Page 36 of Sal Gabrini: Man on Fire

Reno frowned. “This my wife, what are you talking?”

“Wife? You’re married? Oh, pardon me. For some reason I didn’t think you were married. But okay.”

Reno gave Sal thatget a load of this guylook after Mason made his nasty little comment, but Reno held his fire.

Then Mason took Gemma by the arm and yelled out: “Ladies and gentleman, our guest of honor has arrived. Please let me introduce you to my fab attorney, the woman who saved my ass, bacon, and everything else in between, Miss Gemma Jones!”

They all began applauding, but Sal grabbed Mason by the arm and turned him to him. “What’s with this Gemma Jones shit? That’s my wife. Mrs. Sal Gabrini. And don’t you forget it.”

“I know that’s right,” said Reno.

“Sorry, Sal,” said Mason. “I was simply remembering her name before she married.”

Reno found that curious to say. “You didn’t know her before she married Sal.”

“I didn’t? Funny how I was under the impression that I did.”

“We went to the same college, Reno,” Gemma said.

“You did?” Reno asked. Even Trina was surprised.

And Sal was still staring at Gemma. “Why didn’t you tell them about that?”

“Because it was nothing to tell. Period.”

Reno could see Mason’s jaw tightened when Gemma said those words. Sal was right. There was something off about Kidd when it came to Gemma. Reno could see it too.

“But please come on in and meet the stars and enjoy yourselves,” said Mason. “This is Gemma’s big night and we will not spoil it, will we now?”

Before Sal could zing him back, Mason had taken Gemma by the arm and was already introducing her to some young music legend Sal had never heard of. But it didn’t matter. Sal stayed by Gemma’s side like white stayed on rice.

Trina, however, spotted the man she came to see and smiled a smile Reno thought was going to rip her face. “What’s gotten into you?” he asked with a frown.

“There’s Idris,” Trina said excitedly. “There’s Idris Elba!”

“Idris-what-ba?”

“I’ll be back,” Trina said happily and began hurrying toward her movie star favorite.

But when Reno looked over and saw the big, black, hunky movie star, he didn’t delay. “Be back my ass,” he said, and hurried behind Trina.

But as the evening wore on, Sal and Reno gave up. They weren’t used to playing interference and didn’t have it in them to continue. Reno went to the bathroom to pee. Sal went and sat on one of the sofas in the house.

But he kept his eyes on Gemma as she moved through the crowd. They all had questions about this type of lawsuit or that type of criminal complaint and it all started running together to Sal. But Gemma was loving it, he could tell. This was her crowd. It most definitely was not his.

“You look like you could use a dick.”

Sal angrily looked up. “What?”

It was a blonde woman handing him a glass. “You look like you could use a dick,” she said. “That’s what we call this drink.”

Sal still gave her a hard look. “Oh,” he said.

“Have some?”

“No thanks,” he said. He wasn’t drinking anything in that house, and most certainly not something named dick, and he had already instructed Gemma not to do so either.

“You’re cute,” the woman said with a smile and sat beside him. “Wanna go upstairs?”

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