Fire and Ice - Anne Stuart [2]
He was going to find Jilly and send her back where she belonged before she got hurt.
And then he could forget all about her once more.
The jet lag shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Jilly—she’d seen Lost in Translation too many times. She’d staggered off the airplane in a sleepless daze, and it was sheer luck she’d made her circuitous way from Narita airport into Tokyo and into one of the cute green cabs. She handed the address to the driver, then sat back, closing her eyes.
Where the hell were Summer and Taka? She’d left half a dozen messages on her sister’s cell phone and heard zip in return. If she’d had any sense, she never would have gotten on the plane to Tokyo until she heard back from them, but right now she wasn’t in the mood to be sensible. She was running, running to her big sister, who’d hug her and tell her everything would be fine.
And in the meantime she’d finally managed to get her butt to Japan. She had all the practical reasons—she hadn’t seen her sister in three months, there was an extraordinary exhibit of Heian-era pottery at the state museum, and if she was thinking of switching her doctoral studies in archaeology from Mesopotamia to early Japan, then an almost pitch-perfect (according to the reports) exhibit of Heian life was a necessary part of her studies. It didn’t matter that the exhibit would be there for years—she hadn’t discussed the change with her advisers and the sooner she made the decision the better.
So Japan, now, was a necessity. If it happened to coincide with the occurrence of the worst one-night stand in the history of the universe, with Duke the moron, then that was merely coincidental. She was going to put that abortive, messy, horrible night out of her mind. It wasn’t the first time she’d done something stupid—well, in fact, when it came to men, it was, but she wasn’t going to think about that now. Like Scarlett O’Hara, she’d think about that tomorrow. For the time being all she wanted was her sister, and she wanted her now. There were a dozen other reasons to be in Japan, like Taka, like his cousin, but she had no intention of thinking about any of those right now.
It was growing dark, the bright neon flowers lighting up the city, but she was too impatient to admire anything. She just had to get someplace and stay put for a while. She needed her sister’s calm wisdom, and a decent bed and time to figure out what she was going to do. About everything.
It took the cab forever, and by the time the driver pulled to a stop in the residential area in the southern part of the city, she’d almost fallen asleep.
“Arigato gozaimasu,” she said, shoving half of her yen into his white-gloved hand. She scrambled out of the taxi, dragging her backpack with her, and looked at the one-story building.
The taxi hadn’t moved. A moment later the driver emerged, a troubled expression on his face. “No one appears to be home, miss. Perhaps I should take you to one of the big hotels in the city?” Except he spoke in Japanese, and clearly had no hope of her understanding.
But she’d been working toward this from the moment she met her Japanese brother-in-law. And his mysterious cousin. “I’ll be fine. My sister knows I’m coming, and I have a key.” Which was a lie on both counts, but she had no doubt she’d find a way in.
The taxi driver politely hid his surprise, either at her command of the language or her god-awful accent, and returned to his cab, relieved to have done his duty to the hapless gaijin. He took off into the darkened street, leaving Jilly alone to make her way into her sister’s walled fortress.
She checked the iron gate, just in case they’d left it unlocked, but it held firm. She