Billionaire Romance Boxed Set 2(112)

“You take your shoes off first,” Asher offered with a grin. “Shall I?” He mimicked kneeling to help me remove them.

“N-no!” My God, this was embarrassing. I stepped out of my high heels and…

“Right here,” Asher said, tapping a mat off to the side. I put my heels there. “The proper way to sit is called seiza, but most women can’t do it for…”

I interrupted him before he could finish. “I can do it. What’s seiza?”

He cleared his throat and tossed me a quick smile before explaining. “Kneeling, with your feet under your rear. It’s a strictly feminine way of sitting, but if you need a demonstration I can emasculate myself for a moment.”

“I can do it!” I said. Far be it for me not to know these things. Granted, I didn’t know them, and maybe I would make a fool out of myself, but after he explained it I felt I had a decent grasp of what I needed to do. I wasn’t about to let Asher mock me by letting him show me how to sit properly. How hard could it be?

Stepping into the alcove onto one of the cushions, I lowered my knees onto it and sat on the heels of my feet.

“Perfect,” he said with a nod.

When he sat opposite me on the other cushion, he simply sat cross-legged.

“Hey,” I said. “Is that customary?”

“For me, yes,” he replied. “This is the casual Japanese way of sitting for a man.”

“So I can sit like that?” I asked.

“If you want. I won’t mind. Typically the casual way for a woman is to put your feet to the side and sit directly on the cushion, though.” When I scooted both my feet sideways so they were to the right of my body, he nodded. “Yes, like that.”

Well, no. I was of a mind to show him I could be quite the formal and sophisticated lady. I put my feet back under my butt and sat with my back completely straight in some haughty show of refinement. Asher rolled his eyes and laughed at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Very good.”

A waiter brought us menus and asked after drinks. I ordered water, having no idea what else to order. Asher did the same, but asked for a tokkuri (one of those bulbous flasks, I guessed?) of sake, too, plus cups for each of us.

I had bad experiences with sake, and I told him as much.

“Oh, really?” he asked with a smirk. “What sort of bad experiences?”

“A lady doesn’t drink and tell,” I said. Honestly, if I told him the truth about a drunken stumble through the city, being kicked out of a cab with my friend halfway to my house, and us wandering in our inebriation towards a park where we collapsed on a bench, convinced it was the couch in my living room, I was pretty sure he’d never speak to me again. That wasn’t the kind of story you told someone you met yesterday, regardless of what happened during your first meeting with them.

“I suppose,” he said, teasing, “I’ll just have to see what you do after we have our first cup.”

“First and last,” I said. “I won’t be having more. I have to—” What did I have to do? Nothing. I had no work for today, since I wouldn’t be able to find anything at the temp agency this late in the day. In fact, I’d intentionally told them I couldn’t work today because of this lunch date, meeting, or whatever it was. But I couldn’t very well tell Asher that…

“I need to wash my hair,” I said after a long pause. “Alcohol closes up the pores and makes it harder to clean.”

“Pores?” he asked. “In your hair?”#p#分页标题#e#

“Well, yeah? Hair is just dead skin, basically, and skin has pores, so…” Did hair have pores? It sounded good in my head, but I had no clue.

“Which is why people eat greasy food after a night of drinking,” Asher added, matter-of-factly, with a hint of sarcasm. “The oil will travel to the hair and make it shinier, since washing it won’t work as well.”

“Y-yes…” I doubted he bought my explanation, but his comeback was impeccable.

To escape his scrutiny, I stuffed my face into the menu, pretending to browse through the choices. When I actually looked at what I had in front of me, I frowned.

“The menu is in Japanese,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, agreeing.

“How are we supposed to order anything when we can’t read it?” Why was he so calm! He acted as if he had control over everything, like the situation would bend itself to his will and come out just perfectly, except how? How could he know? I didn’t even know what I was supposed to order to eat, but from looking at Asher I had a feeling that he knew exactly what he’d be eating today, and every other day for a year.