Chapter 19

Watching Tokyo unfurl underneath me is like a dream come true. Sure, at several thousand feet in the air, it pretty much looks like every other city I’ve flown over in my life, but at the same time... it’s different.

“You look like you’re ready to geek out,” Thomas whispers from the business-class seat next to me.

“I am . . . but it’s all good.”

I was surprised that he’s back here with the rest of the team, but when he sat down next to me, giving me the window seat in the front row of business class while he took the aisle, I was so excited that I’ve barely slept the entire eleven hours.

Instead, I’ve binged on movies, talked with Thomas, and tried to keep my voice down as he’s made me laugh even as the people around us have slept.

That was hard, as somewhere over the Pacific where I could just see the aurora borealis out my window, he insisted on whispering things he wanted to do in Japan into my ear... very few of which we could repeat out loud. The ideas that go through his mind fill me with heat, and more than once, I had to stifle a moan as he teased me with naughty thoughts about what we’re going to get up to.

And that was without even touching me as he reminded me of my demand for professionalism. I’d been this close to saying fuck it and skipping down the aisle to the tiny bathroom to join the Mile-High Club, and he’d known it. He’d delighted in it, in fact.

All work and no play? Thomas likes to pretend that’s how he is, but it’s the exact opposite. His hard, efficient work means he plays just as hard, and for hours over the Pacific, he told me exactly how he wants to play.

My excitement fades a little as we circle into Narita Airport and go through the exhausting rigmarole that is customs. Even Thomas’s money and influence don’t swing any weight with these guys, and by the time we step out into the underground train station that links the airport to the rest of Tokyo, I’m already exhausted.

“Please tell me this takes us directly to a hotel.”

“Sorry,” Thomas says, shouldering his bag while wheeling his other behind him like any other traveler, “but our limo’s waiting for us at Tokyo Station. And at least the train’s fast.”

Fast is one thing, but more importantly, the Narita Express is quiet, and Thomas doesn’t seem to mind that I use his shoulder as a pillow while I close my eyes. It’s comforting, watching him act so normal but so protective. It lets me sort of half-doze, and I have good dreams as I feel his warmth against my cheek the whole trip.

“Come on, we’re here,” he says, gently nudging me.

Our team isn’t that large, only five people, but the other three don’t seem to give a second thought to Thomas’s possessive closeness with me. In fact, in the last couple of weeks, nobody’s said anything to me at all about Thomas and me going ‘public’ with our relationship, probably for three reasons.

One, almost nobody comes down to my office anyway since the gossip-mongers all got their fill.

Two, I’m still busting my butt for Bill and he’s pretty much the coolest supervisor I could ask for in this situation.

Three, I’m pretty sure Thomas’s simmering anger and reputation have made anyone who considers saying anything keep their traps shut out of fear of ‘the blast.’

I don’t care. I’ll prove the naysayers wrong the same way that I’ve won Thomas’s respect . . . with my results. I’m strong, I’m powerful, I’m one sexy bitch... but most importantly, I’m smart.

Emerging onto the streets of Tokyo is like a dream come true. The crowd, the sounds, the music, the signage... I feel like I’ve just walked into one of my animes.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Too bad we won’t be able to see what it looks like at night,” Thomas reminds me, looking around before turning to Kenny, who’s serving double-duty as translator and Japanese legal expert. He directs us to our ride, and we make our way over.

The limo’s not quite a limo but more of a large, luxurious minivan that takes us where we need to go. I want to watch Tokyo city life blossom around me, watch the hustle and bustle, the children walking to school in groups with their uniforms, hats, and backpacks, the young people looking much more colorfully arrayed, and the housewives on their bicycles. I want to watch the herds of ‘salarymen’ on their way to work... but it all passes too quickly, even if we are dealing with city traffic.

It turns into a hazy slide show, and before I know it, we’re at Odaiba Bay, where we get off in front of something I can’t believe. “A seaplane?” I ask.

“I figured it’d be more fun than the ferry, and I want to look at incorporating this service,” Thomas replies as we climb aboard the sleek, modern-looking plane.

The flight’s about ninety minutes, and while nowhere near as quiet as the business-class airliner we took to get to Tokyo, the view’s worth it, and I’m reminded of old reruns of Fantasy Island as we come in for a landing.

The island’s beautiful, a tropical paradise, one of a small grouping, volcanic hills hunching out of the deep blue Pacific and covered in deep green forests. Along one side there’s a small town, beaches, and a dock.

It’s about as far from the normal image of Japan that I’ve seen, and while the view up here is amazing, I’m excited to get on the ground and see it.

“My God, it’s beautiful,” I whisper as we land in a huge spray of water that’s amazingly smooth, considering what we’re doing.

Thomas nods. “When we get off the plane, take mental notes,” Thomas says to everyone, all business as we approach the dock. “I want your impressions, market ideas, everything. We know our preliminary research, but I need confirmation.”

Colors.Every day, I’m reminded of just how Technicolor this resort is. Five days of waking up in a tropical paradise to the sound of waves, tropical birds, and a gentle wind stirring the curtain outside my window should be enough for anyone to unwind and relax. I sit up in the morning and look out into a riotous collage of blues, greens, whites, and natural browns, of birds dipped in reds and yellows, of fish that dance like golden sparkles and starlets in clear blue bays.

I should be putty in bed, lounging around. I mean, I don’t even need to wear pants. Everyone around here wears shorts most of the time.

I should be relaxed... but I’m anything but. Part of it, of course, has been that I haven’t been able to spend much time with Thomas. While he might be the most efficient worker I’ve ever met, the locals are on their own idea of what good work means.

Unfortunately, that means a lot of ‘work longer, not better,’ and he’s had huge chunks of his time taken up with meetings, teas, and the like where there’s a lot of nodding, a lot of professional smiling, and not much else. I think poor Kenny is getting a sore throat from all the translating back and forth.

By the time Thomas gets back every night, he barely has time to catch up with the rest of the team, to share a small bit of time with me, and to shower before he has to crash and be ready for the next day.

As for me... I’ve got my own challenges.

After a breakfast of rice and furikake, a seaweed, salt, herb, and fish flake mixture that’s used as a seasoning on top of a lot of stuff all around Japan, I try to go back to work.

Which brings me to my main problem, the working situation.

While the proposal Thomas has been presented with is to buy the resort, with its twenty-eight guest rooms and two meeting spaces, and turn it into a high-end escape for Fortune 500 types who want to mix their business with pleasure, the professional capabilities are severely lacking.

Our team’s work room isn’t much bigger than my office back in Roseboro, and while there are only three of us in here, we’re having to share four outlets for three tablets and six laptops. There’s no way we can even fit everyone in here at once unless we want to share bad breath.

To top it off, the Internet is ridiculously slow. As in, I could send a carrier pigeon back to Roseboro faster than this.

“And... I’m going to go do my hair,” Randy Ewing says, shaking her curls, which are much frizzier than when we arrived, and pushing back from her space. She’s responsible for looking at renovation ideas and has been working harder than anyone. “All this heat and humidity is terrible. I’m already planning a salon trip when we get back, but for now, I just need this mop braided and out of my face. I figure by the time I get it done, my email might actually be finished downloading.” She taps the laptop she’s working on like her harsh words might make it connect faster. “What about you, Mia?”

I mutter a few tasty curse words in Russian and glare at one of my two laptops. Looking up at her, I shrug. “At least you’ve got something. Did you know the current owner keeps all his business records on paper? Not even an Excel spreadsheet... handwritten entries in a bound book like it’s 1985. Seriously, how am I supposed to see any trends with that?”

“Best of luck,” she says, shaking her head. “By the third time I had to bicycle all the way into town to even check my texts, I’d made up my mind. We’d have to sink too much into this place to make it anything close to what Thomas is thinking. God knows what it’d take to get a proper renovation team up here, and that’s before the actual materials cost even kicks in.”

Randy leaves, and I chug away at my information as best I can. Finally, just before noon, I see Thomas come in, his eyes red from last night’s activities.

“Ugh... I don’t know what they put in the local version of sake, but it smelled like kerosene and kicks like a mule.”

“Good morning to you too, sunshine. Or good afternoon,” I grumble, slamming my laptop closed. “Please tell me that you’re making progress on your side of things?”

“I think I am,” Thomas confides. “I feel stupid that I haven’t learned Japanese and have to rely on Kenny to translate for me, but I’ve gotten the flow of how they do things around here. Somewhere in between Dancing Queen and Gimme Shelter at the karaoke bar, there was a nod, a little grunt passed in between two men who were pretending to be drunk but were nowhere near as wasted as their singing excused, and I’ve gotten the approval of the village head honchos. If we want to make the deal on the resort, we can. I hope it’s worth the headache, and I hope Kenny forgives me for my bad rendition of Elvis. Apparently, the karaoke bar in town doesn’t have the most up to date database.”

“Databases... ugh. God, what I’d give for a fucking database right now. I’d run algorithms, maybe even make a chart. Databases,” I say longingly. I lean back, growling at the word while I tug at my hair. I’ve reached my limit. I never thought I’d be tired of being in Japan... but the Japan I want to see is nowhere near here.

“What’s the problem?” he asks, rubbing at his temples. “Internet is on the list of needed upgrades. Along with a revamped power system.”

“It’s not just that. You need data analysis, but I can’t get my hands on the data. You want me to spot trends, but without having the ability to see the complete picture, I simply can’t. I’ve got twenty-year-old technology, fifty-year-old data collection systems, and a power grid that can’t even keep up with what we’re asking of it. I’m working one-armed and in the dark. And I don’t want to let you down.”

“Mia, figure it out. That’s what we’re here to do,” he says dismissively, sitting down in the empty chair. “You’re smart. Think outside the box.”

“Excuse me?” I ask, my frustrations boiling over. “Thomas, I’ve been stuck in here because the tools I need to use—”

“Use your brain, not the technology!” Thomas snaps. I stop, shocked at how he’s pushing me. It’s not that I think I’m immune from his ‘blasts’, and in fact, have demanded that he treat me the same as everyone else, but this is the first time he’s actually done so, and the charge in the air between us is staticky and buzzy.

He pauses for a moment, taking a breath before continuing in a calmer voice. “Computers are tools, yes. But that’s just it, they’re tools. They’re never going to replace what’s inside your head because that brain’s better than any computer can ever be. I do need your skills to dissect the clusterfuck this resort is, judging by everyone’s complaints. But that can be done at home if the technology isn’t here. There’s more here to evaluate than just dry figures.”

Somehow, it feels like he doesn’t even know me. I live for dry figures, columns of numbers that magically add up correctly every time, and the things I can learn from rows of data. But he says there’s more?

“What do you mean, ‘more’? This is why you brought me,” I say, gesturing to the laptop in front of me.

Thomas, amazingly, chuckles. “We’re not making a decision and cutting a check today. If we do want to move on this deal, it’s going to be a fiscal year at least while all the right people put all the right signatures on all the right pieces of paperwork. I honestly think this island’s held in place in the ocean by paperwork. But while we’re here, I need the team’s insight—no, I need your insight—into this deal.”

I pause, surprised by the meaning in his words. I venture, “Do you realize that we’ve been on this island paradise for four days and I’ve barely had time with you as my boyfriend and not my boss? I know we’re here on business, but maybe we can take a small break?”

He presses his lips together, and I can already hear him telling me that he can’t budge from his schedule. “How about if you spend today compiling every bit of information you can get your hands on and getting your numbers pulled together to take home, and tomorrow, we take twenty-four hours just for us? I’ll give the whole team the day and let them pull their own impressions too so we have a solid look at everything this proposal has to offer.”

I grin, giving him a little sass. “That was the most unsexy request for a date I think I’ve ever received.”

His smirk is full of arrogance, and he raises an eyebrow. “Not a date, Miss Karakova. We’re keeping things professional, remember?”

I bite down on the end of my pen pointedly, remembering how he told me he thought I’d been intentionally driving him crazy in our first meetings. His eyes zero in on my mouth the way I’d hoped they would, and I tease him further. “Anything you say, Mr. Goldstone.” My voice is pure sex and suggestion.

“Starting tomorrow when you wake up, you’ll be totally unplugged. And totally mine, Mia.”