“What happened when you were fifteen?”
“I started flunking out of school. Smoking weed. Doing bad things with boys.” Her words were mocking. “Mei was aware I loved her mom. So I was told I couldn’t see her unless I shaped up.”
“You didn’t. Shape up, that is.”
“I couldn’t,” she said, the words torn from her. “I couldn’t do anything right to please her. I couldn’t change.”
Something dark moved across his face. “I would have intervened with Kati if she were smoking weed or cutting class at fifteen. But Mei shouldn’t have kept you from someone you love. That’s cruel and excessive punishment.”
She leaned into his criticism of her mother as if she could absorb it. “My grandma—Hana—she didn’t like it. She tried to sneakily visit me at school, send me presents and cards.” Akira’s smile was tinged with triumph. “The day I turned eighteen, I came here and used the trust fund my paternal grandfather left me to fly her to Paris. We spent a whole month there.” Her smile faded. “She died a year later.”
Her chest filled with pressure, and she realized, with a vague sense of horror, her eyes were stinging. What was it about this man that brought out emotions she thought were safely locked away?
Don’t look at him.
Her body wasn’t hers to control around him. She found his gaze resting on her, those green eyes holding so much compassion she wanted to scream. Panic unfurled inside her, bringing with it deep fear. She shuffled the papers spread out on her desk. “It’s, uh…late…”
“Akira. It’s okay,” he said gently. “You can miss her.”
No. No, she couldn’t, because that would be a weakness. Weakness was a tool, used to manipulate and control.
“I have to go. I have to.”
She expected him to push. But Jacob rarely did anything she expected. He immediately got to his feet and grabbed his jacket. “I’ll walk you to your car.” His tone brooked no argument.
Not like she would have argued. The street was generally safe, with a coffee shop open late up the street. It was surprisingly comforting, however, to be walked the short distance to the small parking lot on the side of the building, her giant escort watching and waiting to make sure she drove away without incident.
Don’t get used to it. This is starting to get a little too cozy, and you know what you need to do.
Too bad what she needed to do and what she wanted to do were such polar opposite things.
She stood and gathered her belongings, accepting the box from him on the way out. That was another thing—he didn’t mock her for lugging the thing to and fro from home, hadn’t even raised an eyebrow over her weird quirk, making it into her security blanket.
She had lost it for so many years. She didn’t want it out of her sight. The only person she could even contemplate handling it was Jacob.
That said something. Something she didn’t want to examine too closely.
Conflicted, she walked past him silently, and they made their way downstairs to the side entrance. Jacob’s long strides brought him there a second before her, and he opened it, nodding at her.
She took three steps out of the door. And came to a screeching halt, multiple flashes of light going off in her eyes.
“Akira, is it true about Chloe Benton’s pregnancy rumors—”
“Ms. Mori, are you excited for your new brother—?”
“Akira, is a reunion in the works—?”
Blinded and disoriented, Akira turned in a half-circle, before a strong hand latched on to her arm and yanked her backward. The door shut, and she was back inside the blessed quiet and peace of the warm hallway of her building.
“What,” Jacob said slowly, staring at the door, “the fuck was that?”
She had to take a second to calm her heartbeat before she could speak. “That’s what my dear father has saddled me with.”
She yanked out her phone and pulled up the browser, muttering, “No wonder his producer was calling me.”
“I don’t understand.”
She only had to load TMZ’s homepage to confirm her suspicions. She hissed out a curse. “My dearest stepmother’s doctor’s office leaked the news about her pregnancy.”
