Wayward Dreams (22 page)

CHAPTER 14

Harry could have sworn he would have known it was Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport even if he'd been blindfolded. At two in the morning, traffic had slowed and the night was hot and moist. He looked up into what felt like endless night, the sky all velvety and mysterious, filled with a cityscape of stars, and reminding him of Bianca. Raising his hand to hail a cab, he felt a little hollow, missing her.

Twenty-four hours earlier, leaving Narita International in Tokyo, he was only guessing when he told her that his flight back to Atlanta would take thirteen hours, the time difference between Atlanta and Tokyo—but what did he know? He wasn't the pilot and he couldn't account for the time and weather, but he didn't mind the delays when Bianca made good on her word about the phone sex. His smile was broad when his cab slowed in front of him. Settling his long frame into the back seat, she stayed on his mind.

Bianca Coltrane was truly a woman of many talents, and he was pretty sure he would have willingly walked the near seven thousand miles back from Tokyo just to see her again. Now he was back and glad to know she was eager to see him, to get back to what they'd begun. He leaned back into the seat and sighed. The taxi didn't even begin to compare with the Ferrari, but it rolled and was headed in the right direction. Tired, he let his eyes drift shut.

At least he had gotten some work done. The Roppongi project was actually centered in and around a new hotel complex in Tokyo's Minatoku ward. Roppongi was known for its nightlife and popular with foreigners, but the new buildings were planned to be a star in the district's crown, and their proximity to the massive Roppongi Hills shopping and dining complex had already drawn some criminal attention and was keeping local police busy.

At first, it was building supplies, copper wire and pipes that “walked” away. But as building progressed, computer circuitry quickly followed. There were small burglaries, too. Things lifted when no one was looking, cars vandalized—kid stuff, mostly. But once the little stuff was under control and residents began taking their spaces in the new complex, the snatch-and-grab robberies began, and it was NeoTech's job to ensure that crime at any level would not be tolerated. Harry intended to make sure his company did its job, but it was exhausting.

Three days of reformatting computer programs, retooling hardware, and climbing through walls and floor spaces took a lot out of a man, especially when the man tried to give his work his undivided attention. Was it only yesterday that undivided attention had become impossible? Harry's eyes roamed the darkened taxi and the city beyond. His hand went to the back of his neck and rubbed, trying to ease his tension, and he remembered walking the periphery of the Roppongi site, checking his watch again.

“Do you have another appointment?” The man at his side had made his face deliberately blank.

“No.”
Yes!
“Why do you ask?” Harry was fairly certain he hadn't been caught daydreaming.

“You have checked your watch at thirty-minute intervals for the whole of this day,” Yamada Taro said carefully. His eyes didn't miss much; anyone who knew him could tell you that.

“I apologize. I have been a bit preoccupied.”

Yamada pulled at his hard hat, and then pressed his lips into a thin line. “Is she pretty?”

Harry blinked when Yamada kept his face expressionless.
Am I that obvious?

“And now you wonder if you are that obvious.” Taro bowed his head slightly and smiled. “Yes, Haru, you are. This woman and how you feel about her are new for you, and you have not yet learned how to hide your feelings about her. As my children would say,
I ain't mad at you
.”

Harry laughed softly. “Okay, no more MTV for your kids.”

Taro's eyes twinkled when they met Harry's. “I fear it is BET that has infected them.” He compressed his smile. “Do you have a picture of the lady?”

I kept it to myself.
In his cab rolling along I-75 in Atlanta, Harry's fingers kneaded the back of his neck and he chuckled softly at the memory.
I still can't believe I even lied to my mother about not having a picture of Bianca. I didn't even want to share her name. My mother would have run right out to the nearest fortune teller to find out if this one was destined to be her daughter-in-law.

“Nope, sorry.” Harry heard himself say the words and hoped the older man wouldn't read the lie in his voice or on his face. He had pictures. Of course he had pictures of them together. They had been taken on his phone by a stranger at the airport and he didn't want to share them. He didn't want to share the three he'd taken himself, using his phone when Bianca was unaware. He'd spent a good deal of his flight time on the way to Tokyo playing with those three pictures, cropping and shading them until they were three perfect shots of her face. Sharing them would have been a violation, and he had no intention of doing that.

Harry had looked at the older man and shook his head. “Nope, I didn't bring any pictures with me.”

Yamada inclined his head slightly, the movement filled with respect. “I understand. I would also take great care of the woman I had come to love.”

Love?
Harry had looked up sharply.
Ain't nobody up in this camp said nothin' about love!
When the older man smiled, Harry realized the expression that was probably on his face. He smoothed his features and licked his lips. Yes, Bianca was sweet, fun, and sexy. She was intelligent, and God knew she was a wonder in bed.

But love, loving, took more than that, didn't it? She was thoughtful and earnest in everything they'd done together, and in time maybe they would find a way to make something of what they were becoming to each other, but for now…

“No, Taro, this is not the woman I love.”

Yamada Taro nodded and dropped his eyes to the blueprints spread on the table between them. “Yes, Haru. That is what they all say—at first.”

Harry's cab pulled off the highway and onto International Boulevard. Making a sweeping turn along Piedmont, the driver flipped on a blinker and followed the stream of cars turning onto Baker Street. While the driver was making his turns, Harry was thinking—and hearing Yamada Taro's words again.
“That's what they all say—at first.”

In front of Museum Tower, Harry stepped from the cab and handed the driver cash. The driver waved a hand out the window as he drove away, leaving Harry on the sidewalk. Looking up, he could still see the stars shining in that velvety sky and his sigh was more wistful than he wanted to admit as he counted the windows. Eight floors up, that's where she was…

Eight floors up, in her bedroom, Bianca pulled at the sheet covering her body. Suddenly, it was as though someone called her name, pulling her from a sound sleep.
Harry.
His name was her first thought. Closing her eyes, she missed him and reached to cradle a pillow to her breast. It was a poor substitute, but at least she could dream of him. She hugged the pillow and pulled her knees high beneath the sheet and squeezed her eyes together tightly, but it didn't help. Harry was in her head.

Her eyes opened to focus on the window across from her bed. From where she lay, she saw only the star-pointed night sky and thought of a Peabo Bryson song. Somewhere in the world, Harry was standing under that same sky. Humming the melody, she pushed herself up, her back resting against the headboard and her arms still cradling the pillow. She'd heard women say that it was the shared experiences that boosted the levels of connection in relationships. Huddled in the dark, she started a mental list.
We both have same sex-siblings. Both oldest children. Both pretty independent.

We're both pretty ambitious.
She turned her cheek against her pillow and gave that one more thought. Harry's ambitions were an exercise in intellect; hers were more basic, especially after meeting Kelvin Payne. She once thought she needed to succeed in business for the money and attention, but now she knew she needed to be more than a pretty face in the crowd, depending on some man to make her whole.

We both love sports.
Sports ranked high among the things they both loved, and if she had to admit it, even here in the dark privacy of her bedroom, the similarity existed mostly because of their differences.
He used to play the game and I was a game player. I'm a woman with a past, but he's the man I want in my future.

She tried to remember the words he'd whispered at the airport and failed to come up with much more than the sound of his voice, but she remembered the translation:
He said he was crazy about me.
A warming vision of breakfast, moved through her. Harry in the kitchen.

Bianca pushed the pillow between her breasts and her knees and wrapped her arms around them. She'd never had a real reason to think of a man and the word forever in the same sentence. She'd never really gone looking for a man for forever. Oh, sure, she'd gone looking for love in all the wrong places, mostly for all the wrong reasons, with all the wrong people, and she'd used her physical assets to take advantage whenever it seemed useful. And the end result was that she was left feeling hollow and unnecessary, with no thought of forever.

But what she was finding with Harry was different. He wasn't a reason to be a better person, he was just Harry. He wasn't a means to an end, but he made the journey more interesting. With Harry, there were no games or reasons for pretense. He didn't need her as an accessory, or a toy. He didn't want her as a convenience, either. And she didn't feel a need to be any of those things to hold onto him, either.

Okay. There. I've confessed it; put it out there in the Universe.

Julia would like that, the confession part.
Like I'm ever going to tell her!

Laying her cheek on her knees, Bianca hoped that this time she knew a good man for his worth and that he would find her worthy of…Afraid of jinxing everything, she released the word on a whisper. “Forever.”

On the sidewalk, eight floors beneath Bianca's bedroom windows, Harry pulled his eyes away from the building. He let himself into the lobby. Elevator traffic at three in the morning was light, and the elevator arrived quickly. Scanning the rows of buttons, he pressed the penthouse button.

We'll talk in the morning.

Letting himself in, he was sure she was asleep. It had been a long time since he'd known a woman well enough to know her sleeping habits. Maybe that was one of those things that went into building a love for a lifetime, something like his parents had. He walked through his home, stopping in his office. Passing a hand over the wall panel, he smiled when the room came alive. On the desktop computer's flat screen, a picture of Bianca resolved itself, welcoming him. It was one of the ones he'd taken at the airport when she wasn't looking.

He'd passed a lot of time on his return trip getting this picture to look just the way he wanted it, then sending it here. Maybe transmitting the picture hadn't taken a genius, but Harry was glad he'd done it. Hers was a nice face to come home to. He walked closer to his desk and let his luggage slide to the floor. Setting his laptop on the desk, he couldn't help reaching out and touching her. Even though it was only a digital photo, he felt closer to her.

I really do owe Akemi a big thank-you for introducing me to you.

Shedding his shirt, Harry moved to his telephone and keyed in the voicemail code. He listened to the phone go through the prompts until it came to the first message. It was from his office. Deb's voice was clear and her tone clipped when she reported that he'd gotten several calls from a woman who refused to identify herself.

“She was fairly aggressive in her attempt to contact you,” Deb reported. “Naturally, we provided no detailed or personal information.” She paused and her attempt at laughter sounded like the bark of a small dog. “You're not the Baby Mama type, Haru, but this one could be a stalker, and I don't think your new girlfriend will be willing to play nice and share.”

Frowning, Harry replayed the message and tried to think of an aggressive woman who would need to contact him. Deb knew both his grandmothers and his mother well enough to recognize their voices; she would have said something if the calls had been from them. She'd met Bianca, but why would Bianca call his office? She had direct numbers for him; there was no reason for her to call his office.

Still frowning, Harry decided that four in the morning was no time to be worried about strange phone calls from unidentified women and moved to the next message. It was Bianca. Smiling at the sound of her voice, he could almost hear the words his mother whispered when he bent to kiss her cheek at the airport.
Trust lightning to strike once, my son.

Trust his mother to get that final pitch in. She wanted grandchildren and was disappointed when he said he hadn't brought a single photo of Bianca with him. He still felt kind of guilty—it wasn't even a white lie. He could have shown her the pictures on his cellphone, but…

He moved to the next call.

“Hey, stranger! This is AJ. Dench and I heard you were in town and we thought we could try to hook up.”

Harry stopped the message. Replaying it brought back memories, some good, and some really great. Having the chance to hear an old friend's voice, even recorded, was another reason to thank his brother. AJ said he and Dench had been trying to avoid holding their wives' purses while they were shopping at Phipps Plaza, and they ran into Kemi.

“Man, your brother had so many bags that we were looking for
his
purse!”

Yeah, Harry laughed, that would be about right for his shopaholic brother.

“He was the one who recognized us, and we got your number from him. So we were thinking that we need to get together while you're around. You know Dench is with the Falcons these days; how about hanging out with us at the training camp? You know, run up to Flowery Branch, watch the new guys get ready for the season, then have dinner and drinks afterward.”