Her Perfect Gift (11 page)

However, Yumiko turned out to be more adept at shopping and going on spa days with other executive wives than mothering their son. And when nanny after nanny started quitting due to Kenji’s difficult behavior, it had only taken the eventual Asperger’s diagnosis for her to quit, too. She’d gone back to her family in Japan, and eventually gotten remarried to an older man who already had grown sons and daughters. After the divorce was finalized, she never made contact with him or their son again.

Suro came to realize the bright and accommodating woman he had married had been little more than an act. What she had really been was lazy and money-hungry. Any wealthy man would do as long as he didn’t demand too much of her.

Lacey, on the other hand, had stuck by her daughter. And he had no doubt she would make an excellent mother. A wave of disappointment washed over him. “You don’t want children?” he asked her.

“It’s not about what I want,” she answered. “And please stop pretending you care what I want. If you did, you wouldn’t be up in my apartment with my security key around your neck.”

He turned on his side to face her then. “I care,” he informed her. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care.”

She shook her head. “No, you’re just trying to manipulate me, because you’re mad I stood you up.”

That was true, but what he said next was also true. “And because I care.” He turned his head toward her so she could see the truth in his eyes. “I care about you.”

For a moment her own eyes melted, but then her face hardened and she said, “Then give me back my key.”

“Tell me who you really are,” he countered.

“I can’t,” she said.

“You don’t trust me.”

“No, I don’t,” she told him point blank. “You tracked me down to Chicago, bullied your way into my life, and stole my key. I don’t trust anybody, but I really don’t trust you. Can you blame me?”

“I need you to trust me.”

“Why?”

“Because what I do—I don’t have a pretty career. I can’t come home to a woman I don’t trust. And I can’t trust you if you don’t trust me.”

“Well, you haven’t exactly been doing a bang-up job of gaining my trust.”

And there they were, in yet another stand-off, until Suro said, “I would like to make a counter offer.”

“What kind of counter offer?”

“Be with me, really be with me until Christmas and I’ll give you back the key.”

She seemed to be weighing her options in her head, running some kind of mental calculation. Finally she said. “Okay, but with a few conditions: no more asking me about who I am or snooping around my office or acting like a crazy stalker.”

He actually gave her conditions some consideration. He fully intended to find out who she was before Christmas, and not snooping around or fishing for answers would put a crimp in his plans.

When he needed information from a reluctant source, his go-to methods were searching the guy’s spaces and asking him the same questions over and over again. Along with food and sleep deprivation, this combination usually proved to be effective enough. And though Lacey had done a very good job of covering her tracks, she wasn’t a trained assassin. If he wore her down enough, he’d probably be able to break her.

The only problem was he didn’t want to break her. He wanted her to trust him enough to tell him who she really was, and if he played his cards right, he might be able to gain that trust by Christmas.

“I agree to your conditions.” He sat up and held out his hand for them to shake on the matter.

But she hesitated. “How do I know you’ll keep your end of the bargain?” she asked, sitting up, too.

“I am man of my word. The question right now is are you a woman of yours?”

Something about his question seemed to cause her a great deal of pain. Her eyes flickered away for a second, but then she said, “Fine” and took his hand. They shook on it. Then she smiled.

“You know most guys send flowers and candy when they want a girl to go with them.”

“Go with them?” His English was superior to many native speakers, but occasionally an idiom came along that he didn’t recognize.

“Be their girlfriend.” She reached for her t-shirt and used it to cover up her chest. “But I guess in this case, we’re more like sex buddies than boyfriend-girlfriend.”

“Don’t,” he said. He took the t-shirt away from her and let his eyes roam over her ample chest. “We’ve discussed this before. Don’t hide from me in this way, especially now that we’re ‘going with’ each other.”

She shook her head. “I can’t guarantee I’ll ever get used to sitting around with you naked.”

He leaned in and kissed her clavicle, then licked the salty skin on her neck. He liked the way she tasted, like sweet soap and sweaty sex. “You will.”

“Mmm,” she said, leaning into his kiss. “Can we move back to the bed, though? This kitchen floor is getting harder by the minute.”

So was he.

He helped her up and escorted her to the bedroom, wondering what he had just agreed to. He had finally gotten the upper hand. She wouldn’t be running away again, at least not until Christmas, and she would once again be sharing his bed. So then why did it feel like he had just made himself vulnerable?

CHAPTER 13

WHEN
Lacey agreed to share Suro’s bed until Christmas in exchange for him stopping his investigation and giving her the key, she thought she was getting the better end of the bargain. Great sex and the time and money she needed to hatch an escape plan. All she had to do was keep her heart firmly locked away in the box she’d put it in when her father died ten years ago.

And that should have been easy enough. Suro was great in bed, but he wasn’t exactly warm or even all that romantic. She doubted he’d send her flowers or fill her ears with pretty words like Hector Jr. had.

And she had been right. Suro remained as silent as ever, rarely speaking unless she asked him a question. And then he only responded in monosyllables. Her: “How was your day, Suro?” Him: “Fine.” However, this only made the few compliments he did give her that much more special.

“You truly have a gift,” he’d said, the first time he tasted her shrimp étouffée, and the five-word compliment had her glowing all night.

She couldn’t imagine Suro saying, “Damn, babe, your body is banging,” as she’d heard a few customers calling out to the strippers downstairs, but the way he worshiped her curves with his hands and mouth every night made her feel like nothing short of a goddess.

Within a week of their handshake, she had gotten used to walking around the apartment naked until she was ready to leave for work and him slowly stripping her out of her clothes as soon as she got home. There had to be something sexier than watching her make dinner in nothing but an apron, but from the look on Suro’s face as she did so every night, he didn’t think so. And thank goodness she had acquired a taste for the mostly cold Japanese breakfasts Suro made, because often his eyes would heat up across the table and she’d find herself engaged in chair sex midway through the meal.

Even when she tried to cover up before breakfast, he only took off her clothes again, peeling each item off one by one, with steady hands and a chastising look on his face. It should have made her feel like a sex toy, but instead it made her feel treasured, like of all the women on Earth, Suro most wanted to be with her.

She began to suspect he didn’t give her gifts like designer clothing because he didn’t want her to get any ideas about actually wearing clothes when she was in his presence. But she soon found this didn’t mean she wouldn’t be getting any gifts from him.

The Monday after they made the agreement, he moved her schedule forward to nine in morning, ending at six at night. He gave the night manager an extra hour at the top of his schedule and hired a hulking bartender, whose duty it was to also keep an eye on the girls during the hour between when Lacey left and the night manager arrived.

And when she’d noticed the water wasn’t getting warm in her shower one morning, she’d gone downstairs to check the water heater, only to find a plumber already working on it.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Name’s Hank,” he answered, handing her his card. “Mr. Nakamura subcontracted me to do all the maintenance on your building. You must be the superintendent. Next time you’ve got a problem, just give me a call and I’ll be here to fix it in a jiffy.”

And as if that hadn’t been enough, Suro showed up at her office one day and said, “Come with me.”

She followed him to the back room, which they used as a catch all for back up poles, overstock, and what not. But when he opened the door this time, she found a sparkling-clean room with yellow walls that still smelled faintly of the paint used to cover up the old dingy white. There were three cribs, a playpen, and several shelves stuffed with toys.

She covered her mouth with both her hands. “This is beautiful. I can’t believe you—“

But before she could finish a soft tap sounded on the door, and a plump Hispanic woman came in and introduced herself as Miss Beatriz. According to Miss Beatriz, she was certified to care for up to four children at a time and provide emergency daycare if any of the dancers should need it between the hours of eleven and six. The co-op would still be responsible for the afterschool care of the older kids, but Miss Beatriz would give the club much needed back up with the younger ones.

Lacey, who had literally had nightmares about one of the children getting hurt after what had happened with Ben and Spidey, had thrown her arms around Suro’s neck and thanked him with a face full of kisses. As it turned out his gifts weren’t as good as the ones the strippers got from their admirers.

They were way better.

“So I guess you think you’re hot shit now?” said a voice behind her when she was taking inventory at the bar before the day-shift bartender arrived at noon.

She turned around to see Candy, dressed in the pink teddy and white boots she wore for her rare daytime set.

“I don’t think I’m anything but counting these bottles,” Lacey answered. “Can I help you?”

Candy sniffed. “Here’s the rest of the rent money I owe you. Just got a hundred dollar tip off my lap dance. Big spender from that businessman over there. He’s Korean like the new boss.” Then she sniffed again.

“Suro’s Japanese and Chinese,” Lacey said, not liking the sound of that sniff. Lacey didn’t look like she had a cold or allergies, and she’d been short on rent money the last two months in a row. If that didn’t scream coke habit, she didn’t know what did. “And you’re not supposed to just give me your tips. You know everyone else has to get their percentage during tip out at the end of your shift.”

Candy sniffed again, this time with contempt. “That’s some bullshit. I’m the one working, not them busboys, bartenders, and bouncers. Who made that rule?”

“Tony did,” she answered.

Candy adjusted her breasts under the nightie. “Well, let me talk to the Chinaman then.” She gave Lacey a disparaging look. “He like chocolate, maybe I can convince him to change it.”

For a moment, the mere suggestion of Candy trying to rub up on Suro made Lacey’s mind go red with rage. She imagined herself cracking a beer bottle against the bar and using its jagged edges to show Candy exactly who Suro belonged to.

But her father’s voice came back to her like Jiminy Cricket. “Ain’t never no reason two ladies need to be fighting over a man,
non
,” he’d told her once, after he’d gotten cut on his arm pulling apart two girls who’d gotten into a knife fight over the affections of some thug in Cofi’s. “All it does is make both them heifers look bad. You ‘member that sure truth,
cher
.”

Lacey held herself still and said, “Go ahead and try it, Candy. But realize, he’s not as lenient as me. I’m going to give you a month, until Thanksgiving, to kick your cocaine habit, but if Suro picks up on it as easily as I did, he might fire you on the spot. Be careful.”

Candy’s smirk disappeared, but she didn’t back down. “Nobody’s going to be firing me just cuz I’m having a little fun on my own time.”

“Maybe that was true at the other clubs where you worked, but The Matrix has a zero-tolerance policy, not to mention a duty to tell the state if we think you’re an unfit mother because of what you’re shoving up your nose.”

Candy sniffed sharply and her back went straight. “I don’t do it around my kid.”

“Don’t do it at all,” Lacey said. “Those are the rules. You’ve got a month.”

Candy walked away then, but not before muttering, “Bitch!” under her breath just loud enough for Lacey to hear.

Lacey sighed and made a mental note to check in on Spidey in the co-op daycare while Candy was dancing. Despite what people outside the industry might think, most of the single mothers who worked at the club loved their kids and put their needs first. In fact, that’s why many of them ended up taking jobs like this—the pay was good and The Matrix was a decent club that treated its girls like the precious commodity they were. But just like with any group of people, there were always one or two rotten apples.

To Lacey’s relief, Spidey was fine, clean, and healthy and he seemed in good spirits when she came to visit him. “You’re getting so big!” she said, picking him up, and cuddling him in her arms.

As someone who would never be able to safely have more kids, she wondered how anyone could choose cocaine over this little bundle of goodness. But she also knew when you were young, like Candy, and didn’t plan to have a kid, it could turn your whole life upside down.

The memory of her own unexpected pregnancy came back to her. She’d only been in college a year when she’d started having flu-like symptoms like nausea, nasal congestion, and body aches that wouldn’t go away. At first she had chalked it up to her strenuous work course at Rutgers, but then she had nearly fainted in the middle of her Introduction to Financial Accounting final, which had been administered in a sweltering room with a faulty air conditioning system. After finding her outside the business school building, desperately breathing in the cool spring air, the T.A. had suggested she go get a pregnancy test.

“If you’re pregnant, I can let you make it up at a later date,” she told Lacey. “If not, you’re going to have to get a doctor’s note.”