Her Perfect Gift (15 page)

Lacey nodded with stoic resolve. “I’ll make a packing plan as soon as I get back to school.”

Somehow her acquiescence hurt more than her near meltdown. “Right,” Lacey whispered, feeling exactly like what she was, the worst mother in the world.

The sound of skates scraping the ice in front of them lifted both their heads from the conversation.

“Is everything all right?” Suro asked above them, his eyes on Sparkle.

Lacey gave him a wry half-smile. Of course, a fellow Aspie parent would recognize the aftermath of a near meltdown when he saw it.

“She’s upset about you saying no to the piano,” Kenji informed his father with the authority of a music prodigy.

“It’s okay, Sparkle,” Kenji said. “We won’t be able to get as much work done on this vacation as we planned. But we’ll be able to make it up at Christmas break when we’re in Miami. And I talked to Dad about marrying your mom by the summer, so we’ll be able to work on the opera then, too.”

Lacey’s eyes flew to Suro’s, “And what did your dad say when you talked to him about this?”

Kenji shrugged, as if his father didn’t have much to do with the subject. “He didn’t say anything, but that doesn’t matter. I know he really likes you, because he hasn’t had a girlfriend since my mother left.”

Lacey continued to stare at Suro, whose expression had yet to change as he listened to this exchange. “Well, marriage is about more than two people liking each other. And we’ve only been together for a little while.”

Kenji shook his head. “You don’t understand. My dad doesn’t like that many people. If he likes you enough to live in your tiny apartment, he’s going to want to marry you. Hopefully, soon, so we can move back to Miami. Right, Dad?”

They all waited for his answer, but in the end, Suro said, “Kenji, I’ve told you before, I will not discuss this kind of business with you.”

“Do it for Sparkle,” Kenji said. “Look how upset she got because she doesn’t have a piano. If she knows she’ll always have access to a good one, like the one in our house, she’ll feel better. Tell them, Sparkle.”

Sparkle looked at her mother and for a moment, Lacey was scared she would tell them exactly what she’d been so upset about. But instead she said to Kenji, “I was thinking we could set the second act in an ice-skating rink. The sound of skates would make a nice transition from the break.”

“That’s a good idea,” Kenji said, easily distracted by the subject of their opera. “Come on, let’s go record some ice skating sounds on my phone. We can use it for inspiration when we get back to Rise Academy.”

The two pre-teens skated away, chattering on and using music terminology Lacey couldn’t even begin to understand. Then, to her surprise, instead of going with them, Suro sat down beside her before moving Spidey over to his own lap.

“You don’ have to,” she said.

“I want to,” he answered, settling Spidey into his arms. “I like holding him. I didn’t get to do this with Kenji.”

“Because he was autistic?” she asked.

“Because I was busy,” he answered. “Back then, I was very concerned with proving to my father I was worthy of his name. He was already grooming my school-age stepbrothers to take over the company, but upon graduation, he placed me in the Risk Management department. I worked day and night to prove to him how wrong he was not trust me to one day inherit The Nakamura Group.”

“But now you own a strip club?” Lacey had resisted asking him questions about what must be his very interesting back story, since she hadn’t been willing to share her own. But she couldn’t keep the curiosity out of her voice.

He stroked Spidey’s hair, seeming to talk more to the baby than to her when he said, “After Kenji was diagnosed, my wife left us, and my father soon started pressuring me to find another one, so I could give him an heir worthy of the family name. That’s when I realized if I did as he asked, then my next son would spend his life trying to prove he was worthy, too. My father didn’t want progeny, he wanted devotees. After that, I quit and worked as a security consultant on my own until Dexter emailed me and asked if I was interested in going into business with him.”

“And you said yes?” she asked.

“I said yes. Again, the security work I do is very specialized. I suppose I had gotten tired of working alone.”

They grew quiet after that, watching Sparkle and Kenji record skating sounds. Lacey knew their group must have presented a strange picture to the rest of the skaters. Kenji and Sparkle, who despite their separate races acted like a set of fraternal twins with their matching obsessions. And then there was Suro holding Spidey like a father, as if he didn’t even notice their color differences.

“You know, if we did get married it could always be like this. You, me, Sparkle, Kenji. We could even look into adopting Spidey.”

Her heart jumped and recoiled at the same time at the thought of a future she couldn’t possibly hope for. “Don’t,” she said to him. She laid her hand on top of his. “We’re having a nice Thanksgiving. Don’t spoil it with talk about the future.”

Suro looked like he might argue, but at the last moment his eyes turned back to the ice.

“I’ll go get us some apple cider,” she said.

And then she rushed away before he could answer. She didn’t want him to see how much his near-proposal had affected her, how badly she wanted it to always be like this, too.

CHAPTER 17

BEFORE
that Thursday, Suro wouldn’t have thought turkey gumbo chicken breasts, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed up peas for Spidey, and a party platter from the only sushi place in Chicago Suro had deemed “decent,” would have made for the best Thanksgiving feast he’d ever had. But by the time Kenji and Sparkle started clearing the dishes, Suro was stuffed and more satisfied than he’d ever been after a meal.

Despite Sparkle’s near miss at the ice skating rink, and Kenji’s complaints about everything, from sleeping on the floor, “We have several guestrooms at the house in Miami,” to the lack of a piano, “If we got on a plane right now we could be at our house in Miami by nighttime,” to not having his own bathroom, “We have four at our house in Miami,” no one had thrown a real fit, which seemed to Suro nothing short of a Thanksgiving miracle.

Much of the credit went to Rise Academy, where he could see both his son and Lacey’s daughter had been thriving and learning to deal with their Asperger’s in practical ways that would make life easier for them in the real world. But Suro also had to give credit to the circumstances.

Kenji valued having someone around who actually understood his obsession with music more than he valued the creature comforts of their Miami home. And both he and Sparkle seemed to understand Lacey had her arms full with Spidey and didn’t have the energy to attend to any extra demands.

They even tried to teach Spidey to play their electric keyboards after dinner, claiming it was never too late to indoctrinate a baby to music.

“Maybe if you’d had early training, you’d appreciate music more now,” Sparkle said to Lacey, in the way of a scientist forming a hypothesis.

“I do appreciate music,” Lacey said.

Then she put on a popular rap song Suro recognized from the nineties and started dancing around the living room. Suro, who had been half-reading a military memoir on the couch during this debate, found himself mesmerized by the sight of Lacey moving her body in the rhythmic way of a woman who used to be a girl who loved to dance.

Her locks soon began escaping from her messy bun, and he had to adjust himself on the couch to accommodate the response from down below. Spidey’s presence in the bedroom had put a cramp on their sexual activities, and the way Lacey’s body swayed under the jersey dress she was wearing reminded him of just how much he’d been missing her body since they’d last made love.

“No, not that kind of music!” Sparkle and Kenji yelled at her over the synthesized beats.

But Spidey squealed with delight when Lacey plucked him off the exposed pipe he’d been attempting to scale and began dancing with him around the living room.

“Spidey loves it.”

“Spidey’s a baby,” Sparkle said. “His brain hasn’t developed enough to know better yet.”

“Oh, snap, I know,” Lacey said. She went to her CD collection on the bookshelf, pulled out a disc and loaded it into the CD player.

Soon the catchy rhythm of a song he didn’t recognize came out.

“What is this song?” he asked her.

She shook her head at him, her crinkling with disbelief. “You’ve never heard of the ‘Cha-Cha Slide?’ Haven’t you ever been to a wedding?”

Only to guard them
. And weddings that employed security firms like his didn’t usually have attendees who appreciated this kind of music.

“You can’t call yourself living in Chicago and never have done the Cha-Cha Slide.” She tossed his book aside and tugged at one of his arms. “Get up.”

“I don’t think so,” he answered.

But she kept pulling on his arm. “Set a good example,” she said, in the same tone of voice he’d heard her use with Kenji when he was whining.

Which was how he, Suro Nakamura of the Tokyo Nakamuras, one of the most elite hit men in the entire world, came to find himself attempting to follow the commands of the man rapping line dancing instructions from Lacey’s CD player.

At first his movements were stiff with reluctance, but then Lacey got Sparkle and Kenji to join in, and soon they all got the moves down, clapping in time and spinning together as a unit.

It reminded Suro of the
gongfu
or Kung Fu classes he had taken as a boy at his Chinese mother’s behest, with their
sifu
calling out instructions to he and his fellow students, which they all performed together with precision timing. Except this was a lot more fun.

Lacey was laughing, as were Sparkle and Kenji. Even Spidey was giggling, especially on the turns.

Suro’s heart warmed at the scene before him, one he could never have hoped for, much less imagined a year ago, and this caused him to do something that brought Lacey to an immediate halt.

“What?” he asked as she stared up at him with comically wide eyes.

“You’re smiling,” she said. She cupped one side of his face in her hand. “I’ve never seen you smile before. It’s beautiful.”

No, Lacey was beautiful, and he had never wanted any woman as much as he wanted her. He dipped his head towards her to taste her sweet lips, momentarily forgetting Sparkle and Kenji, and Spidey. The music faded away and there was nothing left but the two of them, him smiling, her smiling back, their lips almost about to touch—

The harsh screech of the doorbell sounded and Lacey snapped out of their daze, pulling back from him.

“I wonder who that could be?”

Sparkle answered the door, while Lacey went to turn off the music. So it was in dead silence that Sparkle revealed Spidey’s mother, Candy, standing at the door.

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” Lacey demanded as soon as she stepped into the hallway with Spidey and closed the door behind her.

Candy held out her arms, “Give me my son.”

“Your son who I’ve been taking care of for the last twenty-four hours?” Lacey pointed at her. “I think you owe me an explanation first.”

“I don’t owe you shit! I’ve been doing what I had to do to make sure my son and me get the money we need.”

You haven’t been…” Lacey lowered her voice. “You haven’t been selling your body, have you? Because, Candy, the drugs aren’t worth it. We can get you help.”

“I don’t need help,” Candy said. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t be asking you for it,
Tasha
.”

Her blood ran cold. “What did you call me?”

“You heard me,” Candy said. “I knew I’d seen you before some place. At first I thought maybe you used to strip and you just didn’t want everybody to know. But then the other day it came to me. You was the girl behind the counter at Cofi’s! My mama used to love that place and we were up in there all the time. She was real pissed then when your dad closed up his shop out the blue like that. And she was even more pissed she didn’t know where you went, because Hector Mendez had his guys showing your picture all around the neighborhood, saying he’d give anybody with information about your whereabouts a real nice reward. I was still in high school, but I remembered the story about how you shot that poor man’s only son.”

Lacey shook her head. “I don’t know who you think I am, but you must have mistaken me for somebody else.”

“Stop lying, bitch.” Candy rolled her neck. “You want to know where I was? I was back in Trenton, getting a nice grip of cash from Hector Mendez. He didn’t believe me when I called and said I had information about your whereabouts. Flew me out to New Jersey and everything to get the whole story and make sure I wasn’t lying. I told him all about you working in Chicago now and about that Rain Man daughter of yours.”

She smiled when Lacey’s eyes widened in horror.

“Yeah, he was real interested in his granddaughter, since he don’t got no other family,” Candy said. She then glared at Lacey with barely contained hate. “I knew you was putting on a front from the first day I met you. Acting all prissy, like your shit don’t stink.”

Lacey trembled, unable to believe after everything she had done to stay hidden, one disgruntled addict had blown her cover. “Why do you hate me so much? I’ve never done anything to you.”

“You fucked with me, so I fucked with you,” Candy answered like it was a simple math equation. “You know how we do it in West Trenton.”

Candy snatched Spidey out of her arms, and the little boy immediately started crying in protest. But all Lacey could do was stand there frozen as Candy walked away with the child.

What was she going to do? What was she going to do?

She re-entered the apartment in a daze.

“Where’s Spidey?” Kenji demanded as soon as she walked through the door.

“I had to give him back,” she heard herself say. “He’s with his mother.”

Somehow she managed to tell them a version of what had happened and then make small talk in the gloomy mood that followed.

“We’ll get him back,” Suro said to her quietly after they said good night to Kenji and Sparkle. “I’ll make calls first thing in the morning and we’ll get this solved. Spidey deserves better.”