Romancing Tommy Gabrini (8 page)

But
for some reason he couldn’t just let her go.
 
The main reason, undoubtedly, was because of her smoking body.
 
But he wondered if another reason was because
of
her
.
 
And the fact that she didn’t go in for casual
sex.
 
And the fact that she wasn’t like
the women he was normally attracted to.
 

“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.”