Tommy Gabrini: The Grace Factor (11 page)

Grace knew exactly what he
meant.
 
She’d never seen Tommy so
determined.
 
Nor as concerned for her.

“In the meantime,” he said, “you and
Destiny will stay with me until my people track him down.”

Now Grace was concerned.
 
“You don’t think he would harm Destiny, do
you?”

Tommy’s expression moved to a graver
look.
 
“I pray not,” he said.
 
“But it’s not a chance we can take.”

Grace nodded immediately.
 
She understood that.

“I’m going to go downstairs and have
lunch with Destiny,” he said.
 
“You
finish your work up here.
 
And then,” he
said, rubbing her arms before letting her go, “we’re going home.”

Grace nodded her approval and Tommy
left.

She felt a chill as soon as he walked
away from her.
 
But she felt enormous
warmth too.
 
She wasn’t going to get her
hopes up.
 
She didn’t feel she could ever
deserve a second chance with a man like him.
 
Besides, she knew Liz was a shrewd woman.
 
She was going to try to get Tommy back.
 
And with her attributes, she might
succeed.
 
But Grace wasn’t thinking about
that right now.
 
She couldn’t afford to
think that way.
 
Tommy wanted her and
Destiny with him.
 
That was all she was
going to think about right now.
 
That was
all that mattered right now.

It was the strangest feeling in the
world for Grace when she walked into that home again.
 
Tommy gave it to her, so that Destiny
wouldn’t be uprooted from her home when she married Ed, but Ed couldn’t stay
there.
 
Too much of Tommy was in the air,
he said.
 
So they moved to the
suburbs.
 
But Grace remembered the home
as that welcoming place she lived in with Tommy and their baby.
 
It had been the only true home she’d ever had
in all of her adulthood.
 
But that was
before the divorce.
 
Today was her first
day back in years.

Tommy was carrying Destiny when the
threesome walked through the door, and the uniqueness of Grace’s presence in
his home wasn’t lost on him either.
 
He
sat Destiny down, but he kept his eyes on Grace.
 
It was sad to him that she felt like a
stranger in her own home.
 
And it was
still her home.
 
When they first married,
he put her name on the deed.
 
After the
divorce, her name remained on the deed.
 
But she was as awkward as a fish out of water.
  

“Mommy’s in here,” Destiny said,
realizing the oddity too.

Grace smiled and took her daughter’s
hand.
 
Destiny was a baby when she and
Tommy divorced.
 
“It’s been a long time
since Mommy has been in this house.
 
You’re right,” she said to her daughter.

“I’m in this house all the time,”
Destiny said.

Grace smiled.
 
“That’s right.”

“And daddy’s in this house all the
time.”

“Right.”

“But not with you.
 
Daddy’s in this house with other ladies.”

Other ladies?
 
More than one?
 
Grace wanted to ask if she meant Miss Liz
only, but she didn’t dare.
 
Tommy was a
single man with a massive sexual appetite.
 
He always had a massive one.
 
Liz
could have been the only woman who was satisfying that appetite, or she could
have been one of several.
 
That was not
her place to know, and she wasn’t about to make it her daughter’s place to keep
her informed.
 
Tommy took exceptional
care of Destiny.
 
That was all Grace
needed to know.
 
But she and Tommy did exchange
a glance.

“One thing for certain,” Grace said,
looking away from Tommy and at his elegant home.
 
“It hasn’t changed a bit.”

“I didn’t want to change what you did
to the place,” Tommy said.
 
“It was
exactly right just the way it was.”

Grace and Tommy exchanged another
glance as one of Tommy’s men came in carrying Grace’s two suitcases and sat
them in the foyer.
 
Sally, Destiny’s
primary nanny, came in too.
 

“Will there be anything further,
sir?” the man asked.

“No, thank you, that’ll be all,”
Tommy responded, and the man walked back out and closed the door.

Grace looked at Destiny.
 
“Since I haven’t been here in such a long
time, are you going to show me around?”

But Destiny seemed to have a
different idea in mind.
 
“Yes ma’am,” she
said, “I’ll show you around.
 
But I
wanted to play before dinner.
 
Daddy
pulled me out and I didn’t get a chance to go on the playground in school
today.
 
May I go on the playground before
dinner?”

Tommy’s backyard, though not the full
carnival he set up for Destiny’s birthday, was nonetheless filled with
merriment too.
 
“If it’s okay with your
father,” Grace said, “it’s okay with me.”

“Daddy, please,” Destiny said, her
beautiful eyes looking up at her father in doleful and innocent manipulation.

Tommy looked at Sally.
 
“Thirty minutes and then bring her back in,”
he ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Sally said, and took
Destiny’s hand to walk her toward the back.
 
But Destiny began running, with the nanny struggling to keep up, as they
made their way through the living room and toward the back patio door.

Tommy laughed and shook his
head.
 
“Our daughter is full of life,
Grace.
 
Full of life.”

“Yes, she is,” Grace said, smiling
too.
 
Then her smile slowly turned into a
look that was far more concerning.

Tommy saw it. “What is it, Grace?” he
asked her.
 
“Are you worried about Ed?”

Grace frowned.
 
“No,” she said as if the idea offended
her.
 
“Why would I worry about a man who
wants to use me and my daughter for his own ill-gotten gain, who punched me
like he didn’t give a damn about me ever, and who wants to kill the father of
my daughter?
 
I already feel like the
fool of fools for marrying that bastard.
 
I already feel like I’m the one who brought all of this misery on our
family to begin with.”

Tommy quickly placed his hand around
her narrow waist.
 
“Don’t blame
yourself,” he said to her.
 
“I told you
this is not your fault.
 
Ed presented a
great image.
 
Even I couldn’t find dirt
on him.”

Grace looked at Tommy.
 
“But you knew he was slimy all along.
 
Didn’t you?”

“I had my suspicions.
 
Yes.
 
But at Destiny’s party, I don’t know.
 
I saw a desperation in him that I didn’t see before.
 
It concerned me.
 
You and Destiny were living with the
joker.
 
It concerned me mightily.
 
I all but told my men they would be fired if
they didn’t dig up the dirt on Ed.
 
Because I knew he had some dirt.
 
It was just deeply buried.”

Grace wanted to lean against Tommy.
 
His presence always made her feel so warm and
protected.
 
But just because he and Liz
were on the outs, she wasn’t going to just worm her way back in.
 
She moved from his grasp altogether.

“I’d better get changed and get
started with dinner,” she said.

“I have an entire staff to take care
of dinner, Grace,” Tommy said.
 
He was
disappointed that she was no longer in his grasp, but he understood why she
moved away.
 
“You don’t have to cook
anything.”

“I know I don’t have to,” she said,
“but I want to.
 
I make it my business to
cook Destiny a healthy, well-balanced meal every school night.
 
I let her cheat a little on the
weekends.
 
She get to have pizza and hot
dogs and all of that good stuff on the weekends.
 
But never on a school night.
 
So please don’t call in your kitchen
staff.
 
I’ll feel even more out of place
if I can’t cook for her.”

Tommy wanted to tell Grace how much
he appreciated the time and attention she gave to their daughter, and the
tremendous care she gave to her, but he already felt he was overdoing it.
 
He already felt he was too happy to have her
back in his home again.
 
And he couldn’t
understand why.
 
Why was he so happy?
 
He was barely out of the pot with Liz.
 
There was no way he should want to jump right
back in with Grace.
 
That would be
crazy.
 
But he was happy to have her with
him.
 
He couldn’t deny the fact that
having Grace and Destiny under his roof again, under his care and protection,
made him a very happy man.
 
But
verbalizing such feelings were out of the question.
 
“Let me show you to your room,” he said
instead, as he grabbed her luggage and began to walk across the foyer, and up
the stairs.

When they made it onto the second
floor landing and Tommy began to head, not toward the guestrooms on the
opposite wing, but toward the master bedroom, Grace’s movements slowed.
 
They were going in the wrong direction.
 
But she didn’t speak.
 
She allowed Tommy to lead the way.
 
But when they arrived at the double doors of
the master bedroom, and she followed Tommy in, she had to make certain that he
understood the boundaries.
 
“Tommy,” she
said, “I can sleep in one of the guestrooms.”

“No,” Tommy responded, putting her
luggage down, “I’m going to sleep in the guest room.”

But that made no sense to Grace.
 
“You don’t have to give up your bed.
 
Why would you give up your bed?”
   

“Because other than Destiny’s room,
which will be occupied by Destiny, this room, with this bed, is the best room
in the house.
 
You get my bed.
 
You get my room.
 
I’ll sleep in the guestroom.”

Grace felt such a strong flood of
emotion for Tommy at that very moment that it almost choked her.
 
He had a myriad of reasons to despise
her.
 
But he didn’t.
 
To her continual surprise, he still cared
about her.
 
“Thank you, Tommy,” she said
to him.

Tommy gave her that smile he seemed
to only display in tender moments.
 
It
was a smile that didn’t show his charm as much as it showed his age.
 
His experience.
 
His fears.
 
“You’re welcome,” he said.
 
“But
get you some rest before you try to tackle dinner.
 
I’m going to take care of a little business
in my office downstairs.
 
Call me if you
need anything at all.”

“I will.
 
And thanks again.”

Tommy smiled again and then left,
closing the door behind him.

Grace felt all kinds of emotions when
that door closed.
 
This was the room she
shared with Tommy in marriage.
 
This was
the room he undoubtedly shared with many other women after their marriage.
 
Including Liz, a woman she liked.
 
But the oddest thing, as Grace walked around
that big, grand bedroom, wasn’t the presence of some other woman, not even her
own presence.
 
It was all Tommy.
 
She could sense Tommy in every corner of that
room.
 
She could even smell his cologne
scent, his maleness.
 
Him
.

And the sensuality of it.
 
Just looking at that bed alone reminded Grace
of all kinds of sensual memories.
 
Tommy
was the best sexual partner she’d ever had before.
 
Bar none.
 
He would do things to her body that no man had ever done, or could ever
do.
 
The kind of expert handling that
would make her want to holler with joy.
 
One night, he ate her so hard and so long that it made him cum.
 
She had never experienced such a thing in her
entire life.
 
Just giving her oral made
him
cum.
 
Grace remembered how pleased she was by that.
 
She remembered how pleased Tommy was.

Just thinking about Tommy’s big,
naked body, and his huge cock inside of her, caused her vagina to tingle.
 
And for a sense of shame to creep over
her.
 
He wasn’t hers anymore, what was
she thinking?
 
Living in the past, or
dreaming about reigniting the past, was always risky and almost always fraught
with failure.
 
She quickly erased such
thoughts from her mind.

Until she sat on the side of the bed,
pleased to have a few moments of rest, and looked at the only picture in the
room.
 
It was a picture frame on his
nightstand, and with a picture of Destiny smiling with her little black baby
dolls.
 
Grace picked up the frame and
smiled too.
 
Their daughter was so
photogenic, she thought.
 
But when she
went to sit the frame back on the night stand, she could feel an unevenness
beneath it.
 
She realized she was sitting
it in the wrong spot on the stand.
 
Because of the size of the obstruction, it appeared to her to be
somebody’s picture beneath the scarf.
 
She expected to find a picture of Liz, or of one of his other ladies of
whom he still had fond memories.
 
Maybe
the person would be naked.
 
Maybe
not.
 
But Grace was too curious not to
take a peep.