ROMANCING TOMMY GABRINI

by Mallory Monroe

  “Since you can’t have a drink with me tonight,” he said as if there was no double meaning in his first request at all, “how about having dinner with me another night?”

  Grace considered the offer. It was tempting, that was for sure. She enjoyed talking to him. There was something naturally likeable about him. But did she really want to go out with him? Did she really want to go that far? And what about Jillian? How would Jillian feel if she found out Grace had accepted an invitation from one of Jillian’s so-called fat cats, a man who probably already had a contract with Trammel and therefore, in Jillian’s eyes, wouldn’t be worth the effort?

  But Grace dismissed how Jillian would feel about it because she didn’t care how Jillian felt. Jillian certainly didn’t care how she felt or she wouldn’t still be trying to pawn Cam off on her after the way he had hurt her. What mattered was how Grace felt about it. And she realized she actually liked this guy very much, even despite what she knew was his real intentions for this dinner offer.

  He was, after all, she thought jokingly, Mister “Open” Relationship.

  But she also knew, since her breakup with Cam, that he was the only man who had intrigued her even a little bit. Besides, he might want sex from her, but he couldn’t make her go any further than she wanted to go.

  “Yes,” she said. “Dinner could work.”

  “Great,” Tommy said with a relieved smile as he opened her door for her. “I’ll call you and we’ll set something up.”

  “Sounds good,” she said as she got into her car.

  He closed the door and waited as she cranked up and let down her window. He leaned slightly into the car. She could smell his expensive cologne. “Drive carefully now,” he said. And although it was ridiculous to suggest it, Grace actually felt as if he wasn’t just saying parting words.

  “I will,” she said and then buckled up.

  She was pleased to see, through her rearview mirror, that he was still standing there staring at her as she drove away. But then, as he began to walk away, she quickly realized that he didn’t even have her cell number. How was he going to phone her to set up their date if he didn’t have her number? She put on brakes and was about to turn around. But when she looked through her rearview again and saw him talking with Jillian, as if they were planning some midnight rendezvous or some other sexual tryst, she removed her feet from the brake and put the petal to the metal. A man with his looks and bod had to know that he was the personification of sexiness and could have his pick of the ladies. He probably just fed her that dinner line to hide his shock that she had turned down his original offer.

  Oh well, she decided, as she drove away. It was probably for the best. It had been her experience that great looking guys always came with great looking trouble. And after all those wasted years with Cam, she’d had her fill of both.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Early the next morning, Tommy stepped into his shower and allowed the warm water to pour over his naked body in a drenching downpour. Last night had been the first time in a long time that he was seriously interested in a woman and didn’t end up in bed with her. Nor did he go out, after her turn down, to get a substitute. Now he had a hardening dick just thinking about what he could have had. Candace Herrera certainly wanted to hook up with him last night, and two or three other women at that same party, but he went home alone. Not because those other women weren’t attractive, because they were very attractive. But they weren’t Grace.

  Grace, he thought, as he raked his hair back and lifted his chin, the water hitting against his face in hard slaps. He found her so refreshing that it had affected him even after Jillian’s party. He even dreamed about the girl. She was scantily clad, singing I Will Run to You, and she was running to him the same way Whitney Houston ran to Kevin Costner in that Bodyguard movie. Then he woke up, felt foolish for even cooking up such a scene, and fell back asleep.

  But it wasn’t just in the way she had looked last night, but it was also in what she had said. She knew it was corny, she had said, but she wanted to be a wife and a mom more than anything else. More than anything else, she’d said. He’d never, not ever, been attracted to a female who had marriage with children on her mind. Let alone as her main intention. Even the woman he had asked to marry wasn’t into getting married and having children.

  But this young girl, this Grace, was a serious woman who wasn’t ashamed to say she wanted a family. She didn’t mention fame, she didn’t mention fortune, she didn’t mention being the wife of a millionaire, or even making her own millions. She wanted to be a wife and mother. She wanted a family. And Tommy realized last night, as she drove away, not in some luxurious Mercedes or BMW, but in her normal Dodge Charger, that he wanted a family of his own, too. In a way he had always wanted it. But it seemed so impossible, given the women he favored, that he dared not even hope for it.

  And then Grace came along.

  He wanted one woman to spend the rest of his life with. A woman with a big heart and a kind spirit. Sex was important to him, he wasn’t going to pretend it wasn’t, but the heart of the woman meant more. In the long run, it had to mean more.

  After his breakup with ShoShawna, he actually tried to find that one woman. But he kept shooting blanks. What he quickly realized was that getting that family dream was a two-way street. He never viewed his various friends with benefits as marriage material, but he realized that his beneficial friends had never viewed him as marriage material either. One, in fact, was clear. “Great lovers,” she had said, “make lousy husbands. And there is no greater lover I’ve ever had, Tommy Gabrini, than you.”

  So he gave up that pipedream and got on with giving the ladies what they wanted, and getting what he wanted in return. And he soon realized that all of those friends who had been begging for more of a commitment from him, wasn’t talking about marriage as he had thought. They didn’t want marriage. They wanted exclusivity. They wanted bragging rights. They wanted the right to say that he was theirs and theirs alone. That they had won some prize. Until the novelty of their victory wore off, and they moved on.

  And he would be left an aging stud still looking for a barn.

  After lathering and then rinsing, he turned off the tap and stepped out of the shower. But just as he dried off and made his way into his bedroom, his cell phone began to ring. He stopped towel drying his hair, tossed the towel around his neck, and then grabbed his phone from his dresser.

  “Hello,” he said quickly upon answering.

  But then silence ensued. He started to say hello again, but didn’t bother. He’d danced this dance too many times before. Always after they broke up, when she was getting antsy for a reconciliation, she’d make her monthly, sometimes weekly, silent phone calls. He used to entertain her indulgences by repeatedly saying hello, or even asking if it was her. But not anymore. They were done. He killed the call, tossed his phone back onto his dresser, and headed for his walk-in closet.

  In Budapest, Hungary, ShoShawna Shanks stared at her phone. Then she killed the call, too.

  “Was your friend not there?” her bed partner asked in his native tongue.

  But ShoShawna flipped him onto his back and got back on top of him. “Shut the fuck up,” she said, “and fuck me.”

  He smiled. He loved hot-bloodied Americans. “With pleasure,” he said, and obliged her.

  Tears dropped from ShoShawna’s eyes as she endured yet another anybody-but-Tommy lover who was supposed to help her forget what she had lost. And her lover was highly motivated. He pounded her into oblivion, his pale body filled with the sweat of his labors, the hotel bed squeaking loudly with every ram and jam, but her tears would not cease. Because every one of these so-called wonderful lovers she’d gone through, and she’d gone through many, had proven to be so not Tommy in every way that she always ended up remembering, not forgetting, what was becoming the loss of her life. And the thought of it, and the way he wouldn’t even entertain her silent phone calls anymore, was becoming almost unbearable.

>   It was an itch, she knew, she had to scratch or it could become, if she wasn’t careful, all-consuming.

  After her morning jog around the lakefront in the Rainier Valley area of Seattle, Grace made her way back to her quiet apartment. She checked her messages, found that she had none, and went into the bathroom. By the time she jumped in and out of the shower, however, she ended up with eight voice mail messages. She smiled. It was her birthday and she had the kind of friends who wouldn’t let her forget it, either.

  Happy birthday, girl, was the dominant message left. You’re not getting older, you’re getting old, was the next. Then there were messages from her two closest friends, Nayla Santiago and Jamie Rogers, reminding her to be at the club tonight.

  Friday night was the night they always met at Moors, a supper club in Beacon Hill, and this Friday would be no exception. Except that this Friday was her birthday, which made her suspicious. Besides, Jamie had already told her that the others were “cooking something up” even though they knew she hated surprises. But she was pleased anyway. At least they cared enough to bother.

  After she had dressed and grabbed a bagel and was in her building’s garage backing out, her cell phone rang again. It was Nayla.

  “So the queen answers the phone,” she said as Grace drove.

  “Where are you?” Grace asked.

  “At work, where you think? Unlike some of us I know I only work here at Trammel, I don’t run it, thank-you. Where are you is the real question?”

  “Just leaving for work,” Grace replied.

  “Just leaving? Everybody ain’t able to be going to work at ten a.m.”

  “Don’t even trip,” replied Grace, as she turned out into traffic and took another bite of her bagel. “I wasn’t supposed to go in at all today. You know I don’t work on my birthday. But that dinner party last night actually netted a couple promising leads and Jillian wants me to handle the follow up. So going in at all on this day practically makes me a martyr.”

  Nayla laughed. “Be a real martyr and show up at the club tonight.”

  “I don’t like surprises and you know it.”

  “Who said anything about a surprise? You know how you like to stay home sometimes and read some of those boring books you like to read. But not this night, Grace. In fact, I’ll come and pick you up myself tonight. You won’t even have to drive.”

  Grace smiled. Now she knew the surprise party was a go. Nayla hated driving. It was Grace who almost always had to pick Nayla up for any of their excursions. “If you say so.”

  “I say so,” Nayla said. “Unless you’ve got a hot date and don’t need sister girl anymore?”

  Grace thought of Tommy and how he failed to get her number. “Nope, no hot date. And I’ll always need sister girl. Whoever that is.”

  Nayla laughed, pleased. “So how did it go last night?”

  “Terrible.”

  “That bad?”

  “Uh hun.”

  “Did Cam show up?”

  “He showed up. Drunk and disgusted.”

  “Geez,” Nayla said. “What a turd. He knows how his mother hates when he makes a show of himself in public. In private, she couldn’t care less, but don’t pull that shit in public.”

  Grace laughed.

  “Just show up tonight,” Nayla said. “And I promise you a good time.”

  “Any time I’m with you and Jamie is a good time for me.”

  “I hear ya’, girl. And maybe after tonight, just maybe, you’ll realize, like I realized myself, that being man-less and childless at thirty ain’t as bad as it seem. At least flying solo means you don’t have to answer to anybody but yourself.”

  Grace hesitated. Tommy had all but said the same thing last night. Only he was talking about open relationships, which, apparently, he practiced. “And nobody,” Grace replied in the same manner that she had replied to Tommy, “has to answer to you.”

  “Exactly!” Nayla said as if it wasn’t an indictment the way it felt to Grace.

  But that conversation was long off her mind when she entered the revolving doors of Trammel and headed for the private elevators. She wore a Gabardine jacket and a high-waist pencil skirt, both dark grey, and a pair of six inch heels. Her brown hair was pushed up along the front and dropped down in waves of bounciness along her back. Her face was full and serious, and her bright brown eyes contrasted remarkably against her dark brown skin. With her nice height in heels and her briefcase swinging by her side, she projected an image of pure confidence as she strove across the lobby’s parquet floor.

  More than a few men gave her double takes as she smiled and spoke and joked with the security guard, and then made her way to the executive elevators.

  She didn’t realize Jared Graham, the head of Sales, and Penny Shavers, the head of Marketing, had been downstairs waiting on her until she turned her key to call up the private elevator. They came up behind her just as the doors opened.

  “Well, good morning,” Grace said as she, along with the twosome, entered the elevator.

  “You’ve got to help us, Grace,” Penny said.

  “Help you do what?”

  “Jillian wants to install cameras inside every work station,” Jared announced.

  “Cameras?”

  “Yes!” Jared replied as he pressed the button and the doors closed them in. “Including my office and Pen’s! I’m the head of Sales, Grace. Do you realize how much lying we have to do to sale this shit to businesses who could save more money with Fed-Ex and UPS? And she wants to film it?”

  “And I’m director of Marketing,” Penny said. “You know as well as I know that we . . . How can I put it?”

  “That you steal ideas from other companies?” Jared suggested.

  “We borrow from other companies,” Penny preferred. “We borrow their marketing strategies and then we put our own spin on it. But it’s a messy, borderline illegal process. And Jillian knows it! But she wants to film that, too. She’s out of her mind, Grace!”

  Grace nodded. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said, to their delight. They could always count on Grace to at least voice their concerns to Jillian.

  And then Jared added, as he always did: “How about dinner tonight?”

  “I don’t date co-workers,” Grace replied, as she always did.

  “Like hell! You dated Cam and he supposedly works here! That is, when he drags his ass out of some woman’s bed and bothers to show up.”

  “Ever dated someone that you later wondered what in the world were you thinking?” Grace asked him.

  Jared hesitated. “Is this a trick question?”

  “Just answer it.”

  “Yes, I’ve dated many people who I later look back and wonder what in san hell was I thinking.”

  “That’s Cam and me,” Grace said as the elevator doors binged open. “So using Cam Birch as an example will get you nowhere with me, bud.”

  Jared laughed.

  “Let’s get to work, guys,” Grace admonished as she stepped off of the elevator on the top floor of the ten-floor office building, and headed for her office. Her two managers stepped off too, thanked her for agreeing to voice their concerns to Jillian, and then headed for theirs.

  But Grace had barely rounded the reception desk before Jillian Birch came barreling out of her office, her two assistants in tow, as she announced she had a family emergency and Grace had to handle the meeting.

  “What meeting?” Grace asked as she watched Jillian tear past her in that whirlwind way she always carried herself.

  “With the union rep.”

  “The union rep?” Grace asked incredulously. “But Jillian they’re threatening to strike. Don’t you think you should be the one to handle this meeting?”

  “I have every confidence in your ability to do everything in your power to get him to see reason.”

  “But they might strike,” Grace said again with some urgency, in case her boss didn’t fully understand.

  Jillian stopped, turned around, and then
walked back up to Grace. “I have a family emergency,” she said. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “But we’re talking about our truckers walking off the job. This is vital.”

  “And my son isn’t? It’s Cameron. He’s gotten himself into a bit of a mess, and I’ve got to take care of it.”

  “He’s a grown man, but yeah, okay.”

  Jillian stared at Grace. Contempt dripped from her eyes. “You think you have it all figured out, don’t you? You’re young and smart and pretty as a picture and you figure you got it all together. Well wait until you’re fifty, darling, and not so pretty anymore. Wait until men start preferring twenty year olds to you. You just wait. Then the fact that your son is grown, if you’re fortunate to even have one since at the rate you’re going it’s doubtful, will mean nothing to you. Making certain that he’s all right and well cared for will be the very reason you get out of bed every morning, too.” Then a coldness flashed across her eyes. “Meet with the union rep. Resolve his concerns. Avert the strike. You’re chief of staff around here, for goodness sake. Start acting like it.” Jillian said this and then headed, once again, for the elevators.

  Grace exhaled as she always did when Jillian left a room. It was as if an earthquake had been shaking the building and scaring the life out of everybody and then, just like that, the calm returned. But that feeling of being through a storm was still there.

  Grace hesitated, flustered, and then walked around the reception desk to her office near the back of the corridor. Happy birthday to me, she thought as she went. She also figured she’d better school herself on the issues first before she met with anyone. Especially a union representative.

  But as soon as she entered her office and sat her briefcase on her desk, the intercom buzzed.

  “Good morning,” the secretary said into the intercom.

  “Good morning,” Grace replied.