Her Perfect Gift, page 14
Then she walked out of the restaurant without a backwards glance. She had been playing the soft and meek role for the last twelve years, afraid to ever really stand up for herself for fear of discovery. And what had it gotten her? A stripper she hadn’t wanted to hire in the first place ratting her out and an ex-boyfriend, who was now planning on killing her.
She was done apologizing to people like Nestor, especially now that she didn’t have anything else to lose.
That decided, she snatched her phone out of her purse and called the only person she owed anything to.
“What?” her daughter asked in the hostile tone she’d decided to take with Lacey as of late.
“I have to meet with someone,” Lacey answered. “So I might be late tonight.”
“I don’t care,” Sparkle informed her, even less emotional than usual.
And Lacey had to bite back the urge to go off on her petulant daughter, like she’d just gone off on her former boss. “I know you’re angry at me. But I need you to listen to me carefully now,” she said between clenched teeth.
Silence.
“Jennifer, are you still there?”
“Yes, and for the record, I hate the name Jennifer.”
“I know you do.” Lacey took a deep breath. She had hoped she wouldn’t have to ever have this conversation with Sparkle. She’d hoped she’d be able to send her daughter off to college one day and give her the means to lead a normal life. She cursed herself now for letting down her guard in Montana, even for one night.
But in the end, she gathered up the last of her resolve and said, “In case I can’t get back there, I need you to remember these letters: ISLVM. The easy way to remember it is ‘I love Sparkle very much.’ Check the letters against a telephone pad and you’ll have the combination to the safe under my bed. It has everything you need, including instructions about what to do if you don’t hear from me.”
For the first time in weeks, Sparkle didn’t sound angry when she spoke to her. “What’s going on? Mom, you’re scaring me.”
She thought about the icy look on Suro’s face as he informed her he was a hit man. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to scare you like this. Please believe me. I never wanted any of this for you, but from now on, I need you to be selfish, okay? Don’t worry about me. Worry about you. Do whatever it takes to make sure you don’t turn out like me, okay? I love you, Sparkle,” she told her daughter. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I will always, always love you no matter where I am.”
“Mom, you’re upsetting me,” she could practically hear Sparkle rubbing her thumb between her fingers on the other end of the line.
“I know, and that’s why I’m going to get off the phone now. I don’t want to upset you any more than I have.”
“Mom, no. Stay on the phone.”
“Sparkle, breathe. Remember your exercises. Just breathe until you’re able to take the next step and do I would told you.”
“Mom—”
She hung up on her daughter. It seemed less cruel that way. And when she dropped the burner phone back into her purse, she saw that the Cliffrose Inn, a quaint collection of adobe suites, was standing right in front of her.
CHAPTER 20
A FEW minutes later, she found herself outside Suro’s stand-alone suite, knocking on a door painted with a Navajo symbol. It felt like knocking on the door to her own death and her heart beat in her throat when Suro answered. He looked her up and down before opening the door wider so she could enter.
More than twelve years of running, and it had all come down to this, she thought. How would he kill her? she wondered. He didn’t have a gun in his hand. Would he strangle her, or smother her, slit her throat, or force her to drink poison?
Strange, she would have never guessed he was hit man when they were together, but now it made total sense.
She heard the door click behind her and she gathered up her bravery, before turning around to face him. “Before you kill me, I have a few things I have to say.”
He stood there, hands at his side, lethal in his stillness, but he didn’t interrupt so she took that as an invitation to continue.
“I’m glad you know. I couldn’t tell you myself, but I’m glad you found out.” She looked him in the eye. “Because I wasn’t lying in Chicago. I really do love you, and more than anything I wanted you to know who I really was.”
To her surprise his face morphed from impassive into a storm cloud of rage. “Do not lie to me.”
“I’m not,” she said, and she stood her ground, though her instincts were screaming at her to run, to try to get away from this killer, this mad man, even if he’d easily be able to catch her.
“Do not lie to me,” he said again, angrier than she’d ever seen him.
“I’m not!”
His body crashed into hers like a runaway train. Her back hit an adobe wall and the block of ice that had opened the door became a wall of heat. Suro kissed her everywhere, her neck, her chest, her face all the while demanding, “Stop lying, stop lying, stop lying.”
“I’m not,” she said. And she kissed him back with all the passion she’d been trying to forget in the long weeks since she’d left him unconscious in Ferrari’s apartment.
He lifted her leg up around his waist, hiking up her skirt, so she could feel his rigid hard-on against her womanhood.
“Please believe me,” she said. “I loved you. I still do. So much. I don’t care who are or what you do for a living.”
There came the sound of her panties ripping and he was inside her, no condom, just his long, unforgiving length sheathing itself all the way to the hilt inside her quivering pussy. “Yes!” she cried out, happier than she had any right to be, because they were joined together again, even if it was in anger on his part.
He yanked the front of her waitress uniform open and the cheap buttons went flying everywhere. Then he pulled down her bra so her now swollen breasts came bursting out, and he started moving against her, his chest scraping again her sensitive nipples every time he jerked his cock inside her.
For a long while nothing could be heard in the room except for his harsh breaths and the sound of him slamming into her as he fucked her like a vengeful beast against the wall.
But then she wrapped her arms around him as tight as she could and said, “I love you, Suro. I really do. Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and God help me, I’m so happy to see you again. I will never, ever lie to you again I swear. I swear it.”
For a few moments he kept fucking her in the rough manner of a man who could care less about the woman he was rutting, but she kept whispering it in his ear, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” and soon he broke.
His strokes went from rough to tender, and his hand wrapped around the nape of her neck as he pulled her face forward. He kissed and kissed her, like a man who had been starved of kisses for a very long time. And if this had been his plan to try to shut her up, it backfired, because she moaned the words against his lips. “I love you, I love you…”
Soon an orgasm began to blossom inside of her, unfolding like a flower as he moved into her, not stopping until she was shuddering against him, unable to continue speaking the words in her heart because she was so overcome.
Soon after, she felt him swell inside her and then spill his seed into her in a rush of moving bodies, cold adobe wall, and lovers finally reunited.
Later she lay on top of the Navajo spread with him and told him everything from the start, about growing up in New Jersey with her father, about the events that led up to her killing Hector Mendez’s son, and her many years on the lam afterwards.
He didn’t say much, but he didn’t have to. Just finally telling someone, anyone, the entire saga brought her more peace than she had felt in years.
“I’m sorry I kept all of this from you,” she said, lying against his chest. She could hear his heart thumping beneath her ear. “But I wasn’t trying to lie to you. I was honestly trying to protect you. I already lost my father and Sparkle’s all caught up in my mess. I didn’t want someone else I loved to get in harm’s way.”
She looked up to see how he was taking all of this, but his face remained impassive. She quickly ducked her head again, so she didn’t have to see his reaction as she said, “Also, this just in: I’m pregnant. So if you’re still planning to kill me, I’m asking that you give me six months so no one else has to die because of what I did.”
Still he didn’t answer, but the speeding up of his heartbeat told her he had heard every word.
“Suro?” she asked.
“I’m a hit man, but that doesn’t mean I’m without honor. I don’t kill women,” he said,”and I never planned to kill you.”
“You didn’t?” she asked. “Then why did you take the case?”
“For the reason I’ve done every crazy thing I’ve done over the past six months,” he answered. “Because of you. Now go to sleep.”
“But—”
“Go to sleep.”
So she went to sleep. It wasn’t hard. She’d had a strange and crazy day, the low point being when she was fairly sure she was going to die by Suro’s hand. But she was still alive. She’d confessed everything, and she was in the arms of the man she loved. That was enough for today, she thought, and let sleep pull her under.
She woke up a few hours later in a pitch-black room to the sound of her burner phone ringing. More than a little confused by the unfamiliar surroundings, she fumbled around in the dark for a light only to discover when she turned it on, Suro was gone. Moreover, the room was empty. His suitcase was gone, along with any other signs he’d ever been there.
If not for the fact that her lady parts felt pretty worked over, and she was buck-naked and in a hotel room at the Cliffrose Inn, she would have thought maybe she had hallucinated the whole thing.
Still confused, she made her way to the ringing phone and picked it up when she saw Sparkle’s number. “Sparkle—I mean, Jennifer, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” Sparkle said. “But there’s a big guy here. He told me to call you.”
She sighed. “Is it a big black guy named Dexter?” she asked.
“No, I know who Dexter is.” Sparkle answered, not bothering to lower her voice. “It’s a big white guy. His name is Alexei Rustanov. And he says Suro sent him.”
CHAPTER 21
LACEY hadn’t been the only one keeping secrets in their relationship. Apparently Suro was not only a hit man by trade, but he also hung out with Russian billionaires. At least she thought Alexei Rustanov was his friend.
The only explanation he had given before hustling Sparkle and her to his private jet, which Sparkle had recognized as the one that had taken her from Rise Academy to Chicago, was, “Nakamura asked me to pick you up, take you back to our home in Texas, and keep you there until further notice. So that is what I am doing.”
His home in Texas turned out to be a rather large compound in the middle of a small Texas town called Drummond with twenty-four/seven security. Even if Lacey had thought about running away again, and considering the weird circumstances, she did think about it, she doubted she would have gotten past the front gate. And even though he was kind enough to put her and Sparkle up in the “guest house,” which was actually a large, two-floor villa, she felt like a very well kept prisoner.
They had a dedicated housekeeper who came to take their order for dinner every night. Also, there was an upright piano in the living room, so Sparkle was A-OK with the situation, even if her mother was not.
Lacey had expected to be there for a few days, but then a whole week passed by without so much as a text message from Suro or an appearance from Alexei Rustanov. The enigmatic billionaire had apparently flown all the way to Santa Fe to get them himself but then hadn’t bothered to check in with her after dumping them in his swanky guesthouse.
Not to mention she was bored out of her skull. Say what you want about being a somewhat seedy manager/creative accountant for a strip club, it had at least always been interesting. Staying in the villa was way better than waiting tables in some hole-in-the-wall in Santa Fe, but she soon tired of the steady diet of television and listening to Sparkle play the piano in the background.
She was just considering hatching an escape plan, when she heard voices arguing outside of the villa’s front door.
“There is no reason to disturb them, Eva,” came Alexei’s stern voice.
“Don’t you even try to talk to me right now,” came another voice, heavy with a Texas accent. “I can’t believe you have these people up in our house and weren’t even trying to treat them like guests.”
“They are not guests, they are a favor.”
“If they’re staying on my property, they are guests. And what kind of Texan calls guests ‘a favor’? That’s just downright inhospitable.”
“I did feed them,” he pointed out, between what Lacey assumed were clenched teeth. “And as you know, I am not a Texan. I am Russian.”
“I’ll say you are, a Texan would never treat guests this way.”
“They are not guests!”
Before the argument could circle back around, Lacey yanked open the door to see the lady who was giving Alexei such a hard time.
She was surprised to find a pretty and very pregnant black woman on the doorstep, with her hands on her hips as she addressed the much larger Alexei Rustanov. But as soon as she saw Lacey, she pasted on a wide smile. “How are ya’ll doing?” She held out her hand for a shake. “Eva Rustanov. I’m the mayor of Drummond and Alexei’s wife. It is so nice to make your acquaintance.”
Lacey tentatively shook her hand, finding it hard to believe that this little spitfire was married to the scary Russian who had picked them up in Santa Fe. “It’s nice to meet you, too. Are you really the mayor? I’ve never met a mayor before, especially not a female one.”
“I sure am,” Eva answered. “And let me tell you, the last mayor, my daddy, is still hoppin’ mad about it. Of course, if it had been up to him, I wouldn’t have married this big, rude Russian husband of mine in the first place.” Eva glanced sideways at the handsome but hulking figure at her side.
“Eva…” he said, his voice full of warning.
But Eva swatted his words away. “I am almost six months pregnant with your oversized progeny. Do not ‘Eva’ me, Lexie.”
She then turned her gorgeous smile back on Lacey. “Now tell me all about you. Can I just say, I am so glad you’re here? It’s been about a month of Sundays since I had another woman to talk with. And I love this classical music you’re playing on the stereo. What is it?”
“Rachmaninoff,” Alexei supplied. “He is a great Russian composer.”
“And it’s actually my daughter playing,” Lacey told her, opening the door wider so they could come in. “She’s been going backwards up a list of Russian composers she found on the internet ever since we got here. You should have come by a couple of days ago for all the Tchaikovsky. I guess it’s kind of her way of thanking Mr. Rustanov for hosting us.”
Eva’s eyes widened in wonderment as she watched Sparkle’s hands fly over the keys of the piano sitting in the living room. “I can’t believe she’s getting that to come out of our old piano. I could never get our son Aaron to so much as take lessons!”
“It ‘s a blessing and a curse,” Lacey said. “Sparkle—I mean Jennifer—gets these ideas in her head and then she becomes kind of obsessed. But Mr. Rustanov, if you want to come back, she’ll be playing until she gets to the A’s”
“I think I might,” Alexei answered, looking at Sparkle with real admiration in his eyes. “I have not heard trained pianists play Rachmaninoff half so well.”
Not for the first time, Lacey wondered how far Sparkle could go in life if she weren’t saddled with a mother who couldn’t fully support her prodigious talent. For a few moments she let herself admire her daughter along with Alexei and Eva as they all watched her play.
When the piece finished, they applauded. But then Sparkle surprised them all by saying, “Perhaps your son does not like this piano because it’s out of tune.”
Lacey winced. She wasn’t sure if they knew Sparkle was on the autism spectrum and meant no insult when she said things like that.
But either Suro had let them know or Eva was just smooth, because all she said was, “Well, aren’t you a sweetheart for letting us know our piano needs fixing. We’ll get somebody right on that.”
Proving Lacey’s years of instilling rote manners in her daughter hadn’t been wasted, Sparkle did say, “Thank you,” before flipping to the next computer print out of music and starting another piece.
The adults eventually ended up in the kitchen with Eva making them tea while they chatted back and forth about Texas and the house, which, as it turned out, Eva had grown up in since her father had been the mayor for many years before her. “The truth is, if they ever decide to vote me out, we’re going to be in a real pickle because technically the town owns this house, and we’ve built up our compound around it.”
Rustanov frowned at his wife. “Drummond loves you. They would not do this to you. And if ever you decide to retire, then we will buy this house from them and build them another one outside the compound.”
Eva reached over and squeezed Alexei’s hand. “My biggest supporter right here. But seriously, I hope ya’ll are comfortable. If you need anything, just holler. And again, let me apologize for my husband. If I hadn’t been away at a conference, I would never have let you languish out here all alone.”
“They are not alone, they have each other,” Alexei said. “And you are right, you should have been here. You shouldn’t be traveling in your condition.”
Eva just rolled her eyes. “Lexie’s all scared because it took us a while to get pregnant due to a really bad decision he made when was in the habit of sleeping with unsuitable women who weren’t me.”
