Romancing Tommy Gabrini (33 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Tommy
was still behind the bar when Jimmy Mack returned to the front room.
 
“They’re coming,” he announced.

Tommy
grabbed the drinks and began making his way to Grace.
 
He leaned toward Jimmy and lowered his
voice.
 
“They’re fucking, aren’t they?”
he asked as he walked past him.

“You
know it,” Jimmy replied.
 
“Dad gets mad
at me for interrupting them, but what else was I supposed to do?”

As a
man who had a ferocious sexual appetite himself, Tommy had a ready answer for
Jimmy.
 
“Wait until they stop fucking,”
he suggested.

Jimmy,
however, was perplexed.
 
“But you had
arrived,” he said.

Tommy
smiled.
 
Jimmy, Reno, and Trina always
treated his arrival in Vegas as some kind of major event, which pleased and
embarrassed him.
 
He always felt as if he
should come with some trick up his sleeve or some circus routine to prove
worthy of their high regard.
 
But he
never came with anything.
 
And they still
honored his visits.

He
walked over to Grace and handed her one of the two drinks in his hand.

“Thanks,”
she said.
 
“What kind?”

Tommy
took the seat beside her and leaned back.
 
“Gin Rickey,” he said.
 
“I make
the best.”

She
tasted it, and agreed.
 
“It is good,” she
said.
 
“But don’t you think it’s a little
early to be, you know, drinking?”

“Jimmy,”
Tommy said and Jimmy Mack walked toward Grace.

“Uncle
Tommy always says it’s never too early for a Gin Rickey.”

Grace
smiled.
 
“He has you trained.”

“Like
a motherfuck,” Jimmy Mack said and Grace looked at him with surprise.
 
Tommy laughed.
 
Most ladies thought Jimmy was so sweet and
innocent.
 
And he was.
 
But he was so much more.

“Go
get Dommi, Jim,” Tommy told him.
 
“I want
to see that ugly mug again.”

Jimmy
smiled and went to the nursery.
 
When he
came back with the beautiful little baby, Tommy grinned.

“Look
at that prince,” he said as he sat his glass on the cocktail table and took the
sleeping child in his arms.

Grace
smiled, too, and looked at him.
 
“Oh,
he’s precious.”

“Isn’t
he?” Tommy asked.
 
“And look at those
eyes.
 
Look just like his Uncle
Tommy.
 
“Cause if you would have come out
looking like your daddy,” Tommy said in baby talk, “you would have been scaring
us to death, wouldn’t you Dommi, wouldn’t you?”

Although
Jimmy Mack laughed out loud, Grace was concerned.
 
All she’d heard about Reno was substantially
negative.
 
He was a mob boss, sort of,
who would bite even if you barked at him wrong, and now he was so frightfully
ugly looking that it was a relief his own son didn’t favor him?
 
She knew they could have been playing, but there
was usually some truth to play.

But
she stopped thinking about Reno because of the scene right before her.
 
Tommy was holding the baby and playing with
the baby as if he was a natural father.
 
That pleased her no end.
 
She had
a pretty good idea what kind of husband Tommy would make: a great one, if she
had to say so herself.
 
But she had no
clue about his parenting possibilities.
 
Seeing him with the youngest Gabrini gave her great reassurance.

But
that focus on Tommy’s cousin returned when she heard a male’s voice, a voice
laced with a thick Italian-Jersey accent.

“Tommy,
my man!” the voice could be heard saying jovially from just behind the sofa.

Grace’s
heart pounded when she heard that voice.
 
Tommy handed the baby back to Jimmy Mack, rose swiftly, and hurried to
the sound of the voice.

“So
you finally brought your sorry ass around,” Reno said as he and Tommy shook and
then hugged.
 
Grace sat her drink on the
table and stood up, too.
 

The
man Grace assumed was Reno had both hands on Tommy’s upper arms and was looking
him over.
 
“You look good, Tommy.
 
Dapper as usual.
 
We should all look as good as you look when
we get as old as you are.”

Tommy
laughed and pushed Reno’s arms away from him.
 
“Get the fuck outer here,” he said.
 
“I’m still trying to catch up to you.”

“Ha!”
Reno said and began moving past Tommy and toward Grace.

“This
must be your lady friend,” Reno said as he approached.

“It
is,” Tommy said, following him.

Reno
extended his hand.
 
“I’m Reno, how you
doing?”

“I’m
doing good,” Grace said, shaking his hand.
 
“I’m Grace.”

“Yes,
you are,” Reno said with a smile and glanced at Tommy.
 
He approved, Tommy thought fondly, although
Grace wasn’t sure what that glance was about.

“Have
a seat,” Reno said to her and she sat back down on the sofa.
 
“I see my son’s gotten you guys something to
drink.”

“Your
son got us your other son,” Tommy said.
 
“We got our own drinks.”

“Good,”
Reno said, sitting down in the chair flanking the sofa.
 
“He doesn’t need to be waiting on you,
anyway.
 
You’re family.
 
You wait on yourself.”

Tommy
smiled and shook his head.
 
“Your logic
sometimes, Reno, astounds me.”
 
He sat
down beside Grace.
 

Reno
reached for his baby, and when Jimmy Mack handed the baby over, he smiled.
 

“He’s
great, Ree,” Tommy said.
 
“Just a
beautiful baby.”

“He’s
a gift,” Reno said.
 
“A gift from
God.
 
And I cherish every second of that
gift.”

Grace’s
heart warmed just hearing Reno talk.
 
He
seemed so contradictory.
 
He was
gorgeous, which surprised her.
 
She had expected
him to look like Tony Soprano or some other equally husky, Italian mob
type.
 
But he was just as great looking
as Tommy.
 
But to her there was something
far more fierce and unhinged about Reno.
 
His thick brown hair was slicked back, it apparently had been wet, and
his blue eyes weren’t soft and inviting like Tommy’s, but hard and cold.
 
She could see him extracting revenge all day
long.
 
She could see him lose his cool at
the drop of a hat.
 

Yet
he spoke of his child so lovingly.
 
And
even Jimmy Mack, his older, teenage son, sat on the floor beside his chair, as
if he loved being around his father, too.
 

And
something else Grace noticed that Tommy had not bothered to mention: both of
Reno’s sons looked as if they were half black.
 
Which meant, since they had different mothers, those mothers apparently
were black, too, or at least had something African going on.
 
And that fact alone made Grace very anxious
to see Katrina Gabrini.
 

“There
she is,” Tommy said with a smile and Grace and Jimmy Mack looked too.
 
Tommy stood up as Trina entered the living
room.
 
Grace stood, too, as Tommy kissed
Trina on the lips and then pulled her into his arms.
 

“So
good to see you again, Tommy,” Trina said as she held him tightly.
 
“I missed you.”

“I
missed you too,” Tommy said.
 
“I even
missed knucklehead over there,” he added, nodding toward Reno.
 
“Which probably means,” he said as they
stopped embracing, “that I need to have my own head examined.”

“Oh,
stop,” Trina said smilingly.
 
“But it’s
great to see you for real, Tommy.
 
You
keep getting better looking every time I see you.
 
Looking dapper as ever.”

Reno
looked at Grace.
 
“Did he ever tell you
they call him that?” he asked her.

Grace,
who was nervously awaiting her introduction to Trina, looked over at Reno.
 
“Sorry?”

“Tommy.
 
Did he ever tell you that they call him
Dapper Tom?”

Grace
smiled.
 
“No, he didn’t.”

“They
do.
 
All the wise guys call him
that.
 
Don’t mess with Dapper Tom.
 
He’ll smile in your face, then get you in an
alley and cut out your tongue.”

Grace
looked at him with alarm.
 
Tommy and
Trina laughed.

“Don’t
listen to my husband,” Trina said as she approached Grace. “He’s always just
kidding around.”

“Yeah,”
Tommy said as he made his way back beside Grace, “he’s filled with sick,
perverted jokes.”

Reno
laughed.

“Let
me introduce you to Reno’s by far better half,” Tommy said.
 
“Grace, this is Katrina Gabrini, although we
all call her Trina or Tree.
 
And Tree,
this is Grace McKinsey.”

Trina
was impressed with how sweetly Tommy said Grace’s name.
 
That was something.
 
“Hi,” Trina said.
 
Grace extended her hand but Trina would have
none of it.
 
She hugged her, instead.
 
“So nice to meet you, Grace.”

“You
too.
  
I’ve heard wonderful things about
you.”

“Don’t
believe a word of it,” Reno said and Trina pushed him.

Grace
didn’t quite know how to take Reno.
 
They
said he was full of jokes but his facial expressions belied that.
 
There just wasn’t anything easygoing about
the man.
 
Or maybe she was prejudging
him.
 
Maybe the fact that Tommy said Reno
had mob connections was driving her distrust of him.
 
She wasn’t sure.
 
But the jury, as far as she was concerned,
was still out on him.

But
not so much on Trina.
 
She was nice.
 
Grace could see that right off.
 
And, as she had expected, she was a beautiful
black woman with big, hazel eyes.
 
Her
vision of Reno’s wife, when Tommy told her about his background, was that she’d
be a tough Italian female with mob connections of her own.
 
But then again, she also had visualized Reno
as a Tony Soprano type: husky, not at all attractive, and on the racist
side.
 
She appeared to be wrong, so far,
on all fronts.

After
Grace and Tommy sat back down on the sofa, Trina took the baby out of Reno’s
arms and then sat down, with the baby now in her arms, on his lap.
 
Tommy was warmed by the sight.
 
Reno and Trina together, and Reno’s two sons,
one on their lap and one seated on the floor beside them, was a sight to behold
to him.
 
Nothing, Tommy felt, could have
shown how tight a family could be than that image before him now.
 
He placed his arm around Grace and crossed
his legs.
 
It was just the two of them
now, but in time, when the right time came, he wanted to have a full house,
too.

“Tell
us about yourself, Grace,” Trina said. “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m
the chief of staff to the CEO of Trammel,” Grace said.

“What’s
Trammel?” Trina asked.

“It’s
a transport company in Seattle,” Reno said before she could.
 
“Tommy owns a piece of it.”

Trina
smiled.
 
“What don’t you own, Tommy?” she
asked.

“The PaLargio,”
Tommy said without hesitation, and they all laughed.

“But
about Trammel,” Trina continued.
 
“Is it
a transport company like Fed-Ex and UPS?”

“It’s
like that, yes,” Grace said, “but---”

“But
what?” Reno asked.

“But
. . .” Grace thought about it. “I guess we’re exactly like Fed-Ex and UPS.”