‘LET’S WALK TO the crossing,’ she says after dinner.
It’s a beautiful, balmy evening. At this hour the crowded streets are bustling—youngsters in search of night life, commuters heading to the station and tourists enchanted by the big city glow from the overhead neon lights. I’ve grown used to the crush of bodies around Shibuya’s famous intersection—the Shibuya Scramble Crossing—but I took Monroe’s hand the minute we left the bar. My mind says keeping her close is a safety thing, but her hand in mine is scarily natural.
I watch her, admiring her wide-eyed excitement for the atmosphere. ‘You love it here, don’t you?’
She beams. ‘Yes. Don’t you?’
‘I guess.’ I’ve lived in Tokyo for three years and it still doesn’t feel like home, but then nowhere does. A man without roots can live anywhere.
‘Sterling and I had a whole sightseeing itinerary planned this trip, things we missed out on during previous visits.’ She shrugs. ‘I guess I can do some of it alone.’
‘What kind of things?’ I owe her an insider’s tour. Every time I visit them in London and New York, they invite me to new places and include me in their social lives.
‘I’d love to see some cherry blossom, as I’m here at the right time of year, and Sterling wanted to visit the Sensō-ji Temple, but we can do that next time we’re here together. Otherwise I’m happy to just eat and drink and absorb the ambience.’
‘You want to see a bunch of trees lose their petals?’ I grin, wanting to kiss away her adorable outrage.
‘I do. What—too romantic for you, Black?’
My grin widens. ‘No comment.’
She laughs and then looks down. ‘I need distractions. Mum’s memorial is next week.’ When she looks at me again, the excitement has faded from her eyes.
I wince. ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I know it’s a hard time for you.’ I squeeze her hand and clamber for something appropriate to say to a woman still grieving her mother’s passing. ‘Remind me. How long has it been?’
She sways closer until her arm is flush with mine and pastes on a bright smile. ‘We lost her just over four years ago. Every year since, my family hosts a memorial at Dad’s place in Cambridgeshire, although we try to make it more of a celebration. My sister Claire organises everything, despite having three children. She’s the one who still runs Mum’s business. It’s normally just us and a few friends and Mum’s old work colleagues. People whose lives she touched.’
She swallows hard, clearly struggling with deep emotions. She was close to her mother. We don’t normally discuss much of our private lives when we meet up, preferring to focus on the work we love, and socialising after hours. But I recall Monroe’s devastation when her mother died vividly. I’d felt helpless, and inadequate to help. The same feeling renders me uncomfortable now.
‘Will Sterling be at the memorial?’ Sterling had been her husband. He’d know exactly what to say if he were here right now. For her sake I hope he’ll be there next week, but jealousy writhes inside me nonetheless.
‘Yes, he’ll be there.’ Her searching expression leaves me restless.
In the early days of our partnership, I was inexplicably envious of Monroe and Sterling’s relationship—not because I was attracted to Monroe, although I was. Their closeness made me wonder for the first time ever if I might be missing out. Their love, their happiness, at times heightened my loneliness. I was the odd one out, reminded of the years I’d spent as a boy, passed from family to family, home to home, school to school.
Monroe’s voice is wistful as she continues. ‘We try to make it a time of laughter and good memories, because there are heaps of those. A lifetime’s worth. Mum can’t just be remembered by a brass plaque at a chapel of rest.’
I nod, my lips mashed together and a hollow feeling expanding my chest. How do I comfort her now we’ve spent the night locked together physically? In past years I’ve sent flowers and a brief email stating I’d be there if she needed me.
She hadn’t.
I’d even gone to the funeral, tried to support a grieving Monroe. But she had Sterling and her large family to offer comfort. She hadn’t needed a man who, having never known his own parents, couldn’t fully understand what she was going through. The closest I’ve come to that was discovering that Wendy had died, and I’d managed that unsettled time with my usual coping mechanism: work.
‘She was a special lady,’ I say, stroking the back of her hand with my thumb. I met Cathy Dove once or twice around the time of Monroe and Sterling’s wedding, shortly after we founded Bold. I recall a lovely, warm, nurturing woman, always quick to laugh. The busy and noisy Dove household had regularly seen people dropping in for one of Cathy’s famous scones or lethal gin and tonics...
I’d felt out of my depth there.
‘You look like her,’ I say in lieu of anything remotely consoling about the imminent memorial.
Sterling once confessed he didn’t think Monroe would ever get over Cathy’s death. He even attributed her part in their marriage failure to Cathy’s untimely passing, saying she’d pushed him away and he hadn’t been able to compensate for what she’d lost.
‘Do you think so?’
I turn to face her and nod, drawn to bringing back her smile. ‘You have the same hair colour.’ I cup her cheek, my fingers flexing in the silky strands of hair at her nape.
Her smile is my reward. ‘And the same eyes.’
We keep walking.
‘Oh, sorry.’ She sniffs. ‘I don’t know where that heavy turn in the conversation came from. I must still be tired.’
‘Don’t apologise. I hate to see you hurting. It rips me open.’ With my arm around her shoulders, I drag her close and kiss her forehead. I ache for my playful, sassy Dove.
And now my own unwelcome memories resurface, ones I’ve spent my entire adult life suppressing. Wendy was the only remotely motherly figure I had before she got sick and I had to leave. I recall elaborate birthday cakes—a train, a spaceship and a football. Shiny new shoes at the beginning of every school year that didn’t pinch my toes... And cautious hugs I was too scared to trust.
My stomach lurches at the guilt that I didn’t reach out to Wendy and Bill until it was too late. I missed my chance to say thank you.
The crowds in front of us come to a halt at the red lights.
‘I forgot that you met Mum at the wedding,’ says Monroe. ‘She was so happy that day, to see the last of her brood safely hitched.’ She turns pensive once more.
I grow impatient with the wait for the trains to stop and the crossing to spring to life. I want to see Monroe smile again, so I rack my brains for something happy. ‘Yes, we had a brief chat. I was sitting in a corner and she came up and hugged me.’
Monroe smiles. ‘Yes, Mum could always spot the person most in need of a hug.’
I laugh. ‘She had something of a priest’s or doctor’s knack of drawing out confessions, if I remember rightly.’ I hadn’t bothered with a date for the wedding, so I guess I’d been conspicuously alone. ‘I told her how I felt mildly envious of what you and Sterling had together and her eyes lit up.’
Monroe’s small frown and perceptive appraisal give me pause. I’ve never before confessed that personal detail to her or Sterling. It’s not their fault I’m happy alone.
‘I’m sorry if Sterling and I made you feel...excluded.’ She squeezes my fingers. ‘We always tried to keep physical contact out of the office and encouraged you to bring a date when we went out together.’
Rather than feel comforted by her closeness, I feel strangely uneasy, forced to re-examine that time. I’d thought I was well used to feeling alone by then, but it had snuck up on me the night of their wedding. Perhaps because in business we were the three musketeers, but personally it was them and me.
I press a brief kiss to her lips. ‘I didn’t tell you that to make you feel bad. I just wanted to give you a nice memory of Cathy. She claimed to know lots of young women who’d trip over themselves for a date with me.’
Pride gleams in the periphery of Monroe’s eyes. ‘Yes, that was Mum, always matchmaking. Keen to see everyone happy.’
‘I didn’t have the heart to set her straight,’ I say, ‘to tell her mild envy would never turn into a reason to join the married club.’
Monroe stills beside me. ‘Why not?’
Earlier today she called me a lone wolf. I’m not sure why I brought this up—I could have left out that part of the story.
‘I just can’t imagine being that close to someone. Giving another person any sort of control over my contentment.’ When you’ve been powerless, power becomes everything. I shrug. ‘I guess I’m too set in my ways.’
Monroe flashes her compassion. ‘I understand, although Mum and Dad’s advice on marriage—or any partnership, for that matter—was to remember you’re part of a team with a common goal.’
Why are we talking about marriage when all I want to do is drag her back to bed?
‘It’s good advice. But, just for the record, I was happy for you and Sterling. I felt, if anyone could make it work, it was you two.’
She looks at me with curiosity, her eyes still carrying sadness. ‘And yet we couldn’t make it work. Somewhere along the way we forgot we were a team.’
I don’t want to think about Sterling, not when I plan to seduce Monroe into exhaustion over the next few days, but I can’t stop myself. ‘And yet you kept working as one. I’ve always been impressed with the way you managed to stay friends and stay professional.’
That degree of dependence is alien to me. Trust is something life has never taught me. Just before my tenth birthday I was moved on from Wendy and Bill. I learned to shut down emotionally. I stopped waiting for my real parents, who I don’t remember at all, to miraculously claim me in some sappy, happy ending. I stopped hoping for the perfect foster family to take me in and discover I was the missing piece they needed to be whole. I started looking inward for my strength. Self-reliance became a habit that still serves me well today.
‘I think that was the problem,’ she says. ‘We worked as friends and business partners, but we married for the wrong reasons. I thought I’d found the one, and had blinkers on so I could join the couple’s club my siblings belonged to. And Sterling had to prove something to his stepfather, I think.’
‘Do you still have regrets?’ I know she dates. That she’s still searching for a lasting relationship.
‘I regret the heartache caused. I was naive.’ She stares up at me and I tighten my grip on her shoulders. ‘I had romantic expectations. I wanted to see perfection, and then I struggled to compromise when I realised that it was an illusion. No relationship is perfect. I put a lot of pressure on us as a couple because I wanted to recreate the sense of belonging I’d felt growing up.’
For some reason her candour and insight make me uncomfortable. Then she shakes off her melancholy, her eyes turning playful once more.
‘I haven’t given up the search for my Mr Right. When I find him, you and Sterling will need to take over the business while I raise my own brood of children.’
My smile is rubbery. We want very different things from life. Just as I know she wants a husband and family one day, she knows she’ll never find that with a man like me.
The crossing lights overhead change to green, snapping me from my daze.
‘Is there anything I can do for you...you know...to help with the memorial?’ She must know that, despite being atrocious at emotional support, I’d do anything for her and Sterling.
Anything but keep my hands off her, it seems.
She offers me an indulgent smile as we wait for the crowd in front of us to surge forward. She must see how out of my comfort zone I am. ‘That’s a very thoughtful offer. Right now, I think the most helpful thing would be distraction.’
She purses her lips in the sexy way she does. At least she’s no longer thinking about her failed marriage or her mum.
‘I’ll happily distract you for the next four nights.’ I rub a hand over my chin while I pretend to consider some options, but really there’s only one way I want to occupy Monroe.
She sounds forlorn when she says, ‘As long as you don’t have other...plans.’
I lead her into the flow of human traffic as the crossing becomes a moving sea of bodies lit from above by the giant advertising screens. I slip my arm around her waist and lean close. ‘I’m happy to make you my plans. I happen to know of a competitive little seduction game that’s currently at a draw.’
She tilts her head to one side, her lips parted with excitement. ‘Well, we can’t have that. Someone has to win...’
My head is awash with distraction techniques. In all of them, she’s naked. But now we’re stuck in the middle of Shibuya Crossing.
‘We could do a few tourist things. I can take some time off and show you the sights. I’d like to see the Cherry Blossom Festival too.’
‘Is that the best you can do, Black? I don’t want to brag, but if we were in London I’d show you a really good time.’ She flicks me the look that kept me awake hour after hour last night—pure sin and temptation. Sleep was irrelevant, given the way we’d scorched the sheets.
I pull her to a halt in the centre of the crossing. I sweep her into my arms and kiss her the way I’ve wanted to since we entered my office this morning, freshly showered and newly wary of each other.
She returns my enthusiasm, wrapping her arms around my neck and sighing against my lips. Relief shudders through me. People swarm around us, parting like a river around a rock.
I pull back, determined to make this trip to Tokyo her best yet. ‘I guarantee total mind-blowing distraction for the rest of your stay.’
Heat and playfulness and challenge gleam in the green-gold pools of her eyes. It’s as if we’re the only two people on the planet.
‘That’s a pretty tall order. Are you up to a mission of that undertaking?’ She stands on tiptoes and rubs her lips against mine provocatively.
A chuckle rumbles through my chest as we step back into the flow of human traffic. ‘The seduction challenge is back on. I’m happy to continue my winning streak if you’re happy to take a thrashing, Dove.’
‘Always such a high achiever.’ She laughs, the throaty sound and her glittering stare tugging my mouth into a grin while arousal and satisfaction pound through my blood. ‘Challenge accepted.’