Twelve Months of Kristal: 50 Loving States Maine

In Japan, I’ll find a way to convince her not to return to the workshop.

As the plan sets, the captain comes on the intercom to tell us we’ll soon be making our descent into Seattle.

“Seattle?” she says, finally looking up from the dark window. “We’re not refueling in San Francisco?”

“The pilot chose the flight path,” I answer. This is the truth. But I’ve left out that I had Declan instruct him not to pass through San Francisco this time. There’d already been too many delays to this trip, and San Francisco seemed like too dangerous a risk.

The plane refuels quickly and efficiently.

But then we end up sitting on the tarmac for quite a long time.

After an hour, the lead pilot comes out to the main cabin to talk to us. “Sorry for the delay, Mr. Nakamura. Unfortunately, a heavy fog cover has rolled in. Traffic control says they can’t clear us to fly until it dissipates.”

“And when will that be?”

“Right now, they’re predicting not until tomorrow morning. Jason’s in back, powering down the plane.”

I silently curse. Though after so many delays, I suppose I no longer have the right to be surprised about this one.

“So, we’re staying here tonight?” Kristal asks the pilot.

“Fraid so.”

Her face lights up. “Awesome. I’ve never been to Seattle.”

“It’s a great city,” the pilot assures her. But then he says to me, “Unfortunately, since it’s New Year’s, you’re going to have a hard time finding a hotel up to your standards. I barely managed to find a room for Jason and me at the airport hotel. I know Declan’s quit, but maybe he could find something for you, Mr. Nakamura?

“That won’t be necessary,” I answer with a heavy inward sigh. “My brother and his family live here. We’ll stay with them.”

Then I turn to Kristal and say, “It looks like we’ll be having a traditional Japanese new year after all.”

Oh no, Hayato and Kristal are stuck in Seattle.

What will happen when Kristal meets

No and Lilli from

HIS REVENGE BABY?

Stay tuned for a magical New Year’s episode

with some very special guest stars!

I JUST WANT TO CELEBRATE

Episode 8

34

Get Ready

HAYATO

Two summers after my mother’s death, my father ordered me to start dating the woman he wished me to wed.

Koyamo held a long list of accomplishments. She’d gone to the finest schools, won awards for horseback riding, and had a glamorous job as an editor for a high fashion magazine. Her beauty was subtle. Just enough to appreciate, but not so overpowering that other men felt compelled to gaze. She spoke softly but succinctly, and her skin was milky white as if she had never walked in the sun. She was everything the CEO of a major Japanese corporation would want for his son. And after just a few months of dating, I began to warm to the idea of marrying her.

Or perhaps I thought that if I played the part of the potential groom well enough, I would no longer be the man who saw ghosts.

I did not know back then that my father was the person responsible for my mother’s death. Or perhaps I refused to know. I had not been able to bring myself to look upon her ghost, much less listen any further to her rants against falling in love.

Guilt and duty performed a strange dance inside of me back then. I was ashamed of my secret ability to see ghosts and still trying to reconcile Satomi’s death at my father’s brutal hand. Dating Koyamo eased those conflicted feelings as she proved to be a perfect match.

She talked little of herself and only asked me enough questions as to appear polite. She was most interested in surface things, like who would attend certain galas and who might win the current season of Ninja Warrior. Yet, she never gossiped, and she refused to watch television dramas or reality shows.

“I don’t like seeing people so upset,” she confessed on our first date, her cheeks pink with pretty embarrassment.

She was curiously incurious about me. I suspect that her father had fully briefed her on my background as mine had hers, and she felt no need to dig any further. I liked that.

She was a tranquil pond disguised as a woman. And I knew if we were to marry, there would be no protests about my refusal to live anywhere that wasn’t a brand-new construction. She wouldn’t demand anything of me or go to my father with concerns of strange behavior. I felt no desire toward her whatsoever, but I sensed that she wouldn’t mind if I took a mistress to satisfy my needs beyond the sex required to produce heirs.

So by the time my father called us to the Nakamura estate in Tokyo to have lunch with him — code for “assure him we were on the marriage track,” I had already decided that I would wed her as my father wished.