As soon as the words left her mouth, a spark of memory flashed in her mind.
Youko Matsunaga wore a sad frown as she gazed down at Reiko. The expression was so familiar, Reiko sometimes wondered if her mother knew any other. The words that followed were equally unsurprising. “Your father is very disappointed, Reiko.”
Reiko smoothed her hands across her lap and shoved the memory back. “I’m sorry, Mom. It looks like Father was right about me, after all.” The words hurt and her throat constricted once more as she pushed them off her tongue. But she was the only one there, and more than one of her previous therapists had told her that saying things out loud could be beneficial. Maybe she hadn’t figured out the secret trick to that yet. “Well, I have some things to do still. I’ll … be back next year.” She bent forward in a partial bow, held the position for several seconds, then straightened and pushed to her feet.
Things to do was both a truth and an exaggeration. She should, certainly, have gone to file for unemployment. She had at least managed to update her résumé and get it uploaded to a job-hunting site before she’d left to visit the cemetery, but the day had taken its toll. She had no more emotional energy to spare.
She barely had the energy to stay upright.
So, if she took a small detour on a flaring emotional impulse and wound up with a single scoop of one of her favorite localice creams, and if she took that sweet treat to a quiet bench on the edge of Lafayette Park, no one could blame her. Even on the verge of being probably more broke than she’d ever known, she was allowed one singular moment to breathe and not feel like the world was crashing down on her.
She hoped.
Reiko chased the anxious thought and twinge of annoying buyer’s regret with a bite of waffle cone. The purchase was done. She was not going to waste it by letting the delicious treat melt away. She could lecture herself for her frazzled mind and impulsivity later.
“Is this seat taken?”
The unexpected question jarred Reiko from her swirling thoughts and she blinked, absently licking caramel ice cream from her lips as she turned only to see that the man who had to been the source of the question was already claiming the open half of the bench beside her. For a split-second, she merely stared at him. Then her eyes blew wide. She wasdefinitelyhaving a strange day.
The man who’d just sat beside her was her now-former employer, Santino Guerra.
She’d never seen him in person before, only on a rare company video and in the photos she’d found online. But there was no mistaking it.
He arched a pale brow, his lips lifting in a grin as he watched her, seemingly waiting for her to speak.
Yet she couldn’t. She was overwhelmed with shock and something else, something she could feel in her blood but absolutely refused to put a name to. She’d known from his photos that Santino Guerra was handsome with his head full of sun-kissed blond hair over bright blue eyes and a strong jaw. He was broad-shouldered and neither his cleanly pressed slacks nor the possibly silver button-up shirt successfully concealedthe power in his frame. But it was his size that struck her. She remembered thinking he looked tall in some of the pictures, but sitting directly beside him as she was drove it home. Even seated, her forehead barely cleared his shoulder.
Not that five-foot-four is exactly tall … here.
“Careful, beautiful,” Guerra said, his grin expanding and shining in his eyes. “Keep staring at me like that and I might misunderstand.” His unwavering expression didn’t leave a lot of options for how he would feel about such a circumstance.
His words also finally snapped Reiko back to herself and she sucked in a breath, her shoulders drawing together in a reflexively defensive move. She wetted her mouth when she found it had gone dry and turned bodily away, bowing her head without thought. “My apologies, Mr. Guerra.” She winced at the sound of her own words. Did she really need to be so respectful?
Then again, he’d likely never known she existed before this moment. He was the owner of the company she’d spent the past several years working for, but she had been one of literally hundreds of employees. They’d never had cause to interact.
Unfamiliar male chuckling drew her out of her reflection and Reiko felt heat burn her cheeks. “Mr. Guerra, huh?” He adjusted to rest an elbow on the back of the bench between them. “Awfully formal for the first time we’ve met. Although you do seem familiar somehow.” He paused only a moment and she swore she could hear the grin lingering in his voice, though she didn’t look. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me your name?”
She bought herself a moment by popping the last bit of her waffle cone into her mouth. It was perhaps one of the boldest, rudest things she’d deliberately done in years, and it didn’t feel nearly as gratifying as she wished it had. But at least she hadn’t wasted her treat.
Reiko curled her fingers in her lap as her stalling tactic quite literally sank into her belly. She quietly licked her lips and said,“I do apologize for staring. I know you’re a busy man. Please don’t be concerned with someone as inconsequential as myself.” Without glancing his way again, she pushed back to her tired feet.
He made a sound of surprise as she stood. She had no intention of waiting for a response or looking back, feeling comfortable in the knowledge that a man as wealthy and influential as Santino Guerra would forget her by hours’ end. She made it about three steps before his voice called out to her and strong fingers curled—loosely—around her forearm. “Wait.”
She halted immediately, too stunned to turn and look.
He didn’t make her, stepping directly into her line of sight and simultaneously proving her earlier theory right in every way. The man towered over her. She had to crane her neck up to find his gaze, forcing her in the process to take in the full, impressive sight of him. He wasn’t overflowing with muscle like those men who seemed to live at the gym, but it was undeniably there. Up close, face-to-face, he was somehow more intimidating than she’d imagined.
“Your name,” Guerra said. “I insist.”
She swallowed awkwardly and found herself having to consciously remember which name to say first, as if she hadn’t introduced herself the Western way most of her life. “Reiko Matsunaga.”
He smiled, pearly white teeth and all, his eyes seeming to burn in the sunlight as he stared back at her. “Reiko,” he repeated. “Would it be inappropriate of me to take you to dinner?”
She jerked back, her head spinning. Was he mocking her? Was this some kind of joke? “Yes,” she said. When his smile seemed to lift, she hurried to clarify her meaning. “It would be terribly inappropriate. I don’t go to meals with men I’ve just met, let alone men who only this morning saw fit to upend my life without warning.” She hiked her purse higher on her shoulderand raised her chin in a pointless attempt to stand even such an untouchable man. “Have a good day, Mr. Guerra.”
Santino watched the obviously agitated, nonetheless captivating, Japanese woman stride away so swiftly her mostly loose, dark hair trailed in her wake. He’d thought his arrival had made her uncomfortable, but her reaction when he’d asked her out had made it clear that discomfort stemmed from something else. Something more personal.
Upend her life?
