Romancing Tommy Gabrini (39 page)

Tommy
exhaled.
 
“Damn,” he said.
 
“What could she want now?” he asked.

“Oh,
Tommy, please,” Reno said. “She wants you.
 
You threw her out of that hotel room in Sydney.
 
You told her no. She’s another bitch who
can’t take no for an answer.”

Tommy
shook his head.
 
“And Grace saw these
pictures,” he said, not giving Shanks a second thought.

He
and Reno then hurried to the bedroom, but Grace wasn’t there.
 
Then Tommy looked in the closet.
 
Her luggage, all of it, was gone.
 

Reno
grabbed the phone off of the nightstand and called downstairs.

“Eddie,
hey.”

“Yes,
sir, Mr. Gabrini, how can I help you?”

“Did
Miss,” Reno snapped his fingers.

“McKinsey,”
Tommy said.

“Did
Miss McKinsey call for a car?”

“A
cab, yes, sir.”

“How
long ago?”

“About
an hour or so, I think.”

“Where
was she going?”

“Airport,”
Eddie said.

Tommy
hurried for the exit.

“Ready
the limo for Tommy,” Reno said, Eddie said that he would, and Reno hung up the
phone.
 
He then shook his head just
thinking about Shanks.

“That
bitch!” he said again.

Grace
sat her carrying case on her lap and exhaled.
 
She was seated in the McCarran International Airport and the activity
was bustling.
 
But she wasn’t people
watching at all.
 
She was too consumed in
her own thoughts.

They
had dates, she kept thinking.
 
If only
those pictures would not have had dates on them then she would have given Tommy
a chance to explain.
 
But they were
dated.
 
And the date was that same day
Tommy arrived in Australia.
 

Alone.
 

Supposedly
on business.

But,
instead, he had a beautiful naked woman with him, who decided, for her own
reasons, to snap pictures of their encounter.
 
And if her goal, by sending those pictures to Grace, was to scare Grace
off, then she succeeded mightily.
 
Grace
was sufficiently spooked.
 
She couldn’t
get away from Tommy fast enough.

But
the pain of her decision was wrenching.
 
She gathered her carrying bag again, more out of nervousness than
necessity, and exhaled again.
 
Her plane
didn’t board for another hour, and she couldn’t wait to get onboard and get
back home.
  

Then
she thought about her life back home without Tommy.
 
Without his laughter and his sex and his
presence.
 
And it was a dreadful
thought.
 
But she’d rather be alone and
even lonely than stuck with a man she couldn’t trust.
 
She’d rather be an old maid for the rest of
her life than settle for a man who couldn’t be faithful if his life depended on
it.

She
didn’t realize that very man was standing right in front of her, until she
looked down at her carrying bag again, to push it closer against her, and she
saw those shoes, those expensive Italian leather shoes, that Tommy always
wore.
 
She looked from the shoes up to
his face.

“If I
was a snake,” he said, looking serious, “you would have been bitten.”

“You
are a snake,” she replied, serious too, “and I have been bitten.”

Tommy’s
heart squeezed with anguish.
 
He reached
out his hand.
 
“Let’s go talk about it,”
he offered.

But
Grace refused.
 
“There’s nothing to talk about,”
she said.

Tommy’s
anger rose.
 
“There’s plenty to,” he
practically shouted and then, looking around, settled back down.
 
And sat down beside her.
 
The sweet smell of her, and the fact that he
might lose her, made him began to panic.

“There’s
plenty to talk about, Grace,” he said, his voice lowered to reach her ears
only.
 

“I
know,” Grace said.
 
“Those pictures were
photo-shopped, right?”

“No,”
Tommy admitted.
 
“They were real.”

Grace’s
heart plunged.
 
Any hope she had at all
of reconciliation went flying out the window.
 
“At least you don’t lie,” she said.
 
“You cheat, but at least you don’t lie.”

“I
didn’t cheat on you, Grace,” he said.
 

“Who’s
the woman in those pictures?
 
Shanks?”

Tommy
paused.
 
“Yes,” he said.

Grace
stared at him.
 

“I
went to Sydney, alone, and was in the shower.
 
Somebody from my office, undoubtedly, had told Shawnie about my trip and
she paid me a visit.
 
She apparently
bribed somebody on the hotel staff to let her into my room.
 
When I got out of the shower, she was sitting
there naked and offering me a ride.”

“So
you decided if you can’t beat’em, join’em, right?”
 
Grace was dripping with sarcasm, which he
knew meant that she was deeply hurt.

“What
those photos showed was that I was throwing her out, not trying to make love to
her.
 
And I did throw her out.”

“So
it’s the pictures’ fault?
 
The pictures
are lying, right?”

“The
interpretation of the snapshots she chose to send to you are, yes.”

“So
like Sheila Lindsey, she wants you back, too?”

Tommy
gave Grace a chilling look.
 
He almost
told her to kiss his ass.
 
He almost just
got up and left.
 
He didn’t need this
aggravation.
 
He didn’t have to explain
himself to her or anybody else.
 

But
he couldn’t do it.
 
Not to Grace.
 
And he would have fallen on his face in
explanation if, at the end of the day, she’d come back to him.

“If
those
 
pictures are true,” he said, “why
didn’t she show snapshots of us in bed? Why didn’t she show snapshots of me
actually fucking her? Hun, Grace?
 
Why
didn’t she show the real show, if it existed?”

Grace
stared at him.

“Because
it didn’t happen,” he said.
 
Then he
frowned, his blue eyes weary.
 
“I love
you, Grace.
 
Nobody else.
 
You.
 
I
didn’t cheat on you in Sydney or at any other time in our relationship.
 
I kicked her out of my hotel room.
 
Please believe me.
 
I kicked her out.”

Grace
couldn’t hide her anguish any longer.
 
“But why didn’t you tell me about it?” she asked him.
 
“I could have been prepared for this if you
would have told me.”

“I
didn’t think there was anything to tell.”

“A
naked woman in your hotel room was nothing to tell?”

“Nothing
happened between me and that naked woman, is what I mean,” he said.
 
Then tears appeared in Tommy’s eyes.
 
Grace was so stunned, she didn’t know how to
take such a sight.

He
wiped his eyes.
 
“Please believe me,” he
said to her.

He
looked so dignified sitting there, yet so vulnerable to Grace.
 
And at that moment she wanted to believe
him.
 
She wanted to believe every word he
was saying to her.
 
But the evidence. . .

She
didn’t know what to say.
 
Then she looked
at him.
 
“Do you want her back?” she
asked him.

“No,”
Tommy said, his eyes tired.
 
“Absolutely
not.”

“But
she wants you back?”

“It’s
never that simple with Shanks.
 
But it’s
for certain she’s out for revenge.
 
That
much I’m certain about.
 
Maybe because I
threw her out of that hotel room, or maybe because I dumped her months
ago.
 
It’s always hard to tell with
Shanks.
 
But I also think she was the
person who’s been feeding intel to the Feds about Sheila Lindsey.”

“She
knew about her?”

Tommy
nodded.
 
“She knew.”

“But
why would she be the feeder?” Grace asked.

“Accumulation,”
he said. “Between a woman who committed suicide in my past, and the accusations
that I might have been involved in her death, and then those photos, all it was
together was designed to overwhelm, and to give you second thoughts about our
relationship.
 
She wants you to run, not
walk, but run away from me.”
 
Tommy
exhaled and wiped his eyes again. “And she seems to have succeeded,” he added.

More
than one or two people were now noticing their emotional conversation.
 
And it bothered Grace.
 
The idea that a man like Tommy would be
sitting here, in this airport, making a spectacle of himself just to win her
back, was unnerving.
 
But what was she
supposed to do?
 
Go back to him and
accept his wild explanation?
 
Or believe
the obvious and fly away fast?

She
closed her eyes.
 
Flight seemed like the
safest bet.
 
But then she opened back up
her eyes.
 
And looked at Tommy.
 
What did she ever get, other than lonely days
and wasted nights, playing it safe?

She
stood up, causing Tommy to stand up too.
 
And handed him her carrying bag.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The
motel room was a sleazy one, but it was the only place ShoShawna would agree to
meet.
 
Tommy had called her directly,
told her that he knew she was in Vegas and he wanted to talk to her, and she
agreed to see him.
 
Only he had to come
alone.
 
This was between the two of them,
she had said, and she didn’t want Reno’s big mouth to contend with.

Tommy
entered the motel room expecting more histrionics from ShoShawna.
 
But he didn’t get it.
 
She sat quietly in the only chair in the
room.

“I
see you’re still punctual,” she said to him.

Tommy
ignored her comment and began walking around the small room.
 
ShoShawna stared at him as he walked.
 
If there was a better looking man alive,
she’d never seen him.
 
And the idea that
she was just going to let him kick her to the curb and replace her with some
nothing of a secretary was ludicrous.
 
She didn’t want him anymore, or at least she would never again admit to
a living soul that she still did, but she had to make sure that he paid for how
he treated her.

Tommy
sat down on the bed, the only other place to sit, and crossed his legs.
 
And for all of ShoShawna’s big talk, an even
bigger truth struck her in the face.
 
Because she knew, if Tommy would have unzipped and pulled it out, she
would have taken it whole.
 
Nobody sexed
her, and she had many who tried, the way Tommy did.

But
sexing her was the absolute last thing on Tommy’s mind.
 
“So you figure you can intimidate my woman,”
he said to her.

ShoShawna
hadn’t expected him to be so blunt.
 
“I
didn’t know you had a woman,” she said.

“Sure
you did.
 
You know.
 
Just like you knew when I would be at the
Ambrose Hotel in Sydney.
 
Just like you
knew I would be here, in Vegas.
 
You know
all about me, don’t you Shanks?”

ShoShawna
frowned.
 
“Don’t call me that,” she
ordered.
 
“Everybody calls me that.
 
Except you.”

“Well
put me in the everybody category, because that’s all I’ll ever be to you again.”

“I
thought you was coming here to talk.”

“I am
talking.”