She straightened, continued to work with renewed zeal. “Why? I invited you to meals before.”
And he’d thought everything she’d served him had been ambrosia. “You were someone else then. Actually you weren’t someone at all, just a role. One that necessitated satisfying my every hunger to mollify me enough so you could dupe me. Which you did. No more reason for you to feed me.”
She flashed him another look over her shoulder that struck his heart like a bolt, before resuming work. “It’s the least I can do after I made a fifty-million-dollar-shaped hole in your pocket.”
“A fifty-million-dollar meal, eh?” He stepped away before he lost the battle and devoured her instead of the painfully tasty-smelling concoctions she was preparing. He walked back to the island, pulled out a stool and leaned his itching hands on the marble counter. “It had better be really good.”
“Of course it will be.”
There she went again with that supreme assurance. She’d never displayed anything near it in the past.
But then it hadn’t been the real her he’d known. She’d been playing the part of the part-time florist and kindergarten teacher who’d been out of her league in his world. In reality, with everything he was, everything he’d seen and done, the reverse might turn out to be true.
She now placed a plate heaped with triple the amount of hers before him, before taking a seat across from him.
He continued watching her, wondering if this was the real her this time, or if it was just another role.
She raised one elegant eyebrow. “You’re starving. Eat.”
A huff escaped him. She just kept surprising him with every word and action. “And you know that how?”
She pushed the cutlery pointedly at his hands. “Because I calculated that you haven’t eaten in at least six hours. I first saw you tonight five hours ago, and you hadn’t eaten at least an hour before that. I remember you needed to eat every three hours, with the level of exercise you maintained, and that nuclear metabolism of yours. You seemed to eat almost half my body weight every day. With your increased body mass, you must be in the red by now.”
He was. In every way. And he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He’d thought his appetite, which nothing had ever affected except her, had been stalled anticipating the ball. Seemed it had been an advance alarm. He had been anticipating her.
She started eating, and he gave in, followed suit.
The moment the thing he was eating hit his taste buds, an involuntary growl of hunger and appreciation rolled from his gut. “What is that?”
“Nasu dengaku.”
“What?”
Her lips twitched. “You don’t know your Japanese cuisine, do you?”
His gaze clung to her lips as her expression filled with what looked like unguarded humor. But it couldn’t be. This enigma probably was incapable of spontaneity.
Compressing his lips, he suppressed the moronic impulse to smile back. “I only look Japanese, remember? I spent my first twenty-four years as an identity-less weapon, then when I got out, I became American. I learned everything I could about Japan before I came, but nothing can replace acquiring knowledge firsthand.”
She nodded as she chewed, her brilliant eyes doing this hypnotic color dance. “It is a very complex country and culture. Such an extensive mix of modern and traditional, so many regional variations. You’ll need at least six months before you’re used to the most common daily practices, and a year to comfortably navigate the land and society.”
If he didn’t know better, he would have thought she was giving him sincere advice to ease his integration into his new homeland. But he did know better.
So what was she doing? No doubt more acting.
The acute senses that had never failed him clamored to detect her duplicity. But she was truly undetectable.
He exhaled. “Are you talking from firsthand experience?”
“I have been here just over a year now.” Her gorgeous head inclined, and her deep red silky hair sparked fire in the overhead halogen spotlights. “Bear in mind, it might be years before you can fully integrate. Good news is, speaking fluent Japanese will shorten and ease the process. It did for me.”
She’d never let on she understood a word of Japanese.
“I have more factors to shorten and ease the process. I will have a Japanese wife. Something you didn’t have.”
“I certainly didn’t have a Japanese wife.”
He held those teasing eyes, and the urge to ask became irresistible. Not one of the dozens of relevant questions, but the one that blocked his throat like a burning coal.