Romancing Tommy Gabrini (3 page)

CHAPTER ONE

Five Months Later

“Happy
birthday, girl,” the voice on the cell phone said and Grace McKinsey smiled as
she drove swiftly beneath the overcast skies of Seattle, Washington.
 
Her cell phone was on her car’s dashboard, in
its holder, on Speaker.

And
her best friend, Nayla Santiago, had just phoned her.

“Not
so fast,” Grace replied to Nayla’s well wishes.
 
“My birthday isn’t until tomorrow, thank-you very much.”

“And
in one day you’ll be thirty years old, thank-you very much.
 
You’re kicking the mess out of the big
three-0.
 
You’re about to be just that
age when you start looking around and wondering where all those years went.”

“I’m
already looking around and wondering where all those years went,” Grace
replied.
 
“And I’m already wondering why
I don’t have more to show for all those years.”

“Oh,
you need to quit,” Nayla asked with her usual bite.
 
“You’ve got plenty to show.
 
You’re the chief of staff to the renowned
Jillian Birch, the owner and operator of one of the oldest transport companies
in the northwest, and you don’t think that’s something to show?
 
If I had that much going for me I’d be
shouting it from the rooftops.
 
‘Hey, all
you suckers, look at me!’
 
But of course
you’re sweet Grace.
 
You wouldn’t dream
of making a show of yourself like that.
 
That’s probably why you’ll far more ahead in your career than I am in
mine.
 
But don’t be selling yourself
short, girl.
 
That ain’t attractive,
either.”

But
Grace didn’t mean it that way.
 
“I’m not
talking about my career,” she said.
 
“I
mean personally.
 
I’m man-less and
childless and about to turn thirty.
 
I
haven’t accomplished the main thing I always wanted to accomplish by now.
 
I’ll be thirty and don’t even have a prospect
for a husband, forget having a baby.
 
I’m
going to be a woman alone on my thirtieth birthday.”
 

“Forgive
me, please, if I don’t whip out the string quartet,” Nayla said.

Grace
laughed.
 
“I’m serious, Nay!”

“I’m
serious too!
 
You’re tall and gorgeous
and got it going on in every department.
 
And that creamy chocolate skin of yours that most women would die for,
give me a break!
 
The only reason you’re
going to be alone at thirty is because you wasted all those years with Cam’s
sorry ass and wouldn’t give any of those other men a chance.
 
I told you he wasn’t worth a damn, didn’t I
tell you?
 
But would you listen?
 
No, you wouldn’t.
 
If you hadn’t caught him in bed yourself with
those two skanky females you’d still be wasting time with that loser.”

“I
doubt that.”

“But
that’s the only reason, come tomorrow, you’ll be a woman alone at thirty.
 
Now if you were to open up that locked
bedroom door of yours, dust off the sheets and give another man a chance, then
you won’t have to be alone at all.
 
You
feel me?”

Grace
wasn’t trying to feel that.
 
She’d just
dumped Cam four months ago.
 
She wasn’t
trying to jump into any sack with anybody else any time soon.
 
“I feel you,” she said to her best
friend.
 
“And you feel like a boil on my
butt.”

Nayla
laughed heartily.
 

Grace
smiled, too, and sipped strong coffee from her thermal mug.
 
It was nearly eight at night but she needed
the injection of caffeine if she ever expected to survive another dinner party
at Jillian’s.
 

Not
that she hated dinner parties.
 
She
didn’t.
 
She usually enjoyed them
immensely.
 
But a dinner party at
Jillian’s was never a party.
 
A dinner
party at Jillian’s was always more about schmoozing and networking and all but
begging those rich, connected, business-owning friends to contract with Trammel
for all of their transporting needs.
 
Jillian, as company CEO, was too proud to beg.
 
But she had no problem with Grace giving it a
shot.

“Where
are you anyway?” Nayla asked over the phone.
 
“I called your house earlier but I got no answer.”

“That’s
because I had to rush home, shower and change, and then rush to this party.
 
Answering a telephone was out of the
question.”

“What
party?” Nayla asked.
 
“I didn’t know the
crew was having a party.”

“It’s
not our crew.
 
Jilly’s got me attending
one of her dinner parties tonight---”

“Not
another one!”

“Another
one, girl,” Grace said sadly.
 
“She needs
to drum up more business and she can’t think of any better way to do it.”

“She
still expects you to flaunt yourself in front of those rich old geezer friends
of hers and charm them out of their money?”

“You
know it,” Grace said with a nod of her head.
 
“That’s how crazy she is.
 
She
thinks youth is everything.
 
I honestly
believe that’s one reason why she made me her chief of staff.
 
To keep me close to her.
 
She actually thinks if she surrounds herself
with young people then she’ll never grow old.
 
Now that’s depressing, you hear me?
 
She thinks youth is contagious.”

Nayla
laughed.
 
“So do I!
 
What’s depressing about it?”

“I’m
for real,” Grace said seriously.
 
“That
kind of youth-obsessed thinking is a two-edged sword.
 
When I was twenty-two and fresh out of
college, working for a great businesswoman like Jillian Birch was an
honor.
 
I was her executive assistant and
we got along great and she moved me up the ladder nicely.
 
But now that I’m pushing thirty, and not all
that young anymore, I’m already beginning to see the change in her.
 
She may trade me in for a twenty-year old
soon and very soon!”

“Not
as her chief of staff she won’t,” Nayla made clear.
 
Nayla, too, worked at Trammel, only she
worked in the Logistics department.
 
“Can’t no twenty-year-old run that staff of hers.
 
But I get your point,” Nayla added.
 

“Youth
is everything to her,” Grace continued.
 
“She thinks people who are what she considers to be young and vibrant
and full of life have it made, girl.”

“And
don’t forget pretty,” Nayla reminded her.
 
“You’ve got to be pretty to be around Jillian Birch.
 
She’s the most superficial woman I’ve ever
met in my life.”

“Who
are you telling?” Grace asked.
 
“She
honestly believes that if I bat my big brown eyes at those old rich business
friends of hers then they’ll lovingly start signing contracts with Trammel
Transport left and right just so they can continue to have contact with
me.
 
Like those successful men are that gullible.”

“I
don’t know now,” Nayla said.
 
“Those
ridiculous dinner parties of Jillian’s have netted some big contracts for y’all
in the past.
 
And maybe, just maybe, it
is because of you and your slammin’ body, and your big browns.
 
Maybe Jillian knows what she’s doing.
 
Oh, wait a minute.
 
Did I just say that?”

“Yeah,
you did,” Grace said with a grin as she turned into the circular driveway of
Jillian’s beautiful home.
 
Only she had
to park on the back edge of the driveway as the cars of other guests had
already clogged up the choice spots.
 

“Did
I actually just say that Jillian Birch knows what she’s doing?”
 
Nayla asked again.

“You
actually said it, girl,” Grace said as she killed her engine.

“Wow,
that’s deep,” Nayla said.
 
“It must be
true then.
 
I’m not only getting old as
hell, but I’m getting senile, too.”

Grace
laughed heartily.
 
“Let me go,
child.
 
I’m already late as it is.”

“Have
fun.
 
And make sure you don’t get caught
up in any of those Jillian traps.”

“Girl
quit.”

“I’m
serious, Grace.
 
Don’t let Jillian
Bitch---”

“Her
name is Jillian Birch, thank-you.”

“Until
she stops using you and acting like a bitch on two legs then she’s Jillian
Bitch to me,” Nayla said firmly.
 
“Don’t
let that woman trick you into going back with Cam tonight, that’s the point I’m
making.
 
I don’t care how pitiful you
feel about the fact that you’re man-less and childless the night before your
thirtieth birthday, I don’t care how horny you are.
 
You gave that idiot one chance and he blew it
big time.
 
Don’t give him anymore!
 
Besides,” she added coyly, “I still believe
all Jillian and that son of hers really want from you anyway is your ten
shares.”

When
Grace started dating Jillian’s hunky son Cameron, and Jillian was all for their
relationship, encouraging it no end, Grace would have never thought that there
was an ulterior motive involved.
 
But
after Cameron asked her to marry him and not a week later she caught him in bed
with not one, but two women, and he seemed so cavalier about her devastating
discovery, she questioned everything about their relationship.
 
And left his ass as quickly as she could get
out of his front door.

Grace
inherited a ten percent ownership stake in Trammel from her father.
 
He worked for and was a close friend of Clive
Birch, Jillian’s husband, the man who had owned and operated Trammel.
 
Clive and Grace’s father were driving back to
a hotel after participating in a pro-am golf tournament in Palm Springs,
Florida, and were both killed in a car crash.
 

Before
the tragedy, when those shares rested with Grace’s father, Cam had been cordial
enough to her, but never showed any real interest at all.
 
Clive Birch had hired Grace out of college,
undoubtedly as a favor to her father, and she and Cam saw each other quite
often.
 
But he never even flirted with
her.
 
She assumed she was probably too
tame for his taste.
 

After
the accident, however, Cam’s interest went through the roof.
 
She thought it was because he had lost his
father, too, and they could grieve together.
 
But overtime she learned that, not a year after the tragedy, Jillian had
been forced to sell off a huge chunk of her shares in Trammel just to keep the
business afloat.
 
Now she only owned
thirty-seven percent of the shares and Cam owned an additional five.
 
If she were to wrest control of Grace’s ten
shares, Jillian would have fifty-two percent ownership and would regain her
majority stake in the company.

Although
neither Cam nor Jillian would ever admit their parts in such a scheme, Grace
was still angry with herself for not investigating earlier.
 
But she thought she was in love.
 
And she thought Cam wanted her, not to gain
control of any shares, but because he was in love, too.
 
And she thought all of that talk about love
being blind was hogwash.
 
But she thought
wrong.
 
Her love epitomized blindness.

And
even as Jillian and Cam continued to try to win her over, as if she still
didn’t get it, Grace was playing her cards close to the vest.
 
And scrimping and saving and learning
everything she could from Jillian so that one day she could leave Jillian’s
side and set up her own thing.
 
Because
Jillian and Cam may have continued to view her as this clueless young fool who
just didn’t get it, she knew better.
 
She
understood their motives perfectly now.
 
And that was why they would have to pry those ten shares out of her
cold, dead hands before she gave any to them.
 
In the memory of her beloved father, and for the sake of her own
self-respect, she’d give those shares to a bum on the street before she gave a
fifth of a percent to either one of them.