ROMANCING SAL GABRINI Page 14

  Then Gemma got real. She knew why. Because he was Sal, she said to herself. And she would have been disappointed beyond measure if he would have brought himself to Vegas and declared their disagreement had been some grand misunderstanding that he had come to straighten out. Because he came with truth, or at least the appearance of it, kept her listening to him.

  “I meant what I said, but I said it because . . . I said it because I was afraid, Gem.”

  Gemma’s eyes betrayed her shock. Afraid? Sal? She didn’t know what to say to that. She looked ahead instead.

  “The light is green,” she said, and Sal looked ahead and realized it too.

  He drove on, and the silence returned as if even he couldn’t believe he had made such a personal confession, and he needed time to digest it himself. So the silence stayed with them like a security blanket until he was pulling her BMW into the driveway of her attractive, but modest home.

  At first they just sat there. Sal looked over the steering wheel at the house, as if he was going to comment, but he didn’t. She also loved that about him. Her home was nothing to write home about, compared to what he was used to, and he wasn’t going to pretend that it was. Trina once said that there was something pretty exceptional about Sal, something so unexpected about him that it was an attraction all its own. Gemma knew it too.

  That was probably why it hurt her so badly when he had the nerve to insist on her fidelity, but not his own. She didn’t expect that from Sal. She expected better from him. And she knew there was an argument to be made that she was foolish to expect any such thing from him, but she couldn’t help how she felt. Of all the men she’d had before, she saw something different in Sal. She saw it from the first moment they met. And she guessed, when she was lonely enough to admit it, she was counting on him to prove her right.

  Until his do as I say, not as I do comments in Seattle.

  But instead of either one of them getting out of the car, they continued to sit in the silence. Gemma knew she couldn’t leave it like this. She knew she couldn’t hear him make such a tough confession and she ignore it. She looked at him. “What were you afraid of?” she asked him.

  Sal didn’t skip a beat. “Love,” he said. “Commitment. Marriage.” A stormy look came into his blue eyes. “I’ve had too many rotten examples. And not just my old man, either. But Reno’s old man-my uncle. And all of their other brothers. And Tommy. And fuck, me too! We Gabrini men, we’re good lovers. The best, and I’m not bragging.”

  Gemma managed to smile. “Yes you are, but go on.”

  “No, I disagree with you. The truth ain’t bragging. I’m not bragging. We Gabrini men are excellent lovers. That’s a fact. We’re even very good friends. But commitment, being committed to just one woman only, forever-like, is something we don’t do.”

  For some reason this scared Gemma. And she felt a need to prove him wrong. “But Reno and Tree,” she started to say, in defense of Gabrini men, but Sal cut her off.

  “Every time I bring up anything about the men in my family, somebody always bring up Reno. Reno and Tree. Well, Reno and Tree are the exception. Trust me on that. And even they almost got divorced once! So it hasn’t always been whatta you call peaches and cream with them either.”

  He hesitated, as if the truth of what he said about his family was kind of shameful. But the truth. “So yeah,” he continued, “I was scared. It was all so fast and so tempting and it scared the shit out of me, I’m not gonna lie. Give up every woman for one woman? And then that woman might play me anyway, she might break my heart? That shit is terrifying! I’d fight fifty fuckers in a boxing ring, fifty heavyweight champions coming at me, and I still would be more terrified of what love could do to me!”

  Gemma could hardly believe her ears. What was he saying? Why in the world would he be that terrified of love? Of love for crying out loud? Then she thought again. She thought about his childhood, about his awful father, and about how he said his mother left when they were little. She remembered how he once ran away to be with his mother, but she angrily beat him and sent him right back to his father. She thought about how much he would do for his father, and how he would go and see him and make sure he was okay, but it was Tommy his father really loved. And it suddenly made sense to Gemma. Sal Gabrini was afraid of love, but not because of love, but because every time he tried to love somebody, namely his own parents, they returned it with hate. And she expected somebody with that kind of baggage to meet somebody like her, and just toss that wreckage aside as if it was light as a feather.

  But before she could say anything to Sal, an agitated look came over his handsome face. It was as if he was embarrassed that he had revealed so much about himself. He therefore slung the seatbelt from around his waist, and before she could comment at all he got out of the car, and made his way to the passenger side.

  Gemma felt so thrown, not just by his own revelation, but by her revelation of him as well, that she suddenly felt burdened too. Because instead of those revelations making her more leery of being with him, those revelations made her more determined to be with him. She knew she could love him right. She knew she could love him so completely that he’d forgive his hateful parents and move on with his life. She also knew she was thinking awfully high of her own abilities, but she believed it to the core of her being. Sal Luca Gabrini wasn’t getting away from her. Not this special man. But she also knew, if she came on too strong, that, too, could scare him away.

  So she let him take the lead.

  He opened her car door, took her by the hand, and assisted her out of the car. It was such a sweet, old-fashioned gesture, she thought, that it made her all warm and fuzzy inside. She’d been with many men who opened car doors for her, although it wasn’t something she cherished or had to have in the least, but Sal was the only man she’d ever been with who felt a need to take her by the hand and help her out of the car. And ever since she met him he always did it that way.

  But as they walked across the sidewalk and up the steps to her front door, with no words being said, not even small talk, she felt kind of letdown. She wanted to tell him she got it, that she believed she understood the root of his issues, but how could she go there? Nobody wanted to be psychoanalyzed, especially not a proud man like Sal! He’d probably cuss her out and leave just for attempting it. So she had to be careful. Again, she had to let him take the lead.

  Besides, she didn’t want a man who didn’t want her. He had to want her as badly, at least, as she wanted him. He had to take the lead. But would he, she thought, as he handed her her keys back, and allowed her to unlock her door.

  She was just crossing the threshold of her home, and he had just followed her in, when he grabbed her by her arm and turned her back around.

  “Gotdammit, Gem!” he said in such an anguished, agonizing voice that it, at first, startled her. But then she looked into his eyes. They seemed to border, not on vulnerability anymore, but on desperation.

  She reached behind him and closed the door. He placed one hand on his hip, and the other hand on his forehead, as if all of this emotion had taken him to places he never dreamed he’d go. But she could tell he wasn’t through yet. So she remained silent, and gave him a moment to say what he probably didn’t want to say, but felt compelled to say.

  “I’ve tried so hard to stop thinking about you,” he said. He was looking her squarely in the eyes right now, and she respected that. “I’ve tried to pretend you were just another female, just another bed partner, and it was high time I move on to the next female, to the next bed partner. I tried to stop thinking about you, to stop worrying about you, to stop phoning Tree and asking her constantly about you. But I couldn’t pull it off.”

  He now flapped open his suit coat and placed both hands on his hips. “I would walk into my kitchen, and see you at my stove. I’d walk into my bedroom, and see your beautiful body stretched out in my bed. I’d walk down the street, see a beautiful black chick with your coloring, and have to do a double take. Then I’d
realize she looked nothing like you, nothing at all, and then I’d kick myself for being so ridiculous. You weren’t in Seattle, and I knew it, what was my problem? And whenever I traveled, and I’ve been to a few places since we last were together, and even then I’d see you in people who looked nothing like you. I couldn’t get you out of my system no matter how hard I tried. And I tried.”

  A distressed look came into his eyes, as if he wasn’t sure if he should continue.

  “You tried?” Gemma asked him, to encourage him.

  “I tried,” he said, looking, once again, at her. “But I couldn’t forget you. That’s the real reason why I came to Vegas. Yeah, I told Ree and Tree that I was passing through and wanted to see the progress they’d made on the PaLargio. But even they knew better than that. They knew I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the PaLargio’s progress. But you, on the other hand,” he said as he reached out and touched her on the side of her face. Gemma’s heartbeat began to quicken.

  Sal continued on. “I haven’t been with another woman since you left Seattle,” he said to her. “Do you realize that? I could have been with plenty of them, and came awfully close, but I couldn’t do it. Not one woman have I been with since you left me. Not one. That’s a major deal. That’s a fucking record for me!”

  Gemma almost smiled, but the pain she felt wouldn’t let her. Even his smile was tempered too, as if he was coming to terms with what he was actually trying to do here himself. Gemma placed her hand on the side of his face. His eyes closed, as if her touch did something to him. She waited for them to open back up.

  “What do you want, Sal?” she asked him. And she asked it, not with any accusatory tone, but with concern in her voice. What was it that he really wanted? She had to hear him say it.

  “You,” Sal said without any prompting. “I came to Vegas because I’ve learned something very profound about myself.”

  This was what Gemma wanted to hear. He was bringing it home. “What did you learn?” she asked him.

  “I learned that I can’t make it by myself. I don’t want to make it by myself. I need you by my side, Gemma. To be my partner. To sometimes be my guide. I’ll take care of you, and I’ll protect you. There’s no motherfucker out there that can take care of you better, or protect you better than I will. I’ll be the boss of our family and you’ll get used to that. You’ll realize that I’m no canary running my mouth, but that my actions will show just how much I’ve got your back. But when it comes to this love thing, to this relationship thing, to this commitment thing, I can’t lie. I don’t know shit about it,” he said, and Gemma couldn’t help but smile.

  He continued. “I’ve got you in every way, don’t you worry about that, you hear me, sweetheart? You’ll never feel alone, or lost, with me. I’m no deadbeat. I’m not what you call one of those inattentive men. I’m not gonna come into your life and win your heart and then act like you’re no longer important to me. I’ll never do that to you. I’ve got your back. But when it comes to expressing love, I’m going to need you to have mine.”

  Gemma’s heart soared. But she couldn’t dismiss the obvious. She couldn’t let his words alone dictate her feelings. What about his actions over the last few months?

  “A big part of me want to believe every word you just said, Sal,” she said to him, deciding to speak a little truth herself. “Because I believe I can have your back too. I get what you’re saying. But I can’t overlook your actions, Sal. I can’t overlook that just two months ago you wanted it all, me and Sue and Sandi too. I can’t just overlook that. And you haven’t phoned me in two whole months. I used to wait by the phone for your call,” she said as tears welled up in her eyes.

  Sal could see how she hated that the tears had come, and he placed both hands on her upper arms. “Oh, babe,” he said, fighting back tears of his own.

  “I wanted to call you,” she continued, wiping underneath one of her eyes with one of her fingers. “I started giving excuses and said maybe if I just called him this one time, and got the ball rolling again, that he’d consider me. But that bar was too low. I didn’t want your consideration. I wanted your respect. Because more than anything else, I felt that you disrespected me when you expected me to be okay with your infidelity. As if my feelings didn’t count. So no, I couldn’t phone you. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t painful.”

  She said this and looked at Sal. “So I guess I don’t know what you want from me. What you truly want from me. You want me to say yeah, he’s changed because he says he has, and just give you another chance? And then you’d get comfortable with me again, and see that you’ve got me right where you want me, vulnerable again, and I’ll be more than willing to let you whore yourself around, just as long as you come home to me?” She shook her head. “I can’t overlook the fact that you all but said you didn’t think I was going to be enough for you. I don’t know how to forget about that. I’m still coming to terms with that.”

  “I know, sweetheart, I know,” Sal said, rubbing her arms. “But that wasn’t what I meant. It wasn’t because you wasn’t enough for me. It was because . . .” Sal didn’t know how to say it. “There’s an old adage. We Italians use it all the time. It says how I wouldn’t want to join a club, that would have me as a member.”

  Gemma stared at him.

  “You were willing to have me as a member,” Sal said, “and I couldn’t handle that. The women I’ve been with, they knew what they were getting. They knew there were no happily ever afters with me. With Sal Gabrini, come on. I was their lover man, and that’s all they wanted me to be and that was all I wanted to be. But then you came along. Even when we first met in Vegas I saw how you wasn’t like those other girls. You actually saw something in me. You actually refused to go along with my bullshit. And it . . . spooked me. I mean you were the total package. You were smart and beautiful and successful in your own right and you could even go toe-to-toe with my old man. I was falling for you, Gem. Hard. So I knew I had to protect myself from any let-downs. Saying that I could have those other females, although I had no intention of having any of them, was my protection.”

  Gemma stared at him. And to her amazement, she understood exactly what he was saying. And although a part of her knew it would be reckless for her to just believe him, the bigger part knew it would be even more reckless not to. She believed. She didn’t see that special something in him for nothing. She knew she was about to take a major gamble. She knew a gorgeous man like Sal Luca could break her heart like it was nobody’s business. But Trina was right. With Sal, she would never be bored.

  She moved up closer to him, and he, delighted, wrapped his arms around her. “Let’s do this,” she said, and Sal laughed out loud for the first time in a long time.

  “What a card,” he said, with pure joy in his heart, and he kissed her. He had feared with a crushing fear that she wouldn’t take him back. He had feared that he’d come to Vegas and find a woman hell bent on refusing him. That was why he knew he had to come straight with Gemma. And he did. For the first time in his life he wore his heart on his sleeve. And she didn’t reject it.

  But when he stopped kissing her, and looked into her eyes, both of them felt the gravity of what they were about to undertake. And the smiles and grand feelings left. Because this ride they were about to take could be fantastic, or it could be fantastically painful. It was up to them. To both of them.

  Sal moved closer to her, and cupped the back of her head with one hand, and her waist with the other. “I’m going to do right by you, Gemma Jones,” he said to her. “I promise you that.”

  And this time, when they kissed, it wasn’t a kiss punctuated with joy, but a kiss punctuated with need. Great need. The kind of need an already oversexed man had for a woman he craved and hadn’t been able to have in months. He devoured her mouth. And, to Gemma’s delight, was unbuckling his pants right where he stood. She began to move him, toward the couch, because she wanted him on top of her. The one thing she missed almost as much as Sal’s dick, was his we
ight on top of her. She felt so warm and protected, when he fucked her on top.

  He fucked her on top. But not before tossing aside her jacket and then lifting her blouse and her bra and putting her breasts almost whole in his mouth. He sucked and licked and lifted them with his tongue alone. He teased them with his teeth. And as he mauled her breasts, they both began removing her shoes and her pants and panties, rendering her completely naked from the waist down. And as his hand slipped in between her legs, and began rubbing her there, she began unzipping and removing his lower half clothing too. He took a moment to quickly remove his suit coat, tossing that expensive item of clothing aside, and then he grabbed his tie with some agitation, removing it as if he was slinging it off. He wanted to remove his shirt also, but he couldn’t wait to undo cufflinks and buttons and all the rest. He had to taste her now. Not later, now.

  He slung down, from her breasts to her legs. He opened them wide and steeled himself as he sniffed her wonderful aroma. An aroma he craved. And then his head was wedged between those legs, and Gemma was holding onto the part of her sofa’s fabric that she could grab, as he licked her with a long, lingering, smothering lick, for the first time in two months.

  Sal’s entire body shook when he tasted her again. When he woke up this morning with an erection from just the thought of her, he never dreamed he’d be in this position ever again. He wanted this woman in every way. He knew it a long time ago, but for some reason it weighed particularly heavily on him this morning.

  And that was why, on an impulse he could not quench, he hopped on his private jet and came straight to Vegas. He had meetings, he had people to see and places to go, but he came to Vegas. She was in court, he found out from Trina, when he first arrived, but he knew he was going to see her. And beg her if he had to.