Her Perfect Gift (7 page)

Her pocket vibrator was getting quite the workout. Usually, she only used it once or twice a month to relax after a particularly long day, but lately she found herself pulling it out of her nightstand drawer every night, thinking about Suro as she let the electronic device give her orgasms that seemed but a dull echo of the ones he’d given her that night.

Before she knew it, almost two weeks had passed without him saying a single word to her. Which was why she was so surprised on Saturday when an envelope appeared at the bottom of her closed office door, sliding into the room with a slick whisper.

She opened it and found a check for two weeks worth of work and her heart sank.

She sat back down at her desk and proceeded to explain over the course of three post-it notes, and in the vaguest way possible, why she couldn’t accept payment in form of a check and how Tony had always paid her in cash. Then she attached the three post-its to the paycheck envelope and slid it under his office door, which was also closed.

It didn’t take long to get a reply. She’d been back at her desk less than five minutes when a note written in elegant handwriting on heavy parchment paper appeared under the door. It read,
“If you want your money in cash, meet me at the Drake Hotel tonight after your shift.”

CHAPTER 8

“YOU’RE
here to see a Suro Nakamura?” The woman behind The Drake’s guest desk gave her a questioning look, and Lacey couldn’t blame her. A ratty old Wrigley Field t-shirt and knee-length fleece shorts weren’t exactly standard apparel at one of Chicago’s finest hotels, and she certainly felt out of place in the opulent lobby, which was festooned with silk burnt orange curtains, dark wood paneling, oversized tufted settees, and incredible chandeliers practically dripping with light and crystals.

She was a little surprised she’d gotten past the red-coated doorman who’d also given her a suspicious once over as he let her into the ritzy Chicago landmark, which had been around since the 1920s. But it wasn’t like she’d had much choice. Suro had invited her up to his hotel room, for goodness sake! How else was she supposed to convey she wasn’t even remotely interested in entertaining a booty call and what happened in Montana would never happen again?

“Can you check to see if he’s staying here?” she said now to the clerk. “I thought we would be meeting in the bar, but he’s not there.”

The clerk typed the name into her keyboard, and Lacey hoped like crazy she wouldn’t get a hit. Maybe he had stood her up, just to teach her a lesson about standing him up in Montana. If that was the case, she could apologize on Monday and possibly get her money without things becoming intimate again.

But the clerk nodded and asked, “Your name?”

“Lacey Winters,” she answered.

The clerk picked up the phone and placed a discreet call. “Yes, Mr. Nakamura,” she heard the woman say. “Right away.”

And a few minutes later, Lacey was standing outside one of the Gold Coast suites, holding a magnetic key card with the name of the hotel printed across the front in Old English lettering.

She still couldn’t believe she was standing in The Drake, preparing to let herself into her new boss’s hotel room at his instruction. It felt like standing outside a door-shaped Pandora’s box. She had no idea what would happen after she dared open it.

But open it she did. It wasn’t like she could continue to work without getting paid, and she reminded herself that she regularly stared down men, even larger than Suro, when they tried to get too fresh with the dancers. She could handle this one guy. Couldn’t she?

She quickly slipped the key card in the door’s locking mechanism before she could chicken out. Inside, she found a spacious hotel room with a separate living area that provided a spectacular night view overlooking Lake Michigan.

Having only one day off a week, she didn’t get a chance to see the lake all that often, and it looked particularly pretty, lit up as it was by all the tall buildings running along is shoreline. She got so caught up in the sight, she didn’t hear when Suro emerged from wherever he’d been. Suddenly, he was there in the window’s reflection, looking dapper in a white open collar shirt, black leather jacket, and a pair of jeans.

She stiffened, but forced herself to turn around to face him.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hello,” he answered, his cool eyes giving away nothing.

“So you’re staying at the Drake? How amazing is that? I’ve always wondered what this place looked like on the inside. You hear about so many famous people staying here when they come to town, and a few of the dancers have gotten drinks downstairs just to check it out, but I never have. It’s a really pretty hotel, and I’m really excited I finally got to see it.” Lacey waggled her thumbs. “But it’s late and I don’t want to keep you, so I guess I should get going after you give me my money.”

“Dinner first,” he said.

She grimaced. “Hey, thank you for the offer, but I’m way under dressed to be eating at a fancy restaurant, so why don’t we just do the money exchange and I’ll get out of your hair?”

He took off his leather jacket and hung it across a chair at a round table, which she could now see was covered with a table cloth and set with a bottle of wine, two candles, two side salads, and two dishes of what appeared to be a very delicious-looking chicken linguine with mushrooms, covered in freshly grated parmesan.

“Dinner first,” he said again and pulled a seat out for her.

Before she could even think to lie that she wasn’t hungry, her traitorous stomach rumbled its appreciation of the well-presented food.

“Thank you,” she said, taking a reluctant seat.

The linguine was just as delicious as it looked, and though she didn’t dare touch the red wine he’d poured for her, Lacey found herself relaxing and, once again, doing most of the talking, though she did keep trailing off to stare out at the lake.

“Sorry,” she said after she did it a fourth time. “It’s just…Lake Michigan is so beautiful, and I almost never get to see it at night.”

“Why not?” he asked.

She was surprised by the question, since he hadn’t asked one the entire time they’d been eating. “Well, you know, my hours are weird, so I don’t get much leisure time after the sun goes down.”

“You work too much,” he said.

She shrugged. “Obviously you make a lot of money doing high-end security, but paying for Sparkle’s schooling isn’t exactly easy for me.”

“Yet you refuse to apply for a scholarship.”

She lowered her fork and pasted a smile on her face. “Nope. There are students who need them more than Sparkle, and I don’t mind working. It keeps me busy.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Either that or you didn’t want to provide the school with your financial records, so you’re working what amounts to three jobs to pay her tuition.”

Her smile wobbled. That had been exactly why she hadn’t applied for a scholarship.

“Speaking of that third job,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to ask is there anything else you want me to do on the accounting side of things.”

He steepled his hands over his plate. “Anything else like what?” His onyx eyes met hers and it sent a small shiver down her spine.

“Tony calls it ‘creative accounting,’” she said, trying to keep the shakiness she felt out of her voice. “If I have to explain it, then you probably don’t need it. It just that you make enough to buy Tony’s business and pay for Sparkle’s tuition without blinking and I thought that might mean you were involved in something more than high-end security.”

His gaze kept her pinned. “If I was, would you think less of me?”

“I—I don’t know,” she said. “I guess it would depend on what exactly you do besides high-end security.”

He regarded her for a few seconds before saying, “You’re right, what I do isn’t as simple as high-end security. It’s highly specialized and very few other men in the world do it as well as I do, that’s why I’m able to live as comfortably as I do. Also, I inherited a substantial amount of money from my mother.”

“So your mom’s dead?” she asked, her heart going out to him because she hadn’t known they had this in common.

The same sadness that she’d seen in Montana flickered across his face then. “Yes. Less than fifteen years into their marriage, my father decided he’d made a mistake in marrying my mother for love and started divorce proceedings. You see, she is Chinese, and though her family was very well off in her country, my father’s family never approved of their marriage. Her answer to this insult was to take her own life, making him a widow, before he could throw her away. Technically the money should have gone to him, but my father held it in trust for me and gifted it to me on my wedding day.”

“That was nice of him,” she said, thinking of her own father, who had always put her best interests ahead of his own.

“No,” he said, placing his napkin on the table. “It was a manipulation, a gift for marrying the woman he had chosen for me and for assuming the role he designated for me in the family business. If he could have found away to take the money back upon our divorce, he would have done so.”

“So you and your father don’t get along?” she asked.

“No, but I remain grateful for his presence in my early life.” He gave her an up and down look that made goose bumps raise on her arms. “He taught me to be ruthless, and that quality has served me well over the years.”

The subject, she could sense, had changed. When he talked about his inherited ruthlessness, he wasn’t really talking about his father or even his current job. Something pulsed in the air between them like a tiger ready to pounce.

“Wow, would you look at the time?” she said, making a big show of checking her watch. “I took the El, so I should probably be heading out before it gets too late.”

He stood up and picked up his dish. “I don’t like leaving dirty dishes for room service. Will you help me rinse these off?”

“Sure. I guess so,” Lacey answered, feeling flustered but obligated to at least rinse a few dishes after he’d provided her with such a scrumptious dinner.

So she stood beside him, stiff and unable to provide her usual ramble, because though he had yet to touch her or even look at her in an amorous way, she could feel the sexual tension, thick as a cloud in the room.

He handed her a dish and asked, “What kind of girl are you?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“In Montana, you said you weren’t the kind of girl who had sex with a man because he bought her dinner. So now I’m wondering what kind of girl you are.”

A weird fear caught her heart in a tight lasso. “I still don’t understand,” she said.

He turned off the water and turned to face her. “You’re making it obvious you don’t wish to have sex with me tonight. You wore what looks like your workout clothes and you keep trying to leave. Why?”

She swallowed the hard lump of fear lodged in her throat and decided to just give it to him straight. “Because you scare me. Because I still don’t know why you paid Sparkle’s tuition, or bought my club, or why you’re here. But mostly because you scare me. I read guys for a living, and I can’t read you, and that makes me nervous.”

“Nervous,” he repeated. If she’d offended him, he didn’t let it show. Instead his eyes drifted down to her outfit. “Choosing to wear these clothes was a mistake.”

“Because you wanted me to wear something sexier?” she asked, her back going straight.

“No, because though I’ve lived in the States since college, I’m still very Japanese.”

She shook her head, confused. “What does that mean?”

“Have you ever seen Japanese porn?” he asked her.

She felt her cheeks heat. “Um, no. We get a lot Japanese clients coming through the club, but I haven’t explored the country beyond that.”

He began unbuttoning his shirt, “If you had ever spent any time in my home country, you would know the Japanese have a somewhat peculiar talent that your own country does not.”

It felt like her heart had moved from her chest and set up permanent residence in her stomach, but she couldn’t keep herself from asking, “What kind of talent?”

“Tentacles, baths, even simple conversation—we can make anything sexy. So while you were sitting across from me at the table, thinking I’d surely be turned off by your clothing, I was thinking what it would be like reach up under your shirt and take off your bra.”

To her surprise, his arms came around her waist, and he distracted her with a hot kiss as his hands snaked under the back of her t-shirt.

“And if you hadn’t worn such a simple bra, I wouldn’t have been able to do this…”

Before she knew it, he’d unclasped her bra and was pulling it off, taking the admittedly easy-to-maneuver straps down both her arms and stripping the bra off through one armhole.

She’d thought he’d strip her out of her t-shirt next, but instead his mouth closed over one of her nipples, lathing her breast through the worn material. Hot pleasure trickled from her chest straight into her womanhood. And she could feel her nipple puckering inside his mouth as her breasts swelled with instantaneous need.

“What are you doing?” she asked, unable to believe how hot the feel of a man’s tongue through her t-shirt was making her.

His answer was to let go of the breast underneath the I-G-L and move on to the one underneath the F-I-E. The cool air hit the now damp breast he’d abandoned, making for a heady contrast of hot and cold as he paid the same wet attention to her other breast. He tugged at it through the t-shirt with long, insistent sucks, and she could feel her pussy clenching in response. “Suro,” she moaned.

He stood up straight, his normally cool eyes now ablaze with heat as he took in the outline of her nipples highlighted through the wet spots he made on her shirt.

“Not good enough,” he said.

He picked her up.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, coming out of her sexual daze enough to be alarmed.

He didn’t respond, but he walked so swiftly toward the back of the suite that she soon got her answer.

He opened a door to reveal a bathroom and a hot tub roiling with heated water.

“
So that was where he was when I came in
,” she thought to herself.