Page 113 of Tripped By Love

My joy from the water and the win slipped away.

I eyed her again. The sunglasses were for more than show.

I pulled her away from the crowd, down the bar. “What’s up?” I asked quietly.

“Ken’Ichi arrived this morning,” she said, flipping her diamond-studded phone case over and over and over on the bar.

I frowned at her nervous habit but gave a curt nod. We’d known he was showing up. I had business to discuss with him. Ken’Ichi was Tsuyoshi Mori’s first lieutenant?hisWakagashira. I’d been working for almost four years to get to this point. To have this exact meeting become a reality.

“Otosancalled at the same time. It seems my philandering ways have embarrassed the family for the last time. I am to be married off in hopes that my husband?or motherhood?will tame me,” she said.

“Were those his exact words?” I asked, concern flowing through me. Last week, the paparazzi had sneaked onto the villa’s grounds and taken a picture of her and a male companion on the balcony with more skin than clothes showing. I was the reason she’d been out there to begin with. I’d asked her to cause a distraction. I hadn’t asked her to have sex to do it, but with Jada, I should have known she’d use the one power she so deftly wielded.

“His exact words were, ‘You will marry Ken’Ichi,’” she said in a rough imitation of her dad’s strong Japanese accent compared to her almost completely Americanized one.

“Ken’Ichi,” I repeated like a moron. It didn’t shock me, and yet it did. He was in his forties and was old enough to be her father, but he was also the closest thing to a son thatMori-samahad.

Jada pulled herself from me. Before I could stop her, she’d climbed onto the bar top and called the room to order by flinging her crystal glass into a thousand pieces.

“We’re celebrating Armaud Racing’s win at my place. Gates open at nine this evening. If you don’t know who I am or where it’s at, you’re not invited.” Laughter flew through the room because the crowd allowed into the club all knew exactly who she was.

“Jada,” I said, a warning in my tone that she chose to ignore. She was poking the rabid dog.

She stumbled slightly on her way down, and it was Dax who caught her. If I hadn’t been standing right next to them, I would never have heard her whisper, “Hands off, Armaud. Wouldn’t want to taint those lily-white fingers of yours.”

A barb to her word choice that had nothing to do with his tan skin.

She pushed away and headed toward the door, calling back to me, “You coming now, Dawson? Or should I send Kaida back for you later?”

Dax and I exchanged a worried look.

“I’m coming,” I said.

I followed her out to the bulletproof sedan that Kaida Ito was driving. Part bodyguard and part chauffeur, the woman pretty much went everywhere with Jada. She was dark-haired and light-skinned with a gracefulness that spoke to her karate training, but she also had an edge to her that saidDon’t fuck with me. She had a gun at her back and a knife in her boot, and Tsuyoshi Mori trusted her to keep his only child safe in a world that might use her for bait.

Jada and I didn’t say a word in the car. We couldn’t. Once we arrived at the villa, I dragged her out toward the pool. We were careful to avoid the cameras, and even then, we spoke in a hushed tone as if a million ears were standing around us.

“Is it a good idea to throw another party?” I asked.

“You need a good reason to be drunk and stumbly, and this might be my last hoorah ifOtosangets his way,” she whispered back.

I needed to have an excuse for being loud and obnoxious when I met with Ken’Ichi Matsuda tonight. One that would allow me to get close enough to his phone to be able to clone it and drop a listening device beside it. But I didn’t need Jada risking more for me to do it.

“I don’t need you for this,” I told her.

“In for a penny, in for a pound, right?”

She was staring at me, but I couldn’t really see her eyes because of the sunglasses. I reached up and slid them down her nose. She didn’t object, but she did look away from my gaze.

Her eyes were tired with deep, dark circles underscoring them.

It was my fault.

I’d taken advantage of her friendship with Violet to get close. I’d taken advantage of the way she felt about Dax to pull us all together. I was an asshole.

No good to the core.

I could hear my father’s voice echoing through my head. It seemed to be on repeat lately. Like it had been in those final days leading up to the boat crash in Clover Lake five and half years ago. The one that had almost cost my friend Carlos everything, banished me from my father’s world, and thrust me into my brother’s Coast Guard life in New London.