Tommy Gabrini 4: Dapper Tom Begin Again (13 page)

Tommy’s
look, which wasn’t all that upbeat to begin with, turned somber.
 
And when he squatted down, just inside the
open door beside her, she could feel that heaviness.
 

“Why
do I get the feeling I’m about to have a little talk with the principal?” she
asked.

Her
little joke didn’t sway Tommy. He remained serious.
 
“I want you to know how much I enjoyed spending
time with you.”

Liz
nodded.
 
“Ditto,” she said.

“You’re
a very lovely lady.”

“Ditto,”
she said again.
 
“Substitute Man.”

“But
 
. . .,” Tommy went on to say.

She
shook her head.
 
“There’s always a
but
.”

Tommy
stared into her eyes.
 
“We’d better quit while
we’re ahead,” he said sincerely.

Liz
considered him.
 
She’d been there.
 
She’d had numerous relationships that she
just knew could go somewhere, but ended up imploding.
 
He wasn’t speaking off the cuff.
 
He was speaking from experience.
 
She nodded knowingly.
 
“Like I always tell my staff,” she said, “I
can’t argue with good sense.”

Tommy
could love this woman, he thought.
 
Deeply.
 
But that was the
problem.
 
He kissed her on her forehead,
stood up, and closed the door.
 
The
chauffeur had already placed the suitcase in the trunk, had gotten back behind
the wheel, and began to drive off.

Liz
wanted to be Miss Sophisticated and keep her eyes straight and unfazed.
 
But she also wanted to wave goodbye.
 
She even turned to wave goodbye.
 
But Tommy was already heading back toward his
luxurious plane, his suit coat fanning around him in the stiff Persian Gulf
wind, his duty done.
 
And a sadness came
over Liz.
 
She would rather stay with him
instead.
 
But she had a duty to perform
also.
 
Promises to keep and miles to go
and all of that.
 
So she chalked it up to
some passing fancy the way she always did.
 
And was about to say
his loss
the way she usually verbalized it.
 
But
not this time.
 

“My
loss,” she said instead, and sat back in the comfort of the leather seat.

Rikki
Lowe stood at the big bay window inside Tommy Gabrini’s kitchen, and watched
him play with his little girl in his massive, private backyard.
 
The chef was preparing dinner, and the housekeeping
staff were sweeping and dusting and doing what maids were hired to do, and
although Rikki’s job was to watch Destiny Gabrini, she couldn’t stop watching
Destiny’s dad.
 
Could a man be more
attractive, she mused.
 
And Rikki was no
slouch either.
 
She was in her
mid-twenties, was blonde and blue-eyed and felt she was as pretty as pretty
could get.
 
She had more suitors than she
could keep track of.
 
But Tommy Gabrini
was the top of the food chain to her.
 
She wanted a taste of that.

This
was only her third time working at the Gabrini compound.
 
The other two times he wasn’t around at
all.
 
Today marked her first chance to
see the man in the flesh, not just on the internet, not just from some
picture.
 
And boy was she impressed!

She
was the back-up Nanny, the person called in whenever Miss Fletcher, the regular
Nanny, or Henry, Mr. Gabrini’s House Manager, weren’t available to watch the
child.
 
One was off and one was sick
today and although Mr. Gabrini had every intention of being home all weekend,
he apparently lived the kind of life where he always had to have somebody in
place in case he suddenly had to leave.
 
She was thoroughly investigated for the gig, as if she was applying for
a job with the FBI or some big deal company like that.
 
But even after all of that extensive
investigating, she rarely got the call.
 

But
today, on this beautiful Saturday, the two babysitters Tommy trusted most,
Henry and Miss Fletcher, left the gate wide open for Rikki by the simple fact
that they weren’t there.
 
Her goal was to
go through it.
 
Her goal was to replace
both of them and become the go-to girl in the daughter’s life and, ultimately,
in Mr. Gabrini’s life.

But
first she had to have some serious face time with the man.
 
She was still calling him
Mister Gabrini
for crying out loud.
 
What man would want to be with a woman who
didn’t have the nerve to call him by his first name?
 
But she had to get that baby girl out of the
way, and that wasn’t going to be easy.
 
Because that two-year old kid was running.
 

She
was running in that big backyard as if it were her private Disney World.
 
She ran like it was her first time
running.
 
Tommy was chasing his daughter,
and she was laughing and laughing every time he touched the back of her shirt
and nearly caught her.
 
Then she’d grin
so hard that she’d fall on her rump, get back up, and run some more.
 
Tommy was chasing, and was pretending to
nearly catch her, all over again.
 
It was
boring as hell to Rikki, but those two were having the time of their lives.

Then,
when the running was all over, they sat at Destiny’s little patio table and
played with her little tea set.
 
It was
amusing to see him sit at that tiny table drinking pretend tea and allowing his
daughter to entertain him the way her mother undoubtedly taught her.
 
But again it was boring as hell to Rikki, as
that little playtime seemed to go on forever too.
 

Then
finally, an hour or so later, they were on the lounger.
 
Tommy was lying prone, reading over some
documents on his iPad, and his daughter was lying on him and was playing in his
hair.
 
But she was sleepy.
 
Her eyelids were getting heavy.
 
It would take another five minutes, but she
finally took her busy ass to sleep.

Now
it was Rikki time.
 
She had already
planned it out.
  
It was a breezy
day.
 
Wearing a pair of short shorts and
a halter top wasn’t out of line at all.
 
So she began to leave the kitchen.
 
It was time for her to make an appearance on the patio.
 

When
she left the kitchen area, the white chef, who was preparing the meal, shook
his head.
 
The black housekeepers, who
were dusting and vacuuming, knew exactly what he meant.

“She’s
wasting her time,” the chef said loudly, and the maids all laughed.

But
Rikki would beg to differ.
 
She felt she
had all the attributes a man like Tommy Gabrini craved.
 
Blonde? Check.
 
Blue-eyed?
 
Check.
 
Skinny?
 
Check.
 
Pretty?
 
Checkmate!
 

Outside,
instead of reviewing contracts on his iPad the way he usually did, Tommy found
himself reviewing the history of Kutana magazine, from its’ modest beginning
five years ago when Liz Logan opened its doors.

But
Kutana, Tommy also discovered, was struggling these days the way most print
publications were.
  
He couldn’t find any
in-depth financial statements online, but all indications was that she was
surviving; that she was able to pay her staff on time, and keep the lights on
at her headquarters in Chicago and bureaus around the globe.
 
But what was also clear was that Kutana
hadn’t turned a significant profit in years.

He
found where she was interviewed by the Chicago Tribune and the reporter asked
about Kutana’s print division’s viability when most of their success was from
the online version.
 
Liz chose to focus
on Kutana’s durability and uniqueness.
 
Which wasn’t the question.
 
What
Tommy didn’t understand was why, from strictly a business standpoint, she
didn’t close the doors on her print division altogether.

What
he also couldn’t understand was why he couldn’t forget about Liz Logan!
 
Damn, how she disturbed his peace!
 
It had been nearly three weeks since he last
saw her, but yet almost daily she’d cross his mind.
 
Last week, when he saw a picture of her at
some online celebrity magazine attending a gala with some big time Hollywood
producer, he actually felt some kind of way about that.
 
Maybe even a twinge of jealousy, if he were
to admit it.
 
Which, he knew, was
nuts!
 
She was gorgeous, and her sex was
amazing, but he was still the same man who wasn’t going through any more female
drama for as long as he lived.
 
On that
he was firm.
 

But
yet, he couldn’t stop thinking about Liz.

“She’s
asleep I see,” Rikki said with a smile as she approached him.

 
Tommy glanced down at his little girl.
 
“Yeah,” he said, and went back to reading his
iPad.

“Shall
I take her upstairs to bed?” Rikki asked.

“No,”
he said.
 
“I want to hold her.”

Good,
Rikki thought.
 
Perfect!
 
Then she sat on the edge of the lounger
beside Tommy’s.
 
“You get her, what?
 
Every weekend?”

“And
the summer and holidays, yes.”

Rikki
crossed her legs.
 
She had as smooth and as
nicely tanned legs as he’d ever care to see, she felt, and she was showing them
off.
 
“It must be hard being
divorced.
 
I’m divorced, I should know.
 
I have full custody, but my ex gets my
daughter every weekend.
 
What I love
about this job is that, when I do have my child, I can still bring her to work
with me.”

Tommy
looked at her.
 
“You like that?”

“I
do, yes, sir.”
 
Now that he was looking
those gorgeously odd, greenish-blue eyes at her, she ran her hand down between
her breasts.
 
“I love it in fact.”

“Your
daughter is five, correct?”

Rikki
smiled, ran her hand between her breasts again.
 
“Yes!
 
How did you know?”

“I
know everything about the people hired to watch my daughter.”
 
He stared at her.
 
“Everything.”

Then
Tommy went back to reading his iPad and holding onto his baby.
 
Rikki didn’t like the tone in his voice, and
she gave him a nasty look when he looked away from her, but maybe he was some
kind of freak who got his kicks talking harshly to women.
 
She didn’t know!
  
But she was going to find out.
 
She wanted herself a rich sugar daddy.
 
And a good looking one to boot?
 
She kept up the seduction.
 

She
leaned back on the lounger and began shaking her crossed leg.
 
“You don’t know everything about us,” she
said. “You can’t possibly know everything.
 
For instance, I’d bet you didn’t know that I once worked for the Green
Bay Packers.
 
I was on their official
cheerleading squad when they won the Super bowl.
 
I personally knew Bret Favre and
everything!
 
You didn’t know that, did
you?”

Tommy
didn’t look up, but she could tell his eyes stopped reading.
 
And he hesitated for some reason.
 
Then he began reading his iPad some
more.
 
“No,” he said.

“Well
I was,” Rikki said with a smile, shaking her leg even harder, a little
disappointed that he wouldn’t look at her.
 
“All the guys on the team just loved me.”
 
She decided to go there. “And how I made them
feel.”

Again
she could see where Tommy stopped reading.
 
But again, he kept reading again and never looked up at her.
 
It was infuriating!
 
Didn’t he get it?
 
She was offering up her wares for free!
 
What more did he want?

 
She decided to go for broke.
 

“Oh
no!” she screamed and jumped up.
 
Tommy
looked up then.
  
“A bug is in my shirt!”
she cried hysterically as she began jumping up and down and shaking her little
halter top.
 
She was stunned that he
hadn’t even bothered to stand up as she jumped.
 
Now she felt like a fool.
 
But she
wasn’t going to back down.
 
She went
harder.

“I
hate bugs!
 
I hate bugs!” And then, since
she was all-in by this point, she flung her blouse over her head completely,
revealing her braless, big, nearly white from lack of sun, bare breasts.
 
Then she began rubbing all over them and
turning them toward Tommy.
 
“Do you see
anything?” she asked him.

Tommy
looked to make sure the commotion hadn’t awaken Destiny.
 
“No,” he said.
 
Then he looked at her.
 
He stared at her with eyes that showed, not
his lust, but his displeasure.
 
“Go clean
yourself up,” he said.

Rikki
was stunned.
 
What was wrong with this
man?
 
Was he gay or something?
 
How could he not want her?

She
put back on her halter top and headed back inside the house.
 
As she walked through the kitchen, no one
looked her way.
 
They continued to do
their work.
 
But after she left the
kitchen area and headed toward the servant’s bathroom beneath the stairs and
down a long corridor, laughter broke out.
 
The maids and chef nearly fell out laughing.

Although
it seemed obvious that they were laughing at her little display, Rikki chose to
look at it differently.
 
They were just
jealous that they didn’t have her looks and body.
 
They were just jealous that they couldn’t
even dream of seducing anybody.
 
They,
she decided, were just jealous.

And
as she stood in the bathroom, and looked at herself in the mirror, she
smiled.
 
He saw her breasts.
 
Say whatever they wanted, laugh all they
pleased, but the man saw her breasts.
 
That, to Rikki, was a start.

She
reached into the back pocket of her shorts and pulled out the joint she had
brought with her.
 
She put down the
commode top, sat on it, and took slow drags on her blunt.
 
For nearly fifteen minutes she stayed in that
bathroom, smoking her joint and chilling, and thrilled that she was making
money and progress too.
 
He behaved like
some prude today, but he was a man.
 
He
wasn’t going to resist her for long.