Speaking of which, when he went to use the bathroom after the fourth bridal episode, she hastily got up, pulled out the bumpy sofa bed Sparkle used to sleep on, and dressed it in the Dora the Explorer sheets Sparkle still insisted on even though she was twelve. She threw the matching comforter on top, then scrambled into her bedroom, locking the door behind her.
Usually she washed her face and brushed her teeth before bed, but if it meant putting some distance between her and Suro, she could go without this one time, she thought as she changed into her pajamas. But no sooner had she settled into bed, in waltzed Suro, letting himself into her bedroom as if she had issued him an invitation and hadn’t locked the door.
She switched on her bedside lamp, glaring at him angrily with her arms folded tightly across her chest. “You’re not sleeping here,” she told him. “I made up the couch outside for you. If you don’t like it, you can move back to your hotel. Or better yet, get an apartment of your own if you’re really serious about staying in Chicago.”
Suro casually took off his clothes, giving her a glimpse of his fully erect penis, before he climbed in on the other side of her very small bed.
Lacey moved as close to the edge as she could, but it wasn’t far enough to avoid the heat coming off his body or the sexual tension crackling in the space between them.
This would usually be the time when she “let off some steam” with her pocket rocket, but she couldn’t do that with the off-limits subject of her fantasies lying right beside her, now could she? Her traitorous body swelled underneath the oversized t-shirt and flannel pants she’d worn to bed, imploring her to take advantage of the fact that Suro, the man she had been getting off to for the last two weeks, was lying close enough to touch, and to kiss, and to…
She pushed those thoughts away. Suro had guessed correctly that she was powerless to kick him out of her apartment or even her bed. But she’d be damned if she let him also take control of her body. She crossed her arms over her pebbled nipples. No sir, she was staying right where she was. It would be a cold day in hell before she let Suro claim her again, no matter what kind of protest her body put forth.
LACEY WAS BEING STUBBORN. Another two weeks had passed since Suro moved into her apartment, and she still hadn’t given in. She not only ignored him in bed—the fact that she slept on the tiniest sliver of the mattress her only acknowledgement of his presence—but she also refused to share any more meals with him. She said no when he offered to make her eggs and toast to go along with his own Japanese breakfast, choosing instead to pour herself a bowl of cereal, which she ate standing at the kitchen counter while he read the Chicago Tribune at the table. And though he sometimes noticed her eyeing his meal of rice, salted salmon, sour plum, and miso soup with curiosity, she didn’t say one word.
Though his professional counterparts called him The Silence, it seemed within the confines of her apartment, she was making a bid for the title. Two days after he moved in, she not only ate at the kitchen counter again, but she also made herself a huge vat of jambalaya, portions of which she ate at her desk as opposed to coming upstairs for dinner after her shift.
In yet another effort to take back control, Suro started eating the jambalaya himself for three days straight, effectively limiting her ability to live off of it for too long. In truth, it wasn’t a hardship. He’d been to New Orleans often on business, but Lacey made the best jambalaya he had ever tasted. The flavors popped in his mouth in a rambunctious symphony of tomatoes, chicken, rice, sausage, and spices, not all of which he could name.
It tasted so down home and authentic, he wondered if she wasn’t from New Orleans. So far, Dexter hadn’t been able to track down any more information on Lacey’s real identity other than the fact that she definitely wasn’t Lacey Winters. The real Lacey had been a retail clerk and had died with a gold tooth in her mouth, which had later been used to identify her body along with that of her two-year old daughter, Sparkle.
He’d spent enough time with Lacey to figure out she wasn’t the kind of woman who would wear a gold tooth. And he’d often wondered at her choice of the name Sparkle for her daughter—it seemed unusual and not in character for a woman who was obviously doing everything in her power to lay low. But most of what he knew about her remained in his gut. He’d done a thorough search of her humble apartment while she was at work and the most interesting things he’d found were a suitcase, packed and ready to go, seemingly at a moment’s notice, in the closet, and a small vibrator in her nightstand drawer. To his frustration, Lacey wasn’t only cagey about her real identity, she was also very thorough. There was nothing in the apartment to indicate she was anyone other than who she said she was.
After a week of fruitless searching, he decided to break into her office the next Sunday and search there. Meanwhile, he found himself frequently cleaning his guns, which he’d hidden in the living room closet, whenever Lacey wasn’t in the apartment. Not just to give himself something to do while he waited for his next assignment, but also to keep himself from going crazy with growing lust.
When he’d been scoping out his target in Europe, a war criminal who had made off with a treasured painting belonging to his client’s mother, he had thought of little else but finishing the job, retrieving the painting, and getting back to Lacey. In truth, he had taken a few chances he shouldn’t have in order to wrap things up in less than two weeks so he could return to Chicago.
At the time, moving into her apartment without her consent had seemed like a good idea. He hadn’t wanted to waste any more time away from her and had hoped she might finally tell him the truth, if only to get rid of him. But instead, she had decided to take a different approach: withdrawing and refusing to deal with him, and this made him feel worse than when she had railed at him, calling him an insane stalker.
In fact, when she discovered the jambalaya was gone, she simply got her big cast iron skillet and made red beans and rice, a relatively simple dish that made Suro rock back in his seat, it was so good. He told her as much that night, but she just shook her head at him.
“So you’re the one whose been eating the food I made for myself,” she said, like he was some sort of vermin who had been stealing food behind her back.
The situation was becoming untenable. Not only was he beginning to feel like the creep she had painted him as, but he was also even more sexually frustrated than he’d been while in Europe on assignment. And then there was that fact that he’d managed to get exactly zero answers to the question of Lacey’s real identity.