Tommy Gabrini: The Grace Factor (5 page)

“That’s not true,” Tommy said.

But Liz wasn’t playing along any
longer.
 
“It is true!” she said.
 
“The only woman you ever gave your whole
heart to was Grace, and we both know what she did to it.
 
And that spooked you.
 
I think a part of you refused to give
yourself that completely to anybody ever again.
 
You’ll never admit it out loud, but it’s Grace.
 
She’s still the one you want and you can’t
deal with the fact that I’m not her.
 
I
felt it for months, but since you never brought it up I didn’t either.
 
But I overcompensated.
 
I realize that now.
  
I used to brag about how better I was than
your ex-wife, and how you hit the babe lottery when you got me.
 
But what my stupid ass didn’t realize was
that Grace was the babe lottery you wanted to hit all along!
 
She’s the only one you want and you aren’t
going to settle for anybody else.
 
Is
that the real issue here?”

But Tommy never shared his innermost
feelings with Liz even when their relationship was at its zenith, and he wasn’t
about to start now.
 
Because the issue at
this moment wasn’t how he felt about Grace, but how he felt about her.
 
And how that last episode, and her decision
to remain in the line of fire, was the last straw.
 
“You told me you were traveling to the Middle
East to check in with your bureau chief in Qatar,” he said.
 
“You do it periodically, you said, and you
were going to do it this time.
 
Then you
were coming back.
 
That’s what you told
me.
 
You said nothing, absolutely nothing
about staying for nearly a month, flying your ass to Syria and any other
hotspot you could get to, and putting your ass in harm’s way over and over
again.
 
Because if you would have told me
that then---”

“Then what, Tommy?” Liz asked.
 
“What would have happened if I would have
told you that then?”

Tommy stared at her.
 
“It would have been over then.
 
Just like it’s over now.”
 
A twinge of regret appeared in his tired
eyes, but he had never been more resolute.
 
“It’s not going to work, Liz.
 
We
don’t want the same things.
 
I’m not
traveling down roads to nowhere because I’ve been there, done that, and I’m not
doing that again.
 
It’s over.”

Liz didn’t try to get him to change
his mind.
 
Because the writing had been
on her wall too.
 
She loved Tommy, but
she loved her career and her freedom more.
 
Tommy loved her, but he loved Grace more.
 
She wasn’t giving up her first love, and
Tommy, she now realized, wasn’t giving up his.
 
Grace was married and out of his reach for the moment.
 
But Tommy used to always say how he didn’t
think Grace and Ed were going to last.
 
He used to always mention that.
  
The way Liz figured it, Tommy, always a patient man, wasn’t going to run
into the arms of some other woman.
 
He
was going to wait it out.
 
She should
have known all along that this day would come.
 
She should have seen how their breakup was as inevitable as Seattle
rain.
 
Their interests were just too
different!
 
But it still hurt like hell.

When Tommy left, and didn’t look
back, Liz tried to walk around her hotel room as if she was glad he was
gone.
 
She tried to pretend that it was
all for the best.
 
But when she
visualized his beautiful face, and remembered what it felt like to be Tommy
Gabrini’s woman, and to have his cock deep inside of her, she couldn’t
pretend.
 
Because she wasn’t glad.
 
And it wasn’t for the best.
 
But nobody was standing between her and her
goals.
 
Especially not some good looking
womanizer like Tommy Gabrini still in love with his ex-wife!

She walked a little longer, and then
left too.
 
She left her hotel room, and
went where she knew she could find her own brand of comfort.
 
She went to Raj.

Three Months Later

The guards quickly opened the
security gate and waved Tommy Gabrini through.
 
Tommy gave a quick horn blow in return and drove up the driveway that
led to Grace and Ed’s Seattle lake estate.
 
The home was a new construction home in the suburbs, after Ed decided he
didn’t want to live in Tommy and Grace’s old home, but the guards and every
aspect of security was on Tommy.
 
His
daughter lived there, and his daughter’s mother.
 
He wasn’t leaving their security to anybody
else.

Tommy, for his part, moved back into
his old home when Ed and Grace moved out, mainly because he wanted Destiny to
have that familiarity whenever she stayed with him.
 
But also because he felt adrift when he left
his longtime home.
 
He needed that
familiarity too.

When he pulled around the horseshoe
driveway to the steps that led to the front door, he leaned back in his Ferrari
and looked through his dark sunglasses at the house in front of him.
 
It was nothing to write home about - Tommy’s
estate was five times larger and far grander.
 
But it was so suburban, and so family-oriented, that it radiated warmth
to him.
 
There were toys on the front
lawn, including a big, bright pink Barbie car Tommy could just see his little
girl riding around in, other assorted toys, and a discarded soccer ball.
 
He knew most of his friends wouldn’t be
caught dead living in a place like this.
 
It was too bland, and too cookie-cutter for them.
 
But Tommy smiled.
 
There was a time when he would have given his
right arm to be cookie-cutter too.

What also amazed him was how anxious
he was to see Grace again.
 
Every time he
saw her his heart acted strange.
 
Every
single time.
 
He ignored those feelings
when he was trying to make it work with Liz.
 
But after their breakup three months ago, his feelings for Grace seemed
to be at the forefront of his mind.
 
Word
had traveled fast that he and Liz were no longer an item, and he was back on
the market, but to even his shock he didn’t participate.
 
He knew he could have any of those women he
wanted.
 
They were blowing up his phone
mercilessly.
 
But Liz was right.
 
In his eyes, none of them were going to match
up against Grace.
 
She was the one who
got away.
 
Grace was his measuring
stick.
 
She was now his gold standard.
 
Because he didn’t realize what he truly had,
until she was gone.

What amazed his brother Sal and his
cousin Reno, however, was how he was living his life after Liz.
 
No sex, no other woman to warm his bed.
 
They couldn’t believe it.
 
They thought it was because of Liz.
 
They thought she broke his heart.
 
He told them differently, but they didn’t
believe him.
 
He was always taking the
rap, they felt, when these women mistreated him.

But Tommy knew better.
 
He knew that the only reason he hadn’t jumped
into another temporary relationship with yet another gorgeous, but temporary
girl, was because of a gorgeous girl named Grace.
 
He was a man who was tired of playing the
short game.
 
He was getting too old for
that shit.
 
But he wasn’t about to tell
Grace about his feelings.
 
She was a
married woman trying to make her marriage work.
 
He would never intrude on that.
 
But it was a fact he had to stop denying.
 
Grace still had his heart.
 
And probably always would.
 
In time he would play the field again.
 
He was horny as hell even as he sat in his
Ferrari.
 
But he wasn’t ready yet.
 
For some strange reason, and it was super-strange
since he was not committed to anyone at the moment, playing the field would
feel like cheating.

But then the front door of the
suburban home opened, and his daughter ran out.
 
Early this morning his negotiating team phoned and urged him to get to Vienna.
 
Negotiations were breaking down in the
Gabrini Corporation’s merger talks with tech giant Manesco, and they needed
their chairman there to smooth things over.
 
But nothing was going to keep him from his child’s birthday.
 
He told them he would fly to Vienna later,
after the conclusion of her birthday party, but not a second before.
 
Since he was the boss, they had no choice but
to accept his terms.

Destiny Gabrini was the prettiest
child in the world to Tommy.
 
He smiled
as soon as he saw her.
 
She was biracial,
the product of his Italian genes and Grace’s African-American genes, and she
was a sight to behold.
 
Long, wavy black
hair, smooth brown skin, big, bright eyes, and an elegance about her that
defied her young age.
 
She reminded him
of her mother so much, even down to the shape of her ears.
 
People would look at her and declare her a
black child only.
 
No way was her father
white.
 
But they would be wrong.
 
She was his.
 
Other than skin color, she, in actuality, looked like all the best features
of both her parents.

“Daddy!
 
Daddy!” she happily cried as she ran up to
him.

He got out of his car and gladly
hoisted her into his arms.
 
“My big
girl,” he said joyfully too, as he lifted her.
 

“It’s my day of birth, Daddy!”

“It’s your birthday,” Tommy said with
a smile, and closed his car door. “Yes, I’ve heard.”

“You came to my day of, I mean to my
birthday!”

“That’s right,” Tommy said as he
carried her back up the steps.
 
“I
wouldn’t miss it for the world.
 
You’re
my number one person in this whole wide world, don’t you know?”

“You’re my number one person too,
Daddy.
 
You and Mommy.”

Tommy was pleased to hear it as he
carried her across the porch and into her home.
 

When Tommy entered the home and
looked up, he saw Grace Jefferson coming out of the dining room, which was at
the far end of the large living room area.
 
And as soon as he saw her, his heart did that double-beat again.

“There you are!” Grace said to their
daughter and began walking their way.
 
She
had a smile on her face that lit up the already bright room, and a sashay in
her walk that caused Tommy’s eyes to roam down to her hips.
 
Not only did his heart’s double-beat reveal
how much he still loved
 
her, but his
penis throbbed and expanded at the sight of her, revealing just how much he
missed fucking her too.
 
It had been
years since he had Grace in his bed, but now that he wasn’t fucking at all, he
lived on those memories.

“She’s been looking out of that
window all morning for you,” Grace said.
 
“She was afraid you were going to be too busy and couldn’t make it.
 
I told her you will never be too busy for
your little girl.”

“That’s right,” Tommy said with a
smile too, as he stood Destiny back on her feet and closed the front door.
 
Grace wore an apron around her short skirt,
high heels, and had her thick brown hair down her back in waves of rich, thick
curls.
 
She looked like a businesswoman
and mom-in-chief all wrapped up in one.
 
Tommy loved that combination.
 
She
looked sexy as hell to him.

“Daddy has a new car, Mommy,” Destiny
said, and began running to the window to show her.
 
“I didn’t know it was him because the car I
was looking for isn’t the car he’s driving.
 
Come look!”

Grace, who was just about to walk
past the big, bay window, walked up to it instead.
 
When she saw the dark-gray Ferrari, she
smiled and shook her head.
 
“Now that’s
what I call a car,” she said.
 
Then she
looked at Tommy.
 
He wore a pair of light
brown slacks and a yellow Cardigan sweater.
 
His blondish brown hair was piled high around his forehead.
 
His greenish-blue eyes sparkled against the
home’s natural light.
 
Dapper as
ever.
 
“That is so you, Tommy,” she
said.
 
“Congratulations.
 
But you know what’s going to happen,
right?
 
You get a gray Ferrari, Sal and
Reno will be getting gray Ferraris too.
 
You’re the trendsetter.”

Tommy laughed.
 
“I suspected as much myself,” he said.
 
“But I don’t mind.
 
It’s a good ride.”

Before Grace could respond, Destiny
was pulling on her apron.
 
“Mommy,” she
said, “can I have another cupcake?”

“Entertain your guests a little
longer before we eat any more sweets.”

“Is it time to open the presents?”
Destiny asked.

“You want that?” Grace asked.

“Very much,” Destiny said excitedly.

“Gather all the children and sit them
around the dining room table, and then we’ll get started.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Destiny said as if she
was being given sacred orders, and took off running.

Grace laughed and shook her
head.
 
“That child.”
 
She began walking toward Tommy.
 
“She is always so happy.”

“Yes, she is,” Tommy said.
 
“Thank God.”

“Yes,” Grace agreed.
 
“Thank God Almighty.
 
We have been so blessed in that department.”

“Very blessed.”
 
Then he thought about his gift.
 
“You think she can see out back?”

“No way.
 
None of them can.
 
Your people boarded up every back window, and
barricaded the back door.
 
She can’t see
a thing.”

Tommy nodded.
 
“Good,” he said.
 
Then he looked at Grace.
 
They were close now.
 
He could see the smoothness of her brown
skin.
 
The sparkle in her big, brown
eyes.
 
Her slender shape that seemed more
curvaceous than ever.
 
She seemed to get
better looking every time he saw her.
 
“So how have you been, Grace?”

“I’ve been good,” Grace
responded.
 
“When my child is happy, I’m
happy.”

Tommy believed it.
 
Grace was CEO of Trammel, her trucking
company, but she was a mother first.
 
“Where’s Ed?” he asked.

“He should be here shortly.
 
I thought it would be easier when he went
into private practice, but it seems to consume more of his time.”

“More responsibility
undoubtedly.
 
You and I run
companies.
 
We know what that’s like.”

Grace agreed, although Trammel could
hardly be compared to the international Gabrini Corporation.
 
But she got his point.
   

“So he’s really going to go through
with it?”

“You mean running for the U.S.
Senate?” Grace asked.

Tommy nodded.
 
“Yeah.
 
I knew he had ambitions in that direction, but I assumed he would start
locally, on a smaller scale.”

“So did I,” Grace admitted.
 
“But he has people in the GOP who think he
can actually win this thing.
 
He’s going
all out.”

Tommy looked at her.
 
She smelled as fresh as those lilacs in that
garden she once planted in his backyard.
 
“And what about you?
 
Are you
looking forward to moving to Washington should he win?
 
Are you looking forward to being a Senator’s
wife?”

Grace shook her head.
 
“No, to be honest with you.
 
I’m not looking forward to it at all.
 
And I assume you aren’t going to let me move
Destiny to Washington, D.C.”

“You assume correctly,” Tommy said
firmly.
 
He would hate to see Grace move
to another state also.
 
But if she did,
they would have to arrange for her to have visitation, because nobody was
taking his daughter away from him.