Sparked (city2city: Hollywood) (6 page)

“Provence, this summer. We were at a friend’s wedding.” Her best friend Marie’s sister had married the oldest son of one of the area’s largest lavender producers. The ceremony had been beautiful, the wine plentiful, and she and Marie and Kai in high spirits long past midnight. Marie had snapped the photo of Sadie and Kai in the middle of a field, the sunset at their backs, cheeks flushed from being two bottles into the celebrating.
 

“That’s your…brother?”

It wasn’t nice to want that hesitation to mean Ryan was jealous of how close she was standing to Kai in the picture, but that didn’t stop her from secretly hoping he wasn’t keen on photographic evidence of her wrapped around a handsome man. Immediately chagrined, she nodded. “Kai takes after our dad, and I’m more like Mum.” Plucking it from his hands, she returned the photo to the nightstand, shivering when her breasts brushed his chest as she leaned across him. “He hears far more ‘what are you’ questions than I do. Most people assume I’m one hundred percent Japanese.”
 

“Ah.”

She peered at him, curious, then grinned. “I’ve made you uncomfortable, haven’t I?” When his jaw clamped shut and a blush colored his cheekbones, her smile widened. She crawled into his lap, dropping the sheet as she straddled him, and ran a fingertip over one flushed cheek. “Well, then. I have arrived at a decision.”

“Oh?” His big, warm palms settled on her body, one at her hip, the other over the small of her back.
 

Sparks zinged over her skin, along every inch he touched. It seemed both wrong and right that she’d never had this reaction to anyone before. The intensity of it shook a few key places inside her, places she’d believed were unshakeable until now. “Yes. You’re coming to Christmas brunch.”
 

His thumbs traced her bottom-most ribs, easily spanning her torso and making her feel more acutely feminine than she could ever before remember being. “Please say Christmas brunch is happening here in your bed.”

A kiss would make him less likely to panic, yes? So she leaned in, lips open and gentle, teasing and coaxing. “More like at my parents’ house. In less than an hour.”

“You want me to meet your parents?” Strangely, he didn’t sound panicked, at all. He sounded…touched.
 

Damn it.
She could have kicked herself for forgetting. This was his first Christmas without his parents. It wasn’t too much a stretch of the imagination to think he might be missing his family, or to wonder if he wasn’t craving something homey and intimate, like her parents’ Christmas Day brunches always were. “I want you to meet my parents,” she confirmed softly, leaning in to kiss him, embracing the joy that inevitably enveloped her every time she did so. “But that will mean leaving the bed.”

A grin spread across his lovely face. “So long as we can come back to it when brunch is over.”

She shivered in delight, kissing him again. “Deal.”

They took turns in her shower, the stall much too small to share, but it was only a matter of minutes until both were fresh and clean, with him smelling faintly of her orange blossom body wash. He dug into his duffle and she in her closet, and then they were dressed, pulling on their winter gear and heading out the door. By cab, it didn’t take long to get from her tidy flat off Euston Road to her childhood home, a seven-bedroom house in South Kensington. She paid the driver, wished him a happy holiday, and exited the car, Ryan close on her heels. “I…feel like I should warn you.”
 

“Warn me about what?”

She paused on the sidewalk, gloveless hands shoved in the pockets of her purple coat, and stared down at her boots. “It’s a big house.”

“I’ve seen big houses before.”

Sadie drew a line through the slush with the toe of one boot, her mouth twisting wryly. “My parents have a staff.” She glanced up in time to see his tawny eyebrows rise and tried not to feel defensive. Americans so rarely grasped all the nuance of British society. “A small staff, though. My father is a baronet and the country’s former ambassador to Japan. Mum is the CEO of Senabo Financial, and…”

“And?”

“And distantly related to the Japanese Imperial family,” she mumbled.

“I see.”

Her hands fisted in her pockets. “What I’m saying is that they’re busy much of the time. It makes sense to hire others to cook and clean and whatnot.”

“Sadie?” Stepping closer, he cupped her face with those swallow-her-whole hands of his, and bent down to press cool lips to hers. “Let’s go have brunch.”

She beamed at him before grabbing his hand and leading him through the front gate. A moment after she punched the buzzer, Henrietta, one of the newer staff, answered the door with a murmured greeting. She took their coats and Sadie’s purse, and directed them to the front reception room.

Atsuko Koizumi-Bower—Aimi to her friends and family—bustled forward with a welcoming smile. “Sadako.” Sadie’s mother wrapped her arms around her daughter in a warm hug, whispering in her ear. “And you found a boy between now and when we saw you yesterday morning? Quick work, darling.”
 

“
Mum
.” Sadie blushed. “This is Ryan. Ryan, this is my mother.” Her gaze lighted on the tall, graying man who had just walked into the room. “And this is my father, Sir Nelson Bower.”

Bower. Her last name was Bower. How had he gotten to this point without learning her last name? Had he told her his?

Ryan wasn’t exactly sure how he managed not to freak out, because, from what he gathered, Sadie—Sadako, her mother had called her—was some kind of…of royalty. Either Japanese or English or both, since he didn’t really understand how that sort of stuff worked. So he shook Sir Nelson’s hand when prompted, listened when Sadie’s mom insisted he must call her Aimi and not “ma’am” or “Mrs. Bower,” and tried not to let relief swamp him when Sadie linked their fingers and led him into the elegant dining room. If he was eating, he would be far less likely to say the wrong thing, insult someone, and accidentally start an international conflict. Considering how crazy his last twenty-four hours had been, this didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility.
 

But when they sat down for the meal, conversation flowing easily between Sadie and her parents, a brutal pang of loss stabbed him through the chest. Last Christmas had been spent in his parents’ brick suburban two-story. He and Jon had bickered over whose turn it was to use the car. Jon had wanted to use it to drive his on-again, off-again long-distance girlfriend Melissa to the outlet mall in Aurora the next day, and Ryan had wanted to pick up a couple of buddies and go see
Return of the King
.
 

His mom had tossed the keys to the car on the table between them. “Boys. You know there’s only one way to solve this.” Hands on hips, smile tugging at her lips, she’d made a valiant attempt at seriousness with her arched eyebrow, the gleam in her green eyes a mix of humor and exasperation. “Arm wrestle. And, go!”

His dad had walked in the mudroom door, having taken the dog out to do its business, just in time to see Ryan slam Jon’s hand to the tabletop with a gleeful whoop. After rolling his eyes at their antics, their father had told Jon he could use his car. Both boys would get what they wanted.

Two weeks later, his parents were dead, the dog sent off to live with their grandparents in Rockford, and Jon had begun his downward spiral, coalescing in last night’s punch-throwing argument.
 

Sitting there at the Bowers’ fancy table, Ryan could barely breathe. When a brief lull fell in the conversation, he cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, but do you have a phone I could use?” He met Sadie’s inquiring dark eyes, and he was able to finally draw in air. “I think I need to give my brother a call. ’Cause it’s Christmas.”

Her gaze softened, turned liquid, and she pushed back from the table, shooting her parents a quick smile. He followed her into the hall outside the dining room, to where a cordless phone rested in a charging cradle on a low table positioned against the wall. “Good choice,” she murmured, rising on tiptoe to place a swift kiss on his cheek, then disappearing through the doorway as pleasure and pride twisted in his chest.

Drawing his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans, he withdrew the sticky note bearing his brother’s address and phone number in Cambridge. One deep breath later, he was dialing, and listening to the foreign ringing pattern on the other end of the line. Then— “Hello?”

Every tense muscle in his body relaxed at the sound of his brother’s voice. “Hey.”

“Jesus Christ, Ry! Where the hell are you?”

“London. Jon, I—”

“I have been looking for you all fucking night. All this morning. Where did you go?
Why
did you go?”

“You socked me in the jaw, bro. And then you locked the door.”

“Yeah, and then ten minutes later I opened the damn door to say sorry and expected to find you on the front step and
you weren’t there
.” It was then that Ryan heard past Jon’s fury to the panic beneath. “You just…weren’t there. Why weren’t you there, Ry?”

“I…” He swallowed around the lump in his throat, ashamed to feel stupid tears stinging the corners of his eyes for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. “You’ve barely talked to me this year. I figured you really must not want me there.”

“Not the first time I threw a punch at you.”

“First time you ever told me to go to hell when you did it.”

The other end of the line was quiet except for the faint rasp of Jon’s breathing. “I’m sorry.”

Ryan sighed. “I know.”

“I’m…I’m not in a good place, man. I—” A very subtle, very telling sniffle. “Can you come back? Please? I d-don’t want you to go.”

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. Sadie’s right around the corner with her royal family and there are servants, dude. Real servants. Don’t cry in front of the servants.
“Yeah, I can come back.”
 

There was a hiccupping, broken sigh from Jon’s end, a watery sound that nearly cracked Ryan’s resolve. “Fuck. I’m a jackass.”

“Nah. I should’ve stuck around.”

“Damn right you should’ve.” That, finally, sounded more like his tough-as-nails twin. But Jon softened again a moment later. “We can’t be alone on Christmas, okay?”

“Okay.” Except that Ryan wasn’t alone on Christmas at all. He was with Sadie. Beautiful Sadie. Perfect Sadie. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Promise.”

“Thanks, Ry.”

He placed the phone back in its cradle, staring sightlessly down at it as a deep, selfish melancholy stole over him.
 

At that moment, Sadie’s laughter, light and bright, sounded from the dining room, and his melancholy clarified into one vicious spike of insight: He didn’t want to leave her. Ever.

He paused in the doorway to the dining room, shoving his hands into his pockets as tension crept, insidious and Grinch-like, back into his shoulders. “I feel like I’m apologizing for everything today, but I’m sorry. Again.” He watched as Sadie rose from her seat, concern etched on her stunning face. “I need to catch a train to Cambridge and…be with my brother.” Even if he’d rather be with her, here in this uncomfortably opulent house with her parents and their delicious brunch and the servants, because he’d be able to wrap his mind around all the implications of that stuff eventually, but not if he left. If he left, he was probably never coming back. He swallowed around the lump in his throat. “Thank you for hosting me, Aimi, Sir Nelson.” His attempt at a smile was pathetic at best. “Sadie, I—”

But she was standing in front of him, her hands finding his and her head tilted back to look up at him. How was it possible, he thought dazedly, for a woman so petite to have taken up this much space inside him? God, this was going to hurt. “I need to call a cab.” But he’d need to find an ATM first, since he was pretty sure cabbies didn’t take plastic and he still only had his leftover change from last night’s train ticket.

“Don’t be silly, Ryan.” Sadie’s mom gave him a small smile from her seat at the table, not as vibrantly sunny as her daughter’s but genuinely warm nonetheless. “Our car will take you to the station.”

He wanted to protest until he saw Sadie nodding, and his heart stuttered a little again at the thought of leaving her. But he always would have had to leave her eventually, right? This was simply sooner than expected. “I need to get my things.” His voice lowered, not wanting to embarrass her in front of her family on the off chance they didn’t know she was sexually active. “From your place.”

Without hesitation, she moved from the dining room to the front hall closet where their coats and her purse had been stored, rummaging within for a moment until she held out a key. “Just lock up and give it back to Victor when you’re done. Our driver,” she clarified at his blank expression.

He shrugged into his coat when she handed it to him, never taking his eyes from her, and she watched him with a similar intensity. The front door, and his brother in Cambridge, beckoned but there was a battle being waged inside him. It felt wrong to leave her, and the power of that feeling scared him. No one fell in love this fast, not even college kids, he reminded himself sternly. Love at first sight was a fairy tale, and goodness knew Ryan wasn’t living a storybook life these days.
 

Still, he settled his hands on her hips and drew her to him, his world rocked when she threw her arms around his neck with a quiet cry. Her kiss pleaded with him as she hadn’t attempted to with words. He lifted her until her toes dangled off the floor, holding her to him as tightly as he dared.
 

He’d been right—this
hurt
.

Eventually, he made himself set her away, though it nearly killed him to do so. “Call me?” she whispered, eyes wet.
 

He could do nothing but nod, their sudden fairy tale crumbling like dust as emotion knotting his throat. Stroking the backs of his knuckles over her cheek, he exited the Bower townhouse. A black Mercedes idled in front of the gate, exhaust clouding the cold December air as the engine purred, low and quiet. He walked to it, opened the door, and froze, unable to climb in until he’d turned and seen her again, slender arms curled around her sweater-clad torso as she shivered on the front stoop. Jaw clenched, Ryan gave himself ten seconds to memorize her, every sunbeam-infused inch, and slid into the backseat, gaze locked determinedly on the back of Victor’s head.