Tommy Gabrini: The Grace Factor (15 page)

“Destiny!” Nancy Morton said as
Destiny ran up on her porch and she embraced her vigorously.

“Hey, Grandma,” Destiny said, as she
returned the embrace.
 
She was always
thrilled to see her grandmother.
 
Then
she stopped embracing her and looked at her.
 
“Did you get it?” she asked.

“You know I did,” Nancy said. and
Destiny stumped up and down with joy.

“Where is it, Grandma?” Destiny
asked.
 
“Can I play with it?”

“It’s on your bed,” Nancy said, “and
of course you can play with it.”

Destiny wanted to take off running
right away.
 
But her parents had taught
her well.
 
“Mommy, may I?” she asked as
Grace made her way up on the porch too.

“You may,” Grace said, and Destiny
opened the screened door and ran inside, with the screened door flapping shut
behind her.

Grace smiled as she took a seat
beside her mother and sat Destiny’s overnight bag beside the chair.
 
It was Friday afternoon and Grace had just
driven three-hours up Interstate 5, from Seattle to Portland, Oregon, so that
her daughter could spend the weekend with Grace’s mother.
 
It had been a tough couple of weeks following
Ed’s death.
 
She felt the drive would do
her some good.

“What is it that I just gave her
permission to do?” Grace asked her mother.
 
“Open another gift?”

“You know it,” Nancy said.
 
“I got her some doll she asked me to get for her.
 
It was my pleasure to get it.
 
Although I didn’t see why she would be all
excited about some little black baby doll when you and Tommy spoil her rotten
with toys so high tech even I can’t figure them out.”

“Because she knows you can’t figure
them out,” Grace said, “so she doesn’t ask you for anything like that.
 
But that’s Destiny.
 
She appreciates the little things just as
much as she appreciates the big things.”

Nancy agreed.
 
“That is so true,” she said.

Grace leaned back, and removed her
sunglasses. “Where’s everybody?”

“Out living their lives,” Nancy
said.
 
“They check in once a week and
that’s good enough for me.”
 
Then Nancy
looked at her daughter.
 
“Where’s Tommy?”
she asked.

Grace frowned.
 
“Tommy?
 
Why would you ask me about Tommy?”

“When my grandbaby called me two
weeks ago and told me she
and mommy
were spending the night at daddy’s house, I knew something was up with you
two.”

“Oh, please, mother,” Grace
said.
 
“I just buried my husband.
 
What are you talking about?”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking
about.
 
Why would you, a married woman at
the time, be spending the night with your ex?
 
Because I know Tommy Gabrini.
 
And
I know how he still feels about you.”

Grace smiled.
 
“You seem to know a lot today.”

“I know Tommy Gabrini,” Nancy said.
 
“And I know how he feels about you.
 
I know good and well he is not going to have
you spending the night inside of his house unless he’s spending the night
inside of you.”

Grace laughed a laugh of
incredulity.
 
“
What
?”

“Laugh all you please,” Nancy said,
“but I know that ex-husband of yours.
 
What the heck is going on?”

Grace’s laugh began to fade.
 
Because it was a question she had been asking
herself.
 
It had been two weeks since she
and Tommy slept together, and ever since that day Tommy kept his distance.
 
Part of the time he was out of town on
business, and she understood that.
 
But
she didn’t understand the nearly total radio silence he imposed on her.
 
It surprised her at first.
 
He would phone every few days, but only to
talk to Destiny the way he did when Ed was still a part of their lives.
 
He didn’t come over, he didn’t phone every
day the way she was expecting.
 
It was
shocking to her.
 
Didn’t he realize she
had gone to bed with him?
 
Didn’t he
realize how big a deal that was for her?
 
Whenever she would think about it, anger began to creep in.

Then she’d think again.
 
He was handling it his way.
 
She needed to handle it her way. So Grace
refused to let Tommy or anybody else define her approach.
 
She went on with her life.
 
She fell into a new normalcy that was as
different for her as it was traumatic, but she handled it.
 
She was not in a committed relationship for
the first time in a long time, and although the adjustment found her drowning
herself in her work rather than in her tears, it was still a difficult
transition.

Especially during the police
investigation.
 
Ed’s body had been found
in a rough part of town frequented by hookers and addicts.
 
The police concluded, in their flimsy
investigation that should have been far more thorough, that Senate candidate
Dr. Edwin Jefferson, apparently out prowling for a prostitute, had been
carjacked, robbed, and beaten to death.
 
They rounded up all kinds of suspects for a couple of days, and
questioned them to great fanfare.
 
Even
Grace was questioned.
 
But she didn’t
know a thing.
 
Nobody knew a thing.
 
There were no witnesses that were willing to
come forward.
 
That was the end of that.

Ed was eventually buried.
 
They had a ceremony outside Seattle, in
Edmonds, his hometown.
 
Grace attended the
funeral, not out of any respect for a man who would have destroyed her if he
could, but because Destiny wanted to go, and she and Tommy felt she needed that
closure.

“What’s going on, Grace?” Nancy asked
her daughter again.

“Nothing’s going on,” Grace answered
truthfully.
 
“And I mean nothing.”
 
A dose of pain ripped through her.
 
She stood up.
 
“I’m going to use the restroom and get back on the road.
 
I want to get back to Seattle before dark.”

“Why?” Nancy asked with a smile.
 
“Got yourself a hot date tonight?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Grace
responded.
 
“I have myself a hot date
with a tall glass of champagne and a good book.
 
I’m going to wash my hair and then get busy.”

Nancy shook her head.
 
“Child, not me,” she said.
 
“If I was young like you, and owned my own
company, please.
 
You couldn’t keep up
with me on a Friday night.
 
I’d have
three good looking studs pleasuring me.
 
One pleasuring my top, one pleasuring my bottom, and one fanning the
flames because I was going to be on fire!”

Grace smiled and shook her head.
 
Not because she knew her mother was joking,
but because she knew she wasn’t.

“Champagne my ass,” Nancy
continued.
 
“I’d be having me some
fun!
 
You only live once, Grace.
 
I say live it up.
 
Those books can wait!”

Grace grabbed Destiny’s overnight
bag.
 
She wasn’t thinking about her
mother’s advice.
 
She was on respite
right now.
 
She wasn’t about to clutter
up her life again when she just got the clutter out.
 
She had no issue whatsoever with spending her
Friday night alone.
 
None whatsoever!
 
She was looking forward to it, in fact.
 
“I’m sure you’ll have fun for the both of us,
Mother,” she said, and headed inside the house.

Her mother chuckled.
 
“You got that right!” she yelled after
her.
  
“You got that right!”

After Grace used the restroom and
said her goodbyes to Destiny, she got in her Audi and was back on the road
again.
 
She was just pulling back onto
I-5 when Tommy phoned.
 
It surprised her
since he hadn’t phoned just to speak to her before.

“You guys still in Portland?” he asked.

“I just dropped Desi off.
 
I’m on my way back now.”

Tommy was in Seattle, about to go
into a meeting of his senior staff, when he felt that heavy need to give Grace
a call.
 
He felt that need every single
day since they slept together, and he had to tamp it down every single
day.
 
Taking it slow meant just
that.
 
But there he was on a Friday
afternoon, in the hallway outside of his conference room at the Gabrini
Corporate Headquarters building, phoning Grace.

He knew it was too soon.
 
She had just buried Ed a few days ago for
crying out loud, and given the circumstances surrounding that death, he knew he
should be keeping his distance all the more.
 
But he was aching to be with Grace again, and to talk with her, and to
find out if she was ready to give a relationship another try.
 
He wanted it desperately.
 
There was no doubt in his mind that he wanted
Grace.
 
But she had to want him too.

“I was wondering,” he said, “if you
had any plans tonight.”

Grace’s heart wanted to soar when she
heard those words.
 
She could see him
now, standing there looking all fine in his gorgeous suit, or in one of his
beautiful cardigan sweaters.
 
She wanted
to tell him that she had no plans whatsoever and she was down for whatever he
wanted.

But she thought about what
she
wanted, and how badly she had wanted
to be with Tommy over the last two weeks.
 
But after the day they slept together, and she returned to her home and
he returned to his life, what she wanted never came up.
 
She expected him to phone and ask if she was
okay with the fact that he was staying away.
 
She expected him to ask if she wanted to speed things up, or talk things
over, or just end it before it could begin again.
 
She expected him to treat her like his
partner, not like his child.

“Actually,” she responded to him, “I
do have plans tonight.”
 
Champagne and a
book awaited her.
 
That was what she
planned to do before he phoned, and she was sticking to it.

Tommy had been pacing up and down the
corridor, but then stopped walking when she answered him.
 
One hand was in his pocket.
 
The other hand was gripping his cell
phone.
 
“You have plans?” he asked.

His response alone, one that made
clear he was surprised she wasn’t pining away by the telephone waiting for him
to decide to call, was the very reason she knew she was responding the right
way.
 
“Yes,” she said.
 
“I have plans.
 
Why?”

“I thought we might get together.”

Music to Grace’s ears.
 
She couldn’t deny it.
 
But she wasn’t jumping just because he wanted
her to jump.
 
She wasn’t going back to
those frog days ever again.
 
“I can’t
tonight,” she said.
 
She would be open to
a different night, but he was the one who needed to go there.

He didn’t go there.
 
Tommy was not accustomed to a woman turning
him down, and it did something to him.
 
Even if the women had plans for that night, when he called they canceled
those plans.
 
“Okay,” he said.
 
“I’m late for a meeting anyway, so I’d better
get to it.”

His abrupt shift surprised
Grace.
 
But she wasn’t complaining about
that either.
 
If he was upset because she
wasn’t available to him on a mere few hours’ notice, then that was his
issue.
 
Not hers.
 
“I’ll talk to you later then,” she said.

“Destiny doing well?” he asked.

“Very well.
 
She loves spending time with her
grandmother.”

“I already have some guys down there
keeping watch.
 
Just in case.”

Grace understood.
 
Wherever Destiny spent the night anywhere,
Tommy had some of his men, or women, in close proximity.
 
“That’s good to know,” she said.
 
Then he said his goodbye, and ended the call.