Scandalously Expecting His Child(21)

                “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.

                “Is any of this—” he made an encompassing gesture at her “—real? I know your past self was all an act. Is this new persona all a part of your new act?”

                Instead of answering with the same directness she had till now, her eyes lowered to her plate as she resumed eating.

                He ate, too, because the food was just too delicious and he was famished, and because her silence made him feel as he imagined people did when waiting for a heart-stopping twist in a movie, increasing their popcorn munching in anticipation.

                Then she raised her eyes. “I never really acted with you. Apart from the pretense that I was someone...normal, with what that entailed of prefabricated and rehearsed details, everything else—my actions, my characteristics, what I said to you, what I did with you—that was all the real me.”

                His heart went off like a clap of thunder in his chest.

                “Yeah, sure.”

                She nodded, as if accepting his ridicule. “You asked, and I answered. You’re free to take my answer or leave it.”

                “I’ll leave it, if it’s all the same to you.”