CHAD AND SASHA had spent about a half hour at the hotel bar, talking around and around what they really needed to say, but Chad hadn’t pushed it.
Not even once, although he’d gotten a strong feeling that Sasha had a lot on her mind, and she would get around to telling him all about it in her own time.
So, as he’d waited, she’d talked about her research, laughing almost shyly when she’d admitted that it was supposed to center around “woo-woo” things to do around Tokyo. He’d been surprised to hear that, too, based on how Sasha used to be.
Exotic and erotic?
She’d gone on to explain that she was really behind in her endeavors, so she’d have to start hitting hot-stuff establishments soon.
And that’s when Chad finally sucked it up and risked suggesting that he could go out with her tonight if she wanted, just so she would have company in a country she was still hesitant to explore on her own.
The last thing he expected was for her to accept his offer without even a pause.
But was that because she needed to get her book going?
Or because it was an excuse to be with him?
Now, as they wandered a silent, rain-sheened neighborhood away from the more touristy section of Roppongi, Chad couldn’t stop hoping it was the second option.
He’d picked the most romantic bar he could find in the guidebook, and the hushed streets made him think of a topsy-turvy edition of Singing in the Rain, when Gene Kelly had danced over the wet sidewalks, in love and wanting to announce it from here to there.
Chad glanced at the paper where the hotel concierge had written directions in the artful symbols of his language, followed by a translation in English. Chad had then shown the directions to their cab driver, who’d dropped them off here and offered what were probably more directions in Japanese.
Not that this had helped, but it had been a nice gesture.
Chad had thought bringing Sasha to the fringes of the Roppongi District was a decent idea, because from what she’d said over their cocktails, he knew it would feel fairly familiar and comfortable to her; she’d mentioned that she and Juliana had come to the tourist-heavy district last night, and she’d intended to return in order to check out more of the nightlife.
Rain popped on Chad’s umbrella, sounding a lot like Gene Kelly’s shoes. “The bar should be close.”
Sasha, under the cover of her own umbrella, was inspecting the upscale homes around them, where BMWs were parked in Beverly Hills–type affluence.
“I’m not in a hurry,” she said, smiling. Her serene expression went well with the surrounding foliage nodding under the raindrops, the slants of concrete architecture sloping in graceful angles.
Chad had noticed that she seemed far more relaxed tonight than she’d been at the castle, as if she’d thought things out in her complex Sasha way and she’d come to some kind of decision.
Maybe, just maybe, meeting him for that drink had been a big first step for her?
His veins tightened as he wondered what the next step might be.
Then the next.
His heart bumped in his chest while he took a long look around for any sign of the bar. The concierge had said in private to Chad that the best ones around these parts—the most romantic—were nearly hidden.
That they were behind closed doors.
And Chad was going to win Sasha back one bit at a time with all the romance he could muster. Last night, while he had brainstormed with Tristan during a beer-addled haze, everything had become crystal-clear: he needed to show the love of his life that she was more important to him than anything—work, family entanglements…pride.
Because that’s one of the reasons they’d broken up, Chad had admitted. He’d been threatened by where her job might take her, and he’d been too proud to deal with it in the way a man should have.
He’d also been wounded by what he’d taken to be her lack of trust in him, her guarded feelings.
But he was damned sure going to try harder—starting now—to encourage her to bring those feelings out. He would wine and dine her until she couldn’t help but sing in the rain with him.
If he was singing after tonight, that was.
He was beginning to think that Japan itself was like Sasha—sedate and ordered on the outside, but with passion boiling underneath all the customs, in a shadow world.
As he and Sasha wandered, they came to a door nestled below street level, at the bottom of some stairs that were nearly buried under a building.
He pointed to the door, and Sasha’s smile only grew.
His heartbeat picked up, because the Sasha he’d known before would have opted for something less murky.
Then again, the Sasha he’d known wouldn’t have come to a country as seemingly distant, sleek and foreign as Japan, either. The fact that she had—and to write a book about hot stuff, to boot—struck him.
Was she making an effort to open up? He’d suspected so when she’d told him about her book, but little by little, she was beginning to prove it.
He didn’t dare hope it was because their breakup had changed something within her.
“I don’t know if it’s the place we’re looking for,” he said, testing her to see how flexible she would be.
He watched her for a response and, for a moment, he wondered if he’d been wrong about her changing.
But then she headed for the stairs, and his pulse gave a leap.
“We’ll never know unless we try to open it,” she said.
The rain had let up, and as they descended, they both closed their umbrellas, shaking them out.
He gestured for her to try the door, hoping she’d see that he didn’t have to take control a hundred percent of the time, that he knew she would always need the freedom to do things on her own and he would appreciate this about her.
If she could change, he sure as hell could, too.
Their gazes caught, stayed, and a rush of brutal warmth swamped him.
In her beautiful pale-blue eyes, he could see that she had gotten the message.
She knocked at the door, but there was no answer.
Then she tried the handle.
When she pulled the door open, neither of them moved for a moment, because what they found took the breath away with its very simplicity.
A black wall with an alcove where a vase-bound rose bloomed under the glow of a spotlight.
The flower reminded Chad of Sasha’s skin’s texture, the scent of it, and his insides contracted with the need to touch her.
But he knew that was a bad idea, so he propped his hand above Sasha’s on the door to open it wider and ushered her inside.
Slowly, they walked around a corner to the bar itself, where they checked their coats and umbrellas while the scent of incense floated on the air.
He’d been looking for romance?
Well, this was it.
The place was all dark walls and mist, with a bar shining a mere line of light that suffused the faces of two bartenders. Their hair was slicked back, their torsos covered by white linen shirts and black vests, adding to the impression that this was a scene from a minimalist play, with only a couple of other people haunting the bar seats and the tables.
The other customers were foreigners, too, Chad noted. Wanderers just like him and Sasha.
The feeling of isolation made him feel closer to her. Them against this new country, this new world.
He pulled out a seat at the bar for her, and the bartender bowed to them. They bowed back, and Chad ordered champagne because he knew she liked it.
It was probably going to cost an arm and a leg, but he didn’t care.
As the bartender fixed their drinks, Sasha spoke.
“Thank you,” she said, her words just as simple as that flower by the entrance.
“For what?” he asked, trying not to move too fast by revealing how significantly even a word or two from her could still affect him.
“For finding a buried gem like this.” The bartender slid cocktail napkins before them while Sasha brought a notebook out of her small purse. “And thank you for encouraging me to go out with you tonight.”
He held on to what she’d said for a moment.
“I know,” she said. “Quite a change from what I told you at the castle. But seeing you was a shock, Chad. I was defensive, and after I left, I was angry at how I handled the situation. Angry at how I reacted.” She opened the notebook to a fresh page and took a pen out of her purse, as well.
Was that all she was going to say? She still seemed a little guarded. Not as much as before, but he could feel it just the same.
Just as he started to think that she was about to go remote on him again, she blew out a breath, as if she’d been holding it. “I’ve been working up to telling you that all night.”
Music to Chad’s ears.
But he didn’t start celebrating. Not yet. Sasha was still in the slow process of unguarding herself.
As the bartender served them champagne in long flutes that flared at the top while bubbles shot up from the base, Sasha scribbled notes about their surroundings. The bartender added plates of aesthetically arranged cantaloupe and cherries.
Sasha touched the plate, then laughed.
“Fruit is funny?” Chad asked.
She started to shake her head, but seemed to think better of shutting him out. Instead, she made an obvious effort to look him in the eyes, and the pale-blue connection was a jolt to his system.
He’d never forgotten how beautiful those eyes were.
“I almost expected them to serve me parsley,” she said.
He frowned at the odd statement.
“It’s a joke,” she added. “Unmarried women over the age of twenty-five in Japan are referred to as ‘parsley.’ Because that’s what’s left on the plate? Get it?”
Now he laughed, too. “The last thing I’d call you is a leftover.”
Her smile was sweet, and it threw his heart right over.
“Juliana would be grateful to hear that, too.” Then she glanced back at her notes. “Wherever she is, I mean.”
Chad sipped his beverage, the taste superdry and definitely expensive. He’d stopped thinking about his and Sasha’s travel partners hours ago when Sasha had told him that her friend was under the weather and was going back up to the room for the night.
The thing was, when Chad had said goodbye to Tristan, he’d been in Juliana’s hotel lobby….
His thoughts jerked back to the here and now as Sasha ate a piece of fruit and closed her eyes with a joyful moan.
He recalled nights in bed, him inside her…
“This cherry,” she said. “It’s amazing.”
“The Japanese pay top dollar for their produce.” He’d barely gotten the words out from his closing throat, but huzzah to him for managing it.
“I mean…” She finally opened her eyes. “Talk about appealing to the senses.”
He paused in his next drink, because she was shooting him such a look of obvious lust for life—lust for him?—that it took him a moment to absorb it.
But there she was—the woman he’d always hoped to uncover. The one who moaned at the taste of a simple cherry or basked in the fizz of bubbles from champagne on her face.
His chest seemed to fold out, his heart catching the light he’d always seen in her but hadn’t ever shone like this, under the low mist of a bar on the other side of the world.
Had it taken thousands of miles to finally get here?
“Maybe you can include the joys of eating their perfect, expensive fruit in your book,” he said, still hardly daring to believe what was happening.
She toyed with the stem of her champagne flute. “Maybe.”
She smiled faintly, took a sip, closed her eyes in pleasure again, and generally made Chad’s temperature shoot through the roof.
Too soon to touch her, he thought, to be a part of what she’s feeling. Just wait.
Even when she put down her flute, she kept hold of it, glancing around the bar.
“So many shadows,” she said.
“It adds ambience.”
“I’m not just talking about this bar, really.” Her gaze searched his.
Here it was.
Chad wanted it… He didn’t want it…
But he did, even if it was only closure.
“You can say anything to me, Sasha.” He took a chance, touched her arm, then removed his hand and rested it on his thigh. “Anything.”
She seemed to steady herself, then said, “If I were to be completely truthful with you about why we broke up, I’d have to say that part of it was because I felt overshadowed by your devotion to your job and to the whole Cole mystique. They’re entwined, actually, and I was sure that they didn’t leave much room for me or even a life of our own. Maybe that’s why I hung back when I wish now I hadn’t.”
This was his chance to make up for everything. “I’ve thought a lot about that, too, and how it affected us. There’s more to life than I used to believe, Sasha. There’s you. And you’re everything.”
Her hand flew to her chest, over her heart. Her fingers seemed to cage it before she took them away.
“After we went our separate ways,” she said, “I thought that proving I wasn’t in love with you would make me stronger. I lived with that credo for months, and it’s hard to let it go.”
Chad looked at her hand, which she’d lightly fisted on the bar near her champagne.
Now. Now’s the time.
Carefully, he eased his hand over hers.
She glanced down, watching how he covered her fingers.
Purposefully, he slipped his hand into hers, bringing them to an equal level on the bar.
As if acknowledging his efforts, she squeezed his fingers.
When he’d first heard that she was in Japan, he’d wanted to see her, but there’d also been a desperate need to know why they’d broken up, and that had driven him to go to the castle, too. After all, he hadn’t been able to move on with his life during the limbolike months that followed her departure.
He’d even wondered if there was a part of him that had wanted to win her over again so he could tell himself that he wasn’t the loser he’d felt like.
But as she slid her thumb over his, he knew this was only about loving Sasha.
The bartender walked by, and they let go of each other in favor of holding their drinks, sipping from them. The fizzy liquid quenched a physical thirst, but it did nothing else but send bubbles to his head.
It must have done the same for Sasha, too.
“Maybe tonight,” she said, “if you haven’t got anything else to do, you’d like to see a few more bars with me? For my research, I mean.”
“I was hoping you’d ask.”
“Good.” She took another sip of champagne, then shot him a lively smile.
One he hadn’t ever seen.
One that made him fall in love all over again.
“And,” she continued in a lowered, hopeful voice, “maybe tomorrow you can even help me with some things that we don’t have in America. Things I’ve been thinking about trying, and now that you’re here…”
He agreed before she’d even finished.
THE NEXT MORNING, Tristan walked with Chad to Shinjuku Station, where a train was scheduled to leave in twenty minutes for Hakone and Jiro Mori’s ryokan, where he would be staying the night.
People walked around them at a fast clip while he and his cousin stepped to the side, near a food kiosk, where they wouldn’t be in the way of the masses.
Tristan set down his overnight bag, thinking it felt surprisingly heavy. But maybe that was only his thoughts, which had been weighing him down since Juliana had left him and his bed empty last night.
There’d been sex—great sex—but he’d messed up and asked for more.
Even now, he cursed himself, knowing he should’ve kept his mouth and his emotions shut tight. What had he been expecting, anyway? He’d gotten his curiosity about what could’ve been appeased.
He only wished…
Chad’s voice interrupted. “You set for this?”
Tristan nodded, almost having forgotten that he had much bigger issues to deal with involving Juliana.
The painting.
His cousin was watching him closely through his glasses, but even that thoughtful inspection didn’t make Chad seem any less like he was walking on air.
He and Sasha had made progress last night, so at least one of the cousins was going to leave this country happy.
“I’ll keep in contact,” Tristan said, hoping to avoid any questions from his cousin about his dark mood.
“You already know the cash ceiling on what we can spend on Dream Rising,” Chad reminded him.
“Yup.”
“So give me a call when I need to start the finance machine rolling.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to be at the ryokan with me for this historic moment?”
Chad raised both his hands, as if to ward off the thought. “Let’s remember that Jiro Mori didn’t expressly invite me. I wouldn’t want to be a rude barbarian and crash the party.”
Tristan also knew that Chad planned to spend the day helping Sasha with her research, mending their relationship, and his cousin could see to his part in this family business here just as well as in Hakone.
“All right then,” Tristan said, reaching out to shake Chad’s hand before he picked up his bag.
But his cousin wasn’t hoodwinked. “Just don’t go into negotiations looking so glum.”
“Who’s glum?”
“Oh, come on,” Chad said. “Like I don’t know you have a thing for Juliana Thomsen.”
A thing.
Hell, it’d gone way, way beyond that. It was “a thing” that’d gotten him maybe an hour of restless sleep last night, just as he’d had the night before. It was “a thing” that made him wonder if he could go back home without it.
Or if he would ever find this “thing” with anyone else again.
Tristan started to walk away, then paused. “Listen, I know that you’re finally getting a fresh start with Sasha, and I’m glad for it. Believe me. I was only doing the same with Juliana.”
Chad clearly didn’t know what to say.
“I’m not going into details,” Tristan added, “but it seems to me that we all deserve a second chance, no matter who it’s with.”
“I never knew—”
Tristan held up a finger. “And you’re going to keep on never knowing. Got it, Chad?”
His cousin only assessed him, and Tristan didn’t know if it was because Chad was wondering if Tristan was up to negotiating with Juliana Thomsen now.
As Tristan headed out, Chad stopped him.
“Take it from me—don’t let what the family thinks sway you. I let that happen when Sasha left, but I thought you always knew better.”
Tristan didn’t move. “I didn’t.”
He’d lost her, just as he was losing her again. And it was because she obviously didn’t want to pursue their “thing” anymore. It was just like the first time she’d left him behind.
Or maybe it was because he refused to lay his own feelings on the line.
“Well, then,” Chad said, narrowing his eyes under glasses that’d obviously become rosier after last night’s date with Sasha, “don’t you think it’s about time you started knowing better?”
Without another word, Chad walked off through the crowds with his hand in the air as a farewell, and Tristan realized that his cousin had started on his way forward with Sasha, with life.
And he was only going backward.
JULIANA AND SASHA had decided to grab some bakery snacks for Juliana’s train ride, so they went to a department store near the station before departure.
As Juliana purchased a melon custard muffin and cheese-stuffed bread—Lord, she wished she’d discovered department-store bakeries to dull the sadness earlier—she listened to the clerk keep up a constant patter of conversation. At first, she thought the young, musical-voiced woman was gabbing with her coworkers. But Sasha told Juliana that she thought the clerk was actually detailing everything she was doing for Juliana, bringing customer service to a whole new level they weren’t used to.
With their food wrapped, they took a quick tour of the store, where Juliana couldn’t resist buying a gift bag that featured a cute bear with its arms in scare position while a darling cat waved hello.
“Bad Bear Versus Good Cat,” the bag read, and Juliana couldn’t help loving how the Japanese seemed to adapt English words randomly for trains, products and even mottos on gift bags.
Truthfully, though, she’d hoped shopping would divert her from thinking about Tristan, but it didn’t.
She was nervous about how they would react to each other today, during business, when they both knew their affair was over. Or, more to the point, she was anxious about how she would respond to him.
Even now, her blood was pistoning through her.
What had happened to the innocuous affair they’d started? What had happened to the time-in-a-bottle notion that she’d satisfy her curiosity and explore her sexuality and then be done with it?
“I suppose I should head back to the hotel before I meet Chad,” Sasha said. “Want me to take your bear and cat with me so I can stow it in the room?”
Thanking her, Juliana handed her purchase over, noticing again how Sasha fairly glowed under the cleared weather. Her eyes were just as blue as the cloud-free sky.
“So you’re taking Chad to love hotels today?” Juliana asked, trying to brush off the melancholy that was still dogging her. “This trip has already turned you around, baby.”
“We’re just going for look-sees.”
“And what if…”
“Don’t get ahead of things.” They stopped at the commuter-choked entrance to the station. “We’re just getting back on common ground. Anything more would be premature.” Then Sasha sent her an unsure glance. “Don’t you think?”
“I think you should do whatever feels right.”
They smiled at each other, and even in that one small gesture, Juliana could see that her friend had truly shed most of the shell that had always kept her at a distance.
It cracked Juliana’s heart, because it was almost as if she had taken that shell and slipped into it herself, with Tristan.
She’d always admired Sasha, especially after her friend had left Chad to chase her own dreams without anyone or anything to hold her back. Juliana had wanted the same independence but, like Sasha, she was finding that there was something missing.
The other woman took hold of Juliana’s fingers. “Hey. You thinking about him again?”
“Always thinking.”
Always staying in her role as Girl Friday, the family loyalist, even though she’d tried to slough it off for a few days.
But she hadn’t even managed to do that, because here she was, away from him because she was still that Girl Friday.
Would she always be?
“Bye, Jules,” Sasha said as she let go of Juliana’s hand. “Good luck, okay? Call me if you need to.”
“I will,” Juliana said, having no intention of doing so as she watched Sasha walk away.
As always, she would handle this on her own, staying faithful to what she knew, putting everything else on the back burner for the bigger Thomsen picture because it was so much easier that way.
She turned around, heading for the trains, feeling as if she were going nowhere.