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.”
* * *
Scarlett walked away steadily. Her five-inch heels clicked on the wooden bridge leading away from the garden house over the pond in a rhythmic, deliberate staccato.
Inside her, absolute chaos raged.
This confrontation with Raiden had been a total shock. It hadn’t even been a possibility in her mind coming here.
When Hiro had called her a few hours ago, insisting that she attended this ball, she’d been loath to agree. Even with a new face and identity, she dreaded social functions and suffocated under scrutiny. Looking the way she did now, and being a gaijin, as foreigners were called in Japan, and Hiro’s personal companion to boot, she’d been certain she’d be put under the microscope of public interest. But she’d agreed without letting Hiro know of her aversion. She’d do anything for him.
Then he’d told her he was sending her the dress he wanted her to wear, and her dormant curiosity had been roused. But it had been when she’d noticed he’d sounded nothing like his warmly indulgent and coolly humorous self, but nervous, urgent and sour, that she’d gently probed.
And he’d told her what he’d withheld from her for months—why he’d been holding this ball, and for whom. The woman he wanted. She’d become engaged to another, obeying her family’s demands. He’d wanted to show her he wouldn’t be mourning her loss, had an exotic beauty on whom to bestow the affections she’d rejected. Then he’d told her the name of the man he’d lost his woman to. Raiden.
After that, she’d been as anxious as he about this ball.
During the past three years, after she’d resurfaced with her new identity, she’d seen Raiden many times, all from afar. He’d even been the indirect reason she’d come to Japan. Seeing him up close again was a whole different ball game, the anticipation eating her up with agitation and eagerness.
So she’d dressed up as Hiro had wanted, played the role he’d wanted her to play when he’d taken her to Raiden and his fiancée. Empathy at Hiro’s suffering at Megumi’s sight had been intensified by her upheaval at Raiden’s nearness. Seeing him face-to-face had felt like a direct blow to the heart.
But she’d played her part for Hiro’s sake, and had almost sagged in his stiff hold when he, too, hadn’t been able to bear Megumi’s nearness any longer and cut their confrontation short. She’d thought that had been it.
Not for a second had she considered Raiden might see any similarity between the new her and the casually dressing, flat shoe–wearing, slim blonde he’d once known. So even when she’d felt him following her, she’d thought he’d been pursuing Hiro’s new romantic interest. The Raiden she’d known wouldn’t have struck at an adversary that way, but then he could have changed since she’d betrayed him.
Then he’d confronted her, and every meticulously erected pillar maintaining her cohesion had crumbled in shock.
But she’d been trained too well, through too many brutal tests. She’d acted her way to perfection through her life’s worst situations. And she’d had plenty of nightmarish ones. None, however, had ever affected her as her time with Raiden had.
In the garden house, she’d still fallen back on her fail-safe maneuvers, trapping her agitation in her deepest recesses, plastering one of her automated reaction modes on the surface. But then he’d taken her in his arms, drowned her in a kiss that had dissolved the last vestiges of her facade. And she’d given up the pretense.
What had followed had been agonizing. But she hoped she’d maintained a semblance of indifference all through.
One thing held her together now as she walked away from Raiden. Knowing that he’d heed her warning and leave her alone. She’d never see or hear from him again. Or if she did, he’d pretend she was the total stranger he’d just met tonight.
Not that he didn’t hate it. She’d felt him seething to obey the urge to do her major damage, equivalent to what he considered she’d caused him. She could feel his gaze on her all the way to the mansion’s entrance, bombarding her with his pent-up rage and contempt.
By the time she reached one of Hiro’s limos, she’d expended the last of her balance. After forcing her rented apartment’s address in Shibuya out of unsteady lips to the unknown driver, she flopped back in her seat, her nerves in pieces, her muscles like trembling jelly.
Exhaling forcibly to expel her agitation, she tried to luxuriate in the sights of Tokyo at night. The city was one of the most exotic and exciting places she’d ever been, and her life had taken her almost everywhere.
She soon gave up, resigned she’d see nothing during the hour’s drive but Raiden’s magnificent, wrathful face. Would feel nothing but regurgitated turmoil and searing memories.
Had it really been five years? The insane whirlpool of events as she’d reinvented herself since made her feel as if it had been fifty years. But his memory was so intense, it could have been five days since she’d last seen him. She hadn’t forgotten a thing about him. His beauty was as indescribable as she remembered, and his effect on her was as overpowering.
When