Not that she’d given Hiro any reason to fear him. She’d barely looked in his direction so far.
Hiro, on the other hand, was still glaring at him, waiting for his corroboration. Raiden gave it to him with an inclination of his head.
Megumi’s hand tightened. Was she urging him to vocalize his response? He knew he had to comply, or it would be taken as an offense. His silence so far had been bad enough.
He didn’t feel like making a response. Right now the only thing he felt like doing was snatching Hiro’s arm off Scarlett’s waist and dragging her away from him.
Still, he said, “Matsuyama-san, Ms. Delacroix, your presence at our wedding isn’t only our privilege, it’s a necessity.”
His deferential words didn’t seem to appease Hiro. The man’s response was perplexing, since Hiro had not only insisted on holding this ball, but had brought to his attention the very woman he was visually wrestling him over.
Thankfully, the stilted meeting came to an end shortly afterward, and Hiro and Scarlett moved on. Raiden forced himself not to watch them walk away. Not to watch her. But he could no longer bear having Megumi by his side.
Looking down at her, he tried to smile, failing this time. “If it’s okay with you, Megumi, I’ll now take advantage of your kind offer to go make the rounds.”
“Of course.” Megumi stepped back, looking as relieved as he felt to finally separate.
Walking away, he forced himself to stop by a few congratulators. As soon as he saw an opening to get out of the ballroom, he took it. On his way out, he again saw Scarlett. She was heading out, too. Even from the back, and from a distance, the sense of familiarity swamped him all over again. The same intensity he’d experienced when he’d first seen her.
Her. That was how he’d always thought of the woman he’d known by the name of Hannah McPherson.
He’d met her in New York one bright summer afternoon five years ago, when she’d swerved her car to avoid hitting a reckless biker and crashed into his car instead.
From the moment she’d stepped out of her car, everything else had ceased to matter to him. The inexorable attraction he’d felt toward her had been something he’d never thought he could experience. He’d always told her she’d literally crashed into his life, and pulverized all his preconceptions and rules.
Ignoring his usual precautions, he hadn’t even performed the most basic investigation on her. It had been through her that he’d known her to be a kindergarten teacher by morning, and a florist who ran an inherited shop by afternoon.
When he’d taken her out that first night, she’d made it clear it wouldn’t go any further because he inhabited a world alien to hers. She hadn’t budged when he’d insisted that attraction like theirs bridged all differences. It had taken their first kiss for her to capitulate, concede that what had sprung between them had been unstoppable. And from that first night, he’d plunged with her into an incendiary affair.
Then after five delirious months, a single inexplicable discrepancy had led him to unravel an ingeniously spun web of fraud. And to an appalling verdict. That her identity had been manufactured just prior to meeting him.
It had all been a setup. Starting with the accident that had brought them together. She must have been sent by some rival to spy on him. And in their intimacy, he’d left himself wide-open. Whatever she’d been after, she could have found it.
But since no one had used privileged information against him yet, either she hadn’t found what she’d been looking for or she was waiting for the right time to leverage her intel from her recruiters. Or him. Or both.