Dearly Beloved (Siren Publishing Allure) (2 page)

“Doctor Maxwell will be right with you, Ms. Taylor,” the receptionist said to her. “Please have a seat.”

Tomio escorted her to a row of chairs and they sat down. About fifteen minutes later, a nurse came through the door and called her name. Tomio followed her. Ebony got out of all the layers of winter garments and handed it to him while she stepped on the scale. She saw the scowl on his face as the nurse repeated her weight aloud, and jotted it down on a paper in a manila folder. She could not be considered tiny compared to Japanese standards. Afterward, the nurse led them to a room and took Ebony’s vitals. Tomio sat down, still holding Ebony’s things.

“Remove everything and put the gown on with the open side in front.” The nurse left.

Ebony undressed behind a curtain, then stepped up on the examination table. She covered herself with the sheet when she sat down.

Doctor Maxwell entered and stared at Tomio. “Hello, I’m Doctor Maxwell.” He didn’t try to shake hands with Tomio. Tomio nodded curtly. “How are you feeling, Ms. Taylor?” he asked as he washed his hands.

“Fat,” Ebony answered.

The doctor chuckled. “That’s to be expected when you’re pregnant.”

Tomio gasped. Ebony hadn’t planned for him to find out this way.

The nurse returned and helped Ebony lie down on the table. She adjusted the sheet to cover her properly. The doctor felt her stomach, examined her breasts, and gave her a mini pelvic exam. “Have you been taking your vitamins?”

“Yes, sir,” Ebony answered.

“You can sit up now,” the doctor said. “Everything looks fine. I’d like to see you in a month.”

Tomio glared at her and finally spoke to the doctor. “Will she be able to fly?”

“Yes, she’s about to enter her second trimester, Mr. Taylor.”

Ebony made a face.

Tomio corrected the doctor. “The name is Nakamura.”

“Oh, sorry, Mr. Nakamura. Both the baby and the mother are healthy, and I see no reason why she can’t travel.” The nurse left the room.

Tomio neglected to tell the good doctor that her trip to Tokyo, Japan would take about fifteen hours, or that he would never see her again.

“Second trimester, what does that mean?” Tomio asked.

Ebony frowned.
Tomio is such a man
.

“It means that she’s four months pregnant, and out of the critical phase of the first three months.” The doctor helped her down from the table. “You can get dressed now.”

“Thank you for taking care of my wife,” Tomio said to the other man. The doctor nodded and stepped out of the room.

Ebony disappeared behind the curtain again and got dressed. Tomio was waiting to help her into her coat when she reappeared. They walked out of the examination room. Tomio paid her bill and accepted the prescriptions the receptionist handed him. He tucked those away in his coat pocket. Heading for the elevator, Tomio took out his phone and dialed a number. “We are coming out.” He hung up, and they entered the elevator. “Where is your wedding ring?”

“In a jewelry box at my apartment.”

“Why aren’t you wearing it?”

“It’s too tight.”

Tomio looked down at her, and then stared straight ahead of him.

Ebony frowned. She’d removed the ring the minute she boarded a plane for America. She didn’t know how Tomio had tracked her down in Louisiana, but the man and his family had enough money to hire an investigator or two. He helped her into the car, and Akira drove away from the parking area. They ended up at her apartment. How? She didn’t know since she never gave Tomio or Akira the address. She supposed a detective told them this information, too.

Tomio escorted her into the furnished apartment, looked around, and frowned. “Pack your things. You are coming home with me where you belong.”

“This is my home,” Ebony said to him.

“A wife’s place is with her husband. Do the vows you took mean nothing to you?”

Ebony refused to answer. She just marched into the bedroom, pulled her suitcases from the closet, and began tossing in clothes. She didn’t have much, so it didn’t take long. Her prenatal vitamins were the last things she grabbed and stuffed inside of her purse.

“I have taken care of your rent and turned off the utilities,” Tomio said. “You just need to drop the keys off at the office.” He carried her luggage out of the apartment.

Ebony checked her mailbox while Tomio gave the keys to the lady behind the desk. Less than an hour later, they were at the airport walking out to the Nakamura private jet. She’d escaped him once. Just because she now carried the future heir to the Nakamura fortune, didn’t mean she wouldn’t attempt to escape again.

Fifteen and a half hours later, they were back in Tokyo and driving away from the Narita International Airport. Akira left them at the Nakamura mansion in Ochiai, located in the northwestern corner of Shinjuku. A young woman and man greeted them at the door and took their coats.

Tomio escorted Ebony to the formal receiving room. All conversation ceased when he entered with her. Both of them went down on their knees and lowered their heads before Tomio’s parents.

“Rise.” It was Setsuko Nakumura, the matriarch of the family.

Ebony lifted her head only to be rewarded by a sound slap across the face that caught her off guard and knocked her off balance. Tomio caught her before she fell.

“Ungrateful bitch. How dare you disrespect my son and this family after all he has done for you,” Setsuko shouted. For a little woman she had a big mouth. “He took you off the streets and put you upon a pedestal above all the decent, single young Japanese women. Is this how you repay him?”

Talk about a bad first impression
. Ebony refused to answer the older woman. Her face hurt and evil thoughts of choking the old biddy entered her head. Tomio helped Ebony to her feet. She pulled away from him. How dare he touch her after he didn’t defend her honor?

Setsuko raised her hand to strike her again. Ebony towered over the older woman. Tomio caught his mother’s hand before it could hit her. “Mother, don’t.” He opened Ebony’s coat, exposing her small abdomen to her and the rest of the family. “She’s pregnant with my child.” He turned to her. “Go to my room.”

A hush went over the room. Ebony turned on her heels and marched out, leaving Tomio with his perfect family. One of the maids showed her to Tomio’s suite. Even the hired help looked down on her.

Tomio sat near the head of the table enjoying the
kishimen
—flat udon noodles mixed with soy sauce and leeks that the cook had prepared for him and his family.

“Are you sure the baby is yours?” his father asked. They were all present…his parents, Hajime and Setsuko, his banker brother, Eiji, and his dutiful wife, Gina, his two younger brothers, Kazuhiko and Makoto, and their lazy wives, Haruka and Takara. He knew exactly what all of them had on their minds. They thought he had gone off his rocker for going all the way to Louisiana to find and bring back a woman who had deserted him. Tomio didn’t care what they thought. It was his life and his woman, and if they didn’t like it, they could all go to hell.

“She’s not even Japanese,” Haruka finally said. “Why go to so much trouble for someone who obviously doesn’t want to be a part of this family?”

Tomio stopped eating and glared at the outspoken twenty-five-year-old daughter of one of his father’s good friends. “I do not have to answer to you. It would be wise to stay out of my affairs and mind your own damn business.”

The raven-haired beauty gasped. “How dare you speak that way to me, Tomio? Who the fuck do you think you are? Do you know who my father is?”

Tomio glared at her. “Of course I do. Do you know who I am?”

Haruka turned to her husband, Kazuhiko. “Are you going to allow your brother to speak to me this way? He might be the oldest, but he is not the boss of me.”

Her efforts were rewarded by a backhanded slap that knocked her from her seat, onto the floor. No one at the table attempted to help her or chastised Kazuhiko for his actions.

Haruka crawled back into the chair with her head lowered. Her lip was bleeding and starting to swell.

“You will not disrespect Tomio,” Kazuhiko said angrily. He went back to eating.

Haruka grabbed a napkin, wiped away the blood, and resumed eating as if nothing had happened.

Tomio felt no remorse for what had just happened. As the eldest brother and the heir to the Nakamura dynasty, he couldn’t show any type of sentimental emotions because it could be taken as a sign of weakness. He knew the moment that he met Haruka Enoki that she was trouble. Their families had arranged the courtship and marriage between her and Kazuhiko. Haruka was eighteen at the time, had just graduated high school, but had no marketable skills, except as a pain in the ass. There was no doubt in his mind that her father had married her off to get rid of her. Kazuhiko didn’t put up a fuss because Haruka was pretty and came with a generous dowry. Instead of doing something useful with her life, like going to college or producing kids for his brother, all she did was lie around her room gossiping on the phone with her friends, or on one of those social networks.

Kazuhiko, at twenty-seven, didn’t seem to care what his wife did, just as long as she didn’t interfere in family business, or show up at the Golden Goddess—the hostess club that he managed in the red-light district of Kabukicho, Tokyo. Kazuhiko had plenty of other women in his life, and Haruka’s sole purpose was to spend his money on clothing so she could look good on his arm at parties and other functions. She should have used some of her energy to learn how to be a perfect yakuza wife.

Tomio rang a bell and one of the food servers arrived in the dining room. He called the man over.

“Yes, Tomio-sama,” the servant said respectfully.

“Please have the cook prepare some porridge and tea, and take it up to my wife in my suite. It has been a long flight and she has not eaten.”

The server bowed. “Yes, Tomio-sama.” He left the room quickly.

“Are you sure that the child is yours?” his father asked again.

“Quite sure,” Tomio answered. “My wife was a virgin when I met her, and not some tramp as you want others to believe.” The other women at the table seemed a bit uncomfortable with the conversation. Only a few people knew of Ebony’s existence, and about their marriage. He had kept it a secret from his family. It wasn’t until she disappeared that he let the proverbial cat out of the bag by going into a tirade. “I accompanied her to her doctor’s appointment yesterday. She is four months pregnant, which coincides with the time we’ve been intimate.”

“That does not mean a thing,” his mother said. “She was a hostess when you met her. She could have very well slept with any of her customers while she was dating you.”

Being the matriarch of the Nakamura family earned his mother certain privileges. That was the only reason she wasn’t sent to the floor by his father the way Kazuhiko had reprimanded Haruka. It did not accord her the right to insult his wife in such a way. “My wife remained a virgin until the night of our wedding. She never returned to work after that.”

“Tomio is right,” Kazuhiko said. “Ebony is a good girl. I introduced them. I hired her as an entertainer, and I only allowed her to socialize with the grandfatherly types who were just looking to talk to a pretty young woman.”

Tomio remembered the first night he and Ebony had met. The African-American beauty had stolen his heart away with just one smile.

“How much does she know about the family?” his father asked.

“Enough to make her run away to protect her unborn child,” Tomio answered. He couldn’t say that he blamed her. He would have done the same if the shoe was on the other foot. “But I’m sure a lot of what she knows is purely gossip. I don’t mix business with pleasure.” He knew Ebony loved him. He remembered how she clung to him on the night that she left. It couldn’t have been an easy decision for her to make. He only wished she would have discussed her fears with him.

“How do you plan to keep her from fleeing again?” Eiji asked.

Eiji was a year younger than him, and owned a bank in the central business district. His wife, Gina, was the perfect mate. She was not only beautiful, but from a rich and loving family who thought the world of Eiji. Gina had also taken on the role of taking care of his parents and the day-to-day running of the Nakamura household. The job was supposed to go to the wife of the eldest son, but there was no way in the world his mother would even let Ebony near her. Unfortunately, she and the other women of her generation didn’t trust foreigners. Tomio thought that laughable because his mother had no problem with what her husband or her sons were doing.

Twenty-five-year-old Makoto and his twenty-four-year-old wife, Takara, had yet to voice an opinion. As a young lawyer, Makoto served the family well in a legal capacity, and represented the members of their organization in court. So far, he hadn’t lost one case. Tomio was proud of him. His baby brother was a genius.

Takara was his trophy wife that he brought to important parties and showed off. Tomio despised her just as much as he did Haruka. Takara had cheated on Makoto when they were dating. Makoto had foolishly taken her back. His brother had plenty of book sense, but no common sense.