Tommy Gabrini 3: Grace Under Fire (The Gabrini Men Series) (8 page)

Grace
shook his hand.
 
“Okay then,” she
said.
 
“Welcome aboard.
 
I’ll have my Human Resources people contact
you with the hiring packet and start date, etcetera.”

“Very
good,” Brad said.
 
“And thank-you.”

“Thank-you
for accepting,” Grace said, as she began to move away from him.

He
watched her as she left.
 
Her dress was
so skin tight that it revealed in stark detail the outline of her wondrously
tight ass.
 
The pleasure was going to be
all his, he thought, as he continued to watch her leave.
 

It
wasn’t long, however, before Grace was accosted by yet another good looking
man.
 
But there was something desperate
about this one.
 
“Nice party,” the guy
said as he approached Grace.
 
“I’m
pleasantly surprised.”

“So
am I,” Grace admitted.

“I
expected boring in the extreme, but it’s not boring at all.”
 
Then he extended his hand.
 
“I’m Randy, by the by.”

Grace
smiled and shook his hand.
 
“Grace.”

“Your
name certainly fits you.”
 
He looked down
the length of her.
 
“In more ways than
one.”

Grace
ignored his flirtatiousness.
 
She was
used to it now.
 
“Have you known Jake and
Edith long?”

“Jake,
yes.
 
We played football together in
college.
 
What about you?”

“Not
long, no.
 
I met them through my
husband.”

He
nodded.
 
She expected him to ask who her
husband was, but he didn’t.
 
Many of
these womanizing wealthy men would rather not know, undoubtedly, she thought,
so they could deny knowing later.

“Let
me refresh your drink,” he said, taking her half-empty glass.
 
He took a drink off of the tray of a passing
waiter, and replaced it with Grace’s half-empty glass.

“Thank-you,”
Grace said, accepting the drink.

“One
thing I hate is a woman without her liquor.”

Grace
laughed.
 
“Why am I not surprised?” she
asked jovially.
 
As she spoke to a woman
who came over to say hello, Randy took the opportunity to check her out from
head to toe.
 
Especially her full
breasts.
 
He seemed fascinated by her
breasts.

Sal
noticed the fascination as he looked at the twosome from across the room.
 
He looked at Tommy, to see if he saw it too,
but Tommy was too busy laughing and talking with his own group of admirers, to
so much as glance Grace’s way.
 
A robbery
was taking place, Sal thought, and Tommy was asleep at the switch.

But
Sal thought wrong.
 
Tommy was wide
awake.
 
He was laughing and talking with
his circle of friends, but he was also keeping an eye out for his wife.
 
Nobody would know it.
 
Tommy was a master at undetected
surveillance, and he was watching her closely.
 
He even watched as Grace said her goodbyes to Randy and moved away from
him, and how Randy made his way, a few minutes later, back by her side.
 
And when he would make her laugh, he would
touch her, or brush against her ever so gently.
 
So gently, so subtle, that Grace wouldn’t even notice it.
 
But Tommy noticed it.
 
He kept his distance, talked with his
friends, and noticed.

After
several minutes of this, Grace finally broke away from Randy’s presence again,
to go join a group of ladies in the parlor.
 
Randy then, realizing he could not possibly follow her there, made his
way to the bathroom.
 
It was then that
Tommy calmly excused himself from the crowd, placed his drink on a passing
waiter’s tray, and headed for the restroom also.

He
waited, in the hall, for Randy to flush and then unlock the door.
 
But just as Randy was about to come out of
the restroom, Tommy bum-rushed him and forced him back in, closing and locking
the door behind him.

“What
are you doing?” Randy asked hysterically.
 
“Let me out of here.”
 
Randy moved
to leave, but Tommy was blocking the door.

“What
are you doing?” Randy asked again.
 
“What
the fuck are you doing?”

Tommy
stood at the door, with his arms folded in front of him.
 
He was as cool as Randy was hysterical.
 
“Do you know me?” he asked him.

“I’ve
never seen you before in my life!”

“You
know Grace.”

“What,
the black girl?
 
Yeah, we spoke.
 
I spoke to her.”

“You
did more than speak to her,” Tommy pointed out.

“I
spoke to her, that’s all I did!
 
We
talked!”
 

“Who
do you think you’re yelling at?”

Randy
settled back down. “All I did was talk a little to the lady.
 
That’s all I did.”

“That
lady is my wife,” Tommy said.
 

Then
he looked at Randy with such a chilling look that Randy’s heart began to
race.
 
“Touch her again,” Tommy said,
“and she’ll be the last woman you touch.
 
Go near her again and she’ll be the last human being you walk near.
 
Do I make myself clear?”

Randy
swallowed hard.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“I get it.”

 
“You don’t cop feels on her.
 
You don’t undress her with your eyes.
 
You stay away from her.
 
Understood?”

“Yeah,
yeah, I get it.”

But
Tommy could see the relief in his eyes.
 
He didn’t get a damn thing.
 
Tommy
therefore grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and rammed his head down into
the toilet.
 
The man was scrambling to
break free, but Tommy was too strong.

“Now
do you understand?”

“I
understand,” the man said in an underwater, gurgling voice.
 
“I understand!”

Tommy
pulled his head back up.
 
The man, now on
his knees, gasped for air and wiped his toilet water drenched face with his
hand.

Tommy
stood erect.
 
“Now get the fuck outta
here,” he ordered, and the man crawled, then stood up, then took off out of
there.

Tommy
remained there, wiping his hands with his handkerchief, knowing that Grace
would call this an overreaction too.
 
But
he wasn’t about to allow her angst to stop him from doing his job.
 
A man touching his wife was the overreaction
in his book, and that man had to understand that he could go there if he wanted
to, but he was going to regret it.

Sal
was tossing back another swig of wine when he saw Randy hurry back into the thick
of the crowd.
 
Then he saw Tommy
following shortly after.
 
He smiled
because he knew the man had been dealt with.

But
later, as the evening wore on and the women returned from parlor, Sal began to
actually enjoy himself.
 
Because he kept
looking at Randy.
 
Because every time
Grace was within a few feet of him, the guy would take off in the opposite
direction.
 
Tommy had gotten to the poor
sod.
 
And Sal loved it.
 
“That’s what I’m talking about,” he said, and
drained more liquor.

The
ride back in the limousine was a quiet one.
 
Grace was leaned against Tommy, half asleep, and Sal was sitting on the
seat across from them, completely asleep.
 
Tommy, the only one still fully awake, had his I-phone out and was
reviewing his numerous texts.
 

But
after they dropped Sal off at the Wingate, the luxury apartment complex that
Sal not only lived in but also owned, the limo took the scenic route home.
 
That was because Tommy, as soon as Sal was
out, had pressed down the private screen.
 
Preston, the chauffeur who had been with Tommy for years, knew exactly
what that meant.
 
He was to drive, and
continue driving, until the screen was pressed back up.

“Get
on my lap,” Tommy said to his wife as he tossed his cell phone on the seat Sal
had vacated.

Grace
smiled, waking up now, and straddled him, facing him, on his lap.
 
Then she wrapped her arms around his
neck.
 
“What you say we go dancing
tomorrow night?” she asked him.

He
placed his arms around her waist and looked into her bright brown eyes.
 
“Can’t tomorrow,” he said, kissing her on her
naturally puckered lips.
 
“I’ve got to be
in Chicago tomorrow.
 
Remember?”

“Is
that trip tomorrow?”

Tommy
smiled.
 
“It is.”

“I
think you’re out of town more than you’re in town, Tommy.”

“Can’t
be helped.
 
Not yet.”

“But
do you have to buy every business that’s a good deal?”

“If I
expect to stay competitive, yes.
 
But I’m
not going to purchase any business.
 
I’m
going to assist with a security issue.
 
Meetings and more meetings.”

 
“Like today,” Grace said.
 
“What was that meeting about?”

“Some
fools are of the opinion that I would make a very good mayor of Seattle.”

“Politics?”
Grace smiled, and then nodded. “You know I could see that, Tommy.”

“Well
I’m glad you can, because I can’t.”

“You
told them no?”

“I
told them no, then I told them hell no.”

Grace
laughed.
 
“But surely they did their
homework if they had the nerve to approach you.
 
Don’t they know about your family’s mob ties?”

“They
knew.
 
But they figured my father’s
reputation, since he was police chief when he died, could overcome all of the
negative stuff.”

Grace
was aghast.
 
“Your
father
?
 
But
he
was the negative stuff!”

“I
know,” Tommy agreed.
 
“That’s the irony
of it.
 
Reno’s old man was terrible, but
at least he took his craziness out on other people, not his own family.”

Grace
stared at him.
 
“How’s everything going
with you, Tommy?
 
I mean really?
 
And how are those sessions going?”

Tommy
didn’t immediately respond.
 
But then he
responded.
 
“They’re going,” he said.

“You
don’t think they’re helping at all, do you?”

“I
think a terrible thing happened to me.
 
My father took an unhealthy, sick, perverted liking to me and abused
me.
 
And I know I needed to talk it out,
and we did talk it out.
 
Those sessions
with you, I think, helped the most.
 
But
those therapists, they want to keep you the victim.
 
And that, I cannot abide.
 
It was a bad thing that happened, but at some
point you have to move the hell on.
 
There’s nothing I can do about it.
 
And I’m not going to wallow in it.
 
I talked it out, I know it wasn’t my fault on any level, end of
discussion as far as I’m concerned.”

“So
what you’re saying,” Grace said, “is that you stopped going to the therapist?”

“I
still go.”

Grace
smiled.
 
“You still go?
 
But why, if you don’t think it’s doing you
any good?”

“I go
for you,” he said.
 
“To make sure, if I
still have damage that needs repairing, I’m getting it repaired.”

“Then
maybe,” Grace said, rubbing Tommy’s coat lapel, “we can consider
children.”
 
She said this and looked into
his eyes.

Tommy
didn’t blink, but a storminess came over his entire face.
 
“I want to be the father of your children,”
he said, “you know I do.
 
Nobody on the
face of this earth is going to be the mother of my children but you.
 
And I know I’m not getting any younger.
 
Sal reminds me of that every chance he
gets.”
 
Then he frowned.
 
“But I have to make sure first.”