TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART (7 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

Monday
morning and the limo stopped in front of Trammel Transport Corporate
Headquarters building.
 
Grace and Tommy
sat quietly on the backseat.
 
He looked
at her.

“You
okay?” he asked her.

She
hesitated, as if she had to think about it, but then nodded her head.
 
“I’m okay.”

He
studied her face.
 
It was a pretty face,
but a concerned one too.
 
“It’ll work
out, Grace.”

“I
know.
 
And I feel I’m ready for
this.
 
The idea that I can take a company
I love and make the kind of changes it needs to be successful again, is a
challenge I know I’ll enjoy.
 
But I can’t
deny the obvious either,” she said as she looked at him.
 
“I’m a little worried about how Jillian will
react.
 
Her dead husband started Trammel
all those years ago.
  
She’s going to
declare that it’s still her company and who am I to try and take it.”

“I
understand that,” Tommy said.
 
“Clive was
a close friend of mine, and you’re right, Jillian will point that out time and
time again.
 
But that’s precisely why
she’s going to be told at the same time everybody else on the board is
told.
 
That’ll give her less opportunity
to show her ass.”

“Oh,
she’s going to show it regardless,” Grace pointed out.
 
“She plays Miss Sweet and Nice around you,
but around me and everybody else who’s not up there with her, she’s a
for real
bitch.
 
She’ll believe until the day she dies that
Trammel is hers.”

“And
that’s why you make it clear right away.
 
To all of them.
 
Trammel is owned
by the shareholders.
 
You own a majority
of the shares now, fifty-eight percent of the shares to be precise.
 
You now own Trammel.
 
Jilly can believe anything she wants.
 
You stick to the facts.”

Grace
looked especially hard at him.
 
“You’re
going to remain as chairman though, right?”
 
Then she smiled.
 
“As if you don’t
have enough to do already with your own business obligations.”

Tommy
smiled weakly and kissed her on the lips.
 
“I’ll stay for now,” he said.
 
“But eventually you’re going to replace me, you understand?
 
Once you get fully acclimated to your new
role, you aren’t going to want me breathing down your neck telling you how to
run your company.”

“It’s
your company too.”

“No,
Grace, it’s not.
 
It’s yours, you hear
me?
 
Not mine, not Jilly’s.
 
Yours.
 
Get used to it.”

Grace
smiled again and leaned closer against him.
 
“Yes, sir,” she said playfully.
 

Tommy
held her tighter, and kissed her hair.
 
But it was going to be a daunting task.
 
They both knew it.
 
Yesterday she
was nothing more than Jillian’s chief of staff.
 
Today she was about to become CEO, which would make her Jillian’s
boss.
 
She was in for it, and they both
knew it.

“What
is this meeting about, Jilly?” one of the board members asked when Jillian
Birch walked into the top floor boardroom at Trammel Transport.
 
“I was supposed to be in Boston today, but I
get a call for this emergency meeting.”

“Not
my call,” Jillian said as she made her way to the head of the table on the back
end.
  
Tommy, as chairman of the board,
always sat at the head of the table on the front end.
 
Which Jillian didn’t like one bit.
 
But because Trammel often needed that
infusion of cash Tommy gave just so they could stay afloat, she never objected
either.
 
And although Tommy did own the
single most chunk of shares of Trammel at forty percent, Jillian’s thirty-seven
percent, coupled with her son Cameron’s five percent, made her, at least as
Jillian saw it, the undeniable head of Trammel.
  

“You
didn’t call this meeting?” another member of the board asked.

“Tommy
called it,” Jillian said as she sat down.
 
“And what is it about?
 
Don’t ask
me.
 
I have no idea.”
 

She
pulled her compact out of her purse and began applying more lipstick and makeup
to her surgically enhanced lips and cheekbones.
 
She also began fluffing her thinning blonde hair as if she was preparing
for a night out rather than a board meeting.
 
But she couldn’t stop thinking about Tommy Gabrini.
 
The level of disrespect that man showed to
her sometimes, she thought angrily as she brushed her face with rapid strokes,
her pasty hand now filled with liver spots and wrinkles.
 
That was why she was so perturbed when one of
Tommy’s assistants informed her late last night that he was holding a board
meeting this morning that required her attendance.
 
Required
her attendance, the girl said.
 
The least
he could have done, it seemed to Jillian, was to notify her himself if it was
that important.
 

But
he never did.
 
Every meeting he ever held
at Trammel was relayed to her by one of his assistants.
 
He might have been the head honcho at the
mammoth Gabrini Corporation, where a company like Trammel would be too small
for him to even consider acquisitioning, but Jillian was head honcho at
Trammel.
 
Yet Tommy never, it seemed to
her, respected that fact.

 
After fielding more
what’s it all about, Jilly
questions, Jillian and the rest of the
board finally looked up to see Tommy Gabrini walking through the door.
 
All of them, except Jillian, stood to their
feet when their chairman walked in.
 
The
pretty young black woman they all knew as Jillian’s chief of staff, walked in
with him.

Jillian
found it particularly odd when Tommy escorted Grace to the seat at the head of
the table.
 
She knew they were dating
now, to her great disappointment.
 
She
had hoped that Grace and her son Cameron would eventually marry and then Grace
would add her ten percent shares to Jillian and Cam’s forty-two, consolidating
Jilly’s power.
 
But when Grace took up
with Tommy, Jillian knew that was the end of that dream.
 
But why would Tommy have her attending a
board meeting?
 
She wasn’t a member of
the board!

“Good
morning,” Tommy said.
 
“Have a seat,
please.”
 

Everybody
sat back down.
 
Grace sat down too.
 
Tommy remained standing.

“I’ll
be brief,” he said, “since I have another meeting to attend with my own board
of directors.”
 
They all laughed because
they fully understood the difference between Trammel’s quaint board of
directors, and the board of an international conglomerate like the Gabrini
Corporation.
 

“As
you all know,” Tommy continued, “I came onboard at Trammel several years ago
when Clive passed away.
 
The business was
floundering at that time, about to close its doors, and I therefore brought the
majority of the shares being offered for sale to keep the business viable.
 
I was also appointed board chairman, although
I would have preferred not.”
 
They
laughed again.
 
“As all of you know,”
Tommy continued.
 
“And Jillian replaced
Clive as CEO.
 
However, I called this
meeting because I wanted to notify each and every one of you in person of a
major change in the hierarchy of this organization.
 
Effective immediately, Grace McKinsey, whom I
think you all know, is now the majority shareholder of Trammel Transport.”

Every
eye in the room immediately flew, not to Grace, but to Jillian.
 

But
Jillian was staring at Tommy.
 
“What do
you mean she’s the majority shareholder?” she asked.
 
“I beg your pardon.
 
I’m the majority shareholder.
 
Cam and I own the majority of the shares in
Trammel.”

“As
of right now, Grace owns fifty-eight percent of the shares,” Tommy said to
amazed looks from the members.
 

Jillian
stood to her feet, her face a mask of umbrage and outrage.
 
“Are you insane?” she asked Tommy.
 
“That’s impossible!
 
How can she own fifty-eight percent?”

Tommy
started to explain, but Grace touched his hand.
 
If Jillian was ever going to respect her as boss, she had to start
now.
 

Grace
looked Jillian dead in the eyes.
 
“Thanks
to my father, who once served as executive vice president of Trammel before his
death, I inherited ten percent stake in this company.”

“That’s
old news,” Jillian said dismissively.
 
“Why are you rehashing old, nothing news?”

Grace,
however, refused to get knocked off her game.
 
“Tommy has given me his forty-eight percent shares,” she went on.
 
“Couple his forty-eight with my ten, then you
do the math.
 
That makes me majority
shareholder.”

“Forty-eight
percent?” Jillian asked with a disgusted look on her face. “What forty-eight
percent?
 
Tommy doesn’t have forty-eight
percent to give!
 
He only owns forty
percent himself, what are you talking about?”

Again
Tommy was about to explain, but again Grace touched him on his arm.
 
Tommy inwardly smiled and moved aside, over
by the window sill.
 
He, like everybody
else in the room, watched Grace.
 
She was
nervous as hell.
 
He could tell by the
way her small hands gripped the arms of her arch-top chair.
 
And although she was thirty years old, she
always looked so young to him.
 
Especially now, as her beautiful eyes appeared so large that they
glistened like glass.
 
It was as if she
was amazed by the view; as if she was amazed to be at the head of the table
when she wasn’t even allowed in the room just a day ago.
 
She looked closer in age to a woman of
twenty, rather than a seasoned, thirty year old.
 

It
was for that reason, because she always seemed so young and sweet and innocent
to Tommy, that he had hesitated turning the reins of Trammel over to her.
 
He had planned to do it before last week, but
couldn’t pull the trigger.
 
Not because
he didn’t think she could ultimately handle it, but because he didn’t think he
could handle anybody mistreating Grace in any way, or Grace having to deal with
that mistreatment.
 
He didn’t want her to
become like them.
 
He didn’t want her
jaded and sullied and bloodied with life’s smut.
 
He didn’t want her to lose her sweetness.

Grace
was his heart.
 
She was becoming precious
to him in a way that no other human being had ever become.
 
And he felt so protective of her.
 
Overly protective.
 
Almost possessive.
 
She was his woman now.
 
His responsibility.
 
She was the one.
 
And he wanted her safe from any harm.

But
he knew he also had to let go.
 
He knew
his best friend Reno, and Reno’s wife Trina, and even his brother Sal Luca were
right.
 
He had to stop babying Grace.
 
If he respected her the way he wanted others
to respect her, he had to stop babying her.

So he
stood back, folded his arms, and allowed her to handle her business.
 
Just so long as they all knew he had her
back.
 
Just as long as they all knew that
harming her would be the exact same thing as harming him.
 

And
if that happened, Tommy thought as he watched Grace, they’d better be prepared
for the consequences.
 

But
as he watched her, he knew she was going to be just fine.
 
Because she was far more determined than she
was nervous.
 
That showed clearer on her
serious, brown face than anything else.
 
Because this had to work.
 
This
was a dream come true for Grace, a chance for her to own her own company, and
Tommy knew she was going to do everything in her power to prove those board
members wrong.
 
She was going to make
this work.