Mergers & Matrimony

by Leigh, Allison

  A faint smile grew around the corners of Mori’s lips. “Who wishes to turn out a light now?”

  She dragged his sweater up and off his head next. He had the most extraordinarily well-defined body she’d ever seen. Probably earned from activities like climbing that very mountain. Looking at him was almost as mind-boggling as touching him, she’d realized. “You have only yourself to blame.”

  His smile widened. “I will accept the responsibility.”

  “Such honor.” She pushed him back until they met the very rustic and very substantial table that sat in the middle of the room. The warmth of his knuckles brushing against the button at her waist maddened her.

  “This is the honor,” he murmured. His hand drifted upward, sliding against the tiny center clasp of her bra. She moistened her lips, anticipation making her want to squirm. But he didn’t unfasten it as his unreasonably light touch grazed over her breast, circling her nipple, which tightened even more for him. “Touching you.”

  A knot grew in her throat again. She wanted to tear off the rest of his clothes, to ravage him as thoroughly as his gentle, skimming touch ravaged her. “Touch more.” Her plea was husky but she was too filled with need to care that she’d begged.

  “Anything in particular?”

  Her head felt heavy. She pressed her forehead against the satiny skin that hugged his broad shoulder and slid her hands from his waist, down his hips. “Everything,” she sighed. “Oh, Mori. Everything. And hurry.”

  His breath drew in on a chuckle that was as much hiss as humor. “Impatient American.” He reached between them, and her bra separated. She wanted to cry with delight when her bare flesh finally met his hard chest.

  “That would be me,” she agreed, smiling against him.

  But it wasn’t long before smiles turned to sighs and laughter turned to longing that could no longer be denied. She dragged at his jeans. He dragged at hers. The tabletop was cool, but the table legs were sturdy and Helen didn’t care if she was shocking Mori or not. Because he was inside her again, and pleasure blasted through them both.

  And Helen knew, once again, that her life would never again be the same.

  By the time they finally started the meal, it was well past breakfast time. So she sat at the table she felt increasingly fond of and watched him fix their lunch, instead.

  He’d never bothered to shut the door they’d left open and a cool breeze occasionally blew through. She propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands as she watched him.

  Morito Taka.

  Barefoot.

  He had very sexy feet, she decided lazily.

  Fact was, he was very sexy from those feet all the way up to the top of his closely cut black hair.

  He glanced at her occasionally as he chopped fresh vegetables and deftly filleted a salmon, all of which, he’d told her, had been delivered from the village while they’d been communing with nature. “What are you smiling at? I told you once that I enjoy the kitchen, did I not?”

  “Well—” her lips curved “—at the time you told me that, I thought you were referring to cooking.”

  His grin widened.

  “You just look good, that’s all,” she finished. “So I’m smiling.”

  His gaze lingered on her face for a moment. “You look good, also.”

  She certainly felt good. Hadn’t felt so good in weeks. Months.

  Years.

  “I’m happy,” she said finally.

  “I am glad.” He turned back to his preparations.

  “What would you be doing if you weren’t running TAKA?”

  He shrugged. “I would not be not running TAKA.”

  “Use your imagination.”

  He shot her an amused look over his shoulder.

  “You’ve already proven you’re quite adept at that,” she reasoned.

  He popped a slice of red pepper in his mouth and seemed to contemplate the question as he chewed. “I would garden,” he finally said.

  She could have fallen off her chair. “Garden?”

  He pointed the tip of his deadly-looking knife at the plants that grew in profusion outside the kitchen windows. “Garden. You have seen the one in my suite at the Anderson hotel.”

  “You’re the one who takes care of that jungle?”

  “Who did you think?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. The hotel, I suppose.”

  “No. I do. It is…satisfying.”

  He’d surprised her, yet again.

  “What would you be doing if not for Hanson Media?”

  “Having my hair or nails done,” she said immediately. Then, at his long look, she shrugged. “I don’t honestly know. For so long, I wanted to be a part of that side of George’s life and he refused. I can hardly remember not wanting to be doing something there, even if it meant filing press clippings.”

  “What is it you like most?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been involved in Hanson until recently. And since then I’ve been working on the merger.”

  “You like the hunt?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know that I’d put it that way.”

  He laughed softly and tossed his peppers into the wok he’d placed on the stove.

  “I think I’m not too awful at negotiations,” she finally said.

  He shook his head. “No, you are not awful at all.”

  She decided that was pretty high praise, coming from him. “Mori? How did you convince your father to back off?”

  “Why?”

  She studied the lines of his strong back as he tended the vegetables. Already the kitchen was fragrant with them and her stomach was growling so loudly, she feared he would hear. “How do you know he won’t try to stop the merger yet again? He doesn’t really want you to step down from TAKA, does he?”

  “I will see that my father is voted off the board if he does.”

  She pressed her lips together, swallowing her shock.

  Mori sighed a little and continued. “He wishes that he were still the head of that household. But he also knows his time there has passed. He struggles with that. Some day, that will be my struggle.”

  Helen couldn’t honestly see Mori behaving the way Yukio had. “I’m not sure I could be as understanding if I were in your position,” she said faintly.

  “You do not have understanding for your stepsons?” His voice was dry. “You defend them even when you wish to throttle them.”

  “They’re my family,” she murmured. “And I don’t usually wish to throttle them. Andrew, oh, he’ll make such a great father when Delia has the baby. He’ll bend over backward being exactly what his own father was not. If ever there was a playboy happy to trade it in for a woman, it’s Andrew with Delia. Not that he started out feeling quite that way. And Jack will make an incredibly fair judge one day. Samantha is just enough of a free spirit to keep him from becoming too set in his ways.”

  “And Evan? He is not married.”

  “Not yet. It’s only a matter of time, though. He and Meredith have been it for each other since they were in high school together. They’ve just needed some time to adjust to that particular fact. Evan’s had the hardest time since his father’s death. George completely cut him out of the will.” She shook her head. “He refused to see Evan’s potential. It was so wrong of him. Yet I know he was really quite proud of the way Evan never asked him for anything.”

  “What about your brother-in-law? He was not close to your husband?”

  “Remember that David is considerably younger than George was. They hardly knew each other, really. David was mostly raised by nannies. If it weren’t for Hanson Media, they would have probably been complete strangers.”

  “And then there is you. Who brings their focus together for the company.”

  “David already worked there before I came along.”

  “Do not downplay what you have done, Helen. I know the other three had nothing to do with Hanson Media until they had to.” He set a
plate of vividly colored stir-fried vegetables and flaking salmon in front of her.

  “Which they can all blame me for,” Helen said, striving for matter-of-factness and falling short. “They’d have come together without me, though, Mori. I still believe that. They’d have done what was necessary to save their heritage.”

  “So, you believe that about them when their own father told you in that letter that he did not.”

  “George shouldn’t have underestimated his family the way he did. But even he wanted them to have the company in the end, or he wouldn’t have bothered writing that letter and leaving it for me to find. He knew I was the one person who wouldn’t be able to ignore his request. He played on my feelings for him. If he truly didn’t care about any of his sons, he wouldn’t have done that.”

  She forked a piece of fish to her mouth and nearly groaned in pleasure as she ate it. “You know, if this chancy TAKA thing doesn’t work out for you,” she finally told him, “and the gardener thing falls through, you could definitely get a gig as a chef.”

  His eyes crinkled as he settled himself on the chair next to her with his own plate. “A comforting thought, indeed.”

  Helen grinned and tucked into her meal.

  After, they washed the dishes together and drove into the village to call on his mother.

  She insisted they stay the afternoon and have dinner with her.

  Mori’s father had returned to the city, she told them.

  Helen, for one, was relieved.

  Before long, additional people began arriving at the house until the living area was fairly bulging with them.

  Helen even managed to converse with some of them in Japanese, and by the time the women began setting out dishes of food on a long table that Mori and some of his cousins set up, she’d even lost her nervousness about making some faux pas.

  She was laughing over her fumbling attempts to pick up a burstingly plump shrimp with her chopsticks when she looked toward Mori, across and several seats down from her.

  He lifted his wineglass in a silent toast.

  Helen’s amusement didn’t fade, but a deeply satisfying contentment filled her.

  Yes. She was happy. And she was not going to worry about how long that happiness was going to last.

  For now, for this moment there with Mori and his amazingly boisterous and generous family, she had everything she’d ever wanted.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Back to the real world.” Helen looked through the window of Mori’s car up at the exterior of the sky-high hotel. She had no idea what sort of welcome—or un-welcome—she would receive.

  And appealing as it was to think she could hide out with Mori, their escape had not been indefinite.

  “I will go up to your room with you.”

  She turned to him and laid her hand along his jaw. She slowly kissed his lips. “Thanks, but no.” She’d already told him she would face George’s family on her own. “I don’t need you distracting me,” she added, not untruthfully.

  “Pity. We distract each other well together.”

  She smiled and kissed him once more. Inside, however, she was nowhere near as calm as she let on. “I was thinking that I might stay in Tokyo for a while. You know. After the merger. I could take a leaf out of Samantha and Jack’s book. They want to find an apartment or something a little more permanent than the hotel during the transition.”

  “Why would you want to remain in Tokyo?”

  Everything inside her stopped cold at his question.

  Why?

  Why?

  Perhaps because she’d stupidly set aside common sense, once again?

  Because she’d allowed herself to think beyond the moment, to contemplate some sort of future with both of them in it?

  Because she’d believed him when he’d told her that not everything was about the merger?

  Mori was watching her curiously, a faint line showing between his eyebrows at her protracted silence.

  She made herself shrug. “It was just a thought,” she finally said smoothly and though she wanted to pound her head against the window, she simply pushed open the car door and stepped out, grabbing her purse that she’d used for Mori’s interlude. “You’ll let me know when the meeting will be rescheduled?”

  “Hai.”

  She nodded, smiled smoothly and turned on her heel, heading straight into the hotel.

  She did not allow herself to look back.

  “She’s back.” Samantha hung up the telephone and faced the others. “That was the concierge. He said Helen went up to her room about twenty minutes ago.”

  “High time,” Jack said.

  Samantha gave him a look and he made a face. She knew he felt badly about the way things had turned out.

  “I just don’t like sitting here cooling our heels while she’s out—”

  “Living her life for a few days?” Meredith put in. Nina, David’s wife, sat beside her on the settee and she was nodding her agreement.

  “Every one of you has said you never understood what the deal was between your father and Helen,” Delia reminded. She sat in a chair, her hands folded over her very pregnant stomach. “Andrew says he thought his father always put Helen last.”

  “She could have done something about it,” Jack argued.

  Samantha went to him and slipped her arm through his. “Regardless of the dynamics of their marriage, Helen loved your dad.”

  “She sure hasn’t grieved very long,” Andrew murmured. “Going off with Taka like that.”

  Delia eyed him. “And what is the acceptable time frame for falling in love, Andrew?”

  He looked back at her. She was nearly a decade older than he was, and he’d never been happier in his life than he was with her.

  And Helen had encouraged their relationship.

  He went over and sat on the arm of the chair next to his wife and kissed the top of her head. “Point taken.”

  Meredith looked across the room at Evan, who’d been pacing like some sort of anxious jungle cat. Evan, who was the most laid-back person she’d ever met. “Someone should call her. Have her come up here. Or we should go to her suite.”

  “Doesn’t much matter where we meet,” Evan said. “Either way, we’ve got a pretty big helping of crow to choke down.”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Jack said. He looked at his brothers, who nodded in turn.

  David had picked up the letter from Judge Henry that had been sitting on the coffee table for the past few days where Jack had left it. “She was pretty smart to try and put you and Judge Henry together. When he retires next year, there’s going to be a temporary vacancy on the bench that you might well be perfect for.”

  “I’d have preferred not to have it come about through my stepmother’s manipulation,” Jack countered.

  “How is that any different than the connections your old law firm worked on? All she is doing is introducing the two of you,” Samantha defended. “It’s entirely up to you what comes out of it. The judge can’t give you his old job, after all. You’ll have to be appointed and then win an election to keep it. And you know you want to get back to the law so badly you can taste it.”

  He couldn’t deny it.

  “I think, if I’d been in her shoes,” David said, “I’d have told us all to take a flying leap. She could have sold off her shares in Hanson and still made a fortune, despite the state the company was in.”

  “Suffice it to say that we have all underestimated her,” Andrew conceded.

  “Well, I know Helen from way back,” Samantha said. “So I’m not the least surprised that she didn’t cut her losses and run. That’s not her—” she hesitated when they all heard a knock on the door “—way,” she finished.

  Evan, closest, opened the door.

  Helen wasn’t expecting to see Evan’s face when the door to Samantha and Jack’s suite was pulled open.

  His gaze drifted over her appearance with some surprise.

  “Yes,” she said evenl
y, “Even I own jeans. May I come in?”

  He jerked a little. “Sorry. Of course. You just look—”

  She lifted her eyebrows, waiting.

  “Tired,” he finally settled on. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She stepped into the room, trying not to show her nervousness when she realized that not only was Evan there, but the rest of the Hansons were, as well.

  She tugged the hem of her thin green sweater around her hips and walked to the center of the room. “I’m glad you’re all here,” she said smoothly. “It saves me from having to make a bunch of phone calls.”

  “Look, we know we owe you an apology, Helen.” Jack spoke first. “Nothing like cooling our heels for a few days to put together some realizations.”

  “I’m not here for apologies,” she assured. “Mori is going to let us know when the meeting will be rescheduled.”

  “He still wants to do the deal?” Evan rounded the couch and put his hands over Meredith’s shoulders.

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t he?”

  “He didn’t exactly give us that impression,” David told her. “Guy was pretty pissed.”

  “Made us feel like a bunch of bratty kids,” Andrew added.

  “Ones he had no interest in conducting any kind of business with,” Evan finished.

  Mori had said nothing of the kind to her. But she couldn’t let herself think about Mori or she was going to completely lose any semblance of composure. “He would not have spoken of another meeting if that were the case. But before we do have the sit-down, I’d like you all to consider something. Before, I’d figured we could deal with the matter after the merger was final—since they are decisions that can be made without TAKA approval. But I realize now there is no time like the present.”

  “Helen.” Samantha came to her side, touching her arm. “You look like you’re ready to fall over. Sit down. Please.”

  “Sam’s right. You look like hell. Just what did Taka do to you the last few days?” Andrew pulled a side chair out from the gilt-edged table and carried it over to Helen.