Page 42 of Blossoms of the Heart
Chapter 9
Phoebe
* * *
It was more like a hundred questions.
His batch for me.
I managed to answer without going into too many details. Basically without revealing the mess my life had been over the last six years. That was a long time for things to be bad and tonight I wanted to be as desirable as he made me feel.
There was no way that I could have imagined myself sitting on Tokyo beach with Tai, the guy who’d haunted my fantasies for so many years.
No way did he need to know that I’d married and divorced a complete jerk.
Instead I talked about work and tried not to get turned on when I caught him looking at my breasts.
I drank about a glass of wine, just enough to give me a buzz.
“Two last questions each so choose wisely.” He held up two fingers.
“You’ve rinsed me out. There’s no way you have more questions for me.”
“I do, princess.”
“Okay, you first.”
“Nah, you. I insist.”
There was one question on my mind and I’d avoided asking it this whole time.
It was none of my business, but I wanted to know who that woman was from earlier. The one he left with at the center. He’d placed a protective arm around her as they’d gone through the door and they’d looked like they were involved. Granted, many people could have thought that about us tonight as he held my hand.
I didn’t want to just come out and ask him because for a start it would show that I had some level of interest in him that would make me want to ask him about her, and next I shouldn’t be going there.
Business. I was here for business. All work and no play were bad, but I hadn’t even begun to work yet, and playing was…
Well I thought playing was best left to the back of my shelf of life. I’d been through too much recently and I needed to get back on my feet. Step one was being in Japan.
The bad thing was, curiosity was building within me. That good old curiosity that always drew me to him.
So far, he’d brought me up to speed on his whole family. His parents were both here permanently. Back when I knew him they lived in LA. And he, like me, would travel between Japan and the States to see Akito in the summer.
His brother was still in the army, captain now.
Tai had told me pretty much everything.
What could I ask him first that could potentially ease in the girlfriend question?
It came to me. “Back in Iraq, were you ever scared?” That was a normal question, one we could talk about and it was a conversation builder.
“No,” he answered flatly to my dismay.
Damn him. He was supposed to go into more details not just say no flat out. I at least thought he’d maybe tell me about one of his missions where he could have been scared, but wasn’t.
“Really, you go to a war zone for God knows how long and you were never scared. Not even once?”
He cocked a brow and straightened up, making his dog tags clink, and smirked at me.
