Tommy Gabrini 3: Grace Under Fire (The Gabrini Men Series) (2 page)

ONE

Two Months Earlier

Tommy
Gabrini was happy.
 
Not because he was in
Paris, but because he was about to leave Paris a full day earlier than
originally planned, and was going home to his wife.
 
They’d been married for almost three months
now.
 
He’d never enjoyed life the way he
was enjoying it at this moment in time.
 
The mere thought that he was going to see her radiant face, and see it
earlier than planned, made him feel like a kid again.

But
he was in Paris.
 
Where he’d bedded more
women than he could probably count.
 
And
by the time he stepped off of the elevator and entered the hotel lobby, with
his top two negotiators by his side, one of those women were waiting for him.

“
Tommy
,” she called out in her strong
French accent.
 
When he looked beyond his
people and saw Alexandria Dawse, he knew he couldn’t ignore her.

“I’ll
catch up,” he said to his negotiators.
 

When
they, too, saw the woman standing there, and saw that she was extraordinarily
beautiful, and saw that she was black, they did not mix words.
 
She was undoubtedly one of Tommy’s ladies.
 
They would wait for him outside.

Alex
was standing across the lobby in front of the settee she had been sitting
on.
 
Her heart was filled with grief, and
her big, sad eyes followed his every movement as he approached her.
 
She had hoped she could handle this.
 
She had hoped the news would not affect her
so adversely.
 
But as soon as he began
walking her way, with that devastatingly gorgeous face and that tall, muscular
body she knew so well, she knew she had been hoping for far too much.

“Hello,
Alex,” he said as he unbuttoned his Armani suit coat.
 
He motioned for her to sit down, and he sat
down beside her.
 
“How have you been?”

She
stared at him with that bright-eyed, innocent stare that made her one of the
most sought-after models in Europe.
 
The
fact that she was of mixed race, and had the most appealing hazel eyes he’d
ever seen, helped her success, and he once wanted her because of her looks
alone.
 
She wore no makeup, none at all,
but with her natural beauty she still put most women to shame.
 
She was for Tommy, at one time, irresistible.

He
crossed his legs.
 
His plane was waiting,
and he still had last-minute details to work out with his team.
 
He didn’t have time for this.
 
But his guilt, about roping her in to begin
with, kept him from dismissing her outright.
 

So he
asked her again.
 
“How have you been?”

Again,
she said nothing.

“I
thought Milan was your home now.
 
Have
you moved back, or are you working here now?”

“You
married her.”
 
Those were Alex’s first
words and they were harsh.
 
She spoke
them as if she was stating a fact she could never accept.
 

Tommy
saw her dismay.
 
He already knew she was
a fragile young lady, one of the youngest he’d ever bedded, and he knew he had
to handle her with care.

“Is
it true?” she asked again.
 
“Did you
marry her?”

“Alex,
I told you some time ago that I was engaged and was going to be married.”

“But
is it true?
 
Did you do it?”
 
That was all she wanted to know.
 
A fiancée didn’t mean shit to a woman like
her.
 
There were
engaged
women all over Europe who never got married.
 
She was once one of them.
 
But if he had gone through with it; if he had
turned that plain Jane Grace McKinsey into Mrs. Tommy Gabrini, as her friends
and every news account she read made clear, then that would be another matter
altogether.
 
That would change
everything.

“Yes,
I married Grace,” Tommy said easily.
 
“It’s true.”

But
instead of looking resigned to that reality, Alex scrunched up her face in such
a way that she looked almost as bratty as she looked perplexed.
 
“But how could you marry somebody like
her?
 
She’s not as pretty as I am.
 
She’s not as successful as I am.
 
She has no background and breeding
whatsoever, Tommy!
 
Why would you pick
her over me?”

It
was a ludicrous comparison to be sure.
 
Tommy wondered if Alex even realized how nonsensical she sounded.
 
She was going on as if she was in some hot
and heavy romance with him when he hadn’t seen her in months and hadn’t bedded
her since he met Grace.
 
They were once
together, in an open, non-committed relationship that lasted nearly five years,
and she used to joke that she grew up on Tommy’s dick.
 
She was young, barely twenty when he first
had her, and he went out of his way, at the very beginning, to make it
perfectly clear that the relationship was going no-where and she was not, by a
longshot, the only woman in his life.
 
For her to sit up here now and behave as if they had always been in some
monogamous, committed relationship was ridiculous on its face.

“What’s
the deal, Al?” he asked her.

Again,
she scrunched up her face.
 
“The deal?”

“What
game are you playing at, you know what I mean.”

“Oh,
so I have to be playing a game to ask you a simple question?”

“It
didn’t work out with the actor, so you figure you can ease your way back into
my bed?
 
Is that how this goes?”
 

Alex
frowned.
 
“What are you talking
about?
 
Ease my way back to you?
 
What is that supposed to mean?”

Tommy
didn’t bother to answer.
 
Because she
knew exactly what it meant.
 
She was the
one who left him when she fell hard for Beau Brantley, some heartthrob movie
star young ladies were going nuts over.
 
But of all those young ladies, the kid picked Alex.
 
He even put a ring on her finger.
 
It was a relief for Tommy at the time,
because he was growing increasingly addicted to her sugar, and it would have
required more than his own will power to completely give her up.
 
But that Hollywood dream life Alex thought
was going to last forever crashed and burned in less than two years.
 
She was engaged to the sexy Beau, but in one
chaotic weekend a couple weeks ago, he stunned her and married someone
else.
 
Now she was sitting in this hotel
lobby with Tommy, behaving as if she never left him and that he, by marrying
Grace, just did to her what that actor had done to her.

“Stop
psychoanalyzing me and answer my question,” she said.
 
“Why did you pick her over me?”

“I
didn’t pick her over you,” Tommy responded.
 
“You weren’t even considered.
 
Why
would you be?
 
There’s nothing like that
between us.”

“There
used to be!”

“But
it’s not now, Alex, and you know it.
 
Now
I’m sorry about what happened with the actor, but that has nothing to do with
the fact that I chose Grace to be my wife.
 
There’s nothing further to discuss about that.”

“But
why her?”
 
Alex was still perplexed.
 
In her mind she was beautiful and desirable,
what more could a man want?
 
“How could
she be the one, Tommy?
 
What does she
have that I don’t have?”

“My
heart,” he said bluntly.
  
“She has my
heart.
 
She’s a woman of simple tastes, a
woman without, as you put it, background and breeding, but I love her above any
woman alive.
 
Make no mistake about
that.”

“But
why?
 
How could you love her and not
me?
 
I’m everything you could want in a
woman.
 
You told me so yourself, Tommy!”

Tommy
was certain he had her naked in bed, underneath him, when he told her that.

“You
told me that, Tommy,” she said again.
 
“Didn’t you?”

“Yes,
you’re right.
 
You’re what any man would
want in a woman, Alex.
 
You’re beautiful,
you’re stylish, you’re a turn-on, physically, in every way.
 
But Grace is what I need in a woman.
 
She has integrity.
 
She has compassion.
 
She’s all heart and she’s not vain and
selfish.
 
She’ll be by my side through
thick and thin, and I’ll be by hers.
 
And
I disagree with you.
 
She also happens to
be a very gorgeous girl.”

But
Alex was still unconvinced.
 
“She’s not
as beautiful as I am,” she insisted.
 
“I
don’t care what you say.”

She
sounded so childish that she made Tommy smile.
 
“It’s not a contest, Alex.”

“But
it’s not fair!”
 
Tears were now in her
eyes, and her anger was unleashed.
 
Tommy
uncrossed his legs as her suddenly raised voice caused some to look their way.

“Lower
it,” he ordered her.

“I
have loved you for so long,” she said, in a lowered tone, as she twisted her
hands around in her lap.
 
“She just met
you a year ago or not even that long.
 
How could she win?
 
How could she
go to the front of the line?
 
It’s not
fair!”

Alex
was an emotional wreck, Tommy could see it clearly now.
 
Between her breakup with Beau Brantley, and
Tommy’s marriage to Grace, she probably felt abandoned and alone.
 
But he was not going to be the shoulder she
cried on.
 
He had a wife now, the best
thing that ever happened to him.
 
He
wasn’t about to mess that up.
 
He removed
his handkerchief from his suit coat pocket and took her hand and squeezed it,
giving her the handkerchief as he did so.
 
Then he released her hand and stood up.
 
He cared about her, she would always be dear to him, but enough was
enough.
 
“Are you here in town on
business, or have you moved back?”
 
He
placed his hands in his pants pockets as he spoke to her.
 

Alex
looked at his mid-section and nodded as she dabbed her eyes with the
handkerchief.
 
“Both.”

She
was still staring at his mid-section.
 
She was still remembering what a bundle of joy he held between his
legs.
 
Her ex-fiancé was good in bed, but
Tommy was better.
 
She used to believe
that once she was married to Beau, and was well established as his wife, that
she’d return to Tommy’s bed.
 
But in a
matter of weeks everything had changed.
 
Beau had dumped her and now she would never have Tommy again?
 
It felt like salt in her wound.
 
It was, for her, unbearable.
 

But
Tommy was determined to get her to focus, not on what she’d lost, but on what
she still had.
 
It was a tough sell, and
he knew it was, but he had nothing else to offer her.
 
“Is it a modeling job?”

She
sniffled.
 
“Yes.
 
A photo shoot.”

“The
cover?”

She
nodded again.
 
“Yes.”

“Good,”
he said.
 
“There’s plenty more covers in
your future, young lady.
 
Plenty men who
would give their right arm to be a part of that future.
 
Including the right man for you.
 
Because I’m not him.
 
The fact that I’m married has got to confirm
that for you.”

Alex
looked up into his face.
 
His
greenish-blue eyes looked completely blue against the lobby lights.
 
She wasn’t going to be able to give him up
completely.
 
First Beau, now him?
 
There was no way.
 
So she decided to do what she did best.
 
She had to position herself.
 
“When you get ready to cheat on her,” she
said as if his cheating was a foregone conclusion, “will you let me be the
first one you call?”