“I’m okay with that,” she assured him, and touched her lips to his. “And I’m hungry.”
Steven found an already-open bottle of chardonnay in the fridge and filled two glasses while Samara reheated her dinner. As they moved around one another in the tiny kitchen, he was struck by the domesticity of it all. The situation was somehow both new and familiar, and it was all too easy to imagine sharing space with Samara, working side by side on mundane chores, and making love together late into the night.
He hadn’t consciously built any walls around his heart, but after he’d lost his wife, the only woman he’d ever thought he would love, his focus had shifted—to his children first and his career second. There had been opportunities to be with other women—women who offered comfort and consolation and temporary oblivion—but he hadn’t wanted any of them. He’d believed that his heart had been buried along with his wife. And then Samara had come along.
Now he was feeling things he hadn’t thought he would ever feel again. Wasn’t sure he wanted to feel again, because the greatest pain in his life had been losing the woman he loved. It wasn’t a risk he wanted to take again.
And yet in the brief time he’d known her, Samara had already found her way into his heart.
Was he falling in love with her? He didn’t know, but just the possibility was enough to make him sweat.
But while he couldn’t deny that his feelings for her were changing and deepening, there was still so much that he didn’t know about her.
“Do you still have family in Tokyo?” he asked her.
“Four sisters and their families, and my dad, and a whole bunch of more distant relations.”
“You don’t find it hard, being so far away from them?”
“When I left Tokyo, the person I knew I was going to miss most was my great-grandmother, but she died last February.”
“Why did you leave Tokyo?” he asked again. “Because I’m assuming that there was a bigger reason than wanting to travel the world and take pictures.”
“Jenny calls it the fiancé fiasco.”
“You were engaged?” He wasn’t sure why that surprised him, but it did.
“Three weeks away from getting married, in fact, when I called off the wedding.”
“What happened?”
She sipped her wine. “I was working on the seating plan for the reception, worrying about inconsequential little details like whether my cousin Misaki would have a fit if I sat her at the same table as my cousin Chiuoko, who had stolen her boyfriend more than five years earlier, despite the fact that they were both happily married to completely different men.”
She shook her head. “It’s funny how a perspective can change with time. How, at that moment, I couldn’t imagine anything worse than the scene they might cause. Then the doorbell rang, and I realized there were much worse things—such as a stranger showing up at my door and claiming to be pregnant with my fiancé’s child.”
Steven winced in sympathy.
“She was definitely pregnant,” Samara continued. “Though I didn’t—couldn’t—believe she was carrying Kazuo’s child. Because she was about six months along, and Kazuo and I had been together three years.
“He admitted that he’d slept with her—a momentary lapse, he called it. A single indiscretion that occurred because I was out of town on an assignment and he was missing me so much. But he swore the baby wasn’t his.
“And I wanted to believe him,” she admitted. “But I realized the mere possibility that it could be his child undermined the foundation of our relationship, and I couldn’t build a life with a man I couldn’t trust.
“The DNA test was done a few weeks after the baby was born. Six months later, Kazuo married the mother, and I decided to make a new start where I wouldn’t be reminded of my own mistakes every time I turned around.”
“That’s when you started traveling,” he guessed.
She nodded. “And for a while, moving from one assignment to the next kept me busy enough that I didn’t think about the fact that I was running. Then Jenny invited me to come for a visit and I realized that this was where I wanted to be.”
“I know about running,” he admitted, and explained his reasons for moving his children out of North Carolina.
“Most of the time, I feel like I did the right thing,” he said. “Then there are times—like last weekend—when I question everything.” When he would give anything to be able to talk to Liz again, though he didn’t say that out loud. Even he knew that sitting across the table from the woman he’d just made love with wasn’t an appropriate time to introduce his wife’s name into the conversation. But Samara must have sensed the direction of his thoughts because she did it for him.
“And that’s when you really miss Liz,” she guessed.
He nodded. “It’s scary to think how quickly—and unexpectedly—things can sometimes change. How everything can change in the blink of an eye.”
“Are you feeling guilty now?” she asked.
“Guilty?”
“Because you’re here with me, maybe even having a good time, and she’s gone.”
“There’s no maybe about it,” he said quietly. “I am having a good time. And yes, I’m probably feeling a little bit guilty because of it. And a little bit more guilty because I didn’t expect to ever have these kinds of feelings again.”
“What kind of feelings?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer her question, and he knew he wasn’t ready to define their relationship, so he only said, “When I figure that out, I’ll let you know.”
She smiled, though he got the impression she was disappointed by his response. Or maybe he was only imagining that, because she pressed her lips gently to his. “You do that.”
He kissed her back, longer, deeper, and felt his body stirring to life again.
As much as he wanted to drag her back to the bedroom and spend the rest of the night tangling up the sheets with her, he had other commitments for the weekend, responsibilities that couldn’t be blown off. He had to go home, but it occurred to him, as her body softened and yielded to his, that he didn’t have to go alone.
“I have another question for you,” he said.
“What’s that?”
He nibbled on the full curve of her bottom lip. “Do you know how to use a roller?”
Her brows lifted. “If that’s an American term for some kind of kinky sex toy, I don’t want to know.”
“It’s not—at least, not that I know of,” he assured her. “I was talking about painting.”
“Then, yes,” she said cautiously.
“I promised Caitlin that I would paint her bedroom while she was gone this weekend,” Steven said. “If you didn’t have any other plans and were willing to help me out, we could probably get it done in half the time.”
“And what would we do with the other half of the time?”
He smiled. “I’m sure we can figure something out.”
Chapter Nine
While painting Steven’s daughter’s bedroom wouldn’t have been on a top-ten list of Samara’s favorite things to do on a weekend, she was happy enough just to be with him. And, as they made their way to his house early Saturday morning, she was just a little bit worried that a man she’d known for such a short period of time could make her feel so much.
Or maybe it wasn’t Steven but a natural part of the healing process. She’d been so hurt when she’d found out about Kazuo’s betrayal, devastated to see all of her hopes and dreams crumble, and adamant that she would never let any man trample on her heart again. But over time, the humiliation had started to fade, the pain had eased, and while she wasn’t anxious to experience another heartache, she’d realized it was worse to feel nothing at all.
She didn’t need to worry about that with Steven. From the first—their first touch, their first kiss—he’d stirred something inside her. And while she was determined to move forward carefully and cautiously, she was also relieved—after spending the better part
of the past two years in an emotional limbo—to be finally moving forward.
Okay, so maybe sleeping with a guy she’d known only a few weeks wasn’t particularly careful or cautious, despite having taken the usual precautions, but it had been necessary to take the edge off the attraction that had been building from the beginning. Necessary and—her lips curved at the thought—fabulous.
Besides, she knew full well that physical intimacy and emotional intimacy didn’t necessarily coincide. And while she had feelings for Steven, she wasn’t going to fall in love with him just because she’d fallen into bed with him.
But, as adamant as she was about that, she knew her heart wasn’t immune from danger. The more time she spent with Steven, the more she got to know him, the more she realized that there were a lot of reasons a woman could fall in love with him that had absolutely nothing to do with fabulous sex.
“Having second thoughts?” Steven asked gently.
The question startled her out of her reverie. “What?”
“Do you wish you hadn’t agreed to come?” he asked, pulling into the drive in front of his house.
She shook her head. “I think it will be fun.”
“Fun?” he asked skeptically.
“Not the painting part,” she said. “The part where you show your appreciation for my help.”
The heat in his eyes sent tingles dancing along her skin. “Can we do the appreciation part first?”
She laughed and reached for the door handle when he reached for her. “I want a tour first.”
So he gave her the tour—a quick walk-through from the ground level to the top floor, with a not-so-quick stop in the master bedroom to show off the new bed he’d bought a few weeks earlier.
When they finally got to Caitlin’s room, she saw that the furniture—an elegant white four-poster bed, a wide dresser and matching armoire—had been moved into the center of the room, the floors protected with drop cloths, and the supplies were all set out and ready for them to begin.
While Steven stirred the paint, she took a more leisurely look around.
It was a good-sized room—a lot bigger than the bedroom she’d shared with Tamiko while they were growing up—with a large closet and a pair of tall, narrow windows that overlooked the back garden. But she could understand why Caitlin wanted it painted. The walls were currently a dark beige color that wasn’t so much ugly as it was dull and inspiring. The color that Caitlin had chosen—a pale lavender—would change the whole look.
“Do you want to edge or roll?” Steven asked her.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said.
“Then you can edge. I don’t have a steady hand or enough patience.”
Samara took the tray and tools he offered and carried them to the ladder. As she started to work, she found herself thinking about the fact that—in the past few weeks—she’d helped paint a nursery for Jenny’s baby and now the bedroom of Steven’s daughter. She wondered if she would ever have the opportunity to do the same thing for a child of her own.
She was only twenty-eight. She knew she had a lot of years still before she needed to worry about her biological clock ticking. But she was suddenly uncomfortably aware that her life had deviated far off track from the course she’d envisioned only a few years ago, when Kazuo had put his ring on her finger.
She’d been on top of the world, working at a job she enjoyed, living close to her friends and family, and planning a glorious future with a man who claimed to love her. Then, in the time it had taken her to respond to a knock on the door, everything had started to fall apart.
She didn’t blame the other woman. If anything, she was grateful. As humiliating as it had been to come face-to-face with her fiancé’s pregnant lover, she knew it would have been that much worse for everyone if she’d been confronted by a woman carrying her husband’s child.
Everything happens for a reason, her great-grandmother had assured her.
The reason, as far as Samara could tell at the time, was that Kazuo had been unable to keep his pants zipped. But now, she thought she could appreciate the wisdom of Izumi’s words—or at least the fact that she’d been spared the pain of an unhappy marriage.
Steven’s marriage had been happy—she’d picked up enough hints from the things he’d said to know that—and still, he’d ended up alone. Sort of. He had his children, a tangible reminder of the love he and his wife had shared and of the life they’d built together.
So where did that leave her? Samara wondered.
Where do we go from here?
It was the question he’d asked her last night, the one she’d pushed aside, because she wasn’t ready to put a label on their relationship. But mostly because she was afraid of wanting too much too soon.
And though she’d been unwilling to express her desire in words, she did know what she wanted. It was the same thing she’d always wanted—a family of her own, people who loved her, somewhere she truly belonged.
Whether she might someday have that with Steven wasn’t something she was prepared to consider after only one night together. For now, it was enough just to be with him.
While Samara did the edging, Steven followed behind, filling in with the roller.
He thought they worked well together, and he certainly appreciated her help. Not just because an extra set of hands made the task progress much more quickly, but because he enjoyed watching the sway of her hips as she moved up and down the ladder, the flex of muscles in her calves and her arms as she leaned and stretched, and the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the slim-fitting tank top she wore.
“Do you know,” he said, “I can’t remember the last time I did any painting?”
Samara glanced over her shoulder. “You must have helped your wife paint at some point.”
He shook his head. “She never asked for or seemed to expect much help around the house.”
“And she probably had your meals ready when you came home and cleared away the dishes when you were done.”
“She did, in fact,” he admitted. “And she did the shopping and the cleaning and the laundry. But I was working twelve-and fourteen-hour days, so I wasn’t around much to help out.” He shook his head. “It’s no wonder I didn’t have a clue about what to do when she died.”
“Obviously you figured it out,” Samara said.
“Actually, I didn’t. Not for a long time. I’m not sure how we would have managed if my mom hadn’t moved in for a while.”
“That must have been…interesting.”
“Yeah, it was.” His relationship with his mother hadn’t always been an easy one, but she’d been there for him when he’d needed her. She’d let him flounder for a few weeks, giving him a chance to figure things out for himself. But he’d been in a fog, barely functioning. So she’d moved in and taken over the household tasks, helping to ensure that the kids got out of the house in time for school with clean clothes on their backs and lunches in their backpacks.
“How long did she stay with you?” Samara asked.
“Almost six months. She did everything—cooking, cleaning, laundry. Well, she did the kids’ laundry,” he said, with a wry smile. “It was only when I opened my drawer one morning and couldn’t find a clean pair of socks that I realized she’d stopped doing mine.
“When I asked her about it, she said, ‘You know how to use a washing machine, I made sure of that. And while it might have been Liz’s choice to cater to your wants and needs over the past dozen years, it’s not mine.’”
“Good for her,” Samara said.
“Yeah.” At the time, he’d been shocked and more than a little annoyed by her response. Now he could appreciate the value of what she’d done for him, because he knew that if she hadn’t taken a stand, he wouldn’t have learned to do so either. “But it was only when she was satisfied that I could handle the day-to-day tasks of caring for the house and my kids that she moved out again.”
“It must have been hard for her, when you moved away.”
“It was hard for all of us,” he agreed. His mother was still an important presence in his life and in the lives of his children, and she was probably the biggest reason he’d hesitated to accept the job in Chicago. But as much as he’d worried about moving his children away from the grandmother who had been an invaluable source of support to all of them in the aftermath of Liz’s death, he’d worried more about the future of his children—especially Caitlin—if he’d remained in North Carolina.
“You’re falling behind,” Samara commented, interrupting his thoughts as she nudged the ladder forward a couple of feet before ascending the steps again.
And the sight of those sexy, slim hips swaying pushed all other thoughts from his mind.
He dipped the roller into the tray to refill it before slapping it against the wall.
Samara took a break when she got to the corner, giving him a chance to catch up. She slipped out of the room for a few minutes, returning with a couple of cans of soda in hand. He set the roller down and took one of the cans from her. “Thanks.”
She stood back to scrutinize their work. “It’s going to need a second coat.”
He nodded. “I figured it would.”
“The color looks good, though,” she said. “It definitely brightens up the room.”
“It wouldn’t have been my first choice,” Steven admitted.
“No, yours probably would have been blue.”
“Why do you say that as if it’s a bad thing?”
“Not bad,” she told him. “Just predictable.”
“Because I’m a guy,” he guessed.
“Because you’re the type of guy who likes to color inside the lines.”
“That’s not always a bad thing.”
“I never said it was.”
“I bet you can’t guess what Tyler’s favorite color is,” he challenged her.
“Orange,” she said.
He frowned at her quick—and accurate—response. “How did you know that?”
“When I met your son he was wearing an orange T-shirt, the backpack hanging in the front closet is orange, and there’s an orange sweatshirt on the floor in his bedroom.” She wrapped up her tray to keep the paint from drying out. “How long are we supposed to wait until we can put the second coat on?”
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