Tommy Gabrini 4: Dapper Tom Begin Again (18 page)

Liz
laughed.
 
“The star witness, hun Rome?”

“Nothing
but the best seat in the house for me baby,” Jerome responded.
 
“Ask my wife, she’ll tell you.”
 
Liz laughed.

Tommy
closed the document and handed it back to Annie.

“So
what do you think?” Annie asked.
 
“Since
Liz has such faith in you.”

“I
think I’d better get going,” Tommy said.

Annie
couldn’t believe it.
 
That was it?

Liz
stood up.
 
“Still think you can make that
afternoon board meeting?” she asked him with a smile.

“I’m
going to try,” he said.

“I’ll
walk you out.”

And
she did.
 
She left Annie and Jerome still
hanging out in her office, and escorted Tommy downstairs, to his waiting car
and driver.
 
They stood at the open door
of the passenger seat.
 
And Liz couldn’t
help herself.
 
She hugged him.
 
Tommy was so touched by her show of
affection, since he knew it took a lot for her to go there, that he returned
her hug even more vigorously.
 
Then he
kissed her on the lips as they moved out of their embrace.
 

Liz
was pleased with that response.
 
“Have a
safe flight,” she said to him.

“Have
a safe life,” he said to her.

Liz’s
hopefulness dropped when he uttered those words.
 
It sounded like a definite goodbye.
 
But what could she do about it?
 
He was kind to her, and unbelievably
thoughtful, but he never denied being nothing more than a passing fancy.
 
“You too,” she said, and stepped back.
 

He
got into the car, and the driver closed the door.
 
Then the driver got in and drove off.
 
As the car drove away, Liz could see that
Tommy was already talking on his cell phone and moving on with his life.
 
As if his time with her was as bygone as the
distance that now separated them.
 
She
moved on too.

Oh well
, she thought, as she turned to head
back into the tall office building.
 
His loss
.

Jeffrey
Haggard opened the door of his tiny apartment as if he knew Tommy well, when,
in truth, he didn’t know him at all.
 
But
he looked like a respectable businessman.
 
Super respectable in fact.
 
And he
said he was there about the lawsuit.
 
Jeffrey opened his door.

Tommy
walked in as if he was indeed there on business.
 
And he was.
 
Only not the kind Jeffrey had in mind.
 

Once
Jeffrey closed the door, he smiled.
 
“So
you work for Liz?”

Tommy
didn’t respond to that.
 
He was too busy
sizing Jeffrey up.
 
Tall, well
groomed.
 
Younger than Liz by about five,
six years.
 
Handsome, well built.
 
Liz’s type no doubt about it.
 
Tommy was also sizing up the apartment, and
whether or not the younger man was home alone.

“I
heard about her accident in Iraq,” Jeffrey went on to say.
 
“I know you won’t believe it, and I’m certain
she won’t believe me, but I’m glad she wasn’t seriously injured.
 
I really am.”

“I’m
here about the lawsuit,” Tommy said.
 
He
needed to hear his fake concern like he needed a hole in the head.
 

“What
about the lawsuit?” Jeffrey asked.

“It
needs to end,” Tommy replied.

Jeffrey
smiled.
 
“I’m sure Liz wants this matter
to be over with like yesterday, but not so fast.
 
Besides, I think protocol states that you
should go through my lawyer if you guys want to settle this case out of court,
and not through me.”

“Would
you prefer I go through your lawyer?” Tommy asked him.

“I
would very much prefer that, yes,” Jeffrey replied.

“I
don’t give a shit what you prefer,” Tommy said.

Jeffrey
didn’t expect such vitriol.
 
Where did
that come from?
 
This guy looked like he
could run a Fortune 500 company.
 
Why was
he suddenly so nasty?
 
“Excuse me?”

“You
heard me.”

“Okay,
now see, yeah.”
 
Jeffrey began moving
toward the door. “I think you should leave.”

Tommy
grabbed him by the arm and began twisting it.

“You’re
hurting me!” Jeffrey cried.
 
“What are
you doing?
 
You’re hurting me!”

Tommy
twisted his arm until he could see the joint poking out beneath the skin, and
then he could hear the crack and then the break.
 
Jeffrey screeched in pain.

Tommy
placed his mouth to Jeffrey’s ear.
 
He
was still twisting that broken arm.
 
“You
listen very carefully, Mr. Haggard,” he said to Jeff.
 

“Please.
 
Please don’t
 
hurt me!
 
I can’t this pain!”

“I
don’t have time to go into details,” Tommy said.
 
“But understand this very clearly.
 
Drop the lawsuit.
 
You have a broken arm today.
 
If you don’t drop that lawsuit, everything
breaks tomorrow.”

Tommy
released his arm.
 
Jeffrey dropped to his
knees in tears and agony.
 
Tommy let out
a harsh exhale.
 
Damnable business.
 
“What are you going to do, Mr. Haggard?” he
asked.

But
Jeffrey was in too much pain to answer.
 
Until Tommy took his expensive shoe and pressed it on that arm.

Jeffrey
screamed out again.
 

“What
are you going to do, Mr. Haggard?”
 
Tommy
pressed on that arm again.

Jeffrey
screamed like a woman this time.
 
“Drop
it!” he cried.
 
“I’m going to drop the
lawsuit! I’m going to drop it right now!
 
I’ll never sue another human being for as long as I live! I never heard
the word before!
 
Help me!
 
I can’t take this pain!”

“Will
the police be notified about our little moments together?”

Jeffrey
was now on the floor, coddling his arm, crying in agony.

Tommy
pressed that arm again.

“No!”
Jeffrey screamed.
 
“I won’t go to any
police.
 
What police?
 
What’s a police?”

“Find
your pot of gold somewhere else,” Tommy warned him.
 
“Liz Logan is off limits.
 
Okay?”

Jeffrey
looked up at the maniac.
 
“Okay,” he said
softly, since his screams didn’t work. He just wanted the mad man to leave.

Tommy
stared at the hapless reporter one more time.
 
He hated the thought of him being intimate with Liz.
 
But it was done now.
 
Never to be repeated.
 

He
looked at him a moment longer, and then he left.
 
Jeffrey’s high-note screams recommenced, as
soon as Tommy closed the door.
 

The
nightclub was jumping and Liz and her friends were having fun.
 
Marilyn was there, and Kenisha, along with
Jerome and his wife Amanda.
 
They were
sitting in the VIP section, enjoying the music, and rewinding after another
long week of work.
 
It was Sunday
night.
 
They had to get back into the
grind mill on Monday. They were having a ball.

Although
none of them were on the dance floor, Liz and Kenisha were attempting to
out-dance each other at their seats, as they moved to the groove of yet another
Nicki Minaj beat.
 
Liz’s phone began to
buzz as she and Kenisha were laughing at their own foolishness, and then her
phone beeped.
 
Liz pulled out the phone
and looked at the text message.
 
When she
read it, she smiled.
 
“I’ll be damn,” she
said.

“What
is it?” Jerome asked.

“Tommy’s
in town.”
  
Liz said this and then looked
up at Jerome.
 
“He’s at the airport.
 
He wants to know where I am.”

“You
weren’t expecting him?”
 
Jerome asked.

“I
hadn’t heard from him since he left seven days ago.”

“Who’s
Tommy?” Kenisha asked.

“You
haven’t heard from him all week, and then suddenly he’s in town?
 
Yeah, I know those symptoms.”

Liz
looked at him. “Oh, you do?”

“He
does,” his wife said with a knowing smile.

“So
if you know the symptoms, Dr. Rome,” Liz asked, “what ails him?”

“Love
baby girl,” Jerome said.
 
“It’ll make you
do impulsive things like hop a jet and fly all this way to Chi-town.
 
Tommy Gabrini is in love.”

“Tommy
Gabrini is in lust,” Liz said unabashedly.
 
“And not too deep in with that.
 
He hadn’t called me in seven days.”

 
Jerome and Amanda looked at each other.
 
“It’s love,” they said in unison.

“Who’s
Tommy?” Kenisha asked again.
 
“Will
somebody please tell me who Tommy is?”

“Keep
your shirt on,” Marilyn said.
 
She was
gorgeous in her own right, a woman who owned her own real estate business and
business for her was booming.
 
“He’s a
man who visited Liz apparently.
 
She
didn’t bother to phone me and introduce us so I only know what I heard.
 
I heard he’s Liz’s boyfriend.”

“He’s
not my boyfriend,” Liz pointed out.
 
“You
heard wrong.”

“Then
who is he?” Kenisha asked.

But
Liz was too busy texting Tommy back.
 
“What’s the address to this place?” she asked.

Jerome
searched the table, found a napkin, and handed it to her.

Liz typed
in the address.

“He’s
coming here?” Marilyn asked.

“Apparently,”
Liz said.

“Cool,”
Marilyn responded.
 
“Since you won’t
claim him, maybe he looks good enough for me to claim.”

“Oh,
he looks good enough,” Amanda said.
 
“Jerome told me how he looks.
 
Looking
good is not that man’s problem.”

“Well,”
Marilyn said, sitting more erect.
 
“I’m
looking forward to this then.”

But
after Tommy confirmed that he was on his way, Liz didn’t know if she was
looking forward to any of it.
 
If he
would have called her Monday night after he left town, or even Tuesday night
after he had a chance to settle back down at home, then she would have felt
some kind of happy about his reappearance too.
 
She was, if she had to admit it, really attracted to him.
 
She also enjoyed his company, among other
things, and was looking forward to talking with him again.
 
But when he didn’t phone Monday, nor Tuesday,
nor any other days to this day, her interest in him couldn’t help but fade.
 
She was never the kind of girl to get all
excited about a party she wasn’t invited to.
 
She was not that girl.
 

And
the way Tommy was doing her felt like a tease.
 
He made love to her so passionately and then dropped her off in Dubai
and never bothered to phone her for weeks on end.
 
Then he found out she had been involved in a
situation in Iraq, and he rushed to her bedside, showed such generosity toward
her, spend the night with her, took her to work, and then he was off again with
not so much as another phone call.
 
He
didn’t sound like a man who was in love, or all that much in lust if truth be
told.
 
He sounded like a man who was
extremely busy, and was working her in when he could.
 

But
why he was working her in at all was the intriguing part to Liz.

The
evening progressed as Liz waited for Tommy’s arrival.
 
She continued to have fun.
 
Two hunks even joined their group, both
sitting on either side of Liz, and both asked Liz and Kenisha to dance.
 
Kenisha accepted, but Liz declined.
 
She didn’t want Tommy to see her dancing with
some other man.
 
For some strange reason,
she didn’t want him to think she was some big flirt.
 
Then she smiled.
 
She was a big flirt and, given the sexual
harassment lawsuit where she admitted to his face she’d slept with one of her
reporters , he already knew it too.
 

Outside
of the boisterous club, Tommy stepped out of a cab, paid the driver, and
buttoned his suit coat.
 
He still could
not believe he had done this.
 
He was on
his way to Copenhagen.
 
He was on his way
to Denmark for crying out loud.
 
But
before he could pull the trigger and leave the country, he felt this sudden
great need to see her again.
 
He’d been
avoiding contacting her all week, because he knew it would lead to something,
but when he could have kept it moving, he caved.
 
Now he was walking into a club filled with
kids half his age, to see a woman nearly a decade younger than he was, and he
still couldn’t verbalize why.

But
when the doorkeeper showed him the VIP section, and he saw Liz sitting there
with some young man draped beside her, he understood why immediately.
 
His heart melted when he saw her again.
 
She wore a spaghetti strap, tastefully
low-cut blouse tucked into a short skirt.
 
And it was then and there, just seeing her again, that gave him
clarity.
 
Liz was the reason he jumped
through these travel hoops to see her.
 
And it wasn’t just because she knew how to fuck him, although she did
powerfully.
 

But
beyond her beauty and her rocking body and her bedroom skills stood a very
smart, very sophisticated, very vulnerable funny lady who was winning him over
in a way that no other woman ever had.
 
She scared him, if he were to tell the truth.
 
He stayed away, not because he didn’t want
her, but because he feared he might want her too desperately.
 
And she, like all the women before her, might
break his heart too.

“Tommy!”
she yelled and waved in that life-of-the-party, cheerful way of hers, and he
smiled and made his way toward her.

Marilyn
and Kenisha also smiled when they saw him coming.
 
“That’s Tommy?” Kenisha asked.

“That’s
Tommy,” Liz said, watching his gorgeous, muscular frame approach too.

“Damn,
Liz,” Marilyn said.
 
“I’m not into white
guys, but that’s a good looking white guy.”

“You
aren’t into white guys?” Jerome asked, surprised.
 
“Since when?”

“Yeah,
Mary,” Liz said, “I thought you were into AMW.”

Marilyn
frowned.
 
“What’s an AMW?”

“Any
man walking,” Liz said, and they all laughed.

The
younger guy next to Liz was asking her who was the man approaching, and he
didn’t see the humor about another man invading his territory, but Liz wasn’t
thinking about him. He intruded on her space, not the other way around.
 
She didn’t owe him shit.

“Hey
there,” she said cheerfully when Tommy made his way to her.
 

“Hey
yourself.”
 
He loved how happy she was to
see him.
 
And he couldn’t help
himself.
 
He was not a man given to
public affection, but he leaned down and kissed Liz on the lips.
 
Jerome elbowed Amanda.
 
Marilyn and Kenisha exchanged smiling
glances.

“Sit
down,” Liz said, moving over, and Tommy took a seat on the opposite side of
her.
 
He was well aware that another
gentleman was seated beside her too, and that the guy could very well be her
date, but he was never a man to fly off the handle.
 
They weren’t exactly in a committed
relationship.
 
Gorgeous girl like her
would have her pick of the litter every day of the week.
 
She had every right to date whomever she
pleased.
 
Problem was, it didn’t please
Tommy to think she was exercising that right.

Liz
looked at him.
 
They were so close that
half of her body was leaned back against his chest.
 
“For those of you who haven’t met him yet,
which is everybody except Rome, this is Tommy Gabrini.”

They
all nodded and introduced themselves.

“So
tell me partner,” the man who was seated beside Liz said, “how well do you know
Miss Liz?”

Liz
looked at Jerome, because she knew he would get it, and then they both burst
into laughter.
 
Tommy too was
smiling.
 
“Miss Liz you call her?” he
asked.

“Yeah,”
the young man said.
 
“What’s so funny?”

“Why
do you call her Miss Liz?” Tommy asked.

“Because
I’m only twenty-two and she’s . . . kinda old.”

They
all laughed with sidesplitting laughter, including Tommy.

“I
don’t know why you’re laughing, Tommy Gabrini,” Liz said.
 
“If I’m old at thirty-three, you must be
ancient!”

“Oh,
yeah,” Tommy said and stopped laughing, causing Liz and the others to laugh
too.

And
it was that kind of evening.
 
Tommy
didn’t think he could have had more fun.
 
Liz embraced life.
 
She laughed,
she sang, she danced and even attempted to get Tommy out on that dance floor
with her.
 
She failed, but he appreciated
her effort.

After
they said their goodbyes, Tommy and Liz walked across the huge parking lot to
her Lexus near the back gate.
 
He placed
his hand around her waist and felt the cool Chicago wind beat against his face.
 
He felt at home with Liz.
   
Too at home.

He
looked at her.
 
“So who was that guy?”

“What
guy?”

“The
one sitting next to you.
 
The kid gawking
at you all night.”

Liz
smiled.
 
“Some random guy, I don’t
know.
 
He wanted a pickup.”

“He
was all over you.”
 
Tommy said this in a
way that wasn’t meant to sound accusatory, but that was exactly how it sounded.

Liz
looked at him.
 
“I don’t get your point.”

“If
you don’t want to attract those type of guys, don’t entertain those type of
guys.”

“How
was I entertaining him?
 
We were having
fun in a club.
 
That’s what you do in a
club.”

“You
can overdo it too.
 
I want you to be
aware of that.”

“Okay,
look,” Liz said as she stopped walking.
 
Tommy stopped walking and looked at her.
 
“Some women out here might have daddy issues, but I don’t.
 
Stop that.”

Tommy
frowned.
 
“I wasn’t doing that.
 
Was I doing that?”

“Yes,
you were.
 
Bossy as a big dog.”

Tommy
smiled.
 
“Sorry about that.”

Liz
smiled.
 
“Just don’t let it happen
again.”

“Or
what?”

“Or
I’ll take you over my knee and show you who’s the real boss.”