His Revenge Baby: 50 Loving States, Washington (19 page)

—

But then suddenly all the hairs on the back of her own neck stood straight out.

Followed by the weird, all-over tingle she used to get whenever
he
was watching her.

What the—?

Keeping a tight hold on the puppy, Lilli whipped around to look through the activity room’s clear panel windows into the hallway beyond. But the hall was empty. She wasn’t being watched. At least not as far as she could see.

“Everything okay?”

Lilli turned back to find the pretty doctor watching her carefully. There were no more tingling sensations or anything like that, but Lilli’s eyes narrowed as she focused her gaze on the doctor. She was fairly sure they’d never met before, so then why did she seem so familiar?

Lilli carefully studied the taller woman now. Her white coat sported the usual ID

nametag that identified her as Dr. Anitra Dunhill. But Lilli couldn’t remember ever working with a Dr. Dunhill before. And considering there were so few black female doctors at this hospital, she was certain she would have remembered this one if they’d previously crossed paths. Especially a doctor as pretty as this one. She was really very lovely, so much so that Lilli felt certain the woman could have easily played a doctor in a TV hospital drama, no questions asked…

And that’s when it hit her. “You’re…” she started, her eyes wide.

Dr. Dunhill tilted her head to the side and gave Lilli the chagrined smile of a person who’d just been caught red-handed. “Yes,” she sighed with what sounded a lot like resignation. “That’s me. Well spotted, Lilliana.”

“Call me Lilli, please. And I hope you don’t mind but I’ve got to ask what you’re doing here? I mean, is this like a charity thing? Part of Tour Day?”

Dr. Dunhill shook her head. “More like I work here,” she replied with a wry smile.

“But my past isn’t generally the kind of thing that comes up during the nurse interview process and, well, I’ve been on vacation for the last two weeks. So I’m not at all surprised by your confusion. As for how I got here in the first place…it’s a long story…”

She reached over and gently took the puppy from Lilli with a grin. “Want to have lunch? I’ll tell you all about it!”

Chapter Twenty-Six

IT TOOK him nearly a year to find her.

Ana’s Osaka Charm file turned out to be yet another part of the smoke and mirrors, surrounding her mysterious disappearance. It contained her detailed biography and identification info—all of it completely false. When she’d departed his life without warning, she left behind just a few personal items in the Umeda apartment, and none in the shared apartment she’d allegedly been living in before No contracted her services. Any hopes he had of identifying her via her fingerprints or DNA were quickly dashed when it became clear the Umeda apartment, and all Ana’s things, had been expertly and thoroughly cleaned by the weekly maid service while they’d been away.

That left only dead ends. Literal dead ends.

Miyuki and Doug Tucker were the only connections No had to the woman who’d shared his life for six months, and both had met with untimely deaths.

Miyuki hadn’t left a suicide note, and the investigation into Doug Tucker’s death yielded even less information. The baseball player had died in a tragic car accident before No’s investigator could question him about Ana Granger. According to Doug’s teammates, he hadn’t had a serious, long-term girlfriend since the untimely death of his Japanese wife. Doug did have a young daughter, but she’d moved back to the U.S. to live with a family member after his death.

It seemed hopeless. But No was not one to give up easily.

He doggedly continued to search for information about Ana, even after the investigator gave up. He spent hours sifting through the files he’d compiled until one day, he spotted something that, in retrospect, seemed glaringly obvious. It was a single name. A woman’s name. Buried in a blur of names on Doug Tucker’s report.

No was too used to reading kanji, and his eyes were strained from staring at so much small print for weeks on end, otherwise he might have caught the name sooner.

Lilliana Tucker. Lilli
ana
. Ana.

Lilliana was Doug’s sister. Almost ten years younger than the baseball player, she’d come to live with him and his daughter in Japan after his wife’s death. She’d been in Japan for roughly one year before No met Ana. And after Doug’s death, just a few short days after Ana vanished, Doug’s daughter left Japan to live with this “family member”

in the States.

It had to be more than a coincidence.

No had called the investigator and asked him to look into the new lead. And that was how he discovered that the baseball player’s sister had worked at a local international school before resigning from the job in October, less than two months into the school year and only a few days after No first spotted her at the nightclub.

Lilliana’s former coworkers, and her neighbors in the residential community she lived in with her brother, assumed she’d returned to the States.
Gaijin
burnout—not an uncommon story in Japan. She’d returned briefly after her brother’s accident to collect her niece, and headed right back to the U.S. shortly after. No one seemed to think there was anything off about Lilliana’s activities. It all seemed very cut and dry.

But the accident, police, and insurance reports told a different story. Lilliana was there the day Doug was killed. She’d shown up at the hospital where they’d brought Doug’s daughter after finding the little girl, injured but alive, inside the car that had killed her father upon impact.

How could Lilliana have been at the hospital on the day her brother died if she was living in the States at the time? It’s unlikely she would have even known of her brother’s death until several hours after. At which point she’d have had to make the necessary arrangements and catch a flight to Japan. It didn’t add up. Doug’s sister had also tried to file a life insurance claim on her brother’s behalf, even though the Hawks had a strict policy against paying out insurance on behalf of employees who died with drugs or alcohol in their system. And according to the post-mortem tox report No received from the hospital, it was clear that Doug had more than indulged prior to his car accident.

So yes, it seemed likely Lilliana Tucker was Ana Granger. And his suspicions were finally—painfully—confirmed when he clicked open the .jpg file sent over by his investigator.

Three images popped up on No’s computer screen: the passport photo of a young, grinning black woman; the smiling image of that same woman with one arm draped around the shoulders of a pretty young girl, and the other casually propped up on Doug Tucker’s shoulder; and a glossy Osaka International School staff headshot of, you guessed it, the same woman.

No stared long and hard at the photos, feeling the same as if he’d been punched in the gut. But the young woman just smiled back at him as if she’d done nothing wrong at all.

It was definitely Ana.

His heart had frozen over in that moment, because now he knew the truth of the matter. Not long after posing for each of these photos, Lilliana Tucker would walk into No’s life and pretend to be someone else. She’d turn his world completely upside down, making him rethink everything he thought he knew about himself and the world around him. With her innocent eyes and caring smile, she’d convince him to give up everything to be with her…

No could still remember the looks on the faces of the board members when he resigned his position before his father could demote him, telling them he would be leaving to start a co-venture with Go Gutierrez in the States.

He’d even gone so far as to start trying to find TEFL programs in Portland. Ana had

never complained, but he could tell she was unhappy cooped up in the love flat and gilded hotel room cages he’d provided for her. No blamed himself for her illness. Too much travelling, too little time outside. He was ready to make some changes to their relationship.

It was then that he decided Ana would come with him to America as his girlfriend, not his paid mistress. And he’d wanted to make sure she had something to do while he and Go launched their “practical robotics” company. In fact, he’d almost settled on a program at Portland State College for her when he received that fateful call from Riyu.

“I am sorry, Nakamura-sama. We looked for her everywhere. I even went to the house of her friends from the Osaka Charm agency…”

Afterwards, there had only been a confusion of the red envelopes she’d left behind.

One in each apartments, without so much as a 10,000 yen bill pulled out of either. To No it had been a mystery that didn’t make any sense. Except it did.

He knew his father truly hated him then. Before Ana, No had refused to believe such a thing was possible. He’d held on to the memories of their close relationship before his mother’s death. And he simply could not begin to comprehend the deep animosity he often sensed directed towards him in his father’s scathing looks and words.

But he’d sent Ana in to spy on him. And Ana’s betrayal finally made him believe what he’d refused to truly contemplate before she destroyed his life. And with that belief came a plan. A move to Portland, followed by the carefully devised purchase of the Seattle Fishers, his father’s favorite baseball team.

It was a multi-billion yen cold war declaration, one that left his father with no recourse but to pretend to the Japanese press that he approved of his son’s purchase.

Forcing him to act as if No hadn’t just rendered every piece of Seattle Fishers memorabilia Kazuo owned a bitter reminder of how his son had one-upped him.

Yes, it was an admittedly crude and expensive maneuver. But it was also one that told his father, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the son who owned the second largest share in Nakamura Worldwide had just become his biggest enemy.

Which was why No laughed out loud when Lilliana Tucker’s report and photos showed up in his inbox. She was now living in Seattle, a mere three hours from his current home in Portland. Closer even than his mother’s mountain house had been to Osaka. It was hard not to imagine fate was finally on his side, because everything No needed to get his ultimate revenge had fallen into place.

HOWEVER, the cold, hard feeling he’d been carrying around with him for nearly a year disappeared the moment he saw Ana. No, not Ana. Lilliana. Lilli—that’s what she called herself—what everyone but Japanese children had called her before she walked into No’s office that fateful day.

There
Lilli
stood, with only a piece of glass separating them. She was wearing a set of Hello Kitty scrubs and cuddling a small white puppy, of all things. Stroking its fur in the same affectionate way she used to stroke No’s hair.

That was when the cold numbness he’d enjoyed since discovering her betrayal vanished. Replaced by a boiling hot rage that threatened to—

Remain calm. Remain patient
, he told the rage. He reminded himself of the Western

proverb: “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

He would get his revenge. Very soon. This he silently promised himself as he moved away from the activity room window.

“So as you can see, The Children’s Hospital of Seattle more than deserves its reputation as one of the most well-regarded pediatric medical centers in the world,” the administrator who’d shown him around the hospital said as she finally finished her pitch for why he should give this hospital a significant donation.

Now back in her tidy office, surrounded by framed accolades of the hospital’s various achievements, she indicated a fan of brochures on her desk, awaiting his perusal.

“We have brochures with even more information, and of course any member of our medical staff would be happy to meet with you to go over any further questions you might have.”

“That is good news,” he told the director with a slight bow of his head. “In this case, I would like to meet here, in your office, with Ms. Lilliana Tucker.”

Ms. Fields scrunched her forehead with almost comic confusion. “Lilliana Tucker?

Do you mean the new pediatric nurse?”

“Yes,” he answered, composing his face so it was as aloof and cold as his heart. “She is an acquaintance from Japan. And I would like to meet with her to go over my additional questions…alone.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

LILLI’S whole world changed within a matter of an hour. She’d felt that chill on the back of her neck. Then laughed over lunch with Dr. Dunhill all the while thinking the other woman had, quite possibly, the craziest story she’d ever heard.

And then suddenly Harriet Fields, the director who’d chastised her that morning, was at the break room’s door demanding Lilli go downstairs to meet with a Mr. Norio Nakamura, the new owner of the Seattle Fishers and a potential big donor.

“He specifically asked to speak with you, and I’m not about to disappoint a potentially motivated donor,” Harriet told her.

What could Lilli do? Harriet was her supervisor. The woman who had the power to terminate her position at the hospital at any given moment. She desperately needed this job and wasn’t in any position to decline to meet with “the esteemed Mr.

Nakamura.”

So in the end, it seemed to her she had no choice but to follow Harriet downstairs.

All the while chanting patent untruths to herself. Lies like,
It’s okay, Lilli. You can do
this. You can do this…

Even though walking to Harriet’s office felt exactly to Lilli like walking through a dark tunnel. An extremely long and dark tunnel with an elevator and several hallways before they finally reached a door with Harriet’s brass name plaque next to it.

“Go right in,” Harriet gestured her in with an annoyed hand motion.

“Alone?” Lilli asked, unable to keep the terrified squeak out of her voice.

Harriet gave her an unamused look. “That’s what he requested.”

Okay, Lilli. Don’t panic. Do NOT panic. You can do this,
she silently assured herself.

You are in a crowded hospital in full daylight. There is nothing to be afraid of. You are
going to go in, apologize, and then get out as fast as possible. You can do this…you can do
this
…