After she finished saying goodnight to Ruby on the landing, she opened her door to find No in the act of tugging off the hoodie and suit he’d donned, for appearances it would seem, with Ruby and Dallas.
They both paused in mid-action. Each taking the other in.
“I would like for you to close the door now, please,” he said, his voice cool.
So she did, and then she turned back to watch with wide eyes as he shed the rest of his clothes.
After six months of mostly clothed intimacy, she found it hard to imagine ever actually getting used to the sight of him undressing. And her eyes stayed glued on him as he finished pulling the hoodie over his head, along with the simple black t-shirt he wore underneath. He shook off his shoes, then came flashes of his intricate tattoo as he pushed down his pants, finally revealing…his manhood, magnificent and long.
Only when he was fully naked did his eyes meet hers again. And that was when she could clearly see…the hawk had disappeared, and the dragon was back.
He crossed the room in an instant, all but inhaling her mouth as he swept her up into his arms.
And that was how it went…
They both returned to work the next day. And they soon settled into a routine of Lilli being driven into Seattle most mornings with Ruby, and No either flying into Portland or going to the Seattle Fisher’s home office in a separate car.
When Lilli realized how close the Fishers office was to her hospital, she suggested they start sharing a car on his Seattle days or maybe meet up for lunch or something…
“That would not be a good idea,” he answered before she could even finish her pitch.
Yeah, not a good idea, she agreed silently. Kind of like how having real sex to conceive your hypothetical revenge baby isn’t a great idea.
Those were the kind of thoughts she had during the day when he didn’t drop so much as a hint that they were in any kind of relationship. But damn if she could figure out how to deny him at night…or how to deny herself.
One night became two. And even though No had already paid the medical concierge service’s rather expensive fee, the only person who ever called Uta was Dallas—who, after much debate during the now nightly dinners they shared together, ended up taking the German nurse to a pho and banh mi restaurant on Pike street for a low-pressure lunch date.
Which only opened up a whole ‘nother can of worms that night.
“She said she wanted to go out with me again,” Dallas announced at dinner. They’d all decided to order Indian takeout and eat together again, since Mrs. Santos didn’t work on the weekends. Neither did Dallas, technically, but apparently he needed more advice. “Where you guys think I should take her next?”
“The nurses at my hospital love those paint-and-sip nights,” Lilli told him.
“There are many Japanese gardens in Seattle,” No suggested. “You could walk and speak together more to see if you are a suitable match.”
“Ooh! Ooh! Take her to Lat City Lorroargirl game!” Ruby said, practically bouncing in her seat with the idea.
It took the adults a moment to work out that she was talking about the Rat City Rollergirls, Seattle’s all-women roller derby league. But once that was sorted out, they agreed this would probably make for a really fun date. Interesting for Dallas, and perhaps a tentative walk on the wild side for Uta.
But all the Uta talk made Lilli realize…
“It’s been over seventy-two hours since I got a happy face,” she told No later that night, sneaking into his home office after Ruby went to bed. “So I guess there’s no reason for us to keep having sex,”.
“Hai, if you could close the door, I have been meaning to give this research to you,” he answered.
Lilli did as he asked, and he patted the seat beside him, turning his laptop toward her to present her with an article, translated from the Japanese, about how couples should have sex as much as possible while trying to get pregnant, even post-ovulation.
Lilli squinted at the screen. It was almost as if he’d been waiting for her to suggest they stop having sex so he could whip out his “research.” However, she’d been working in pediatrics far too long not to have a few questions about this so-called study. Test size, methodology, the efficacy of Google Translate…you know, stuff like that.
But somehow all those questions disappeared when instead of letting her read through the article in detail, he leaned across the laptop and captured her lips in a sizzling kiss.
They ended finishing the discussion in a horizontal position on the couch, with Lilli never getting around to verifying the research he’d presented her with.
After that they settled back into the routine they’d established over the last seventy-two hours.
Sex every night in her bed. A bath, and then sleeping off what they’d done in his bed, with her sneaking back into her room after No disappeared downstairs for what he and Ruby simply referred to as their “morning training.”
Lilli still wasn’t exactly clear on what this training involved, but they both seemed to take it way more seriously than any exercise program she’d ever seen. They had two-hour workouts in the morning, then after school Ruby came home and did physical therapy exercises on her temporary leg while practicing what she’d learned that morning with No.
Lilli had once tried to watch one of Ruby’s afternoon workouts, but then had to retreat upstairs when Ruby took a sword off the weapons wall. She could see all the ways the “training” was benefitting her niece, causing a sea change in her personality overnight from an entitled and unbearable girl to confident and respectful young lady. However, Lilli was still a nurse, and watching a thirteen-year-old wield a sharp sword was simply not a sight she could bear.
But the Wednesday after she and No first started hooking up, Ruby met Lilli at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in the hemp karate pants and a GoNoRobo hoodie—pretty much the same outfit she’d taken to wearing all the time these days. However, this morning she was practically jumping up and down, instead of waiting by the door with her hands jammed in the hoodie pockets as she usually did when Lilli was running late for their morning ride.
“Aunt Ana! Aunt Ana! Nakamura-sensei say he going to let me go with him to Portland Friday! He say he talked with engineers at GoBotics SocietyLab, and they want design leg for me! Can you believe it?!”
Ruby threw her arms around Lilli’s neck and then out-right screamed at that blood-curdling register only available to teenage girls. It was as if No had told her he was going to introduce her to the members of her favorite K-Pop boy band.
Despite her ringing ears, Lilli hugged her niece back, even though she wasn’t remotely experiencing anything near Ruby’s unfettered joy. Friday—that was the same day as her appointment with Uta who’d be coming over to administer the blood test that would tell them if Lilli was pregnant.
She glanced over Ruby’s shoulder at No who stood in the kitchen’s entry way. If she was pregnant, he’d be leaving soon. Moving back to Portland to be closer to his start up. All of this, including his purchase of the Seattle Fishers, had merely been part of an over-arching revenge plan. One that would be fully automated and no longer require his oversight once she became pregnant.
It’s just sex—revenge baby sex, Lilli reminded herself when her heart began to ache at just the thought of No leaving after Friday.
Still, she hadn’t seen Ruby this happy in…well, ever. So she forced a smile to her face.
“That’s great!” she told her niece, putting extra effort into keeping her voice light and happy, even as she glanced nervously at No.
The smartwatches No had brought home for Ruby and her after Monday’s trip to Portland lit up on both their wrists.
“We must go. Dallas is here,” Ruby told No. Then she asked, “You home for dinner? Maybe we can look at gymnastics coaches together, like we talk about.”
“I must work late tonight,” he answered. “But compile a list of your top coaches and we will discuss them tomorrow mornin
g after our training.”
“Tell Dallas to hold up for a sec,” Lilli told her niece. “I just need to go over a couple of things with your sensei, then I’ll be right out.”
Ruby nodded and dashed off, her gait a lot less buffered than it had been just a few weeks ago.
Lilli had to admit Ruby had been right about the athletic prosthetic. She was way more committed to continuing with her gymnastics career than Lilli had initially given her credit for. And Lilli was beginning to see what a difference an extra twenty grand and a team of robotic engineers could make in the quality of her next prosthesis.
Speaking of which…
“A prosthesis appointment with Go’s non-profit company and a gymnastics coach. That’s very kind of you,” she said to the man also dressed in karate pants and a GoNoRobo hoodie.
No shook his head. “She has earned it,” he answered.
“Okay, it’s just that I’m a little worried about what happens next week. How disappointed she’ll be when you move back to Portland...”
No went still in that hawkish way of his before saying, “She knows I will be leaving. You would wish for me not to fulfill my promises to her before I do?”
“That’s not what I meant. I just want you to think about the repercussions of giving her everything she wants, and then disappearing on her next week,” Lilli returned.
“Adults have lives of their own. Often they go away for reasons we cannot fully understand.” A bitter shadow clouded over No’s face as he said, This is a lesson she will eventually have to learn. Either now, or on her own.”
Ugh. Okay, she realized they were culturally very different. But Jesus, was he serious about this?
“First of all, I think she already knows adults have lives of their own and often go away. Remember, she lost both her parents with a relatively short span of each other.” Dipping her head, she leveled with him. “Ruby seems tough, I know, but she’s been through a lot, No. A whole lot. I want to make sure you understand and respect that.”
Another cold hawk blink. Then: “I will take your concerns under advisement. However, you are still not permitted to call me that.”
“What? I can’t call you No? But you don’t seem to have an issue with it when we are…”
Lilli broke off, cheeks burning.
And No answered, voice quiet as a hawk’s swoop, “We are no longer in that place,” before disappearing down the sub-basement stairs, and leaving Lilli behind with a whole bunch of bad questions she suspected had no kind of good answer.
Fucking bad patterns.
Sitting beside Ruby in the car on their way into Seattle, Lilli could have kicked herself. Why had she allowed herself to believe No was anything more than he claimed to be? Why did she insist on thinking of him as a human being with feelings, as opposed to an hawkish robot with a revenge plan?
That afternoon, Lilli didn’t look for Anitra on her lunch hour like she usually did (despite her increasingly nosy questions into the status of Lilli’s love life with the Japanese billionaire). Instead, she walked the few blocks to a pharmacy where she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be seen by someone she knew making a certain purchase.
After that, it was busy, busy, busy in the way only a children’s oncology center could get. Sometimes the workload could be overwhelming, but it did make the hours of her shift pass super fast, and Lilli wasn’t surprised when her watch vibrated with the app that told her Dallas had arrived with the car before she was ready to go.
However, after she got down to the lobby, she realized it was his and not her mistake when she saw the time on the huge digital clock above the hospital entrance’s front doors.
“I’m assuming you’re rushing me out of here because you have another date with Uta,” she said, slipping into the back of the car. “Either way, give me a little warning please before the next time you decide to get here almost an hour—”
She stopped, the “early” dying on her tongue. Because the person in the driver’s seat wasn’t Dallas Montana. Not even kind of.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Don’t.”
One word, uttered in crisp, almost accent-less English when she immediately tried to go for the Escalade’s door handle.
“You will not like what happens next if you open that door.”
Okay, as far as threats go, that one was pretty benign. And the driver—he was actually pretty hot, with high cheek bones, almond shaped eyes, and a piercing stare that could’ve earn him a modeling contract. But there was something about him that froze Lilli in mid-action. A quiet stillness that set her senses on red alert and had them screaming that this man was lethal and not likely to go easy on her if she tried to escape.
With a forlorn look toward all the people streaming in and out of passenger loading at the hospital’s entrance, Lilli lowered her hand. Maybe if she kept him talking, he wouldn’t try to drive her off to a second location.
“So…um…how can I help you?” she asked, voice shaky.
“I am not sure,” he answered.
Then he said, “You are not Norio’s usual type of woman. In fact, you are nothing like the women he has dabbled with before this. I am trying to figure out what his intentions are with you.”
Lilli wasn’t exactly sure what to make of that comment.
“Has Norio told you anything about me?” he asked Lilli, his dark eyes still scanning her face.
Lilli’s first instinct was to tell the man the truth. That she had no idea who he was. That No hadn’t shared so much as a speck of non-revenge-related personal information with her since they reunited. That they didn’t have that kind of relationship this time around.
The man now sitting in Dallas’s driver’s seat had so much “you don’t want to fuck with me” coming off of him, it was hard for Lilli not to blurt out an instant answer to his questions, to tell him whatever he wanted to know.
Her second and much stronger instinct, however, was to say nothing at all. To stare back at him in a very un-Japanese way, letting him know she wasn’t the person to ask where information about No was concerned.
And almost casually, the man said, “I used to be his family’s hitman. It’s not a fact they widely advertise, but it is something you should be aware of right now…”
Now that threat was more than obvious to Lilli, and being a human, she couldn’t help but flinch. But still she said nothing. Clamping her lips over her fear rather than betraying No.
Oddly enough, her refusal to say anything seemed to amuse rather than enrage the thin man in the driver’s seat. “I once knew another woman who refused to talk to me, and now I walk with a limp.”
Another threat? A chastisement? It didn’t matter. Nothing would change her position on the matter. Lilli would never again relay information about No to anyone. She didn’t care how lethal this man might be.
“Ah sooooh…” he said, issuing the particularly Japanese exclamation with a small bow.
But then his head gave a sharp turn over his left shoulder, his eyes apparently catching sight of something Lilli couldn’t see. “It would seem our time is up, but please let Norio-chan know that though I am not in the habit of hurting women…I shall not hesitate to do so if I discover he came here to the States with plans that will not benefit my family.”
Okay…so the threat was no longer implicit. And her breath caught when he made a sudden movement in the front seat. But all he did was climb out of the car.
The driver’s door opened and slammed shut, and then Lilli watched the mystery man walk—no, limp—away. Apparently he hadn’t been lying about that, she thought to herself as she sat there breathing hard. For a moment, the only sound in the limo was that of her rapid breathing. Then her door suddenly opened.
“You okay? You okay?”
Lilli turned to make eye contact with a very worried Dallas and nodded.
“Good! Thank fuck! I can’t believe that guy made off with my car. I’m going after him...”
But she could have
told Dallas not to bother. Because by the time she glanced back out the SUV’s front window, the mysterious stranger had already disappeared.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Ah, the little dragon has decided to pay his brother a visit.”
It had been over a decade since No had laid eyes on his older brother. However, Tetsuro Nakamura didn’t seem all that surprised to find No sitting there in an overstuffed chair when he walked into the suite he’d rented under an alias at the Benton Seattle. A luxury hotel just down the street from Ana’s hospital.
In fact, Suro not only closed the door behind him, but continued into the room. Taking off his suit jacket and limping over to the closet to hang it up. As if this were merely the end of another long business day.
“Please do not get up, Norio-chan. I would prefer to sit while we have this conversation,” he said, sinking down on the couch across from where No was seated. “I find the Seattle weather doesn’t agree with my leg.”
No remained where he was, but didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “If you ever approach her again, I will ensure your death myself.”
His brother studied him, an amused smile flitting near, but not quite making it to, his mouth. “I believe you would try,” he answered, in a tone that somehow conveyed respect without actually admitting to the possibility.
Too Chinese. His father had complained about the influence of another culture on the disavowed brother who’d chosen to make his own way in the United States. A prime example, his father had told his two “legitimate” sons, of why the mother of your children should be chosen with the mind rather than the heart.
“I may not be a killer by contract,” No answered Suro’s skeptical look. “But you will find I am a man who keeps his word.”
“This woman you wish me not to ever speak with again—she is pretty in her own way…and in a helping profession, too. So warm, and after the way we were raised, a woman like that would be hard to resist. I do understand…”
Another almost smile, then Suro continued, “But in any case, it is not me you should be worried about. You bought the Seattle Fishers. Formed your own business with an American Father considers an enemy. And now you have moved to Seattle. You either are suffering from the aftereffects of a brain aneurysm, or you have hatched a plan. I was merely attempting to find out which it was based on your odd behavior and rather unusual choice of mistress. It seemed to me she would be the easiest way for me to gain knowledge about you.”
His Revenge Baby: 50 Loving States, Washington Page 22
