you’d still be wasting time with that loser.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “But that’s the only reason, come tomorrow, you’ll be a woman alone at thirty. Now if you were to open up that locked bedroom door of yours, dust off the sheets and give another man a chance, then you won’t have to be alone at all. You feel me?”

  Grace wasn’t trying to feel that. She’d just dumped Cam four months ago. She wasn’t trying to jump into any sack with anybody else any time soon. “I feel you,” she said to her best friend. “And you feel like a boil on my butt.”

  Nayla laughed heartily.

  Grace smiled, too, and sipped strong coffee from her thermal mug. It was nearly eight at night but she needed the injection of caffeine if she ever expected to survive another dinner party at Jillian’s.

  Not that she hated dinner parties. She didn’t. She usually enjoyed them immensely. But a dinner party at Jillian’s was never a party. A dinner party at Jillian’s was always more about schmoozing and networking and all but begging those rich, connected, business-owning friends to contract with Trammel for all of their transporting needs. Jillian, as company CEO, was too proud to beg. But she had no problem with Grace giving it a shot.

  “Where are you anyway?” Nayla asked over the phone. “I called your house earlier but I got no answer.”

  “That’s because I had to rush home, shower and change, and then rush to this party. Answering a telephone was out of the question.”

  “What party?” Nayla asked. “I didn’t know the crew was having a party.”

  “It’s not our crew. Jilly’s got me attending one of her dinner parties tonight---”

  “Not another one!”

  “Another one, girl,” Grace said sadly. “She needs to drum up more business and she can’t think of any better way to do it.”

  “She still expects you to flaunt yourself in front of those rich old geezer friends of hers and charm them out of their money?”

  “You know it,” Grace said with a nod of her head. “That’s how crazy she is. She thinks youth is everything. I honestly believe that’s one reason why she made me her chief of staff. To keep me close to her. She actually thinks if she surrounds herself with young people then she’ll never grow old. Now that’s depressing, you hear me? She thinks youth is contagious.”

  Nayla laughed. “So do I! What’s depressing about it?”

  “I’m for real,” Grace said seriously. “That kind of youth-obsessed thinking is a two-edged sword. When I was twenty-two and fresh out of college, working for a great businesswoman like Jillian Birch was an honor. I was her executive assistant and we got along great and she moved me up the ladder nicely. But now that I’m pushing thirty, and not all that young anymore, I’m already beginning to see the change in her. She may trade me in for a twenty-year old soon and very soon!”

  “Not as her chief of staff she won’t,” Nayla made clear. Nayla, too, worked at Trammel, only she worked in the Logistics department. “Can’t no twenty-year-old run that staff of hers. But I get your point,” Nayla added.

  “Youth is everything to her,” Grace continued. “She thinks people who are what she considers to be young and vibrant and full of life have it made, girl.”

  “And don’t forget pretty,” Nayla reminded her. “You’ve got to be pretty to be around Jillian Birch. She’s the most superficial woman I’ve ever met in my life.”

  “Who are you telling?” Grace asked. “She honestly believes that if I bat my big brown eyes at those old rich business friends of hers then they’ll lovingly start signing contracts with Trammel Transport left and right just so they can continue to have contact with me. Like those successful men are that gullible.”

  “I don’t know now,” Nayla said. “Those ridiculous dinner parties of Jillian’s have netted some big contracts for y’all in the past. And maybe, just maybe, it is because of you and your slammin’ body, and your big browns. Maybe Jillian knows what she’s doing. Oh, wait a minute. Did I just say that?”

  “Yeah, you did,” Grace said with a grin as she turned into the circular driveway of Jillian’s beautiful home. Only she had to park on the back edge of the driveway as the cars of other guests had already clogged up the choice spots.

  “Did I actually just say that Jillian Birch knows what she’s doing?” Nayla asked again.

  “You actually said it, girl,” Grace said as she killed her engine.

  “Wow, that’s deep,” Nayla said. “It must be true then. I’m not only getting old as hell, but I’m getting senile, too.”

  Grace laughed heartily. “Let me go, child. I’m already late as it is.”

  “Have fun. And make sure you don’t get caught up in any of those Jillian traps.”

  “Girl quit.”

  “I’m serious, Grace. Don’t let Jillian Bitch---”

  “Her name is Jillian Birch, thank-you.”

  “Until she stops using you an
d acting like a bitch on two legs then she’s Jillian Bitch to me,” Nayla said firmly. “Don’t let that woman trick you into going back with Cam tonight, that’s the point I’m making. I don’t care how pitiful you feel about the fact that you’re man-less and childless the night before your thirtieth birthday, I don’t care how horny you are. You gave that idiot one chance and he blew it big time. Don’t give him anymore! Besides,” she added coyly, “I still believe all Jillian and that son of hers really want from you anyway is your ten shares.”

  When Grace started dating Jillian’s hunky son Cameron, and Jillian was all for their relationship, encouraging it no end, Grace would have never thought that there was an ulterior motive involved. But after Cameron asked her to marry him and not a week later she caught him in bed with not one, but two women, and he seemed so cavalier about her devastating discovery, she questioned everything about their relationship. And left his ass as quickly as she could get out of his front door.

  Grace inherited a ten percent ownership stake in Trammel from her father. He worked for and was a close friend of Clive Birch, Jillian’s husband, the man who had owned and operated Trammel. Clive and Grace’s father were driving back to a hotel after participating in a pro-am golf tournament in Palm Springs, Florida, and were both killed in a car crash.

  Before the tragedy, when those shares rested with Grace’s father, Cam had been cordial enough to her, but never showed any real interest at all. Clive Birch had hired Grace out of college, undoubtedly as a favor to her father, and she and Cam saw each other quite often. But he never even flirted with her. She assumed she was probably too tame for his taste.

  After the accident, however, Cam’s interest went through the roof. She thought it was because he had lost his father, too, and they could grieve together. But overtime she learned that, not a year after the tragedy, Jillian had been forced to sell off a huge chunk of her shares in Trammel just to keep the business afloat. Now she only owned thirty-seven percent of the shares and Cam owned an additional five. If she were to wrest control of Grace’s ten shares, Jillian would have fifty-two percent ownership and would regain her majority stake in the company.

  Although neither Cam nor Jillian would ever admit their parts in such a scheme, Grace was still angry with herself for not investigating earlier. But she thought she was in love. And she thought Cam wanted her, not to gain control of any shares, but because he was in love, too. And she thought all of that talk about love being blind was hogwash. But she thought wrong. Her love epitomized blindness.

  And even as Jillian and Cam continued to try to win her over, as if she still didn’t get it, Grace was playing her cards close to the vest. And scrimping and saving and learning everything she could from Jillian so that one day she could leave Jillian’s side and set up her own thing. Because Jillian and Cam may have continued to view her as this clueless young fool who just didn’t get it, she knew better. She understood their motives perfectly now. And that was why they would have to pry those ten shares out of her cold, dead hands before she gave any to them. In the memory of her beloved father, and for the sake of her own self-respect, she’d give those shares to a bum on the street before she gave a fifth of a percent to either one of them.

  “Anyway,” Grace said on the phone, “I’d better get inside. Get this over with.”

  “Just think of it this way,” Nayla pointed out. “You own ten percent of that company. If just looking at your pretty face and slammin’ body and big brown eyes can get one of those old farts to sign a contract with Trammel tonight, then good for you. You profit when the company profits.”

  “That’s the only reason I’m even bothering,” she replied. “I’ll call you later and let you know how it went.”

  “Okay, Grace, take care,” Nayla said, they said goodbye, and then Grace got out of the car.

  Tommy Gabrini saw Grace when she first got out of her car. He was seated in his own car, a dark red Ferrari parked on the opposite end of Jillian’s driveway, talking on his car phone. He saw her as she took her hands and smoothed down her sleek red dress. He saw her as she grabbed her clutch bag from the passenger seat, revealing a tight little ass so round and firm just the sight of it gave him a little throb. She locked/alarmed her car, a bright blue Dodge Charger, and then headed for the home’s front door.

  “Tommy,” said the flustered female voice on the other end of his phone conversation. “Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you,” Tommy said into his phone, although his eyes were on Grace.

  Her legs were so long and shapely, he thought, that they gave her a sense of style no outfit could match. It was all in the way she walked, in the way she carried herself, that kept his attention. She walked in deliberation and confidence, very Giselle-like, as if she took her cues from those sashaying models on runways. Her long hair bounced against her small back, and she held her head in such a conscious way that it seemed as if she had been taught from birth to never let it dip low. It was too dark for him to see much of her face, but if her body was any indication, her face was probably a nice sight to behold, too.

  But there was something about the way she moved that made her seem too young for him. She was probably in her early-to-mid-twenties, he was willing to bet, which was too bad. He rarely went in for the young ones, and those few times that he did he ended up regretting it. Not because he was some ageist who had something against younger ladies. But the ones he’d been involved with always came with too much drama and neediness for his taste. And, to make matters worse, they rarely came experienced enough sexually to satisfy him in that sophisticated way he’d grown accustomed.

  “It’s been too long,” the female voice on his phone was continuing. “And I want to know why. I thought we had a good thing going, Tommy.”

  The female on the phone was another one of his friends with benefits who had reached that point in their relationship where she wanted more of a commitment from him. Something he had told her in the beginning, and was now reiterating, she would never get.

  “We do have a good thing going,” Tommy said. “We’re friends.”

  “Since we’re such friends why haven’t you called me? It’s been months, Tommy. Why haven’t you phoned?”

  “I thought you were still in New York.”

  “I came back weeks ago. I left you several messages.”

  Tommy heard her, and he remembered her messages, but his attention continued to be diverted to that leggy young woman in red who was now standing at Jillian’s front door.

  She seemed about as thrilled to be at Jillian’s party as he was, Tommy thought, as he kept watching her. She even had to take a moment, presumably to get her nerves together, before ringing the bell. She turned briefly toward the light as she waited for the bell to be answered. He caught a glimpse of her high cheekbones.

  “Tommy, did you hear me?” the female said into the phone. “What if I want more? What if I want to be more than friends?”

  And then the door opened and the young lady went inside, and was gone from his sight.

  “We’ve had this conversation a million times before,” he said as he turned his full attention back to his caller. “I made it clear from the beginning what our status would be. I made it clear from the beginning that changing my mind wasn’t going to happen.”

  “I’m not trying to change your mind. I’m trying to change your heart.”

  Tommy closed his eyes. What heart, he had wanted to say. After all of that drama with ShoShawna Shanks, he wasn’t so sure if he still even had one. But he knew how his friend felt. He had tried to change the rules on Shawnie, too. He had fallen in love with her and had actually asked her to marry him. And she had agreed. Until they were in Vegas, at the PaLargio, ready to have the big ceremony. And she took off.

  He knew how his friend felt.

  But unlike Shawnie, he wasn’t stringing anybody along.

  “My heart,” he said, “can’t be changed, either.”

  There was a long pause. A painf
ul pause, to be sure. And then the female on the phone killed the call. Tommy hesitated, and pressed off, too.

  He stepped out of his car, revealing thick biceps in a pristinely pressed dress shirt, and then reached back in for his white dinner jacket. He was beginning to hate these parties with a passion, and would have avoided this one too like the Plague, but he had serious business to discuss with Jillian and knew this was the best way he could pin her down. Besides, Jillian had asked him to come tonight, as she believed that his presence alone would generate more business for Trammel, too.

  After ringing the bell and being granted entrance by the butler, he entered an opulent home littered with many familiar faces from Seattle’s elite social and business communities. As he made his way further inside, many of the elites made their way over to him, creating a clique around him within moments of his arrival. The men small-talked about the Mariners and the Seahawks, the weather and local politics, while their wives or girlfriends gave him more than suggestive looks and comments. It was the type of night Tommy used to relish, because he always knew he’d find a new, uncomplicated bed partner in the bunch. But in the past few months he could barely stomach these get-togethers now. Especially when he saw Jillian. He excused himself and made a beeline for her. The sooner he could speak with her, the sooner he could get the hell out of here.

  “Tommy, darling!” Jillian said when she saw him coming. She met him halfway as if she was thrilled to see him. She swept to his side, her little French poodle Alvin in her arm, her gown long and flowing, her blonde hair big and full and about as real as the plastic lips she had plastered on her surgically-enhanced face. She air-kissed both his cheeks.

  “You look marvelous as usual,” she said, looking down at his beautifully-appointed Versace suit and the way it clung to his beautifully-appointed body. She always wanted a taste of him herself, especially when word began to leak about his prowess in bed and the size of his bed equipment. But just like those scrumptious black ballers who seemed to crave white women, she knew Tommy swung the opposite way. He craved the black ones.