Her Perfect Gift, page 8
Your friend,
Tony
It was a simple letter, but Lacey found herself raising her hand to her mouth and crying after she read it. She had just lost the only other man on earth she cared about and she hadn’t even known he’d left the city.
Thoughts of her real father, the other man she had lost, filled her head on the El ride home. She could still see him now, kissing her and his granddaughter, who Lacey had originally named Darla, goodbye before they left for her first under-the-table job as a daycare worker in West Philadelphia.
She should have returned home around six that evening. But just as she was about to unlock the apartment door—Darla balanced carefully on one hip—she remembered she’d left some important documents in the car…documents she was supposed to return to Lacey Winters, the retail clerk who lived across the hall with her two-year-old daughter, Sparkle. Lacey, who had dreams of getting into college but didn’t want to bother with GED classes, had paid her a thousand dollars to take the GED test for her the previous day, giving her two forms of ID to pull the fraud off.
She’d taken the money and the test, though she’d known her father wouldn’t approve. A thousand dollars was a lot of money and since they were both working under the table—he as a short order cook, for a fraction of what he used to make owning his own restaurant—she felt bringing in extra cash was the least she could do.
She decided to carry Darla down with her to grab the paperwork. It was easier to take her toddler back down the multiple flights of stairs than it was to open the apartment door and face her father. He was a smart man and if she told him she’d left something in the car, he’d certainly have questions—questions she preferred to avoid.
At the last minute, she decided to go out the side door to the parking lot in order to throw away an empty raisin box Darla had been nibbling from. This decision would ultimately save both their lives. She was tossing the carton into the dumpster when she both felt and heard the explosion.
Later, Philadelphia newspapers would declare the explosion that took several lives in their death trap of a tenement building “accidental.” They’d insinuate that the John Doe who owned the faulty stove might, like many people living in the building, have been hooked on crack and lit up without realizing his stove had a leak in it.
But Lacey knew instantly she’d been the intended victim. Though she and her father had taken great pains to stay hidden in North Philly, somehow Darla’s grandfather, Hector Mendez Sr., had found them.
Maybe someone recognized her on the street. Fairhill, where they lived, wasn’t the best neighborhood and had a huge Hispanic population. Hector Mendez had probably spread the word he was looking for her beyond New Jersey. But in the end, it didn’t really matter how he found out, only that he did. She had learned her lesson.
Lacey would never trust anyone again with real information about her past. From then on, her main mission in life became doing whatever it took to keep her daughter and herself safe and alive. Even if whatever meant getting on a bus to Chicago and using the ID that belonged to a woman who had died because of her. She got as far away from the East Coast as she could on the limited funds she had eventually landing under-the-table work at a rundown diner.
However, less than a year after their arrival in Chicago, the newly re-dubbed Sparkle started setting off red flags at her daycare and was eventually diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Lacey knew she’d need more money than her job waiting tables could provide to get Sparkle the services she needed. But she was too scared to use a dead women’s ID to try to finish her degree, so Lacey spent whatever time wasn’t taken up by Sparkle and her job at the library, relearning all the accounting basics she’d been taught before being forced to run for her life. She hoped she might prove to her current boss that he should let her take over the books.
Unfortunately, the cook/owner of the diner was a penny-pinching pig. Not only did he turn down her offer, saying he could handle his books himself, but he also fired her for merely suggesting he might need someone to cook his books so the IRS didn’t get suspicious that he was the only one on the official payroll at his restaurant.
Then she’d met Tony at the library.
They might never have talked, except he was an avid reader and the one who came upon her quietly crying at one of the library kiosks in her waitress uniform.
“What’s the matter, kid?” he’d asked. “You’re too young to be crying all over your homework.”
She looked down at the accounting textbook she’d been trying to study before it all became too much and realized he had mistaken her for a student. An easy mistake to make, considering she was only twenty-one. But she hadn’t felt as young as her age in years and at that moment, suspected she never would again.
He handed her a handkerchief, they got to talking, and the next thing she knew, she was installed in his club as a bookkeeper.
At least it started off as bookkeeping, but a few years later one of his managers quit and she asked if she could take over the position, and when his building superintendent passed away, she’d also jumped on that job and the free apartment that came with it.
She considered Tony a saint for giving an out-of-work waitress he’d found crying in the library a job, and though she knew more than anyone how quickly people could be taken away, she had started thinking of him as a permanent fixture in her life. Was it any wonder that she cried all the way home?
But her tears quickly dried up when she saw the state of her office.
“No,” she whispered. Then she saw the drawer where she’d hidden the security deposit key, the one that unlocked the box only she and Tony had keys for. It was sitting on top of her desk, quietly informing her that her most valuable possession was now in the hands of someone else.
“No! No! No!” she cried out loud.
CHAPTER 12
LACEY had never been so angry in her life. Not when she and her father had been forced to run away from New Jersey and relocate to Philadelphia. Not when she’d gotten fired from her waitressing job. Not even when her father died in the explosion meant for her. All those times she’d been more scared than angry.
But as she rushed up the stairs toward her apartment to confront her unwanted squatter, red tinged the edges of her visions. How dare he? Rooting around her apartment was one thing. There had been nothing to find there. But ransacking her office and taking the safety deposit key Tony had given her? An angry sound tore out of her throat as she opened the door to her apartment.
But then she came to understand she hadn’t really been mad. No, she didn’t really get mad until she found Suro standing at her counter, calmly drinking a glass of water with her silver security deposit key hanging around his neck on a thin chain.
That was when she knew the meaning of true rage.
She flew over the counter at him, grabbing for the key around his neck. Her key. The one thing that unlocked everything of value she had in this world. “Give. It. Back.”
“No,” he said, fending her off easily. He caught both her wrists in his hands. And gave her a gentle shove backwards.
“Give it back!” This time she screamed the words. “And then get out of my apartment, you psycho!!”
She tried snatching the key from him again, but once more, he simply caught her wrists and sent her stumbling backwards as if she were little more than a pesky child.
“Get out of my apartment!” she screamed, tears of frustration and fury gathering in her eyes. “You have no right to be here, or to take my things! You have no idea what I’ve been through to get the things I keep in my security deposit box!”
“No, I don’t know what you’ve been through,” he said in an infuriatingly calm voice. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“Because I don’t want to! They’re my secrets. Mine! And that is my key. Give it back!”
He inclined his chin at her, his eyes seeming to go even more dead, as if she were a bug he were studying. “No.”
This time she didn’t go for the key. Her hands went straight for his face in a very deliberate attempt to scratch his eyes out. But her fingers barely grazed his cheeks before her wrists were once again bound in his iron grip.
However, this time he didn’t push her away. “Calm down,” he said.
Which only infuriated her more. She pulled and tugged, trying to get her wrists free, but the more she tried, the stronger his grip became, until her arms were aching and her spirit was wrung dry.
She started crying. Not regular tears of frustration, but the kind of ugly tears that signaled a nervous breakdown. She was so tired of fighting for everything. Staying hidden, staying alive, making enough money, keeping her distance from Suro. And now Tony was gone. And she had no idea how she would get the key back. And her father. Her poor father…she remembered the tired smile he’d given her before she and Darla had left that morning long ago, the last smile he’d given her.
And she sobbed, her heart coming undone as if he had died all over again. For whatever reason, this gained her freedom. Suro let go of her hands, and her arms fell to her sides like worn strings as she continued to cry.
Then to her surprise, Suro’s arms came around her, wrapping her up in an embrace so stiff, it was obvious he hadn’t initiated a hug in a very long time, if ever.
But she held on, because though she hated him at that moment, she knew the alternative was having a nervous breakdown right there in her own kitchen.
Then they were kissing. She didn’t know who started it, but once it began, it blasted through them both like an unstoppable fire.
“Tell me who you really are,” he demanded, dragging his lips across her neck. “Tell me everything.”
Now it was her turn to say, “No.”
A glass of water crashed to the floor and the next thing she knew, she was bent over the counter, her breasts pressed against the formica tile as he pulled down her jeans before taking the elastic band out of her hair. She felt her dreadlocks fan out across her back and heard his sharp intake of breath behind her.
“Do you understand how you’ve tortured me these last few weeks?” he asked. “How much control you’ve made me exercise over myself?”
One hand held her in place, while the other pulled aside the crotch of her panties. “Tell me,” he said again.
“No,” she moaned. Her pussy was on fire now…she could feel it dripping, despite the situation she was in and how furious she was. The apartment’s cool air hit her exposed lips and it only made her squirm more. “No,” she said again, even as she moved her hips against the hand holding the crotch of her panties. “I’ll never tell you anything, so you can stop wasting your breath and just fuck me.”
“Tell me.” He plunged into her from behind, stroking into her deep as he said it over and over again, “Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.”
He worked her clit with fast strokes of his hand, his chest moving across her back as he commanded again, “Tell me.”
“No,” Lacey moaned. She bit down on her lip, trying to hold on to herself, despite the onslaught of pleasure his movements were producing inside her pussy. “No.”
Then another, “Nooo!” when she came hard, her pussy clenching around both his hand and his dick.
He growled and suddenly her shirt was off, followed by her bra. He pulled out just long enough to put her on the floor and plunge back into her, this time bending her leg over his shoulder to open her wide as he thrust into her, his eyes hot with anger, as he said again, “Give in.”
“No,” she said, even as she rolled her hips up into his. “Never.”
“I have spent months trying to figure you out,” he panted. “If you want this key back, you will tell me everything.”
She was aflame for him and so angry, it was hard to tell where the anger left off and the lust began. She only wanted two things at that moment, to come again and to piss Suro off.
“I’m done being threatened by you!” Oh, his cock felt so good inside her. “If you don’t give me my key, I’ll figure something else out. But you don’t own me, and you can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do.” She could feel herself reaching the edge. “Fuck you!”
Then she spit in his face.
He froze on top her, and she took his moment of surprise to grab for the key, but just as her fingers were about to connect with the shiny object, he grabbed her wrists, even harder than before. And that was it. He slammed her trapped arms above her head and lost control on top of her, pounding into her as what she could only assume were Japanese cuss words streamed out of his mouth.
She cursed him right on back. “Fuck you,” she said. “Fuck you.”
Then she nearly blacked out from the orgasm. It hit her hard, exploding across her pussy and shaking her to the very core.
He came a few moments later, his face red and angry, veins throbbing in his neck.
Neither of them realized he wasn’t wearing a condom until his seed flooded into her womb on a red-hot river of lust and recrimination.
SURO ROLLED AWAY FROM LACEY. And for a few moments, he could only lay on the hard kitchen floor trying to figure out what had just happened.
He’d never lost control like that. Not once, and especially not with a woman.
He wanted to yell, he wanted to apologize, he wanted to walk out and never see this woman who so threatened his equilibrium ever again.
But in the end he said, “I need to know. I don’t know why, but not knowing is making me crazy.”
“I don’t know why you need to know either,” she said in a spent voice beside him. “But I’m not going to tell you. It isn’t safe for me or you.”
“I can take care of myself.” And you, if you would just let me. But he didn’t say that aloud, because he knew it would scare her even more than it scared him.
“You can take care of yourself better if you don’t know,” she answered. “If I were you, I’d put my mind to figuring out how to live with the fact that I’m never going to tell you.”
He turned to her then, feeling some of the old calm slip back over him. “I’ll find out whether you tell me or not.”
She let out an audible sigh at that. “No, you won’t.” She sat up. “And you probably don’t have to worry about me getting pregnant. I went off my period yesterday.”
Suro was startled to realize he hadn’t been worried. If anything, the thought of them being bound by something more than sex held a certain appeal. For a moment he allowed himself to imagine a life with her, waking up every morning next to her warm body. Listening to her soft voice as he ate his breakfast, watching her nurse the baby they’d made together.
His ex-wife, Yumiko, had hated motherhood from the beginning, insisting on a night nurse, and always handing Kenji over to one of their nannies for feeding and changing. She had been perfect for Tetsuro Nakamura, the black sheep of the Tokyo Nakumuras, on paper. She hailed from an esteemed family, but had still been willing to marry a hafu, the half-blood son of a Japanese father and Chinese mother. They had lived quite peacefully together for the years Suro had spent establishing himself as an International Security Executive at the Miami branch of his family’s company, before they caved into family pressure and had a baby.
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.”
