“Oh, I’ll bet he loves my ten shares more,” Grace said as she stood.
Jillian feigned astonishment. “What? Your ten shares? Don’t be absurd!”
“Anyway,” Grace said, “I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’ll see you later, Jilly.”
Although Grace left Jillian’s office composed and unaffected, as soon as she entered her own office, and closed the door, she leaned against it. She had already fallen in love with Tommy Gabrini, there was no doubt in her mind about that. She could actually see him as her husband, and as the father of her children. He was the only man she wanted for those roles.
But the idea that he could get bored with her lack of sexual prowess had crossed her mind more than a few times. And the fact that Jillian was all but confirming it, was a distressing revelation. And when she mentioned that ShoShawna Shanks again, that didn’t help, either. That was the first name that woman Trina had mentioned when she phoned the other night and invited Tommy to her son’s birthday party. She just knew Tommy had gotten back together with ShoShawna and would be bringing her with him. As if he was always breaking up with the woman and going back to her. Even Tommy had admitted that, after she had stood him up at the altar, he still went back to her.
Grace made her way to her desk. What she thought was a beautiful morning after the kind of sex Tommy had put on her last night, was already turning into a nightmarish day. She was already in heartbreak territory with Tommy. She was already emotionally vested in him to such an extent that, if he were to leave her for another woman, she would be pretty broken up by it. Maybe even a little devastated. After Cam, it was a position she swore she’d never put herself in again. Now, she had already positioned herself that way.
She placed her briefcase on her desk, tossed her keys, and sat down too. She trusted Tommy in a lot of ways, but she didn’t really know him like that yet. He seemed like a great guy, like the perfect guy. But nobody was perfect.
But then she decided to bump it and get to work. She couldn’t sit around worrying about something she couldn’t control. She turned on her computer. What was she going to do about it? He could be with a woman right now for all she knew. And that, she realized, was the point. She had consciously put herself out there when she agreed to give him a shot. She was no fool, she knew it could lead to heartbreak. And given all of her past relationships, and the fact that he was commitment-phobic, a broken heart was more likely an outcome than a happy-ever-after one.
But she had agreed to take a chance on Tommy Gabrini because she believed he was worth the chance. And the only thing he promised her, that he wouldn’t break her heart, was the very promise she was depending on him keeping. And as she typed in her password on her lap top computer screen, she knew she had to take him at his word. He wouldn’t break her heart. More than Jillian’s talk or her past relationships or even his past behavior, she was going to stand on his word. He wouldn’t break her heart. She was going to hold him to his word.
And that quiet acceptance allowed her to get on with her work. She worked diligently for most of the morning without interruption. Until her phone rang. And it was her mother.
Grace froze at her seat as soon as she heard her mother’s voice. Even the receptionist, who had buzzed her, hadn’t said the name. Just that there was a call for her on line nine.
“Mother?” she asked, although she was certain of that strained voice.
“Hello, Grace.”
“I didn’t expect to hear from you.” Grace never heard from her mother. Not ever. If she wouldn’t have bothered to phone her mother at least once every few months, they would never speak. “How are you?”
“Not good,” her mother said. “Ralph has died.”
Grace’s heart squeezed. Ralph Morton was dead? The man her mother had had an affair with and divorced her father over was no more? The man who hated Grace and didn’t want her around so badly that her own mother, still so in love with mighty Ralph, took his side. Grace was a small child when she moved to Seattle to live with her father, but she was glad to go. She didn’t like Ralph either. He beat on her over petty things and loved to call her names when her mother wasn’t around. But praises be to God it worked out beautifully for Grace in Seattle. Her father was a wonderful man who took wonderful care of her. She ended up exactly where she needed to be.
But her relationship with her mother would never be the same.
Now Ralph, the reason for her mother’s existence, was gone.
“What happened?” she asked her mother.
“A heart attack last night. He was fine, and then he wasn’t. And it was all over just like that.”
Grace knew her mother was crying when silence ensued. She didn’t know what to say to her, so she let her have her tears.
“Anyway,” her mother finally said. “I thought you should know.”
“I’m on my way,” Grace said.
“You don’t have to come.”
“I should arrive this afternoon.”
“I know you’re busy. You don’t have to come.”
“I know I don’t have to. But I’m coming.”
There was a pause.
“Thank-you,” her mother said. And then hung up.
In Sydney, Australia, Tommy walked through the elegant corridor of the Ambrose hotel and followed the bellhop to his suite. The young man placed Tommy’s luggage in the bedroom, accepted his tip, and left.
Tommy was exhausted, but not so jet-lagged that he couldn’t pick up the hotel’s phone and give Grace a call. Her cell phone immediately went to voice mail.
“Hey,” he said. “Didn’t want anything. I’m here in Sydney, I just got in. I have meetings all day so I’ll call you tonight. Since it’s (he looked at his watch) three p.m. your time, and ten a.m. here, I’ll try to phone you before it’s too late. Make sure you have some dinner and if you go out tonight button up. I understand the temperatures are taking a dive in Seattle. So wear a jacket, Grace, I mean it. All right. Love you. Bye.” He hung up.
Then he took out a suit for his first round of meetings, and got in the shower.
Within a few minutes of his exit into the shower, the door of his hotel suite was opened by a maid, and then ShoShawna Shanks stepped in. She paid the maid and then closed and locked the door. She could hear the water running, and could just imagine it running down that sinewy body of Tommy’s.
And then she smiled. And began removing her clothes.
Grace sat in the quiet living room at her mother’s home in Happy Valley, Oregon. Although her two younger stepsisters were also in the room, silence permeated the walls like a human entity. Grace had just arrived an hour ago, but the burden of being there was so great that it felt like she’d been there for days.
Nancy Morton, her mother, a small, attractive woman with long brown hair and big brown eyes, was never much of a small-talker, and today was no exception. But she did attempt to ask Grace how she’d been and how her job was going and if Jilly was still self-centered as ever. But when the conversation shifted to Ralph, and how wonderful a husband and, in the case of the stepsisters, a father he had been, her mother didn’t even attempt to include Grace in their reminiscences.
“I know one person who’s happy he’s gone,” Ashley, one of Grace’s stepsisters, said.
Grace looked at her. “That’s not fair, Ashley,” she said.
“It is fair!” Ashley thundered back. “You hated my father!”
“He hated me, and I was just a child. How did you think I was going to feel about him?”
“Why are you here?” asked Tamara, her other stepsister.
“To support my mother.”
“She has us, the people who loved her husband. She doesn’t need your support.”
Grace started to say that she has it, whether she needed it or not, but she held her peace. These people were genuinely grieving. They had a right to their opinion. But she also had a right to support her mother, and she was staying right there and supporting her.
At the Ambrose hotel in Sydney, Tommy turned off the tap inside the shower and stepped out. He was thinking about his next meeting, and if he was going to accept the offer on the table. He had capital in three businesses in Australia, but this offer for a fourth enterprise was too tempting to dismiss. But if he low-balled them he also knew it could blow up in his face. Negotiations had to proceed delicately. Or, he reasoned, they would more than likely walk.
As soon as he opened the stall and stepped out, thinking about that offer, he reached for the towel on the rack. But he stopped in his tracks when he realized he was not alone. To his amazement, ShoShawna was sitting in a wing chair in the middle of the large bathroom, naked as a jaybird, one of her long legs flapped over the arm of the chair, the other leg swinging down. A tinted wine glass was in her hand.
Tommy frowned. “What are you doing here, Shawnie?”
But ShoShawna only smiled. “You know you want some,” she said as she slowly opened her legs wider, revealing a pussy Tommy knew so well. “So come on, big boy. Put that massive rod into this hot pussy and fuck me shitless. I need it bad, and from the look in your eyes, you want it even worse. So just do it.”
Tommy’s heart was pounding. His dick was dangling right in front of a pussy that was his for the taking. A pussy he used to crave. Right there. In front of him.
But he’d met Grace since last they met and now ShoShawna and her tricks seemed old and tired and didn’t turn him on one bit. He stood amazed that he once even considered making a selfish bitch like her his wife. All she wanted was his dick. That may have been all she ever wanted.
He grabbed her by the arm, startling her, and hoisted her from her seat.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she was yelling. But Tommy began hurrying her out of the bathroom, her naked ass shaking like Jell-O as he dragged her. “You’re hurting me!” she kept yelling. “Let me go, you asshole! Let me go!”
But Tommy wasn’t about to let her go. He couldn’t stand the sight of her anymore. All of that pain she caused him, year in and year out and he kept letting her back. But not anymore. He dragged her into the bedroom, as she continued to scream and demand release. He began picking up her discarded clothes and slamming them against her chest.
“Seriously, Tommy?” she asked as she held onto her clothes, and her glass of wine, as he continually shoved clothes at her. “This is how you’re going to treat me? This is how you’re going to motherfucking treat me? Seriously?”
But Tommy wasn’t thinking about her. He began dragging her out of the bedroom and into the living room of his suite. And she kept on complaining.
“What she got that I don’t have? Hun, Tommy? What does that bitch have? You’re going to give up fucking this to fuck some dumb-ass secretary who ain’t even all that pretty?”
Tommy slung her against the door of his suite, her naked breast heaving when her body slammed hard.
“You hear me, Shanks, and hear me well,” Tommy said, his eyes wild with fury. “I don’t care if I was fucking a chimpanzee, it’s none of your gotdamn business. I don’t want you. I’m not interested in fucking you ever again. I told you I’ve moved on with my life, so you may as well move on with yours. I’m done. You hear me? I’m done gotdammit! So leave me the hell alone!”
But it was as if he hadn’t said a word. ShoShawna reverted back to form. “You’re giving me, me, Shawnie, up for her?” she continued asking. “For her? Seriously, Tommy? You expect me to believe that you’re willing to give up all of this for her? Seriously? Seriously?”
Tommy opened the door of his suite and practically threw her naked body outside, and her shoes behind her, and then he slammed that door in her still complaining face, more than proving just how seriously serious he really was.
And as dramatic it was when she was in his suite making her case, it was as silent and un-dramatic in the hallway outside of that suite.
ShoShawna still clutched her clothes and her wineglass as she leaned against that door, fury now in her own eyes. The same maid who had let her in, was now at the end of the hall, her cleaning cart in front of her, staring at her.
“What the fuck you’re looking at?” ShoShawna yelled, and then began putting on her clothes.
And she was determined now. Because nobody, especially not that asshole Tommy Gabrini, was going to humiliate her like this and expect no retribution.
Yeah, Tommy, she said as she put back on her clothes, you want me to leave you alone now. You couldn’t live without me, now you want me to leave you alone. She looked into her wineglass and grabbed the tiny camera that had been wedged to it, and then she allowed the glass and its liquid contents to fall to the corridor’s carpet.
I’ll leave you alone, all right, she thought as the glass fell. But not before you leave that secretary alone. Not a second before then.
Then she pocketed her camera, as if that was her purpose all along, and left the hall.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The limousine stopped in front of the modest home in Happy Valley and the ladies on the porch took notice. Especially when the chauffeur opened the passenger door and a tall, white, and, if they had to say so themselves, very attractive man stepped out.
Tommy reached back into the car, grabbed his suit coat, and put it on as he made his way toward the front porch. Tamara and Ashley, Grace’s two stepsisters, were on the porch, along with a handful more of their friends.
“Are you with the funeral home?” Ashley asked as soon as Tommy made his way to the bottom step.
“Ah, no,” he said.
“Then who are you?” Tamara wanted to know.
“I’m Tommy Gabrini and I’m looking for my girlfriend, Grace McKinsey.”
Tamara and Ashley looked at each other.
Nancy, Grace’s mother, walked up to the screened door from inside the house. “Who’s this?” she asked when she saw Tommy.
“That’s Grace’s old man,” Ashley said.
Nancy stepped out onto the porch. Tommy began walking up the steps. Grace favored her, he thought. “I’m Thomas Gabrini,” he said as he came. “I was looking for Grace.”
“You’re her boyfriend?”
“That’s right, yes.”
“I’m her mother,” Nancy said.
“Oh, it’s very nice to meet you,” Tommy said, extending his hand. Nancy shook it.
“I’m sure she never mentioned me,” she said.
“She mentioned you,” Tommy said.
“Funny, she never mentioned you,” Ashley said and Tamara and their friends grinned.
Tommy looked at the two young women, and the other ladies on the porch. They seemed juvenile and silly to him.
“Don’t mind them,” Nancy said. “Come, sit down.”
Tommy walked up on the porch, waited for Nancy to take a seat, and then he sat beside her.
“I see where Grace gets her attractive looks,” Tommy said and Nancy smiled.
“Oh, you’re a smooth one,” she said. Tommy laughed.
“Grace told me about the passing of your husband. I’m sorry for your lost.”
“Thank-you. Ralph was a good man. He’ll be missed.” Then she looked at Tommy. “You live in Seattle, too?”
“Yes, I do. I was in Australia, however, when Grace phoned me.”
Nancy looked at him. “Australia?”
“Yes, on business. So I came as quick as I could get here. Unfortunately, it’s an eighteen, nineteen hour turnaround.”
“Oh, my. You came a long way.”
Tommy smiled. “Yes. Is Grace here?”
“They walked over to the store, but they should be back any minute now.”
“They?” Tommy asked.
“Yeah, two of her friends. A man, if you want to call him a man, and a young lady. They’re from Seattle, too.”
Probably Jamie and Nayla, Tommy thought, but he didn’t have to think long. Because as soon as he thought it, Grace, Jamie, and Nayla were coming around the corner. When Grace saw the limo in front of the hou
se, she automatically assumed it was from the funeral home. But when she and her friends neared the house, and she saw Tommy sitting on the porch, she broke out in a sprint.
“Tommy!” she yelled and didn’t stop running until she was running up the steps, with him hurrying toward her, and leaping into his arms. Tommy grabbed her and swung her side to side. When she phoned him and told him what had happened, he headed back to the States without delay. To be with her.
Jamie and Nayla, who were walking toward the house, were even more surprised than Grace to see him.
Jamie leaned toward Nayla. “I thought she said he was in Australia hammering out some mega business deal,” he whispered.
“He was,” whispered Nayla. “But apparently he came back to be with her. That’s what real men do, you know. They stand by their women.”
Jamie looked at her. “Or their man,” he said, and Nayla rolled her eyes.
Later that evening, in a hotel bed in town, Tommy pulled Grace into his arms and held her all night long. She fell asleep in his arms. There was a time when this kind of night would have been out of the question for him. He never slept beside a woman in his life without fucking her. Not ever.
But all of that was before he met Grace. And tonight, Grace was in a state. She had no affection for her stepfather, but she was so hopeful that his death could open the door for a better relationship with her mother. But so far the prognosis was poor. So Tommy dismissed his intense sexual appetite and opted to hold her instead, and be there for her, and do everything in his power to make sure she got her rest and didn’t overstress herself about her mother’s unwillingness to change.
Tommy also lay there, not only thinking about this sweet, kind woman he had in his arms. But also, he had to admit, he was thinking about ShoShawna. And that trick she pulled in Sydney. A part of him was concerned for her, and the pain she allowed her promiscuity to shield. But another part of him hated her. He wasted so many years on an illusion. She never was marriage material. She never wanted to be. And the only reason she had agreed to marry him in the first place, he was now beginning to believe, was because she didn’t want to lose any sexual relationship with him. It was all about sex with Shanks. Somehow he knew it all along. It might have been all about sex for him, too.
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