Romancing Tommy Gabrini (9 page)

Nayla
laughed.
 
“Be a real martyr and show up
at the club tonight.”

“I
don’t like surprises and you know it.”

“Who
said anything about a surprise?
 
You know
how you like to stay home sometimes and read some of those boring books you
like to read.
 
But not this night, Grace.
 
In fact, I’ll come and pick you up myself
tonight.
 
You won’t even have to drive.”

Grace
smiled.
 
Now she knew the surprise party
was a go.
 
Nayla hated driving.
 
It was Grace who almost always had to pick
Nayla up for any of their excursions.
 
“If you say so.”

“I
say so,” Nayla said.
 
“Unless you’ve got
a hot date and don’t need sister girl anymore?”

Grace
thought of Tommy and how he failed to get her number.
 
“Nope, no hot date.
 
And I’ll always need sister girl.
 
Whoever that is.”

Nayla
laughed, pleased.
 
“So how did it go last
night?”

“Terrible.”

“That
bad?”

“Uh
hun.”

“Did
Cam show up?”

“He
showed up.
 
Drunk and disgusted.”

“Geez,”
Nayla said.
 
“What a turd.
 
He knows how his mother hates when he makes a
show of himself in public.
 
In private,
she couldn’t care less, but don’t pull that shit in public.”

Grace
laughed.
 

“Just
show up tonight,” Nayla said.
 
“And I
promise you a good time.”

“Any
time I’m with you and Jamie is a good time for me.”

“I
hear ya’, girl.
 
And maybe after tonight,
just maybe, you’ll realize, like I realized myself, that being man-less and childless
at thirty ain’t as bad as it seem.
 
At
least flying solo means you don’t have to answer to anybody but yourself.”

Grace
hesitated.
 
Tommy had all but said the
same thing last night.
 
Only he was
talking about open relationships, which, apparently, he practiced.
 
“And nobody,” Grace replied in the same
manner that she had replied to Tommy, “has to answer to you.”

“Exactly!”
Nayla said as if it wasn’t an indictment the way it felt to Grace.

But
that conversation was long off her mind when she entered the revolving doors of
Trammel and headed for the private elevators.
 
She wore a Gabardine jacket and a high-waist pencil skirt, both dark
grey, and a pair of six inch heels.
 
Her
brown hair was pushed up along the front and dropped down in waves of bounciness
along her back.
 
Her face was full and
serious, and her bright brown eyes contrasted remarkably against her dark brown
skin.
 
With her nice height in heels and
her briefcase swinging by her side, she projected an image of pure confidence
as she strove across the lobby’s parquet floor.
 

More
than a few men gave her double takes as she smiled and spoke and joked with the
security guard, and then made her way to the executive elevators.

She
didn’t realize Jared Graham, the head of Sales, and Penny Shavers, the head of
Marketing, had been downstairs waiting on her until she turned her key to call
up the private elevator.
 
They came up
behind her just as the doors opened.

“Well,
good morning,” Grace said as she, along with the twosome, entered the elevator.

“You’ve
got to help us, Grace,” Penny said.

“Help
you do what?”

“Jillian
wants to install cameras inside every work station,” Jared announced.

“Cameras?”

“Yes!”
Jared replied as he pressed the button and the doors closed them in.
 
“Including my office and Pen’s!
 
I’m the head of Sales, Grace.
 
Do you realize how much lying we have to do
to sale this shit to businesses who could save more money with Fed-Ex and UPS?
 
And she wants to
film
it?”

“And
I’m director of Marketing,” Penny said.
 
“You know as well as I know that we . . . How can I put it?”

“That
you steal ideas from other companies?” Jared suggested.

“We
borrow
from other companies,” Penny
preferred.
 
“We borrow their marketing
strategies and then we put our own spin on it.
 
But it’s a messy, borderline illegal process.
 
And Jillian knows it!
 
But she wants to film that, too.
 
She’s out of her mind, Grace!”

Grace
nodded.
 
“I’ll see what I can do,” she
said, to their delight.
 
They could
always count on Grace to at least voice their concerns to Jillian.

And
then Jared added, as he always did:
 
“How
about dinner tonight?”

“I
don’t date co-workers,” Grace replied, as she always did.

“Like
hell!
 
You dated Cam and he supposedly
works here! That is, when he drags his ass out of some woman’s bed and bothers
to show up.”

“Ever
dated someone that you later wondered what in the world were you thinking?”
Grace asked him.

Jared
hesitated.
 
“Is this a trick question?”

“Just
answer it.”

“Yes,
I’ve dated many people who I later look back and wonder what in san hell was I
thinking.”

“That’s
Cam and me,” Grace said as the elevator doors binged open.
 
“So using Cam Birch as an example will get
you nowhere with me, bud.”

Jared
laughed.
 

“Let’s
get to work, guys,” Grace admonished as she stepped off of the elevator on the
top floor of the ten-floor office building, and headed for her office.
 
Her two managers stepped off too, thanked her
for agreeing to voice their concerns to Jillian, and then headed for theirs.

But Grace
had barely rounded the reception desk before Jillian Birch came barreling out
of her office, her two assistants in tow, as she announced she had a family
emergency and Grace had to handle the meeting.

“What
meeting?” Grace asked as she watched Jillian tear past her in that whirlwind
way she always carried herself.

“With
the union rep.”

“The
union rep?” Grace asked incredulously.
 
“But Jillian they’re threatening to strike.
 
Don’t you think you should be the one to
handle this meeting?”

“I
have every confidence in your ability to do everything in your power to get him
to see reason.”

“But
they might strike,” Grace said again with some urgency, in case her boss didn’t
fully understand.

Jillian
stopped, turned around, and then walked back up to Grace.
 
“I have a family emergency,” she said.
 
“Didn’t you hear me?”

“But
we’re talking about our truckers walking off the job.
 
This is vital.”

“And
my son isn’t?
 
It’s Cameron.
 
He’s gotten himself into a bit of a mess, and
I’ve got to take care of it.”

“He’s
a grown man, but yeah, okay.”

Jillian
stared at Grace.
 
Contempt dripped from
her eyes.
 
“You think you have it all
figured out, don’t you?
 
You’re young and
smart and pretty as a picture and you figure you got it all together.
 
Well wait until you’re fifty, darling, and
not so pretty anymore.
 
Wait until men
start preferring twenty year olds to you.
 
You just wait.
 
Then the fact that
your son is grown, if you’re fortunate to even have one since at the rate
you’re going it’s doubtful, will mean nothing to you.
 
Making certain that he’s all right and well
cared for will be the very reason you get out of bed every morning, too.”
 
Then a coldness flashed across her eyes.
 
“Meet with the union rep.
 
Resolve his concerns.
 
Avert the strike.
 
You’re chief of staff around here, for
goodness sake.
 
Start acting like
it.”
 
Jillian said this and then headed,
once again, for the elevators.

Grace
exhaled as she always did when Jillian left a room. It was as if an earthquake
had been shaking the building and scaring the life out of everybody and then,
just like that, the calm returned.
 
But
that feeling of being through a storm was still there.

Grace
hesitated, flustered, and then walked around the reception desk to her office
near the back of the corridor.
 
Happy birthday to me
, she thought as she
went.
 
She also figured she’d better
school herself on the issues first before she met with anyone.
 
Especially a union representative.

But
as soon as she entered her office and sat her briefcase on her desk, the
intercom buzzed.
 

“Good
morning,” the secretary said into the intercom.

“Good
morning,” Grace replied.

“Mr.
Gabrini is on line three.”

Grace
was surprised.
 
She hadn’t expected any
call from him, not ever.
 
“Thanks, Mag,”
she said and pressed number three.
 
“This
is Grace,” she said.

Tommy
was in his office signing off on a stack of documents, with one of his
assistants waiting to retrieve them.
 
When Grace’s voice came onto the line he dropped his pen and leaned back
in his swivel chair.

“Hello,
Grace,” he said.
 
“It’s Thomas.”

“Thomas
or Tommy?” she asked.

He
smiled.
 
“Tony.”

She
laughed.
 
“Hello, Tommy.
 
What can I do for you?”

You just wait and see
, Tommy wanted to say.
 
“I thought we’d set a date for that date you
promised me,” he said instead.

Grace
sat down.
 
She had assumed he wasn’t
serious when he didn’t bother to get her cell number.
 
She didn’t even consider the fact that he
knew where she worked.
 
“Okay, sure,” she
said.
 
“When’s good for you?”

Tommy
pulled out his Blackberry and checked his calendar.
 
As usual he was booked solid, including a
business meeting with some investors tonight at one of his restaurants.
 
Normally he didn’t cancel those kinds of
meetings.
 
For some reason, this time, he
was considering it.
 
“How about tonight?”
he asked her.

Grace
was surprised.
 
A guy who didn’t set the
date well into the future usually meant that he was definitely interested,
although she had a pretty good idea what he was interested in.
 
But she was a woman who kept her word.
 
Just as she was about to answer in the affirmative,
she realized what tonight really was.
 
Her birthday.
 
As in her surprise
party.
 
She knew she hated surprises for
a reason!

“Can’t
do it tonight,” she reluctantly said.

This
stopped Tommy cold.
 
He was accustomed to
a lot of things, but being turned down by a woman wasn’t one of them.
 
His smile dissolved.
 
He waved his hand, and his assistant left the
room.
 
“You can’t?” he asked.

“I
can’t, no.”

“And
why can’t you?”
 
He didn’t mean to sound
peevish, but he couldn’t help it.
 
He was
willing to cancel a very important business meeting for this date.
 
He wanted to know what it was that she wasn’t
willing to cancel.

“It’s
my birthday, you see,” she said.
 
“And
some friends of mine are throwing me a surprise party tonight.”

“Oh,”
Tommy said, feeling ridiculous.
 
“Of
course you can’t miss that.
 
So this is
birthday number?”

“Guess.”

“Twenty-five?”

“Bless
you.
 
Thirty.”

“Oh,
you’re a big girl now,” he said, relieved to hear her age.
 
“But wait a minute,” he added with a frown.
 
“If it’s a surprise party, how would you know
about it?”