MOB BOSS 3: LOVE AND RETRIBUTION (7 page)

At first Tommy didn’t understand. “I told you my men wil handle security.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking a personal bodyguard. A tactician, Tommy.”

Tommy frowned trying to comprehend what Reno was saying and what that look on Reno’s mug realy meant.
He needs help, okay, he needs help
, Tommy’s mind was saying. But when it hit, it hit hard.

“No, Reno, not her.”

“I need her, Tommy.”

“Need who?” Carmine asked, but they ignored him. This was realy a two-man conversation. And Tommy was shaking his head.

“Not Shanks, please don’t tel me you’re roping Shanks into this.”

“I need her, Tommy.”

Tommy hesitated. It had been nearly three months since he’d seen or heard from her. Three long months. Surely Reno understood what he was asking of him.

But Reno was persistent. “I wouldn’t go there if I didn’t have to, Tommy, you know that. But something is teling me that this boogey man is the biggest, baddest boogey man we’ve ever faced. I need her.”

Tommy just sat there quietly, suddenly looking drawn it seemed to Reno. And then he seemed to resign himself to the fact that it had to be so. “I don’t even know where she is right now,” he said.

Reno hesitated. He knew the pain just the mention of her name caused Tommy.

But it couldn’t be helped.

“I know how to reach her,” Reno said.

FOUR

The next night, when Tommy Gabrini drove his sports Mercedes onto his circular driveway and saw her car parked along the slant, he literaly stopped in his tracks before he puled on up and kiled his engine. Reno had said that he would get in touch with her, but Tommy never dreamed it would be this soon. Or that she would just show up at his place as if nothing had happened.

He returned from Vegas yesterday, with the hospital stil running tests on Trina and Franny stil in intensive care. Reno spent almost al of his time at Trina’s bedside. When he wasn’t at her side he was either checking in on Franny, or planning his own mother’s funeral. Sometimes Tommy wondered how Reno held up at al. But he did, day in and day out. Tommy, in fact, had yet to meet a stronger man.

The only reason Tommy left Vegas before the funeral was because he had to meet with a corporate client in Portland whose CEO, the very paranoid former head of Burton-Bronston, was requesting a monumental amount of surveilance work from Gabrini Security. But after those drawn-out meetings were over, however, Tommy wasn’t interested in staying the night. He had driven nearly three straight hours just to make it back home. Now he wanted nothing more than to go to bed and get some sleep. It was nine at night, the Seattle sky was gray and overcast, and he was so exhausted that he didn’t even bother to invite one of his female friends over to warm his bed.

But now he had to deal with
her
. And as usual when she reappeared in his life, a part of him was so elated he could hardly contain his thril. But another part of him, lately perhaps the bigger part, was disconcerted.

He got out of his car and pressed his keypad, the lights flashing three times as his car locked then alarmed and then sputtered to sleep. From the flood light that iluminated his big, quiet home, he noticed that her car, a Lexus he had purchased for her last year, had a dent the size of a tennis bal near the back bumper. He rubbed the groove, surprised that she hadn’t mentioned any accident. But then again, he thought, as he headed across the driveway to his front door, how could she? He hadn’t heard from her in months.

When he entered the foyer of his colonial-style home and rounded the corner to the living area, he saw her. She was standing at the back of the massive room in front of the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the Pacific Ocean.

He stopped al movement when he saw her. She was just standing there, staring out at the waves as they careened up and splashed back down in a wild float across the ocean, her tal, slim, exquisite body like a silhouette of magnificence even before she turned around. And when she turned around, and Tommy saw that face that stil dominated his dreams, his heart hammered against his chest.

He continued walking toward her, his movements not as steady now, but his eyes refusing to leave hers. She was his gold standard, the one woman he compared al other women to, but he couldn’t keep letting her do this to him.

As soon as ShoShawna Shanks turned and saw him standing there, staring at her with those piercing blue eyes of his, her face became flushed. He was her gold standard too, the man she compared al other men to, but the only thing she always seemed able to give to him was heartache and grief.

When Reno phoned and told her to get to Seattle, that he needed her firepower, she didn’t ask questions. She packed up her bags and was ready to go. But then she just sat there. On paper she was a firearms expert. But in truth she was nothing more than a hired gun.

She, in fact, had just come off of a rescue mission that went horribly bad, and where she lost two of her people. She had been holed up in a hotel trying to recover from that very mission when she got the cal from Reno. At first she was gung-ho, ready to get that adrenalin rush again. But then she was paralyzed with fear, terrified of making another mistake. She almost phoned Reno back, especialy since he said Tommy’s place would be their meeting point.

Tommy
, she had said as she sat in that lonely hotel room. She wanted to see him so desperately, to feel his strong, protective arms around her, to be a part of his life again. But after their last time together, when he gave her his ultimatum, she was worried that he wouldn’t want to have anything more to do with her.

She put on her best smile as he began moving toward her. And her heart was pounding too. He looked so elegant, she thought, in his double-breasted Italian silk suit and patent leather Ferragamo moccasins. His wondrously thick hair was piled around that thick-jawed, gorgeous face, and his tal, lean body stil looked as firm and sexy as it had when he first caught her eye four years ago.

Their eyes locked as he approached her, and for a brief moment she wanted to run. She wasn’t sure if she could deal with any more emotion right now. But she didn’t run. She attempted to smile instead.

“Hi,” she said when he arrived at her side, her smile more unnerving than joyous.

Although her joy was usualy contagious, Tommy wasn’t trying to smile this time. Not this time. Not when he was too inwardly angry at his physical reaction to her. Already his eyes couldn’t stop scanning her body. Already his penis was throbbing at the mere thought of what hid between those long, luscious legs of hers. He buttoned his Armani suit coat, and slipped his hands into the pockets of his pleated pants, in an effort to hide his expanding reaction.

“I was beginning to wonder if you would get back from Portland at al tonight,” she said.

“You should have phoned,” he replied dryly. It was that face. That gorgeous, panther-like, dark-brown face that always drew him in. Big, almond, African eyes, ful African lips, long hair in rols of curls on one side of her face, and a straight, silky drop-down on the other side. She had that long neck and those high cheek bones that gave her a look so sophisticated, so aristocratic that he always felt as if he was in the presence of royalty whenever he was near her.

She was once his queen. Once his woman. A year ago he asked her to marry him.

But she turned him down cold.

He leaned against the window pane, trying his best to look at her eyes rather than her body, trying his best to not want her so desperately. “How did you know I was in Portland?” he asked, deciding against smal talk.

“I have my spies,” she said with that perfect smile of hers. Those beautiful white teeth against her smooth black skin just dazzled him.

Her look turned serious when he stil wouldn’t return her forced gaiety. “Irene told me,” she admitted. Irene Burk was Tommy’s secretary for nearly a decade, and of al the women Tommy had had in that time, and he’d had many, Shawna was stil her favorite.

“So Reno cals and you comes,” he said to her, a slight edge of bitterness in his voice.

Shawna caught that edge. “He said he needed me,” she explained. “Reno’s a good guy. I look after the good guys.”

“By being a button for the mob?”

“By getting rid of the bad guys.”

Tommy considered her. He hated the fact that she hired herself out as some modern day mercenary, working for the government, the mob, foreign governments even: anybody anywhere whom she

deemed worthy of her hire. He used to worry about her to no end. He stil worried about her. Some nights to this day he’d wake up in cold sweats worrying about her. The next night, however, he’d have a woman, it didn’t realy matter who, in his bed.

But he also knew that her job was as much a part of her as his job was a part of him. And he’d never, not ever, try to take that away from her.

“What did Reno tel you?” he asked her, noticing how that tiny mole she used to have just below the right tip of her bottom lip, a mole he loved, was gone.

“He told me about the hit on the PaLargio. Told me about his mother and sister.” She looked Tommy dead in the eyes. “And how you saved his wife’s life.”

She always seemed so impressed with him. She always made him want to be a better man around her. “And what did you say?” he asked her.

“Damn straight he saved her life,” she said with that half-cocked smile of hers he loved to see. “That’s Tommy. That’s what he does.”

Tommy smiled. She always, somehow, managed to make him smile. But he couldn’t keep letting her bounce in and out of his life, especialy after his ultimatum to her three months ago. He told her then that they couldn’t keep doing this. She’d already turned down his marriage proposal nine months prior to his ultimatum. But she kept dropping by, popping in and out of his life, anytime she needed reassurance or a man or whatever, and like the sucker he sometimes felt he was for her, he kept letting her back in. Three months ago he told her enough was enough. His heart couldn’t take it any longer.

He told her they either committed exclusively to each other, and eventualy started looking toward marriage, or it was over.

He woke up the next morning, and she was gone.

Now, three months later, she was back. To help Reno, he knew that was her main reason. But Reno wasn’t due in Vegas for another couple days, and she knew it.

He was trying to get her out of his system. He was trying to once and for al go on with his life. But how in the world could he ever do that, he wondered, if she kept coming back?

He had to treat this return as business. And nothing but. To protect his own heart.

But almost immediately he failed.

“I’m glad Reno knew how to get in touch with you,” he found himself saying, that bitter bite stil in his tone, “because I sure as hel don’t.”

She turned back toward the window and the high-arching waves of the Pacific Ocean. “It was supposed to be over between us,” she said, and then looked at him again. “Remember?”

Tommy didn’t respond. He had never been able to admit that he and Shawna were no longer together. Not that they ever had an exclusive relationship. They never did. She was, in the beginning, the same as al of his other ladies. And he gave her the same spiel up front: no commitments ever, no demands ever, no jealousy over any of his other ladies ever. She saw whomever she pleased, and he did the same. That was always the way Tommy roled and every one of his bed partners knew it. And for the first three years of their relationship, that was the way she roled too. He, in fact, loved her daunting independence.

Until she slowly but surely started becoming his favorite. First it was in bed. He started wanting her more and more until no one else could come close to satisfying him the way she did. And then he started thinking about her, worrying about her, phoning her constantly whenever she was out of his sight. And he became more protective of her, and more disconcerted when he thought she was seeing some other guy. For over a year he wasn’t seeing anybody but her and he didn’t want anybody but her. He even did something he declared he’d never do and asked her to marry him. Her turndown almost crippled him. And he declared then to never fal in love again.

Problem was, he had never falen out of love with her.

He pushed himself away from the windowpane and headed toward his huge bar in his massive great room. “Want something to drink?” he asked her.

She looked at him. She remembered the night he gave her that ultimatum. They were at this very house, in his bedroom. She began putting back on her clothes. Tommy got out of bed, put on his silk robe, and walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. She stepped into her dress and then came to him. He zipped her up, the way he always did, but this time he puled her down onto his lap, holding her.

robe, and walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. She stepped into her dress and then came to him. He zipped her up, the way he always did, but this time he puled her down onto his lap, holding her.

For the longest time they sat that way, their eyes closed. For Tommy it was her wonderful scent, every curve of her body, her smile and twinkling eyes and sincerity that he knew he was going to miss.

For Shawna, any ilusions about Tommy Gabrini were unthinkable. He was just a guy, she was stil trying to convince herself. Just a man.

She eventualy stood up. He stood up too. They stared into each other’s eyes. “Bye, Tommy,” she finaly said, and then fel against his chest. When he didn’t wrap his arms around her again, she moved back and looked at him.

“I’l be back this way in a couple of months,” she said. “I’l see you then.”

But he was shaking his head. “I don’t think so, Shawnie,” he said.

Shawna stared at him. “You don’t think so?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m doing the best I can, Tommy.”

“Not good enough, kid.”

“Wel what do you want me to do? Give up my job, give up the biggest part of who I am?”

Tommy shook his head. “And then blame me for it? Not on your life. That’s why this game we’re playing, this same time, next month malarkey, has got to stop. For both our sakes.”