Scandalously Expecting His Child(14)

                * * *

                Scarlett walked away steadily. Her five-inch heels clicked on the wooden bridge leading away from the garden house over the pond in a rhythmic, deliberate staccato.

                Inside her, absolute chaos raged.

                This confrontation with Raiden had been a total shock. It hadn’t even been a possibility in her mind coming here.

                When Hiro had called her a few hours ago, insisting that she attended this ball, she’d been loath to agree. Even with a new face and identity, she dreaded social functions and suffocated under scrutiny. Looking the way she did now, and being a gaijin, as foreigners were called in Japan, and Hiro’s personal companion to boot, she’d been certain she’d be put under the microscope of public interest. But she’d agreed without letting Hiro know of her aversion. She’d do anything for him.

                Then he’d told her he was sending her the dress he wanted her to wear, and her dormant curiosity had been roused. But it had been when she’d noticed he’d sounded nothing like his warmly indulgent and coolly humorous self, but nervous, urgent and sour, that she’d gently probed.

                And he’d told her what he’d withheld from her for months—why he’d been holding this ball, and for whom. The woman he wanted. She’d become engaged to another, obeying her family’s demands. He’d wanted to show her he wouldn’t be mourning her loss, had an exotic beauty on whom to bestow the affections she’d rejected. Then he’d told her the name of the man he’d lost his woman to. Raiden.

                After that, she’d been as anxious as he about this ball.

                During the past three years, after she’d resurfaced with her new identity, she’d seen Raiden many times, all from afar. He’d even been the indirect reason she’d come to Japan. Seeing him up close again was a whole different ball game, the anticipation eating her up with agitation and eagerness.

                So she’d dressed up as Hiro had wanted, played the role he’d wanted her to play when he’d taken her to Raiden and his fiancée. Empathy at Hiro’s suffering at Megumi’s sight had been intensified by her upheaval at Raiden’s nearness. Seeing him face-to-face had felt like a direct blow to the heart.

                But she’d played her part for Hiro’s sake, and had almost sagged in his stiff hold when he, too, hadn’t been able to bear Megumi’s nearness any longer and cut their confrontation short. She’d thought that had been it.

                Not for a second had she considered Raiden might see any similarity between the new her and the casually dressing, flat shoe–wearing, slim blonde he’d once known. So even when she’d felt him following her, she’d thought he’d been pursuing Hiro’s new romantic interest. The Raiden she’d known wouldn’t have struck at an adversary that way, but then he could have changed since she’d betrayed him.

                Then he’d confronted her, and every meticulously erected pillar maintaining her cohesion had crumbled in shock.

                But she’d been trained too well, through too many brutal tests. She’d acted her way to perfection through her life’s worst situations. And she’d had plenty of nightmarish ones. None, however, had ever affected her as her time with Raiden had.

                In the garden house, she’d still fallen back on her fail-safe maneuvers, trapping her agitation in her deepest recesses, plastering one of her automated reaction modes on the surface. But then he’d taken her in his arms, drowned her in a kiss that had dissolved the last vestiges of her facade. And she’d given up the pretense.

                What had followed had been agonizing. But she hoped she’d maintained a semblance of indifference all through.