He stared at them. “I can’t leave Kimi out of this.” The idea was impossible. Yet they were talking about luring him with a transfer to Chicago if that’s what it took to keep him happy?
“Why not?”
“Because I—” He broke off. Saw the satisfaction in Helen’s green gaze. “I love her,” he admitted gruffly.
Mori’s lips tightened slightly. “She will be back for the gala,” he said after a moment. “Maybe by then you will feel less unhappy about that fact before you tell her.”
“Where’s she going?”
“To stay with my parents in Nesutotaka.”
Greg sat back in his chair. “You’re kidding.” Just as quickly, he sat forward. “I’ll go after her.”
“No.” Helen spoke up. “Let her be for now, Greg. She’s going there to think in peace.” Her gaze slipped to her husband. “Like a few others have done before her. Don’t worry. She’ll return.”
“I was surprised also,” Mori admitted. “She never liked the village where I grew up. Despite the house I have there, which is more than comfortable. Some day we will travel there together.”
Greg stared at them. “You’re supposed to be furious. Tell me I’m crazy. Tell me to stay away from her.”
“Would that do any good?” Mori asked. “I saw the way you looked at her. The way you stood up for her. As my wife reminds me, some things are not for me to decide. Resolve in yourself what is to be, Greg. Your position with Taka is perfectly secure as long as you want, no matter what happens.”
“Working here is not turning out as I expected at all,” Greg muttered. Kimi had tried to tell him, but he hadn’t wanted to listen. It was so much easier sticking with the world that you knew. That you expected.
“Well,” Helen said, smiling, “nothing is ever quite as expected when it comes to our family. Now is as good a time as any to get used to it.”
But Greg had the feeling that getting used to anything about the Takas was going to take considerably longer than an afternoon or two.
By the time the night of the gala rolled around, he’d had cause to reaffirm that particular belief as the rest of the Hanson clan arrived in the form of David and Nina Hanson and their brood, which—judging by the swell of Nina’s abdomen—was going to be increasing in size pretty soon.
Then there were the other priority arrivals. The corporate suits who, along with Mori and Helen, were the backbone of getting the hospitality division off the ground. The architects. Designers. Bankers. Even a handful of celebrities.
Greg worked his way around the grand ballroom, welcoming them all to the gala. But he still couldn’t see the one person he was watching for.
“Don’t worry,” Jenny said, approaching him after he’d spoken with one of the crowned royals there that evening and watched the man and his wife move off with Mori and Helen to the dance floor that was swollen with ball gowns and tuxedos. Jenny wore a narrow black gown and a choker of diamonds, and she’d spent plenty of time on the dance floor with Richard. “Kimi will be here.”
He hated the idea of being that transparent. “Most of the guests have already arrived by now.” Still there was no sign of her dark head.
It had been nearly a week since he’d seen her. Talked to her. Touched her. A week that had felt like a bloody year. “She’s going to miss the children’s orchestra playing if she’s much later. They go on right before midnight.”
“She’ll be here,” Jenny assured again.
When Kimi was, if she was, he knew it was no guarantee that she would want to stay. Not after the gala. Not with him. Not after everything that had happened.
“I should have gone after her.”
“She needed some time, Greg. Stop worrying. Mori went to see her. Even he said she is all right.” She patted his shoulder before moving off to greet someone else she obviously knew.
Not worry? Easier said than done. Particularly when his position as general manager forced him to introduce the children’s orchestra who had taken the stage temporarily vacated by the professional orchestra that Grace had contracted.
Stepping aside when they began to play, his gaze scanned the crowd, but it was futile.
She’d changed her mind. Just as he’d expected.
The children’s orchestra played only a few songs, but it was still enough, he knew, to sway the hearts of many who were there into opening their purse strings with contributions. He supposed if there was nothing else that he’d done right, at least there was this.
Once the children were off the stage again, he headed into the crowd. There was only minutes before the New Year rang in. In Japan, the ringing was more than a phrase, as the old year was ushered out with the ringing of temple bells. One hundred and eight times to atone for the same number of humankind’s evil passions.
Maybe by the time the last gong had rung, even Greg would feel some ease.
His throat ached, and this time it had nothing whatsoever to do with the bug that had bitten him over Christmas.
He turned away from the crowded dance floor, making his way around the perimeter of the room, past the buffet tables that had been replenished several times over since the first guests had arrived hours earlier. He took the service elevator down to the lobby.
There, it was almost painfully quiet. The water in the fountain gurgled softly. The two young women manning reception smiled at him as he walked past them. “It’s midnight, Mr. Sherman. Happy New Year!”
“You, too, ladies.” He headed toward the front door, only to stop short at the sight of Johnny ushering Yukio Taka and his wife inside the building. That was surprising enough. But what stopped his heart for a moment was the sight of Kimi following behind them.
She wore a scarlet kimono-style gown. It was not exactly traditional. Nor was it quite modern, either. Her hair was a long, shining sheaf draped over her shoulder.
And she started his heart again when her dark gaze met his.
It was all he could do to properly greet her grandparents.
“I talked my grandparents into coming to the grand opening,” Kimi finally said after the proprieties had been observed. “It took somewhat longer than I expected to get here.”
“I will show you to the ballroom,” Greg offered to the couple. Thankfully, Yukio waved him off with a gesture barely shy of impatience and headed toward the elevators with his beaming wife hurrying alongside him.
“My grandmother despaired of my grandfather agreeing to be here tonight,” Kimi said as they left. “Even after all this time he resists the changes my father has brought to the family.”
“I wish you hadn’t disappeared,” he said bluntly.
Her lashes swept down. “Sumimasen. I wanted time. To think.” She made a face, thoroughly modern Kimi. “Who would have thought I would do that so well in Nesutotaka?”
“Maybe you’re more in tune with your Japanese heritage than you thought.”
She touched her gown. “Maybe.”
Johnny opened the door again for another guest and from outside, they could hear the faint, throaty peal of a distant bell.
“The bells have been ringing for a while.” He pushed his hand into his pocket to keep from reaching for her.
“Joya no Kane. My father used to take me to a temple in Tokyo to hear them.” She moistened her lips. “I have seen Charity. I arranged for her and her sister to get back to the States.”
“She won’t ever work for a Taka hotel again.”
“I know. Maybe I just felt that if I hadn’t been so focused on the way people were treating me, I might have noticed now troubled she was.”
“You’re more forgiving than I am.”
“You didn’t issue your press release about the photograph.”
“Jenny’s opinion prevailed.”
“She is smart that way.” She looked away, and a lock of her hair slid over her arm. “I have decided to go back to the U.S., too. Chicago. I’m going to start my MBA.”
The pain was swift and lasting, like a k
ick to the gut. “Good for you,” he managed. “Have you told your parents this time?”
“Yes.” Her smile was wry but painfully brief. “They are pleased.”
The elevator chimed, and several laughing couples exited, heading across the lobby floor. Again Greg could hear the bell tolling when Johnny ushered them out.
“And after that, then what?”
“If my father is smart, he will want me to work for him. If he is not so smart, I will work for others.”
He believed her. “In the States.”
“In the States. Or elsewhere.” She looked away. “I should get to the ballroom before my family decides I have deserted them entirely.”
“They all knew you would come.” He was the one who had doubted.
She had returned, though. Just not to him.
“Excuse me.” She started for the elevators. The guest elevators. He knew the move was not unintentional.
She was a Taka. She was not staff. He was.
That was not ever going to change.
Which meant, if he didn’t want to lose her, he’d have to do the changing.
“Kimi, wait. Don’t go.”
She paused, but didn’t turn. “To the ballroom?”
“To Chicago.”
She slowly looked back at him over her shoulder. There were tears in her eyes. “Do not ask me to stay at the beginning of this year if you do not intend to be with me at the end of it.”
He went to her and took her hands. “I will be with you at the end of fifty years.”
She looked up at him. “Why have you changed your mind now?”
“Because the past week has been about the most damned bleak time in my life.”
“I am sorry. Is that the only reason?”
He didn’t know why the words were still so hard to say. “I love you, all right?”
A tear slipped from the corner of her eye.
He caught it with his thumb. “I love you,” he repeated more gently.
Another tear slid free.
He cupped her nape and pressed his lips to her eyes. “I love you,” he whispered. And he realized it wasn’t difficult at all. “Don’t be sorry. Don’t be unhappy. Just tell me I haven’t lost you for good.”
“You are not worried some will think you are with me because of your career?”
“I stopped caring what anyone else but you thought when you walked away from me. Your parents were…are…something else.”
“I told you they would not care about what happens between us.”
Somewhere behind them, the elevators disgorged another group of noisy New Year’s celebrants. “They care, all right,” he assured her. “Amazingly, they don’t seem to hold it against me.”
“They, too, wish for me to be happy. Even my father convinced me of that when he came to see me in Nesutotaka.”
He realized with some surprise that his hands were shaking. He ran them down to her shoulders. “And what will make you happy, Kimiko?”
“Fifty years,” she whispered. “Or longer.”
Relief, deeper and unlike anything he had ever known, slid through his veins. He pulled her close. “You will still get your MBA. I’ll go with you to Chicago, if I have to.”
“We need not go anywhere. I can do it from here.” Her voice was muffled against the shoulder of his tuxedo.
He pulled her back, to look into her face. “You’re willing to stay in Japan?”
Kimi looked up into his eyes and saw at last everything she had ever dared to hope for. Love. Trust. A future.
With him.
“Japan or anywhere else that you are.” Finally she felt no hesitation. No uncertainty. She was a Taka.
He still looked as if he was not quite ready to believe. “And you will marry me? Have kids, argue over the remote—all of that?”
Her heart squeezed. Oh, there would be so much to share with this man. “Only if Anton Tessier can coordinate the wedding.”
He stilled, looking abruptly appalled. “If that’s what’ll make you happy.”
She laughed softly. “I am kidding.” She slid her hand behind his neck, pulling his head down to hers. “Yes, I will marry you. And all of that. And I wish to meet your mother, who will tell me what herbs to keep on hand should you become too aged and infirm for my liking.”
“I can tell you right now that isn’t likely to be a problem.” He fervently covered her mouth with his.
With her heart seeming ready to burst out of her kimono, Kimi finally dragged back her head to draw in a gasp of air. She was vaguely aware of the small, formally attired crowd they seemed to be drawing. “Mr. Sherman, we are in the middle of the hotel lobby. What will people say?”
His laughter suddenly rang through the lobby as he lifted her in a slow circle. “Let ’em talk. They’ll all be saying, ‘Look at him. He’s the luckiest man in the world.’”
She pressed her hand to his jaw. Looked into those stained-glass eyes and knew that she was the luckiest woman because this New Year was just the beginning of a lifetime of them.
“Happy New Year, Mr. Sherman. I love you.”
“Happy New Year, Ms. Taka. I love you.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-2525-5
THE BOSS’S CHRISTMAS PROPOSAL
Copyright © 2008 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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Boss's Christmas Proposal Page 20
