Putting in his time. Another prison reference, he couldn’t help but notice. Funny and somewhat disturbing how he’d been referring to his life that way lately.
“You can no go. Osaka Charm girls only tonight,” a nearby voice was saying in broken English.
“Yes, I know I’m not on the list, but listen, I am an Osaka Charm girl, okay?” an American accented voice replied. “Doug Tucker invited me. I just need to get inside for a second and find him. Then he’ll come back out here and vouch for me, okay?”
No’s head tilted at the scene before him: a young black woman in a denim sundress pleading with the short but stocky security guard standing outside the club’s large metal door.
She wasn’t beautiful. At least not in the traditional sense. Her dress was cheap, her shoes mere sandals, and as for her nose…nearly every woman in his circle who’d had one even half as wide growing up, no longer did after the age of eighteen, which was when most plastic surgeons deemed it safe to operate.
But he couldn’t say she wasn’t mesmerizing. The woman had huge brown eyes, and under her cheap dress, rich and bountiful curves. And her hair…
No didn’t bother to keep up with most trends in Japan, but even he couldn’t help but be impressed by the lush thickness of her hair. It wasn’t so much a uniform afro as a shoulder-to-shoulder riot of black curls.
He was old school Japanese. Like his forefathers, he rarely touched women outside the bedroom, and especially not in public. Yet he found himself wanting to touch this woman’s curls. Wanting to touch her, with a need so sudden, the piercing ache took him by surprise.
“I am sorry. You are not on—” the guard was telling her in more broken English. Only to stop talking as soon as he saw No.
“Oh! So sorry. Sorry!” the guard said, profusely apologizing to Norio Nakamura in Japanese, and bowing again and again as he undid the velvet rope.
“Let her in,” No commanded him, also in Japanese.
“Yes, of course,” the guard answered, bowing toward Carina. “She is your guest.”
“Not her. The American girl in the blue dress. Let her in, too.”
“Ooh, a black girl,” Carina said in Japanese, her blue eyes brightening with understanding. “We’ve never brought one of those home before. Nice palette cleanser!”
Carina then showed herself not to be nearly as reserved as her Japanese counterparts. With a sly smile, she took the young black woman by the hand and said, “Come with us, hon,” as she pulled her into the dim, neon-lined hallway of the club.
The music was already thumping loudly as they walked down the hallway, thanks to the famous French DJ Nakamura Worldwide had flown in specifically for the event. A major expense, along with renting out one of Osaka’s most popular night clubs on a Friday night—also not cheap. Fortunately, Nakamura was one of the largest car and electronics manufacturers in the world, so they could easily afford it.
“What’s your rate, love?” Carina asked the American girl, yelling over the music.
“Um…” the girl answered.
Her eyes darted to No, back to Carina…and then she carefully withdrew her hand from the Australian’s grasp.
“That question is very flattering. Seriously, so flattering. But I really have to go find my—ah, Doug. He’s the one who invited me here, so…bye.”
“But—” Carina started, but the other woman darted into the belly of the warehouse Void used to be before it was converted into a trendy nightclub. And she was gone before Carina had the chance to explain how much more lucrative time spent with Norio Nakamura would be than with a measly team player. Carina barely had time to shout out, “Wait, we have seats in VIP! You could join us!” before the young woman had vanished.
However, the American girl’s hair made her easy to locate, once he and Carina settled into Void’s VIP area, a collection of black leather couches and small circular tables on the landing that overlooked the entire club.
“Go get her,” No instructed Carina, tipping his chin toward the woman weaving through the crowd
“It’s our last night together, Mr. Nakamura,” Carina whined in English. “And she’s obviously here for the baseball players.”
Obviously.
From his position, he watched the young woman wade through the crowd toward a black baseball player.
Doug Tucker. The one she’d come to see.
The American baseball player was dancing with a tall redhead in a body con dress. No other black girls had been invited to this party that No could see. However, upon seeing the girl in the denim dress, Tucker swept her up in his arms and began swaying side to side with her to the beat of the electronic music.
Indignation flooded No’s brain as he watched the two move together. Foreign women could be like that, he’d found. Going for the star athlete instead of the business man, letting fame outweigh the possibilities of what the right Japanese boyfriend could do for you.
But Tucker, he noted with annoyance, wasn’t even one of the team’s top players. A thirty-five-year-old who’d seen better days playing with the Seattle
Fishers—his father’s favorite American team. Had it not been for Tucker’s connection with the Fishers, he would never have been hired twelve years ago. As it was, he most likely wouldn’t have his contract renewed for the next season. So by choosing Tucker over him, the black woman showed very poor judgement indeed.
Nonetheless…
“Explain who I am so she fully understands,” he told Carina. “Then invite her to join us tonight.”
Carina didn’t look happy about his edict. But ever the consummate professional—one who was getting paid a small fortune to make his every fantasy come true—she deferred with a nod. “
A nod he barely acknowledged before returning his gaze to the scene below. No’s anger flared again as he continued to watch the woman with Tucker. Something inside him had determined she was already his. Not just for tonight, but quite possibly for the next six months if his body continued to respond to her as it was now.
However, she was currently tugging on Tucker’s arm. Perhaps trying to pull him toward one of the back rooms Osaka Charm would have designated for assignations during this event.
But Tucker shook his head and returned to the redhead, as if she could even compare with the girl who wanted him to come with her.
“I would like for you to go now please,” he said to Carina who still hadn’t moved from her position beside him. He needed her to get there before the American player could be persuaded to leave with the woman, and No lost his chance.
Carina went. But almost as soon as she left, someone said,
“Hayato, your brother must be distracted. Otherwise he would not show us such disrespect.”
No turned to see his brother and father standing there with Osaka Charm girls at their sides. Hayato had a Japanese girl beside him, most likely hired just for tonight, since his brother didn’t keep mistresses. However, his father also had a girl No had never met with him. Chinese, No guessed, because they always were. And this one looked even younger than Carina. An interesting choice of mistress for a man who’d so easily dumped his first wife to marry someone Norio’s grandfather had deemed more appropriate.
Kazuo’s first wife didn’t take the divorce request well. And her suicide created a further stain on their family’s story. More death had followed after that. His grandfather succumbed to cancer a decade ago, and Norio’s mother had met an untimely death when No and his younger brother were in their early twenties. And now, it seemed to No, the older his father became, the harder he chased after a past that could never be recovered.
No gave both his father and brother bows, one much deeper than the other. All while trying to keep his eyes from straying back down to the dance floor.
“I would like for us to sit,” his father said with a bow of his own and an extended hand. A command disguised as an invitation.
No sat, again doing all he could not to look at the main floor below. A western gi
rl, his father would understand. No had attended grad school in the States after all and Western girlfriends had long been considered trendy among the elite Japanese. But a Western black girl would be hard to explain, especially after what happened with No’s disavowed hafu older brother.
There were, No was aware, some fathers in the world who could talk with their sons about such things. For example, his former friend Go had once taken him home to celebrate the American holiday of Thanksgiving with his family in Indiana. No had been struck by how Go’s father had listened carefully to his son’s excited chatter about the side projects he and No had been working on. Not really understanding, but asking questions anyway, because he honestly seemed to want to know more about Go’s day-to-day life in the Carnegie Mellon Robotics program. Because he honestly cared about his younger son, no matter how strange Go might come off to everyone else.
No had found the entire conversation fascinating, especially because it was not one he would have dared to have with his father, who had never understood the concept of hobby projects. How will this benefit Nakamara Worldwide?—that would have been Kazuo’s first question. Have you made this American sign over his rights to the work?—his second. Then he would have commanded No to discontinue any extra research projects altogether unless they could be shown to profit the company.
As for his friendship with Go, the other students in their program nicknamed them Go and No for their similar interests and the amount of time they spent together, hyper-focused on those interests. But nickname and interests aside, the truth was they couldn’t have been further apart.
Go had been born into a humble Hispanic family, while No had come to Carnegie Mellon with both a driver and personal assistant on payroll. Also, No and his father didn’t have the same kind of relationship Go and his father shared. More like the exact opposite, with No withholding as much information as possible from his father to ensure Kazuo would never have reason to think him anything less than a fellow Nakamura hawk.
But shortly after Hayato, Kazuo, and he settled onto one of the VIP area’s couches, his past and present collided.
“Our enemy in the States has suffered another setback,” Kazuo informed his two sons. Looking directly at No, he said, “I believe we should initiate talks with his parent company. Ask them to sell to RoTeku while his stock prices are low. We’ll end up paying less than our initial offer, and in this way will his lesson be learned.”
No worked very carefully to keep his face neutral at the thought of attempting to take over GoBotics while its CEO was down. As far as his father was concerned, his son Norio had zero feelings one way or the other about Kazuo’s decision to destroy No’s former project partner after he refused RoTeku’s offer to buy his company. Nor did Kazuo suspect that what happened earlier in the year had been eating Norio up inside. His former best friend had been shot by a madwoman because of Kazuo’s behind-the-scenes machinations…
No had abandoned their friendship. Cut all communication as soon as Kazuo announced RoTeku would be putting in a bid for Go’s fledgling robotics company. It was his way of letting Go know that as illuminating as their grad school project partnership had been, he was first and foremost a Nakamura and he could never let a friendship come between his family’s company and their business interest. At least he thought he’d let go of the strange American with whom he’d shared a surprising rapport. Filed him away along with the projects they’d worked on together.
But what happened to Go earlier that year…it kept No up at night.
And on more than one occasion he’d shown up at the Umeda flat, the one he kept for mistresses, at three in the morning, choosing sex for lack of anything else to distract him from the insomnia that had been dogging him as of late. That was probably one of the reasons Carina was under the illusion that tonight might cement their status as a couple rather than end it.
Carina…
She had surely made it downstairs by now. How was the girl in the blue dress receiving his invitation? Do not look down. Whatever you do, do not look, No told himself. Instead, he forced himself to focus on the conversation with his father and brother.
“May I request time on your calendars this week?” No asked them. “I can come up to Tokyo, and I would like to discuss reintroducing the driverless car initiative to the board.”
Hayato, considered No’s proposal with a thoughtful nod. “This might be a better use of our time where robotics are concerned.”
But his father harrumphed. “If we acquire our enemy’s company, we could use his emotion software to make our cars display a range of emotions. This would make us more appealing to our younger market.”
He could barely hear his father words over the raging compulsion to look down. See if Carina had found their target. Do not look. Do not look, he repeated to himself as he opened his mouth to respond to his father.
But then he had to look, because shouts rang out from below.
“Who do you think you are, man!? Huh?!?! Touching her like that!?” Doug Tucker was drunkenly yelling at a Dominican player.
No fighting was one of the Nakamura Hawks staunchest rules, yet No predicted what would happen even before Tucker took the swing. The typical algorithm of American stupidity and machismo combined with too much alcohol after a season of mandated abstinence.
He watched Carina pull the girl back from the melee as a large brawl broke out.
And unfortunately, he never got his wish to “interview” the girl that night with Carina acting as hostess. His personal security detail quickly escorted him out of the club in one direction, while his father and brother went in the other. There were too many people at the event, some who might have snuck in phones with cameras. Better for them to be as far from the club as possible than pictured on tomorrow’s news.
A call put in to Osaka Charm by his second assistant had been even less fruitful. “Yes, we have several girls we can send to Nakamura-sama,” they’d told Miyuki. “Can you describe the one he saw that night?”
Miyuki had, and apparently the woman from Osaka Charm had been confused. “They say they have no girls on their roster with big hair,” she’d told No. “Maybe you mean long hair? Or perhaps she was wearing a wig?”
Hai, perhaps…
“They have promised to send over all the black American girls they have for a special request interview,” Miyuki told him with an apologetic bow. “Did you wish for one night with this girl or would you prefer another long-term assignment?”
And that was how he ended up putting in a special request for a six-month mistress of a different sort.
He’d felt like a rather strangely cast Prince Charming as he interviewed every single black woman from Osaka Charm. His hopes rising every time the door opened, only to be let down when a woman with little difference, save skin color, from the ones he’d dated in the past, entered his office.
One more. Just one more remained. One so unsuitable that his first assistant, Riyu, had proposed sending her away without being seen.
But as it turned out, the very last woman was exactly who he’d been looking for. His Cinderella. He realized this as soon as the girl from the club walked into his office, naked and nervous. And every bit as arresting as he’d found her that night.
He watched her take in his space. His windows, his office furniture, and then finally…
Her eyes landed on him.
“It’s you!” she gasped, recognition flaring.
Chapter Three
Lilli couldn’t believe it. The man sitting behind the desk was the one from the club. She still remembered him clearly from that night. So tall and lean and almost regally handsome. His nearly black eyes had seemed as cold and disinterested as a hawk’s, even as he closely watched the interplay between Lilli and the blond Australian.
Not his girlfriend, per se, but another Osaka Charm escort it would seem. Maybe he had a thing for blonds? She couldn’t help but wonder after recalling the selection of other candidates in the waiting room. Ma
ybe the agency had made a mistake in sending her over…?
But instead of immediately dismissing her, the enigmatic man answered, “Yes, it’s me.” Then, “Who did you think it would be?”
“Um, your father,” she admitted with a grimace. “I mean, the agency made it seem like this would be a job. Like, a serious job.”
“You do not think this is a serious job?” His eyes darkened. “You would have preferred my father?”
“No! Oh, God, no! I was so trying to figure out how I was going to do this with him if I got hired,” she answered frankly, before recalling that frankness was not necessarily appreciated in situations like this.
During her time in Japan, she’d found that the Japanese took their familial relationships way more seriously than Americans. She knew enough to realize this guy probably wouldn’t appreciate her insulting his father…as he interviewed her naked self.
“I mean, it’s just that you’re so young and handsome, and…”
She trailed off, another too-late voice reminding her the Japanese, unlike Americans, didn’t necessarily value beauty over age. Here, in a country with so many beautiful people, it often seemed to her as a Westerner looking in, that the power and money that came with age tended to trump good looks as far as the desirability scale was concerned.
But this guy…
As embarrassed as she felt standing there naked in front of him, she couldn’t stop looking at him. Couldn’t stop from admitting, “I wasn’t expecting you. It’s kind of a pleasant surprise.”
God, could this situation be any more excruciating? And the way he was looking at her… studying her body so closely, she wondered if he was so displeased with her heavy breasts, wide hips, and—insert shudder here—unshaven vagina that he couldn’t even be bothered to interview her.
But he was the one with all the power, and she was the one asking that he do her the favor of picking her to fuck for the next six months. So she tried again, “My name is Ana. Ana Granger. It’s very nice to meet you.”
His Revenge Baby: 50 Loving States, Washington Page 2
