Tommy Gabrini 4: Dapper Tom Begin Again (10 page)

“I’m
flying out to Rome tonight,” Tommy said.
 
“Will that get you two closer to where you need to go?”

Tommy
could see the immediate acceptance from Chelsey’s body language alone.
 
She just wanted to get away from there.
 
But she was accustomed to taking her cues
from Liz.
 
She looked at Liz.
 

But
Liz, Tommy also noticed, was not so easily persuaded.
 
She wanted out too, but she wasn’t going to
leave any kind of way.
 
“So does that
mean you have a private jet that will take us there?” Liz asked him.

But
now Sal took offense.
 
“What are you
asking questions for?” he asked her.
 
“My
brother is offering you a ride, lady.
 
What difference does it make in what?
 
He’s not gonna load you on the back of a turnip truck and take you
there, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Liz
inwardly smiled at Sal’s snide remark, but she had her game face on right
now.
 
The fact that Tommy had offered
them this lift was huge.
 
Chelsey was
hurting, and needed to get away, and he intervened to help.
 
She liked that.
 
“It’ll get us closer to be sure,” she
said.
 
“Yes.”

Sal
nodded and Gemma smiled.
 
“Well at least
that,” she said.
 
She didn’t want her
sister languishing all night in some hotel.
 
Then she rubbed her brother-in-law’s arm.
 
“Thanks, Tommy,” she said.
 
“Thank-you so very much.”

Although
Tommy accepted her thanks, he had the oddest feeling that he didn’t need
it.
 
He had the oddest sensation that he
was the one who should be thankful.

He
stood at the bar inside his private jet and poured two glasses of wine.
 
But his eyes were primarily on Liz.
 
Chelsey was in one of the back cabins fast
asleep.
 
She said she was a little tired
and needed some shut-eye, but Tommy and Liz both knew better than that.
 
She was emotionally spent after the kind of
day she spent at her father’s house.
 
She’d be out all night.

They
were in the air for a couple hours already, flying high above the clouds.
 
Tommy had been in the conference room,
preoccupied with phone calls and videoconferences he could not avoid, and he
was just getting a chance to relax at all.
  
And although Chelsey was in one of the private cabins fast asleep, Liz
was in the open cabin wide awake.
 
She
had her iPhone sitting beside her, on top of a small stack of files, and she
had her iPad on her lap, thumbing through what was undoubtedly her magazine’s
articles she needed to review.
 
Tommy
noticed how she would occasionally stop thumbing through her iPad and look out
the window, at the blackness that surrounded them, as if her mind had drifted
away in the clouds, and then she’d get back to work.

After
pouring the drinks, he took both glasses and walked over to her elongated
seat.
 
He stood beside her with one of the
two glasses reached out for her to grasp.
 
He glanced down at her iPad as he did so.
 
She was not reviewing press reports as he had
assumed, but balance sheets.

When
she looked at the glass, and then up at his face, his heart actually
fluttered.
 
She wore big reading glasses
on her small face that made her look simply adorable to him, in a sweet, nerdy
sort of way.
 
She also looked weary to
him.

“Thanks,”
she said, and accepted the drink.

Tommy
sat in the seat facing her.
 
She looked
at him as he did so.
 
She didn’t realize
until now that he had changed out of his expensive suit coat and now wore a
light beige Ralph Lauren Cardigan sweater, although he still had on that same
pair of dress pants.
 
His Ferragamos were
also gone and now he sported loafers.
 
Christian Louboutin loafers if she had to
guess.
 
He was a man of style, she
thought as she sipped her wine.
  
No
doubt about that.
 

Tommy
stretched out his long legs across the floor, within an inch of touching hers,
and held his drink, with both hands, on his lap.
 
Liz had gone back to watching clouds, as she
crossed her legs and occasionally sipped her wine, and he had gone back to
watching her.
 
She still wore her
slim-fit pants and tucked-in shirt, but her heels had been replaced with a pair
of Jordans.
 
And she rocked her short
afro in a way that always turned him on.
 
Show him a gorgeous black woman with a soft, neat afro trimmed perfectly
to the shape of her head, and he’d show you a woman he wanted to fuck.
 
It was the exposure that turned him on.
 
It was the fact that a cut that short laid
bare every flaw in a woman’s face.
 
And
every attribute.
 
Very few women could
pull off such a hairstyle.
  
But with her
high cheekbones and her flawless black skin, and with her nicely shaped head,
Liz could.
 
And she wore it well.
 
But his mind couldn’t stop imagining, even as
he drank his wine, what she would look like completely bare.

Liz
knew he was staring at her, but that was nothing new.
 
He’d been staring at her, to various degrees,
ever since they met.
 
She usually didn’t
like it.
 
Men made her feel dirty when
they overdid it this way.
 
But a part of
her, a small part, liked the fact that he found her interesting enough to give
her his full assessment.

She
looked at him, to catch him in the act, but he didn’t seem to care.
 
He didn’t look away.
 
“This is a very nice ride,” she said.
 
“Very smooth.
 
Owned planes all your life, have you?”

Tommy
smiled.
 
“Like no,” he said and Liz
smiled too.
 
“This particular plane,” he
added, “is relatively new.
 
Just a year
or so old.
 
What about you?
 
Are you telling me that a magazine publisher
such as yourself do not own her own plane?”

“Like
hell no,” Liz said, and Tommy laughed.
 
“I barely own a car, are you kidding me?”

“Now
you’re exaggerating.”

“I
know.
 
But it sounded good, didn’t it?”

Tommy
laughed.
 
“It sounded good.”

Then
the laughter died back down.
 
Liz was
about to return her attention to her iPad, but Tommy spoke up.
 
“How long have you been a reporter?
 
Since after college?”

Liz
looked back up.
 
“Since after high
school.
 
I got a job as a gopher for a
local newscast and worked my way up to reporter within a couple years.
 
Then I ended up at the local CBS affiliate
and then, a few years later, I was with their national headquarters in New
York.
 
I scratched and clawed and worked
like a dog and eventually became a war correspondent for CBS.”

“Wow,”
Tommy said, impressed.
 
“You had quite a
ride.”

“I
did.
 
I worked my butt off for that ride,
but it was worth it.
 
But it was only so
far a black girl was going to go in that world, and I knew it.
 
So I took my expertise and got to work on my
own thing.”

“Kutana,”
he said.

She
nodded.
 
“Kutana.
 
And I thank God daily that it worked.
 
I would have lost my shirt if it had not.”

“Thank
God it did.”

“Yes.”

“And somewhere
along the way, you and Gemma’s sister became best friends.”

“We
were best friends since childhood.”

“Oh,
were you?”

“Yep,
since we were kids.
 
It’s funny because
most people back then thought Gemma and I were sisters, and Chelsey was the
neighbor.
 
Gem was tall, I was tall.
 
Gem was dark-skinned, I was
dark-skinned.
 
Yet here was this short,
stout, high-yellow girl hanging out too.
 
And they treated Chelse differently.
 
I think that’s why I was drawn to her because of how she was treated.”

“Even
by her family?”

“Not
Gemma.
 
Gemma never treated Chelse
bad.
 
But her father, yeah.
 
He treated her awful.
 
Her mother tried to stop him, I’ll give her
that, but Rodney Jones ran that household.
 
He wasn’t trying to hear what Mrs. Jones had to say.”

Tommy
waited for more.
 
He waited for her to
tell him the reason Rodney Jones treated Chelsey poorly.
 
It was obvious to him.
 
Chelsey was Cassie’s child, but she was not
Rodney’s.
 
Although he might be wrong,
that was his conclusion.
 
But Liz was too
close to the camera.
 
He honestly didn’t
think she’d seen it yet.

But
Rodney and Chelsey’s drama was none of his business anyway, and he wasn’t about
to meddle in it.
 
“Do you know my brother
at all?” Tommy decided to ask.
 

“Only
what Gem mentioned the few times we spoke on the phone,” Liz replied.
 
“And when I met him, he was exactly as I
expected.
 
But you, as his brother? Not
at all.”

Tommy
was curious.
 
“Sal was exactly what you
expected?
 
What do you mean?
 
How did you expect Sal to be?”

“I
expected a gangster,” Liz said bluntly. “A Mafia type. I did my research.

“And
when you finally saw him in person?”
 
Tommy asked.

“I
saw a gangster. A Mafia type. I would have never expected straight-laced Gem to
marry a guy like that.”

“A
guy like what?”

“A
guy like Sal.
 
A Sal guy. I would have
thought she’d prefer your type more so than your brother’s type.”

Tommy
smile.
  
“Didn’t think I was a type.”

“You
are a type all right,” Chelsey said. “A nice type, but a type.”

Tommy
considered her.
 
“What type are you, Liz Logan
from Rosemont?”

“I
told you about that,” Liz said playfully.
 
“I’m from Chicago now.
 
I’m all
Chicago all the time.
 
Forget Rosemont,
Indiana if you please.”
 

Tommy
laughed.
 

“Rosemont
was where my parents planted me.
 
Chicago
is where I planted myself.
 
Big
difference.”

“Both
of your parents still living?”

“My
father is.
 
My mother died when I was a
kid.”

“Sorry
to hear that.
 
Where you an only child?”

“I
have no biological siblings, but my father married a woman with five kids.”

“Whoa,”
Tommy said.

“Yep.
 
So I have five stepbrothers and sisters.
 
I’m the oldest.”

“Do
they all still live in Rosemont, or just your father?”

“None
of them live in Rosemont anymore, including my Dad and Stepmom.
 
They moved to Wisconsin.
 
I have siblings in California, New York,
Florida, all over.”

“Are
you and your step-siblings close?”

“They
are to each other.
 
I think they always
saw me as their mom’s husband’s daughter, rather than their step-sibling.
 
And the fact that I was older than they are
didn’t help.”

Great
opening.
 
Tommy took it.
 
“How old are you, Liz?” he asked.

“Thirty-three,”
she said.
 
“A whopping eight years older
than any of my siblings.”

“Ah,”
Tommy said, nodding his understanding.

“And
because of that age difference, I always went my own way and did my own
thing.
 
But I would have liked to be
closer to them, it just never worked out.
 
They never wanted to come to Chicago.
 
And would badmouth it too,” she said and Tommy laughed.
 
“I’m serious,” she added, although she wasn’t
all that serious.
 
“I would even offer to
pay their plane fare, but they never came.
 
‘
It’s too cold
,’ one would
say.
 
‘
It’s too windy
,’ another one would say.
 
‘
To
that murder capital
?’ another would say.
 
Just badmouth it.
 
So I don’t go
to their adopted states either.
 
Hell if
they don’t like Chicago, I damn sure don’t like their little shitty towns.”

Tommy
laughed.
 
“Well, tell me, Chicago,” he
said, and Liz smiled.
 
Then he turned
serious.
 
“What type are you?” he asked
her again.

She
had to think about it.
 
“I’m a lot of
types,” she said.

He
stared at her.
 
“Such as?”

“I’m
the lone Wolf type.
 
The workaholic
type.
 
The girl most likely to succeed in
her professional life and fail miserably in her private life type. I have no
personal commitments and don’t want none.”
 
She looked at him.
 
“That type.”

Tommy
considered her.
 
She’d had her heart
broken too.
 
But he wasn’t about to
analyze the lady.
 
Why would he bother?
 
When they made it to Rome, that was going to
be it for him, no matter if she gave him some or not.
 
And based on what she’d just said, it was
going to be it for her too.
 

“Only
that’s not true, is it?
 
The last
type.
 
You and Chelsey are obviously
close.
 
And the way you stood up for her
at her parents’ home was quite nice.”