His Revenge Baby: 50 Loving States, Washington (11 page)

But he was here. Had even had Miyuki drop off a set of pajamas while Ana had been

taking a rather long shower.

“And did you…” She stood, sniffing the air around him “...use my shampoo?”

“
Hai
, and your soap, and your dryer,” he answered, jaw tight. “I didn’t have my own.”

“That’s totally fine,” she said with a wide grin. “Oyin Honey Wash smells stupid good on you.”

A strange compliment, but a compliment nonetheless. And one he somewhat understood, because standing there with her made him feel both stupid and good.

Desire to feel her soft brown skin, warm against his own pale shade, throbbed in his gut, threatening to compel him out of reason.

But he knew better. Knew wanting her softness wasn’t worth breaking one of his family’s most sacred rules.

“Left or right?”

Her soft question interrupted his hard thoughts, and he looked over to find her watching him with a strange look in her warm brown eyes. “Do you sleep on the left or right side of the bed?”

It was concern, he realized. The same thing that had been in her voice when she asked about his day earlier. In her real life, the one before and after her six months with him, she was a teacher. One who cared so much for her charges that she wanted to get further education in order to…how did she put it? Serve them.

He was used to being served. Had never known a time when paid personnel hadn’t been at his beck and call.

“I like your privilege,” Go had observed in that flat way of his back when the personal attendant that traveled with him to America had brought them both Primanti Brothers sandwiches so they might continue with their side project in one of the CMU

robotics labs without a break.

“Left,” he answered Ana, pushing thoughts of his former friend—the only real friend he’d ever had—out of his mind. Though the truth was “the middle,” because he did not share his bed.

It was one of his staunchest rules, and he’d seen the confusion written clearly across Miyuki’s face when she handed him the pajamas he’d requested at the flat’s front door.

Yet here he was, pushing back the covers and getting into bed with a woman who’d only been hired to serve his carnal pleasures and nothing more.

Ana flicked off her bedside light, leaving the room to the ever-present neon lights of Osaka. Enough light for her to see him. Unfortunately he could barely see her given the darkness of her skin. No hadn’t lied about liking to watch her and he cursed the night for taking away this particular pleasure.

One hour, he decided. One hour, then he’d text Miyuki to send a car.

But then he felt rather than saw Ana turn over on the cool white pillows to face him.

“Is it okay if I stroke your hair for a little bit, just until I fall asleep?”

He stared at her in the dark.

“You have really nice hair,” she explained. “I like the feel of it.”

He didn’t give her spoken permission to do what she asked, but he scooted closer, and something inside him sighed when she settled her hand against the side of his head and began a soft rhythmic stroke of his freshly cleaned hair.

“So,” she said after a few moments. “Bad day?”

He cursed her voice. So soft, and laced with tender amusement. It made him ache for her, even though they were just a few inches apart.

No, he didn’t want to tell her about his day. He wanted to get this indulgent hour over with and then leave.

But when he opened his mouth to put an end to this line of questioning, he found himself saying, “I had an unexpected dinner invitation.”

“Yeah—I mean
yes
, I heard.”

“You don’t—”

He stopped short, but then decided to go ahead and tell her, “Miyuki is mistaken about my wishes surrounding the way you speak. If we are ever in public, you must use the most proper English and your very best Japanese. But when we are in private, you may use your natural grammar and tone with me.”

He stopped just short of admitting he liked her black American accent. Liked the way her words popped and twanged, especially when she was being direct.

But perhaps she sensed his feelings on this particular subject, because he could hear the smile in her voice as she said, “Alright then, I’ll talk like I normally talk when it’s just us. So your dinner didn’t go too good?”

“No, it didn’t. I was with my father. And my brother. But my father did all the talking.”

“Oh, dad stuff. I get it. He make you mad?”

Yes, he had, No realized, though having known and dealt with Kazuo all his adult life, it had never before occurred to him to assess how the man made him feel.

“He is a powerful man. A wise man. But he can also be an unforgiving man. And, at times, ruthless.”

“Sounds like a complicated relationship.”

“It is not,” No assured her. “I understand what is expected of me, and I honor my family in this way by doing what is expected of me. Usually he and I agree when it comes to business matters, but our discussion tonight involved…a former friend.”

“A former friend? Why former? Why not a now friend?”

Because he had no friends. No longer bothered to make them. Go had taught him the folly of trying to do that. But out loud he said, “Because we can no longer be friends.”

“Did this former friend do something to you?”

“In my father’s way of looking at the matter, yes. He went with another buyer after we made a bid on his company. So now my father believes he is our enemy, and right now our enemy has been brought low, partially because of things we have orchestrated. My father feels we should give final strike now before he recovers and becomes strong again. That is the Nakamura way.”

“Hmm, so that’s your father’s opinion on the matter. What’s yours?”

She had a way of stating things. One that made him inwardly question his most basic principles, even as he reaffirmed out loud, “My father’s opinion is my opinion.”

“Okay, if that’s how you want to play it. But I’m getting the feeling you’ve still got some love left for this former friend of yours. I get that you want to honor your father, but is there any way to do that, without, you know…kicking this dude who used to be

your friend while he’s down?”

She did not understand. Couldn’t possibly fathom the amount of money at stake in this battle. Yet her solution…it wiggled something loose in the back of his mind. An alternative to a takeover that No had never before considered.

“I don’t know,” he answered, speaking his first fully undiluted truth of the night.

“Okay, well why don’t you sleep on it?” she suggested, her own voice sleepy. “You might wake up with a few ideas.”

A few ideas. More ideas like this one? Staying beyond his usual hour? Breaking more rules in one week than he’d done in an entire year? Sleeping here overnight would be a bad idea. He’d leave in an hour. Less than that, he decided as his eyes closed under her soft touch. In fact, as soon as she was asleep, as soon she was done stroking his hair, he’d be on his way.

Chapter Sixteen

MR. NAKAMURA WAS STILL in bed with her when Lilli woke up in the middle of the night with the need to pee. She was surprised to find him there, breathing steadily beneath her hand. They must have both fallen asleep while she stroked his hair. And wow, she’d thought he’d been gorgeous while sitting upright and cold.

Now he was beautiful. A work of fine art underneath the city lights, and suddenly she understood why painters liked to draw people in sleep.

Still, finding him here like this was certainly a surprise given how like a “wary predator” he’d seemed as he climbed into bed with her. As if this simple act were so far outside his comfort zone, the piece of furniture might as well have been located in Timbuktu.

The truth was, it was way outside her comfort zone, too. Love hurts. Relationships usually ended badly for Lilli. That’s what her parents taught her early in life, and the lesson had stuck with her long after her mother kicked her out.

She’d had a few anemic relationships in her early twenties. A few overnights. But never anything that had involved the kind of sex she’d had with Mr. Nakamura. Never anything that made her want to fall asleep stroking someone’s hair.

And try as she might to suppress it, her concern switch was obviously flipped all the way on. You could cover up the nurse with Osaka Charm, but apparently you could never make her completely disappear.

Thank goodness he’d been able to get what was bothering him off his chest, without giving her too many details. She still didn’t know exactly why he’d been so agitated when he first arrived, but he looked so peaceful now. And so damn beautiful…if not for the fact that she really did have to pee, she might have stayed there staring at him forever…

Lilli took care not to wake him as she snuck into the bathroom and took a spin on the apartment’s state of the art toilet. Unlike the one in her Osaka Charm share apartment, which she didn’t have enough kanji knowledge to operate properly, this one was super-intuitive. Warming as soon as she sat down, and quietly flushing when she stood up.

However, she blinked when she stood and noticed…she could actually read the kanji imprinted across the toilet, but it didn’t make any sense. If she was reading it correctly,

it consisted of the characters for go…and the first couple of characters she’d seen on Norio’s short Wikipedia entry when she’d researched him after their first interview. So that would make the word on top of the toilet:
Go…No…

But what did it mean?

Shaking her head, she turned off the light in the bathroom and crept back into the bedroom. However, she must not have moved quietly enough because when she returned to the room, Norio was sitting up in bed.

And hell if he wasn’t all things cute and adorable with his usually impeccable hair all mussed up and his eyes half hooded with sleep.

“Hey Mr. Nakamura,” she said with more affection than she really should be allowing herself to feel. “You okay?”

He looked around in a seeming daze.

“Should I…text Miyuki?” She hated the thought of bothering the seemingly over-worked assistant at—she glanced at the clock—oh Jesus, two in the morning! But she’d barely had enough Japanese to read what was on the toilet, much less call a cab for a Japanese billionaire who seemed to value discretion above just about everything else.

He mumbled something in Japanese.

“Excuse me,” she said, kneeling on the bed so she could hear him better.

“
Samui
…”

Wait, that was one of her nursing words. She racked her brain to remember. Fever?

Stomach? No—cold! He was
cold
.

“You’re cold,” she said, already back in full nurse mode as she went to pull the blanket back over him.

But before she could complete the action, he grabbed a hold of her, causing her to eep! a little as he settled back into the bed with her. Not so much cuddling as collapsing his body over hers, a “hi, nice to meet you” erection settling into the small of her back.

“You call me No.”

“What?” she asked.

“No. My name is No, not Mr. Nakamura.”

It took her a few sleepy moments to understand… “So you don’t want me to call you Mr. Nakamura, like Miyuki does?”

“You not Miyuki,” he mumbled. “No…that’s what you call me.”

Okay
, she thought. It sounded as if he was asking her to call him No. A nickname that reminded her of that robotics billionaire back in America, Go Gutierrez. The one who’d made all those headlines a few months ago.

Her mind stopped.
Go… No
… Norio was the head of RoTeku at Nakamura Worldwide.

“Hey, No…” she started. “The friend you were mentioning earlier…?”

But then she stopped, realizing it was probably better not to ask, not to know. For his sake and hers.

And in what seemed like mere seconds later, he was breathing evenly again. And sound asleep.

Okay
…this was definitely not where she expected her late night pee journey to end up, but okay. She could handle being covered up by an incredibly beautiful man instead of a blanket. One whose sleeping hard-on was giving her all sorts of ideas it was

better off not to have in the middle of night.

Somehow she managed to fall asleep.

But when she woke up, she was alone in the bed and Norio was nowhere to be seen.

Had it all been a dream? A weird but erotic dream?

Samui
.

Yes, the bed felt really
samui
now that he was gone, leaving her alone in the apartment.

At least she thought she was alone. But that theory got all the way shut down when she came out of the bedroom to the smell of cooking food. She found Miyuki in the apartment kitchen, cracking eggs into a frying pan.

“
Ohayo
, Ana-san!” Miyuki called out a casual Japanese good morning with her usual cheer when she spotted Lilli in the doorway. “I have your
piru
on table.”

She nodded toward the kitchen’s small glass table where, just as promised, Lilli found a new packet of her Western-brand birth control next to a thoughtfully placed glass of water.

Whoa
, she thought.

“If it is okay, you can take after I finish breakfast, okay?” Miyuki said, glancing over her shoulder at the stove.

“Sure,” Lilli answered, punching one pill out of the foil seal. “But why are you making me breakfast?”

“You say you do not cook, so I make breakfast,
hai?
”

“Oh, my gosh, Miyuki! You totally did not have to do that!” Lilli exclaimed. “I was planning to go to the mall to buy a box of cereal or something.”

“It is no problem,” Miyuki answered, flashing Lilli the victory sign, which she had discovered Japanese women often use to mean everything from “Cheese!” to “no worries.”

“But doesn’t Mr. Nakamura need you back at the office?”

Miyuki gave her puzzled smile, as if Lilli should already know the answer to that question. “Riyu-san is for his office, I am for his personal. And now I am for you, too.”

“Okay, so you’re just going to stay with me the entire time he’s out of town?” Lilli asked.

“No,” Miyuki answered, giggling. “I will go with him. Make sure you and him have what you need.” She stopped, frowning. “But if you like cereal, I will make sure hotel has.”