Scandalously Expecting His Child
Noting that Hiro’s bodyguards were monitoring her progress, he waited as she crossed the wooden bridge to the garden house, then set off in the opposite direction.
In minutes, he entered the building soundlessly from its southern entrance. The warmth of the interior advanced as if to greet him, but it was her aura that reached out and enveloped him as she stood looking out the screen window.
It was uncanny. His reaction to her was identical to his reaction to Hannah, when physically she couldn’t be more different. Still, he couldn’t shake that insane feeling. Or resist the preposterous impulse.
He stepped out of the shadows and strode toward her.
Without turning, she only shot him a sidelong glance. There was no doubt about it. She’d felt him there all along, had been waiting for him to make a move.
His heat rose as she resumed looking out to the exquisite moonlit garden. No one, no woman, certainly not Hannah, had ever treated him with such nonchalance.
He stopped a breath away, bent and placed his lips an inch from her ear. His words rustled the hair tucked behind it. “Why are you out here and not in that ballroom soaking up the collective adulation?”
Without giving any indication if his nearness affected her in any way, she said, “Not that I noticed such generalized fascination, but I came out for some fresh air and solitude. I’m a touch claustrophobic and agoraphobic. A full ballroom is my ultimate aversion.”
“Is it? Or are you just giving Hiro something he’s never experienced—a woman who can leave his side, who isn’t trying to court his favor with her every breath? If you walked away to test how deep your hook has sunk into him, are you now disappointed he hasn’t come running after you?”
“I plead not guilty to all of your assumptions, Mr. Kuroshiro. But the question is, why are you here? Why aren’t you back in that ballroom collecting oaths of allegiance and obedience? Can I assume my so-called hook has inadvertently sunk in you instead, and it has brought you running after me?”
“You can indeed assume, Ms. Delacroix.” He paused for a second, then decided to act on the unstoppable compulsion, no matter how absurd it was. “Or should I say Ms. McPherson?”
For an interminable stretch, there was absolutely no reaction from her. Nothing but total stillness and silence.
Then she turned her head to him, her heavily fringed, vibrantly blue eyes looking up at him in what looked like amusement. “I heard that right, didn’t I? You just implied I’m someone else? Someone you know?” A brief, tinkling chuckle escaped her dimpled lips. “That’s one line I was never given.”
His hands itched to clamp over the flesh that pulled at his instincts like inexorable gravity. He barely fought the temptation. “Because men approach you with protests that you’re like no one they’d ever met? Take heart. You’re still unique. So much so, even a totally different face and body didn’t stop me from recognizing you.”
There. The words were out. And they sounded ludicrous. At least, to his logic. His instincts said different. He’d follow those wherever they willed until it all played out.
Her eyebrows rose in incredulity before a considering expression came into her eyes. “Is this a game? You want me to pretend I’m this...McPherson woman? And will you be someone else, too? Someone free to indulge himself with a total stranger?” She turned fully to him, leaned back against the window frame over arms tucked behind her back. “I did hear role-playing is huge in Japan, but I wouldn’t have thought you’re the type who’d be into it. But then, maybe you’re just that. Someone who became a billionaire so young must lead a very stressful life. Maybe it’s your preferred method of defusing the pressures.”
Her every calm syllable, her steady gaze, made everything inside him churn.
His lips twisted grimly, mocking his runaway reaction, conceding her effect. “Your on-the-fly performance is impressive. But then, you always were the most spontaneous, undetectable imposter I’ve ever encountered.”
Only one delicately curved auburn eyebrow rose this time, and what seemed so much like real interest entered her gaze. “Have you encountered that many?”
“Hundreds. And I’ve seen through each of them at a hundred paces. It was only you who took me in, all the way. But I’m now immunized for life against falling for your charades again.”
She shook her head as if she’d had enough of playing his game. Then suddenly she tilted it at him, her gaze shedding its mockery, becoming smoldering. “You don’t need an outrageous approach to hook me, Mr. Kuroshiro. I’m already interested.”
That was something he hadn’t expected her to say. Not that he’d expected anything. He was flying blind here.
“You are?”
“Every female with only a brain wave would be.” She sighed. “Pity you’re engaged.”
“Does that even matter?”
“I guess it wouldn’t to someone like you. Even if I suspect that such a someone doesn’t exist, that you’re one of a kind. I expect you’re bound by no rules and consider no one in your decisions.”
“You already know this about me.”
“You mean this McPherson woman knows this about you.”
“Will you keep pretending you’re not her for long?”
She sighed again. “I already told you I’m interested. And since being engaged doesn’t deter you, it’s something actually in your favor, since you must only want something intense...and transient. The only kind of liaison I’m open to.”
“So Hiro hasn’t reserved a place in your bed yet?”
“Hiro, like everything else in my life, is of no concern to you and is off-limits to discussion. I do as I please, and no one has any claims on me.”
“I bet Hiro doesn’t know this part. Or he does, and you’re still dangling the bait. And while you wait until he swallows the whole fishing rod, you welcome diversions?”
“Why not? I’m a free agent so far.” She uncoiled to her full statuesque height. “But I’ve had enough of indulging your role-playing fetish. Let’s revisit this when you decide to talk to me, not your imaginary character.”
Without lingering one more second, she turned away. He watched her receding, a flame-haired goddess of the night dissolving into her domain, his thoughts tangling.
Had he made a gigantic fool of himself? All evidence said so. His instincts, however, still screamed their contradictory verdict.
Exasperation rumbled from his gut as he lunged after her, grabbed her by the waist and slammed her against his length.
A gasp swelled in her chest as he stabbed a hand into the heavy silk at her nape, tethering her head. In the golden illumination of fire-lit lanterns, her eyes held his in utmost composure, belying her ragged moan at his roughness. And he crashed his lips over hers, swallowing the intoxicating sound.
Her lips parted wide under his onslaught, letting him plunge into her depths, her flesh softening to accommodate his impacting hardness. Her surrender blazed through his nerves. But it was certainty that singed his every cell.
This. This was her unforgotten feel and taste, her inimitable delight. This was her.
The beast that had been perpetually clawing inside him finally tore free. It devoured her, everything inside him roaring with remembrance. Of every minute of deprivation of the five years after she’d left him. Craving more. Needing closure.
Then it swelled. Disgust. With himself. Over the only weakness he’d ever suffered, this susceptibility to her. It towered, then crashed, made him tear his lips from hers, push away from the body that had seemed to melt into his every recess.
Stumbling back at the abruptness of his withdrawal, she leaned against the nearest wall, the only discernible reaction to his explosive kiss her faster breathing.
Then, through those lips he’d just ravished, her voice washed over him, calm, collected...but hers at last.
“What gave me away?”
Two
“Everything.”
The word boomed in the silence of the garden house. Its reverberations hung in the charged air between them, dripping with bitterness, heavy with five years of unresolved anger.
Not even a blip in her gaze or posture demonstrated any agitation. Only a slight tremor of her now-swollen lips betrayed any reaction to his fury. One that stilled at once, making him think he’d imagined it.
Which he probably had. Meeting him hadn’t fazed her at all. And why should it have? She’d come to the ball knowing she’d see him. It was he who’d gotten the shock of his life.
Then, as calmly, she said, “We both know that can’t be true. Not even I recognize the woman who looks back at me in the mirror as myself.”
She was right. Even on such close-up inspection, there wasn’t the least trace of his treacherous lover in her. He’d changed his looks to eliminate perfect resemblance to his old self, but she had totally different facial features and bone structure. Even her complexion looked different. Hannah had had alabaster skin, the kind he’d thought would burn, not tan. But this Scarlett’s tan looked effortless, her skin even, velvet honey. And the deep shade of burgundy of her hair looked natural, too, when Hannah had been an equally convincing platinum blonde. All those changes were certainly artificial, even if their result looked 100 percent real. The only changes that could be natural were her body’s. Maturity and heels could account for the appreciation in her curves and height.
But all in all, this woman bore no resemblance to the one who’d been in his bed every day of those five months, whose every inch he’d memorized and worshipped.
He cocked his head at her, drenching her from head to toe in disdain. “I assume this is my money’s worth? This total and undetectable transformation?”
Her expression remained tranquil, assessing him back. “I wouldn’t call it undetectable. At least, not anymore. You detected me.” She let out a conceding sigh. “I did have some incredibly costly surgeries to reconfigure my face from the bone structure up. And though your money did foot the bills, along with the other cosmetic and stylistic measures needed to complete the transformation, not even all that cost anywhere near fifty million dollars. The whole thing cost around two million. A couple more financed the creation of my new identity with a whole history and paper trail for it.”
“So you still have millions to spare. Or did you invest those into billions? Was that how you got into Hiro’s inner circle, through the doors only that kind of money opens?”
Her lashes lowered before rising to strike him with a flash of azure. “I sort of...crashed my way into that.”
His simmering blood tumbled in a boil. “So you’re still using your old tried-and-true methods.”
“Why change what works?” Suddenly her expression became distant, as if reversing into the past to the crash she’d manufactured to enter his life. “It was a different sort of crash.” Her eyes refocused on him, resumed being supremely placid. “Even if just as effective. But though I put your money to the best use possible, alas, the Midas touch that turns millions into ever-increasing billions remains firmly yours.”
Teeth gritting, he bunched hands stinging with the need to grab her again at his sides. “You seem very much at ease with divulging your machinations and secrets now.”
A graceful shoulder rose in an easy shrug. “You already found me out. And I’m still waiting to hear how you did.”
“It was your eyes.”
Those eyes filled with mock reprimand. “They were what I worked on most, so I’m pretty sure they’re unrecognizable.”
“I recognized the color.”
“You can’t possibly have recognized me from just that.”
“It’s a unique color, and changes hue in as unique a way. I used to be fascinated by its fluctuations, thought they corresponded to shifts in your emotions. Then I found out you have none, and those were just a response to variations in lighting.”
A still moment, then a tinge of sarcasm entered those eyes that were totally different, yet, to him, somehow exactly the same. “Are you telling me I owe being exposed to a fixation you had with my eye color and some trick of light I wasn’t even aware of? And you’re sticking with that story?”
“I felt you.”
His hiss wiped the provocation off her face. She’d cornered him into admitting her relentless hold over him, and that even without evidence, he’d always know her.
Now that the admission was out, he might as well go all the way. “I felt you before I turned to see you on Hiro’s arm. Not even millions of dollars’ worth of permanent disguise was able to wipe off the inimitable imprint you left on my senses.” He cocked his head, his gaze spearing hers. “How about that story? You find it more plausible? More satisfactory?”
Her gaze had emptied, and now her voice followed suit. “I had no idea I’d left such an indelible mark. It’s why I thought it okay to come here tonight. I thought there was no danger you’d sense the least familiarity, let alone recognize me outright. I met many people who knew me well in my previous...incarnations, and none even felt any vague resemblance.”
“I’m not ‘people.’”
Her nod conceded that. “I know in your previous incarnation you were said to have senses so acute, it made you a ninja in a class of your own. I couldn’t tell if those reports were exaggerations. Now I know they weren’t.”
“You had reason to believe they were outright lies, with the way said senses were disabled around you. I had no inkling of your deceit for five straight months of ultimate intimacy.”
Her fixed glance remained unchanged as her head tilted to one side, sending the curtain of her loose silk curls swishing over her polished shoulder. “Speaking of that, I always wondered what finally gave me away that time.”
He was damned if he’d give her the satisfaction, and the security, of knowing it had been total chance that had finally alerted him, and not his allegedly infallible abilities.
“You want to find out so you’ll never repeat the lapse, hone your deception powers to perfection? Sorry, you’ll have to keep on wondering. And worrying.”
“Oh, I never worry. Even in the rare times I slip up, I always manage to compensate. As I did when I preempted you.”
How she’d realized he’d found her out back then had remained a major question mark. Needing an answer to it had even outstripped his need to find his lineage in the past years.
Wrestling with the urge to pounce on her and force her to tell him now, he tried to match her nonchalance. “And now? How will you preempt me this time?”
A sigh accompanied a regretful shake of that elegant head. “It really would have been better for everyone if you didn’t recognize me.”
“Everyone meaning you.”
“Everyone meaning everyone. Starting by you.”
A vicious huff crackled from his depths. “You’re implying knowing your real identity poses danger to me, too?”
“It poses danger to you...only.” Before he processed that outrageous statement, she added, “And you don’t know my real identity.”
Giving in, he obliterated the distance he’d put between them. He needed a physical reinforcement of his dominance, feeling he was on the losing side of this confrontation.
He regretted it the moment he drew his next breath. Though she’d been so thorough in her disguise to the point of changing the soap and perfume she’d used before, her own scent deluged him, even through the masking of new adornments. Hot, vital, intoxicating. The exact bouquet that had been the only one to activate his libido.
Glaring down at her, as if it would shift the balance of power in his favor, he said, “I know this one is fabricated. As was the one before it. Which should be enough. So explain to me how this knowledge, when it’s clearly a secret you’ve kept from everyone here, wouldn’t impact you.”
“It would cause me intense inconvenience. But it’s you who stands to suffer major damage if you expose me.” Before he scoffed at that preposterous declaration, she asked, “But really, why would you want to expose me at all?”
“To stop you from setting Hiro up.”
After a moment, when it looked as if she didn’t get his meaning, incredulity coated her face. “What makes you think I’m doing any such thing? Because you consider I set you up?”
“And you don’t? What do you call what you did to me?” He waved, stopping any argument in its tracks. Haggling over facts turned them into points of view that could be contested and rewritten. And he was damned if he’d let her do that. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s criminal.”
“Because I’m withholding my real identity? Pot calling the kettle black much?” Her full lips twisted. “And if you’re citing my past actions in your unsubstantiated accusations, I did nothing criminal with you. I actually...helped you.”
It was his turn to cough in disbelief. “Sure, by systematically deceiving me for five months, then leaving a fifty-million-dollar gaping hole in my liquid assets. I bet that’s every man’s idea of ‘help.’”
“It isn’t a crime to con a con man. I was sent to expose an assassin who was posing as a squeaky-clean businessman. The only crimes were in your past, not mine.”
He gaped at her, astounded all over again. Even after he’d found out she’d conned him, after she’d blackmailed him, he’d thought she’d held her own with him only because he’d been in a precarious position, and more important, because they’d had their confrontation over the phone. If they’d been face-to-face, he’d always thought she wouldn’t have been able to maintain her poise.
But this woman with the steely self-possession could stare down the scariest monsters he’d ever dealt with and not turn a hair. If she could hold him at a disadvantage with such effortlessness when he’d thought she would be vulnerable and off balance, no one else would stand a chance against her.
He shook his head. “I didn’t choose my old persona. It wasn’t the real me. This new one I created is. I bet you can’t say the same about yourself. So whatever you call what you do for a living, I call you a professional fraud, out of choice. And whatever elaborate deception you’re perpetrating now, I will stop you. I let you get away with deceiving me once. I’m not letting you get away with anything again.”
He’d let his lethal side surface as he talked. Expecting exposure to it to shake her at last, he was again amazed when she met his menace head-on.
“You can only ‘stop’ me if you expose me. And you can’t, because it would mean exposing yourself.”
He coughed in incredulity. “Are you threatening me?”
“You’re the one who’s threatening to strike me down like your old code name. I’m just pointing out that your righteousness is blinding you to the fact that it’s in your best interests to keep my secrets. Why do you think I was so free with them?”
“Because you think I can’t do anything with what I know?”
“Not if you want what I know to remain buried.”
“You are threatening me, then.”
Something like exasperation tinged her gaze. “I once promised I’d never hold my knowledge over you, and I remain at my word.” When he glowered at her, failing to find any words to express what collided inside his head and chest, she exhaled. “Listen, Raiden, you’re the one who can create this impasse, and you mustn’t. Not when you’re mere steps from attaining the family and the status you’ve craved all your life.”
His heart convulsed. She knew this?
Though it shocked him, it stood to reason. Through his obliviousness, his misplaced trust, this woman had somehow once found out his every secret. It must have been easy for someone of her shrewdness to extrapolate his life goals and future plans. Now that she knew the arrangement he had with Megumi and her father, as it had been announced in society already, the details must have been as obvious to her.
It made sense, but it still galled him that she knew so much about him when he knew nothing about her, except what she made him feel, how she still had such power over him.
As if reading his mind, something like gentle persuasion entered her gaze. “Whatever you feel about me, no matter your burning desire to punish me for my transgressions against you, I’m not worth tarnishing the perfect image you’ve worked so hard and long to create. And that would certainly happen if you expose me. For what would you say I blackmailed you for? You can’t say that you succumbed to my blackmail, since it would make you look weak, or that you needed to hide something that badly. If you expose me anonymously, once the mess is out in the open, details have a way of surfacing, of becoming land mines you never know which step will set off.”
Fury, and something else he hadn’t felt since he was a child—futility—mushroomed inside him.
Everything she’d said was true. Any action against her now, in this delicate time, would have consequences, and the fallout would inescapably harm him. If not now, then later. Whatever impacted him, it would surely drag his brothers in by association. So he couldn’t act on the burning desire to punish her, as she’d so accurately put it.
When he made no response, she prodded, that same chafing gentleness in her tone. “Why don’t you let me be and go about your business? Your wedding and adopting your family name are just over two months from now, and you can’t afford to let anything sabotage that.”
She was right again. Damn her.
But there was one thing he wasn’t backing down from. “I will let you be, on one condition. That you keep away from Hiro. I’m not letting you exploit him as you did me.”
It seemed he had finally managed to surprise her. Her eyes, those eyes that in spite of everything he wanted to drown in, widened. “You’re really worried about him? I thought, as his number one rival, you’d welcome whatever misfortune befell him.”
“I certainly wouldn’t. I fight my adversaries with merit. I wouldn’t want to win dishonorably.”
“It wouldn’t be dishonorable if someone else felled him for you.”
“It would be if I knew of his jeopardy and looked the other way. And I won’t.”
“This is about honor, isn’t it? You’re really taking integrating into your new society to the limit, huh?”
“You may never understand what honor is, but it’s the most important thing to me, and I would do anything to satisfy mine. Even if it means risking my plans.”
He held her incandescent gaze as it fluctuated through the range of blue-and-violet spectrum in the softly shifting lights. He imbued his own with his contempt, and his conviction.
She finally shook her head. “You don’t have to do that. And you don’t have to worry about Hiro. I’d never hurt him.”
A skewer twisted in his gut. The way she’d said that... That look in her eyes... It was as if she truly cared for Hiro.
Then the icicles of memory sank into his core, numbing the ache. She’d once looked at him with the same profound emotions. Her ability to project genuineness was unheard of. She could be doing the same now. She must be.
“I can almost see you rejecting what I just said as more fraud.” Her eyes were opaque, her voice hushed. “I can’t do anything about that, but I can about something else. Before anyone realizes you’re here with me, leaving your fiancée back there, and you cause yourself unneeded scandal, I’ll do you a favor and do what you seem unable to do. I’ll walk away. Let me do that and you can forget all about me again.”
With that, she strode to the door she’d entered from. At the threshold, she paused, turned, and the crisp night wind blew her hair toward him like tongues of flame.
Before he could storm after her as every cell in his body was screaming for him to, her voice carried to him across the still warmth, lilting, husky, exactly what had poured into his brain on their transfiguring nights of passion.
“You won’t believe this either, Raiden, but it was...nice seeing you again. This time, I at least get to say goodbye.”