One-Click Buy: June 2009 Harlequin Blaze

by Tori Carrington

  How elusive was it now, though? he wondered.

  “I’ll be honest,” she said. “I’ve never been very attached to this whole Dream Rising history. I’m here for the yakitori and sake.”

  He lifted a brow.

  She laughed. “I came for my aunt Katrina. She and my other aunts and uncles have their hearts set on this painting. I just want to secure it, then have a little amusement before I head back home.”

  “Unless I get the painting for the Coles.”

  She came to a gradual stop, glancing up at him. But what he thought might be a challenging look turned to something softer, her eyes filling with the same memories he couldn’t let go of, either.

  His body responded with even more force this time, a growing erection pressing against his fly. Teenage lust, he thought. It had never died.

  That’s all it was.

  He focused on her mouth. It was enough to distract anyone all on its own, with the way it turned down at the tips, giving her a lush, slightly pouty look that played well with the vivid flash of her eyes.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll be honest, too. I’m here because of Gramps, for the most part. He’s getting on in years and…”

  “You just want to see him happy.”

  Both of them were silent, the air between them thick and hot. His gaze lingered on her mouth, and he tasted her kisses again.

  He’d never forgotten, and it just took seeing her once more to realize it.

  She bit her lip, obviously having caught his appreciation of it, and her mouth shaped into a tentative smile that scrambled his brain.

  But his body read things loud and clear. She was just as attracted as he was—there was something steaming up her imagination with the same humid condensation fogging his.

  Then she began walking again, slower now. “I guess it’d be great revenge for whoever ends up with the painting.”

  “‘There is more real pleasure to be gotten out of a malicious act, where your heart is in it, than out of thirty acts of a nobler sort,’” he said.

  She smiled, almost to herself, probably remembering his habit of quoting Mark Twain, his father’s favorite author. His dad had read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to Tristan most nights of grade school, and Juliana, who’d always been a brainiac, even before taking over the cheesecake-and-book store recently, would know her Twain.

  She laughed, and the sound soothed through him, mixing with the heat. But instead of cooling him off, his lust burned higher.

  He came to her side. As if by accident, her shoulder brushed his arm.

  White heat jolted him.

  Her voice seemed choked when she finally said, “In spite of the circumstances, it’s good to see you again, Tristan.”

  His name on her lips.

  “It’s good to see you again, too,” he said, wishing he could say more, but wary about doing so.

  After all, she’d left him and never come back. What they’d had couldn’t have meant all that much to her.

  He decided to exact his own little revenge by brushing against her.

  Friction seemed to spark between them.

  He thought he heard her take in a quick breath, the ensuing rhythm of it matching his own escalating heartbeat.

  As if in agreement, they came to a halt in front of the ramen house, and with a secretive smile, she winged by him once more, her hand skimming his hand in a subtle, yet earth-rocking move.

  His vision blanked—a zap of electricity that sizzled on a wire through the rest of his body, from his fingers to his gut.

  As she entered the restaurant, he stayed outside, gathering himself.

  Preparing to take up where the woman he shouldn’t want had left him all those years ago.

  2

  WHEN JULIANA ENTERED the ramen house, fully aware that Tristan had yet to follow, she could still feel him on her flesh: heavy and musky. He’d gotten under her skin, too—a rushing heat that was injecting her with need.

  At first she told herself that she was just in shock from seeing him here, and that had muddled her mind. But how did it explain the dampness between her legs, the quiver in her belly?

  Dark alleys, she thought. Exploration.

  She was away from home, in a world where no one knew her, where she didn’t even quite feel like herself. And there Tristan had been in the alley, watching her from a heated distance just as he had the first night they’d kissed.

  A sharp yearning consumed her. Regret.

  How many times had she wondered what he would have felt like inside her? How they would have moved together as the radio had played slow, languorous songs in the sanctuary of his car?

  But, now, just like back then, she thought of the family, and how they would consider what she was feeling a betrayal.

  Even so, tingles consumed her as she tried to clear her mind by glancing around the small, slim eatery, which featured booths, a long counter and woven rice paper decorating the walls. The employees, who were busy behind the counter, bowed and said, “Irasshaimase,” greeting her, and she smiled and bowed back to them. A young Japanese man wearing dark-framed glasses and a shirt with a peace symbol waved to her from his counter seat. He was drinking a bottle of beer, but from the way he kept grinning and grinning, she thought he might have had a lot more than just one.

  It felt a bit isolated in here, she thought. Another world away from the one outside.

  Then she saw a twentysomething man who might be her art dealer, Jiro Mori, in a booth tucked into the back corner. She made her way toward him.

  Even though he had his head down, madly scribbling into a notebook—running numbers based on how much he could make from this sale?—she saw the blue streaks in his shag-cut hair and the paisley long-sleeved shirt. He definitely matched the description he’d given her over the phone.

  She kept her distance from the table, waiting for an opportune moment to greet him, but he didn’t notice her, and she respected his peace, thinking it might be considered rude to interrupt.

  All the while, her flesh danced with the anticipation of Tristan’s entrance; with one glance back at the door, she found that he still hadn’t come in.

  Had that last little brush against him gotten to him as much as it’d gotten to her? Or was he taking a break from her because she’d gone too far in a country where public displays of affection weren’t kosher?

  She wouldn’t blame him for wanting to keep a few feet between him and her. He’d been just as adamant about respecting his family’s feelings back then as she had, and that’s why she’d gone off to college without ever giving in to her desires, even though they’d haunted her long afterward.

  No one had ever kissed her or touched her as he had.

  No one had even gotten close.

  She wiped the back of her neck. Sweaty, she thought, and not just from the weather.

  Juliana realized that the young man at the counter was talking to her, so she listened as he rattled off a string of words that she couldn’t understand.

  She took her phrase book out of her purse and found the right page. “Nihongo wa wakarimasen.”

  I don’t understand Japanese.

  He said whatever he was saying slower. She heard the word English in there and nodded.

  Then he started singing “The Locomotion” to her until the older man and woman behind the counter interrupted with their own blast of Japanese. It sounded like they weren’t happy with him.

  She heard Jiro stir behind her, and when she faced him, she saw he’d gotten out of the booth and was holding out a hand to shake instead of the usual bowing.

  Westernized, she thought. When she’d done some Internet research on his Tokyo gallery, which did a lot of business with foreigners, she saw that he spent a lot of time jet-setting in Europe.

  “Miss Thomsen?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you for changing plans and meeting me here instead of Tokyo.”

  “Thank you for inviting me, Mr. Mori.”

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nbsp; They shook hands, and he led her to one side of the booth. “I’m afraid I was in my own world a few moments ago,” he said. “So sorry.”

  She wasn’t sure just how Westernized he was, so she went ahead with what she’d discovered in her travel research and told him that she’d be presenting him with a gift—expensive candies that she’d purchased at a shop in her hotel.

  She hoped she was doing this right, because like most other things in Japan, gift-giving had its list of do’s and don’ts.

  All these cultural land mines, she thought. They’d keep her on her toes.

  And so would Tristan, she couldn’t help adding, a wave of sensation whisking through her.

  Jiro Mori laughed, thanked her and sat opposite her in the booth. “You’re nervous, I can see that. But you’re doing fine, Miss Thomsen. Japan’s quite a place for foreigners to negotiate.”

  “Tougher than any place I’ve been before, that’s for sure.” Armchair-traveling and exploring San Diego’s nooks and crannies for the purpose of her old business had been her substitute for all the world traveling she’d thought she’d do once upon a time.

  Again, she wondered where Tristan was. At the thought of him her heart jumped, her belly curled, her sex throbbed, and she glanced over her shoulder, still waiting for him to walk through that door and stun her senseless again.

  Jiro Mori obviously thought she was keeping tabs on the tipsy guy at the counter. The owners clearly believed so, too, because they began scolding “The Locomotion” dude again.

  “They’re telling him not to embarrass their country,” Jiro said, sotto voce.

  But then a flood of awareness cascaded down her body, and before Jiro even began to rise out of the booth, she knew that Tristan had finally entered.

  When he arrived at the table, she tried not to look at him. But she was sharply tuned in to his scent, bay leaves—how that took her back—as he and the art dealer went through the same greeting-and-gift scene.

  All the while, she couldn’t deny that her skin had turned into a live playground for goose bumps, and the tingling between her legs grew stronger.

  In spite of herself, she ended up taking a peek at him.

  From an eighteen-year-old to a man.

  And what a man: handsome, with his black hair still longish, slouching over his brow with badass carelessness. But his gray eyes gleamed even in the midst of a certain cloudiness. He had such angles to his face, too: sloping cheekbones, a firm jawline. Strength and beauty and a quiet confidence that had always done something to her and had never been replicated.

  As Jiro moved to the counter and addressed the servers in Japanese, Tristan slid into the booth next to Juliana, a barely there smile tilting his lips.

  He was close.

  Real close.

  His muscled forearm whisked against hers, and her heart slapped against her breastbone.

  She took a breath, knowing her family would be up in arms if they were here to see them.

  But they weren’t, Juliana thought. It was just the two of them.

  Her sense of freedom expanded, consuming her.

  “Took long enough for your grand entrance,” she said in a low voice as Jiro carried on his conversation with the servers.

  “Had to cool off a little out there, seeing as I imagined it might get hotter in here.” He raised a dark brow. “With negotiations for that painting, I mean.”

  Under the cover of the table, he put his hand between them on the seat.

  His fingers were less than an inch away from her leg, and she swore she felt the pressure of them even at that whisper-thin distance.

  Her clit pounded, and she hardly even heard Jiro ask them what they wanted to drink. Then, while the art dealer ordered, Tristan caught her eye.

  He was smiling playfully.

  And before she knew what he was up to, he ran a finger along the crease of her skirt.

  She closed her eyes, suppressed emotion and need hitting her all at once.

  Then she heard his voice, soft, whispered.

  “Have you ever wondered, Juliana?”

  He didn’t need to explain, and on a rush of impulse, she found herself saying, “Yes.”

  When she opened her eyes, their gazes met, his a burning silver, colored with such a passion that she couldn’t fight it.

  His voice lowered even more. “Have you ever thought of finishing what we started that last night we were together?”

  Her vision went dreamlike as she absorbed him.

  How many times had she filled in the blanks of that last night, when they’d decided not to go all the way?

  But he was asking her to…

  Oh, my God. Was he asking her to pretend as if they were still teens and fulfill her most frequent fantasies?

  Before she could stop herself, she heard a soft “Yes” repeated from her lips.

  He grinned, and she almost slid to the floor in one massive flow.

  Then their host’s voice interrupted them, and she startled as Jiro Mori sat down.

  “Are you enjoying Japan so far?” he asked.

  To Juliana, it sounded as if he was talking Swahili in an echo chamber.

  She’d told Tristan yes without thinking about it.

  And, for once, she was ecstatic to have been so rash.

  She managed to talk. “It’s beautiful here.”

  “You find something you didn’t expect around every corner,” Tristan added.

  One of the servers came to their table, setting down a tray with oshibori—a hot towel for each of them.

  She straightened in her seat, took a towel and wiped her hands, just as the others were doing. It was a pre-meal regularity in this country, one that made Juliana’s already-sensitized skin reawaken.

  She fought the electric sensation as the server presented Tristan with a bottle of Asahi and her with the makings of a grapefruit sawa, a fresh drink she’d read about. Jiro chatted in Japanese with the woman and, during the distraction, Tristan touched her leg again.

  Stifling a gasp, she shifted. She’d said yes, but there was still business to deal with right now.

  Damn business.

  He moved, too, as if merely to readjust his sitting position. Yet he was really camouflaging his antics under the table as he kept skimming his fingertips along her leg.

  A tightness forced her to cross one thigh over the other, which put her out of range of his hand.

  He smiled, then reclined, resting his arm on the back of the booth, just behind her, where she could feel the hum of his skin.

  She wanted him to touch her again. Coy brushes over the leg weren’t enough.

  As the server left the table, she couldn’t think of anything else but her throbbing sex, the dampness that was slicking her undies.

  A clueless Jiro gestured to Juliana’s beverage, which had been served with a half grapefruit. “You juice your own fruit and add it to the drink mix.”

  So he thought she wasn’t moving because she didn’t know what to do with the sawa. Okay, she’d go with that.

  She picked up the fruit, noting the irony of having to juice it when the same had been done to her by Tristan.

  “So, Mr. Mori,” he said, all business now. “We have a painting to discuss.”

  “Direct and to the point.” Jiro took a swig of beer, then swallowed. “I like how you conduct business. And I apologize for not notifying you both about having invited the other party, but I had intended to deal with you separately, and today’s little emergency with my associate changed matters. My mind escaped me in the rush.” He put down his beer. “Artists can be quite difficult, especially when their work is in demand.”

  From the way he said it, Juliana thought that maybe Jiro had actually set up this surprise meeting to cause tension between the two interested families, and to whet their appetites for competing for the painting.

  No dummy, this guy, she thought.

  Nonetheless, both she and Tristan acknowledged their host’s apology, and he continued.
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  “If you don’t mind, I wonder if you would indulge me in providing the background on the work first. Dream Rising has a scandalous history, and here I have the ancestors of the main players right in front of me.”

  Okay, so he had an honest enjoyment of gossip. Sounded familiar, except the people in Parisville probably wouldn’t admit to their own need for it.

  Juliana looked at Tristan, then said lightly, “History says that the painting was lost over a hundred years ago, but that’s only part of the truth.”

  Tristan’s mouth quirked in a half grin—a spark to add to what was already crackling between them.

  “My great-great-grandfather, Terrence Cole, was the artist,” he said. “His subject was…”

  He paused, but Juliana could finish. Tristan was probably wondering if saying his jilted mistress was acceptable in this company. Even though she’d read that extramarital affairs were commonplace in Japan, he was probably playing the good traveler by not being brash about it.

  She decided to throw him a lifeline. “Terrence’s subject was my great-great-grandmother, Emelie.”

  But somehow that didn’t seem adequate. Terrence had tossed Emelie out of his life just before he’d married the woman to whom he’d been promised for years. He’d devastated Emelie, and she’d never recovered—not even when she’d married a much, much older German immigrant who’d done well in the gold rush years earlier.

  Terrence the heartbreaker.

  Jiro nodded. “The story is that she stole the painting, and this set into motion a disagreement between your families that has lasted for a few generations now, yes?”

  “You’ve got it,” Juliana said, raising her eyebrows at Tristan.

  He waited a beat, just as if he knew she was remembering his fingers on her thigh and how she wished he would have traveled them up and up…

  She squeezed her legs together, alleviating a little of the almost painful pleasure.

  “We’re terrible enemies,” Tristan finally said.

  His voice was low, rippling through her as she remembered the night they’d decided to let go, never to tell a soul how close they’d come to making love and changing everything.

  He removed his arm from the back of the booth and rested his hand on the seat again. Juliana’s skin flared, waiting, hoping he’d touch her.