Free Her Perfect Gift by Theodora Taylor Page A

to hide from him more. “I know I work at a strip club, but I’m not a stripper. I’m not all that great at sitting around naked in broad daylight.”
    Somehow her soft words calmed his angry heart. He reached out and lowered the hand she had clenched around the sheet. “I want to see you,” he said.
    The sheet fell away from her plump breasts and Suro felt himself getting hard again. She angered him like no other woman he had ever known, not even his ex-wife. But the sight of her pleased him, made him want things he’d taught himself to go without, like companionship, and a woman waiting for him when he got home from a job.
    “Are you okay?” she asked.
    He didn’t answer. Mostly because he didn’t know himself. Every day he wondered what he was doing here in Chicago, obsessing over this woman.
    She studied him with real worry in her eyes. “Sometimes you get this look, like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders. Do you want to talk about it?”
    His nickname in the world of assassins was “The Silence.” And it was well earned. For as long as he could remember, he’d never wanted to talk to anyone about anything, except for this one black woman who had somehow slipped under his skin.
    He abruptly got out of bed. “I’ll order us breakfast.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said behind him. He could hear her scrambling out of bed to gather her clothing, which they’d hung across two chairs to dry the night before. “My father always said I was too nosy. I shouldn’t have asked. You don’t have to order breakfast. I can make myself some when I get home.”
    “I’m leaving town on business tonight and won’t be back until the Friday after next,” he told her.
    He watched her carefully, but couldn’t tell if she was happy or merely surprised when she said, “Oh.”
    “Have breakfast with me. Then I’ll give you your money and you can go.”
    He didn’t wait for her answer before picking up the phone and putting in a breakfast order big enough for two people.
     
     
    TWO WEEKS LATER, Lacey was still trying to figure out why Suro had insisted on having breakfast with her. Dinner, she could understand. He was trying to get into her pants, and she’d once again made it ridiculously easy for him to do so despite her claim she couldn’t be bought for a plate of pasta. But still, he’d insisted on her having yet another meal with him, which she spent telling him all there was to do for fun in Chicago.
    He hadn’t touched her after breakfast, or asked her to help with the dishes, or even said goodbye when he walked her to the door and handed her an envelope filled with money. And though she’d earned her paycheck fair and square, she’d felt like a hooker when she’d taken the money from him and thanked him for breakfast.
    Then nothing. No calls, no emails, no texts. Not a word from Suro, even though his presence seemed to follow her around throughout the day. She woke up in the morning thinking about him and no matter how much she tried to resist fantasizing about him, her dependence on her pocket rocket only increased after their second encounter.
    Absence makes the heart grow fonder, my butt . In her case, Suro’s absence made her treacherous body that much hornier. But she couldn’t afford to go there, she kept reminding herself. It was fine to fantasize about him, but she couldn’t let it go beyond that ever again. The stakes were too high for her to risk involving anyone else in her mess of a life.
    By the time she woke up Friday morning, she’d made up her mind. Suro would be back in the office today, no more tiptoeing around him. She’d stand up for herself and let him know there would be no more dinners in his hotel room. From now on, they’d have a professional relationship only. She couldn’t afford to let herself become embroiled with a man again, not even one who set her on fire like Suro did.
    But when she stormed down to his office before the club opened, she found the