Chapter 4 （Not） A Date #2
Reiko bit her peach-painted lip. The woman in the mirror was an idiot. She ought to be planting roots on her sofa until her phone rang with the request of an interview, not dolling herself up for a date.
It’s not a date.
She raked her eyes over the modest, wide-leg pants she’d snagged a year prior on sale and rarely wore.
They were much nicer than anything she usually had occasion for.
She actually felt good in them. And they paired well with the faux-silk blouse that was just loose enough without looking like a bag on her.
The pants covered her ankles, but as long as she wore something with a slight heel, she wouldn’t step on them.
The blouse was three-quarter sleeved with a higher collar, and while everything cinched in at her waist when she belted it together, she thought the outfit made a good impression.
It would probably be better off saved for job interviews.
Reiko blew out a breath. Why was she making an effort to pull herself together to see Santino Guerra?
She didn’t owe the man anything. He was bound to lose interest in her the moment he realized she wasn’t mysterious or alluring—she was just boring and abandonable. A fact her life had proven repeatedly.
His voice whispered, again, through her mind and her foolish heart beat faster. “By the end of today, you will know one thing. You have me.”
She knew better. She did. But if she couldn’t chase him away with words over the phone, then she would have to show him the cold, dreary reality.
It might do her some good to look it straight-on, too.
She was not the heroine whose life tumbled upside down only to fall into the arms of a future better than she might have imagined for herself.
She was one of those whose stories added to the majority, one whose story contributed to what made the exceptions so exceptional.
Reiko closed her eyes and smoothed her hands down the sides of her clothes. “I can do this.” It’s not a date.
Patterned knocking carried through the apartment as if in challenge to the thought.
Her eyes popped open. She was out of time to pull herself together, then. There was certainly no one else who would be at her door.
Reiko turned away from the long mirror and hurried to grab her mid-size purse and her phone from the table.
She had no new messages or emails. A small bubble of disappointment fizzled inside her.
Every second that passed without at least a lead on a new job felt like it dropped the proverbial blade closer to her throat.
She ought to have been pounding on doors and shoving résumés into people’s faces, not heading out on a social …
something. A social something that was not a date.
She tucked the phone into her purse, unlatched the door, and pulled it open as the knocking resumed. And her breath lodged awkwardly in her throat, suddenly solid and heavy like a stone.
Guerra had been nicely dressed every time she’d seen him.
She couldn’t even imagine him owning a pair of jeans with intentional holes, let alone something so worn down the holes developed naturally.
But the sight he presented in the late morning sun, black sunglasses perched on his head, was unnatural.
He wore black slacks over polished black shoes, and tucked into the pants was a button-up dress shirt some mystical shade of lilac-blue.
The top three buttons were undone, leaving his entire corded throat and the uppermost part of his broad, strong chest visible to every greedy eye.
He’d pushed the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows—pushed, not rolled—and a surely ungodly expensive watch gleamed on his wrist. The look was simple.
He could easily have come straight from the office. He probably had, in fact.
He might also have teleported straight from a photoshoot for the latest cover of GQ.
The breathtaking asshole smiled widely and his blue eyes seemed to gleam in the sunlight. He made no secret of raking his gaze over her—though she hadn’t been subtle in her perusal, either. “It’s a little hard to breathe around you, you know?”
Reiko blinked. “Pardon?”
Guerra leaned closer and tilted his head, his chest expanding as if he were breathing her in. His eyes never left hers. “You’re just so damn beautiful,” he said, the words somehow both soft and rough at once.
Reiko opened her mouth to respond, but she had no idea what to say.
Was he crazy? Was he deliberately trying to see how far he could push her?
He took a step back and to the side, motioning her outside. “Shall we get going, then?”
She swallowed hard, the most unfamiliar type of apprehension building inside her.
It wasn’t as scary or crushing as she was used to.
It felt … brighter. Still overwhelming, but not in a way that had her retreating.
She didn’t know what to make of the weird sensation, or of her general odd reactions to Guerra, so she decided to let it all guide her. Cautiously.
“Where, exactly, are you taking me?” she asked once she’d locked her door and taken an intentional step toward him.
His smile warmed and Guerra turned, hooking his arm around her as he moved.
The action pulled her into motion with him, simultaneously locking her at his side.
“Anywhere. Everywhere. You have my undivided attention today, beautiful Reiko. If there’s a shop you’ve been fantasizing about walking through, I’ll take you there.
” He angled them toward an idling Rolls-Royce, where an unfamiliar, middle-aged man with too much gray in his hair stood waiting.
“I have to be in a room with a handful of interest-minded, stuffed-up suits in about twenty-five hours,” Guerra continued.
He brought them to a stop parallel with the bumper of the shiny Rolls and moved into her view, lightly curling a finger beneath her chin as if to make sure she didn’t look away.
“You have me all to yourself until then.”
He made that sound far too dirty.
Reiko struggled against the urge to lick her lips.
Was it her? Was there something wrong with her that she kept hearing innuendos in everything he said?
It wasn’t like she could remember the last time she’d orgasmed, but that did not make these near-hallucinations okay.
She pulled in a slow breath. “I don’t know how to respond to that.
” It was the most honest thing she could offer.
His eyes crinkled in the corners. “You’re really not used to being the center of attention, are you?”
Something in her chest pinched. Her mother’s distant sobbing played through her mind, the memory well-worn and faded like an old record. Her father’s disgusted, angered tone followed, his words somehow stronger despite that that memory was just as old.
“Do you have any idea what people are saying? How badly you’ve embarrassed the family with your stunt? I can’t even stand to look at you!”
Reiko swallowed and visualized throwing the door shut on a vault. Locking it tight. Sometimes that helped silence the hatred she’d internalized, for a little while.
Aloud, though softly, she said, “Not in a good way.”
The amusement drained from Guerra’s face and his smile thinned.
“I’m still very eager to hear about all of that.
” His lips lifted almost in tandem with her spike of anxiety and he added, “Until then, why don’t you let me show you the good way?
” He trailed his light touch up from her chin, brushing in reverse up the curve of her cheek until he was cupping the entire side of her face in his palm.
“I respect that trust is a thing a man must earn, and I’m willing to earn yours, Reiko.
Just give me today. Give me this one day, and you’ll see. ”
Her heart jumped as if she’d brushed against a live wire even as her mind finished the words he’d just spoken with the words he’d said to her on the phone barely an hour earlier.
“You have me.”
It was insane. It made no sense. She was no one, she had nothing to offer … but she could give him the day. She supposed, in a strange way, he’d already earned that much. So, she nodded, and did her best to exhale the tension from her muscles. “Okay.”
Guerra stroked his thumb over her skin before withdrawing his hand and sweeping his arm toward the Rolls.
“Great! I thought we could do something easy before lunch, give ourselves a chance to relax into each other’s company.
Maybe take a stroll through the zoo, or the botanical garden?
Something like that. What did you think? ”
Reiko paused, not sure if she was supposed to acknowledge the other man who’d quietly pulled open the door while Guerra spoke, and once again felt as though she were scrambling to keep up.
It seemed to be a talent of his. She gave herself a shake.
“Ah, the zoo is fine?” She tried not to wince at the audible uncertainty in her response and hurried to soften it somehow. “I haven’t been there in years.”
Granted, it had been much longer since she’d last been to the garden.
Her mother had loved the Missouri Botanical Garden and often taken Reiko and Hiroto there when they were young.
It had been one of the few places Reiko’s father had considered acceptable.
Reiko had gone on her own only once since her mother’s passing, as she couldn’t see the garden without thinking of her mother, and the painful family memories that followed.
She didn’t have that problem with the zoo—her father had hated it and refused to take them. She’d gone once in her college years and that hadn’t been the greatest experience. The experience hadn’t had anything to do with the animals or the business, though.
Guerra arched a brow at her. “You sure? We could do something different if you’d rather. They were just suggestions.”
His calm response settled her somehow, and Reiko finally ducked into the car. The action delayed her answer. She had severely underestimated how luxurious the inside of a Rolls-Royce was. Or, rather, how it actually felt.
Her little decade-old Hyundai would never compare.
Reiko forcibly dismissed the immediately depressing thought, letting her fingers stroke appreciatively over the leather seats, and finally looked again in Guerra’s direction.
“The zoo is fine. I honestly don’t remember it much.
I went there on a date with my college boyfriend in my penguin phase and he apparently thought it would be polite to dump me in front of the exhibit I was so eager to see.
Like a comfort.” Heat rushed over her as she told the story she hadn’t meant to tell and she once more averted her gaze.
She did have a vaguely disassociated memory of standing there, gasping for breath and humiliated, in front of the penguin enclosure that night.
Surrounded by strangers shooting her a mix of annoyed and sympathetic looks.
She hadn’t been able to bring herself to look back at the birds, for fear of them becoming tainted by the pain.
Guerra grunted as the door beside him closed.
“Well, he was an asshole.” He reached over and tipped up her chin again, his touch a little stronger—a little warmer—than before.
“Fortunately for me, he was also a Grade-A moron.” His thumb stretched up, rubbing just beneath her lip.
“Don’t worry, beautiful. I won’t be abandoning you. Period.”
He couldn’t have understood the way those words would stab straight through her, striking her fragile emotional core as if she had no guard to speak of. But he couldn’t have missed the way she gasped, and since he was staring, he likely didn’t miss the rush of tears she barely held back, either.
His brow furrowed. “Reiko—”
She reached up and pulled his hand from her face, but didn’t let go outright.
“My past is a soap opera,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry. I try to be strong. I just— Abandonment is a sensitive topic for me.
If you really plan to stick around, you’ll learn that.
” She mostly spoke to the back of his hand, yet it took until her words were hanging between them before her brain processed that she was still holding on to his hand at all.
Let alone what she was seeing. She opened her mouth again.
He curled his fingers around hers. “I plan to learn everything, Reiko,” he said, his voice as firm as she’d ever heard it. “Even the shit you don’t like to talk about. The shit that hurts. I want to carry that weight with you—for you—when you’re ready to let me.”
She blinked, raising her eyes to his. “You’re hurt.”
He blinked back. His gaze dropped to their clasped hands and his grin returned. “Got a little carried away earlier.” He gave her hand a squeeze. “Nothing to worry about, beautiful.”
She eyed the simple bandage that partially obscured his knuckles.
She couldn’t feel any weakness or shaking in his grip and certainly didn’t see any signs of infection around the treatment, so she supposed he was probably right.
And it likely wasn’t her place to worry, anyway.
Somehow, though, the sight of that recently banged-up hand holding tightly to hers in conjunction with the sound of his words bouncing in her head made the moment feel … heavier.
It felt real.
That should have been crazy, yet instead, she found it was … exciting.