“The news of your pregnancy all over the newspapers and the internet.”
* * *
It had been two hours since Hiro had left. She was still sitting where he’d left her. All she’d done since had been reaching for her tablet to check the tabloids.
And it was all there, complete with a thorough photo documentation of all of her appearances with Raiden. The feverishly gossipy articles dissected their torrid affair, and ended with the speculation she’d been having about the possibilities in their future, just in outlandish versions. One article hypothesized that Raiden would convert to a religion that would legally allow him to practice bigamy.
All in all, it was an unqualified disaster.
And its shock waves must have reached Raiden by now.
In fact, it must have reached him long before now. So why hadn’t he contacted her? She had to see him at once to figure—
“Scarlett.”
Raiden. Here. As if she’d summoned him.
She turned her head so suddenly, the world spun again and she slumped back on the couch. He rushed from the wide-open door and swooped down on her, looking exactly as she imagined herself to look. Harassed, unsteady and nauseous.
Not that he could be physically nauseous as she was, but he must be sick to his stomach with the developments.
Before she could say anything, apologize for the trouble this would cause him, he caught her head in both his large hands, hitting her like his namesake with an enervating bolt of craving. He claimed her lips in a devouring kiss that mimicked his latest overriding possession.
She’d become a puddle of longing by the time he pulled back to sear her in the roiling emotions radiating from his gaze and every pore of his body. Then he spoke, and every supporting impulse in her body gave way.
Catching her in a fierce embrace, he repeated what he’d just said, every word expanding inside her until she felt she’d burst with the enormity of it all.
“I love you, Scarlett. I’ve always loved you, and I will love you to the day I die.”
He’d said it again and again before she could at last vent a measure of her shock. “Oh, God, Raiden...you do?”
“What did you think our magical five months were about? And the five years I didn’t even think of having another woman? And the past miraculous eight weeks, with their heaven-sent outcome?”
“I—I didn’t think, I just loved you, just wanted to love you...and loved every second with you.”
“You didn’t know I loved you in the past? You didn’t feel me working up to ask you to be with me forever?”
“I—I thought you loved Hannah, who didn’t exist.”
He ran his fingers through her hair, his eyes a blaze of sincerity. “I only ever saw you, whatever name you used or whatever facade you wore. You admitted that you were always yourself with me, and I already told you it was you I felt, you I wanted. But I never confessed completely. Now I am confessing. I will never again hide an iota of what I feel for you. I love you. I worship every breath you take. You’re everything to me, my darling, everything. You and our miracle child.”
She closed her eyes, wanting to trap that image of him as he looked at her with his whole being, the tremor of truth vibrating through all of him, as he confessed his equal and total involvement.
Then she opened her eyes and she felt as if she’d been born again. Born to a world where she didn’t have to be alone, but had the love of the only person she’d ever loved with everything in her, with all of her past and future, her strengths and scars.
“Now I want you to do something for me,” he said. “Without questions.”
She grabbed his hands, her heart ricoc
heting in her chest with alarm at the darkness that tinged his face and voice. “You know I’d do anything for you.”
“I want you to leave Japan. Today. I want you to pack your essentials and go back to the States. I’ll pack everything else for you once you give me an address to send it to.”
She gaped at him, her mind shutting down, unable to reconcile the purity of his heartfelt confession with his sudden demand for her to leave.
Had he just confessed his love only to tell her he could no longer afford to have her near? She’d always thought his desire for his family name and heritage was the most important thing to him, that she’d end up losing him sooner rather than later. But after he’d told her she was everything to him, and she believed he meant it, what could his abrupt demand mean?
“Do you trust me?” His clipped question cut through her chaos.