Shaundra felt like crap the next morning when she crawled out of bed and every bone in her body ached from playing mattress mambo with Ichiro to the wee hours of the morning.
She sighed. Sometimes being fifty really sucked.
Shaundra walked over to her armoire, took out her high blood pressure machine and carried it back over to her bed to test her pressure. She grimaced after getting the reading.
Maybe she should drink more water. She put away the machine, reached for her arsenal of medicine and downed it with a full bottle of water. Every morning she followed the same routine to jumpstart her back into the land of the living.
She gazed over to the clock on the nightstand. Six a.m. and time to go to work. After showering and dressing, Shaundra ate the breakfast Ichiro left for her on the bedside table. She gazed lovingly at the single long-stem red rose he'd picked fresh from the garden. Spring was arriving, and she looked forward to witnessing the trees bloom with cherry blossoms.
Shaundra looked for her reading glasses while her laptop warmed up in her office...a room connected to her and Ichiro's bedroom. It would have been a perfect spot for a nursery if she was foolish enough to consider Ich's proposition. She found her glasses and slipped them up the bridge of her nose so she could read the fine print on her table and on her monitor screen. Constant reading and being on the computer strained her eyes to the point that she needed bifocals. She typed in her login name and password, and moments later her desktop appeared. First stop, Twitter, to catch up on All-K-Pop, her favorite Asian entertainment source. After drooling over all the new male pop idols, Shaundra surfed over to Facebook, where she said good morning to her fans and Happy Birthday to those friends celebrating their birth. After reading all the current posts, she clicked on her profile page to make sure that no one had posted any advertisements and to read comments from her friends, fans and family members who were all concerned about how she was adjusting to her move to Osaka.
Shaundra friended a couple of people and then went to her fan page, where she wrote about her current works in progress and upcoming releases. She posted all of her new book covers and announced a contest for her latest gay book, Manly.
The next stop was perusing her publishers' Facebook pages to catch up on what her fellow writers were up to. One quick surf brought her to Aomori's Facebook page. Their fans had been busy since early this morning posting comments.
Most of the posts were from young girls professing their love to the fellows. A few had uploaded their favorite Aomori music videos, and a lot of them voice their excitement about Aomori's upcoming China tour.
What's this? Shaundra groaned. Someone had posted a video of her and Yori dancing at the club the other night and one of her fighting with Amaya. Her daughters were going to strangle her when they saw that their mother was once again gracing the pages of YouTube. Oh God, she thought. What were her fans going to think? That settled it - no more clubbing with Aomori.
Shaundra signed out of her site and went to check her e- mail. She groaned again. She had about three hundred new letters. Yahoo is going to shut me down. She quickly deleted the Yahoo digests she subscribed to, except the ones from her current publishers. She deleted the ones informing her that she had won a lottery and the ones trying to sell her penile enhancement products.
She zeroed in on the e-mails on how to promote her books, read some reviews on her books and responded to editors who had sent her ARCs that needed tidying. Her eyes landed on several new requests for friendship from Facebook and Twitter. There were also about fifty from YouTube, no doubt concerning her latest debacle with Yori. Shaundra clicked on the first one. Someone actually told her that Amaya deserved the butt-kicking she received, and a few said some pretty unpleasant things about her dancing with Yori.
Enough. Shaundra put checkmarks in the boxes and deleted all of them. All that was left in her box were Calls for Submissions and a letter from Harper Kehoe's New York office. She grimaced. It probably contained a pink slip after seeing her latest video. She clicked on it. Shaundra groaned.
Harper wanted her to do some promoting with him in China in a couple of weeks when they went overseas. The last time she did this type of work for him she ended up the love interest of several hot Japanese singers, a music arranger, a photographer and God knows who else. At fifty, she seemed to be drawing men to her like flies. He said he would be arriving soon and would stop by to see how she was doing.
Shaundra replied, See you when you get here. We have a lot to catch up on. She sent the reply.
A part of her was really excited about seeing Harper again, since she hadn't seen him in a couple of months since her wedding day. She wondered how Dorothy, Jackson and Riley were doing. She promised herself she would call or drop them each a line in a day or so. Now she had to get down to some serious writing and typing.
Shaundra's head still throbbed. The medicine hadn't kicked in yet, but she had a lot of work to do. Her current project for her New York publisher was an erotic vampire series, and she owed NiiKi, her Japanese publisher, a book for their Asian gay line. She reached for the thermos of coffee that Ich had left for her and poured herself a cup. Shaundra moaned when it hit the pit of her stomach, and she felt nauseous. Ignore it, she told herself.
For the life of her she couldn't concentrate on her work.
She kept rehashing her dance with Yori over and over in her mind, adding to her headache. What was I thinking? Did she love Silk that much to foolishly agree to dance with him, even when she knew he still carried a torch for her...proven by a gigantic bulge in his pants that she felt when he held her close? If she was Amaya, she would have slapped her too.
Shaundra knew better but still did the bump and grind on the dance floor with the sexy Japanese man who still held a special spot in her heart.
The door to her office opened and Ichiro entered. "Good morning, beautiful wife."
Shaundra looked over and smiled at him. Ichiro was dressed cutely in a dark brown suit and on his way to another business meeting. Lately he was becoming quite the entrepreneur with the opening of his restaurants in Japan and Korea. She still hadn't met his relatives but looked forward to it one day before the band left for China. She was pretty proud of his accomplishments, but his being away so often cut into her face time with him. Still, she got a lot of work done with the time she had to herself.
He walked over to her, smelling like sunshine and a new light cologne he'd just purchased, and kissed her. "I should be back this afternoon," he told her.
"I'll be here."
He peered over her shoulder at her laptop. "What are you working on?"
"A new book for Mr. Niigata."
"Yaoi?" he asked with a disgusted look on his face.
Shaundra nodded.
"I don't know what people get out of reading such trash."
Shaundra frowned at him.
Ichiro quickly covered his mistake. "I don't mean that your books are trash. I mean the genre. Two men romantically involved is rubbish."
Shaundra smirked. Was her gorgeous J-popper a homophobe? "I have this philosophy that people fall in love with who they fall in love with. It doesn't matter if they're both men."
"It's just not natural," Ichiro argued. "And how do you know what two men do in a room together behind closed doors?"
"I don't, but I have seen movies and done my research."
"You've been watching gay porn?"
"Not lately, but I have seen quite a few movies."
Ichiro didn't fail her. He blushed beet red. "Oh Shaundra, how can you stand to do that?"
"Would it be better on you if I wrote about two women?"
Ichiro brightened and smiled. "Maybe."
"You do understand that I would have to watch a lot of lesbian movies and do a lot of research."
"I hope you mean you'll have to go to the library or surf the Internet."
Shaundra hummed but did not answer him. Let him squirm.
He changed the subject. "If men were made to be together, women wouldn't have been created."
Shaundra chuckled. "You are so innocent."
Ichiro frowned. "Don't tease me, Shaundra. You don't know what it's like having men look at you like you're dessert."
Yes, she did know. She went through it daily. "Ooh, hit a nerve. Are men still lusting after my gorgeous husband?"
"I don't want to talk about it," he said.
The guys of Aomori were always dealing or skirting around the issue of their feminine looks. To her it made them hot, and that was what drew her to them in the first place.
"I'm serious about my beliefs, Shaundra."
Shaundra rose and went into his arms. For a moment she felt faint, but she quickly recovered. "I know you are and so am I. It's just fiction. I don't have some deep latent fantasy of seeing you with another man. Or another woman either, for that matter." Unfortunately she did have fantasies of having Yori join her and Ichiro in bed, but she was never going to act upon them.
"Good, because it's never going to happen."
Shaundra pinched him on his backside, and Ichiro quickly backed away from her. "What's wrong with you?" she asked.
"Nothing," Ichiro answered. "I'm going to be late for my meeting."
Shaundra eyed him curiously and then let it go. "Okay, see you later."
Ichiro headed for the door and stopped. "One more thing: try to stay away from Amaya and Yori today."
"Yeah, yeah, I already know. Anyway, I probably won't step foot out of this office except to get something for lunch or to use the toilet. I have a lot of work to do."
"I mean it, Shaundra," Ichiro said like he didn't believe her.
Why is he being this way? Usually he had the temperament of a kitten. Now he sounded like a...husband.
She raised her right hand as she sat down in her chair. "I promise that I won't go anywhere near Yori or his crazy wife.
I will stay in our suite until you come home."
Ichiro rolled his eyes at her sarcasm and walked out.
Shaundra smirked. Being arrogant did not fit him. If she wanted to be treated like a child or a possession, she would have married her ex-boyfriend Donald.
Her telephone rang. Shaundra looked down at the caller ID. Juanda. Shit. "Hello."
"Have you lost your mind, Mother?"
It had begun. Normally she would have been glad to talk to her eldest daughter, but not this morning. "No."
"Then you must like controversy. Why are you the talk of YouTube again?"
It would be nice every now and then to get a call from Juanda that began with Mama, how are you feeling? or something like that." "Oh, so you've seen it?"
"So have several million viewers. I think they crashed the server, because I'm not able to pull it up again."
Great, sarcasm from two smart-asses this morning. "She started with me."
"Don't even go there. Why were you dancing with that woman's husband?"
"Because he asked me to dance," Shaundra answered.
Why is everyone making such a big deal out of this? It was just a dance.
"Were you out on a date with him or something, and she came to the club and busted the two of you together?"
Shaundra laughed. Where did this girl get these ideas?
"No, we all went to the club together. He asked me to dance after she went to the ladies' room."
"And that wasn't a clue?" She laughed. "My mother, a home wrecker."
"I did not wreck their marriage," Shaundra said in her own defense. "We are all supposed to be friends, so I didn't see anything wrong with dancing with a friend."
"Put yourself in her shoes. You and her husband were once a hot item, and then she comes out of the ladies' room and sees you belly-rubbing with him on the dance floor to 'Freak Me Baby.' What would you have done?"
Shaundra sighed. "Probably the same thing."
"I hope you've apologized to her."
"Hell no," Shaundra answered rudely. "She's been picking with me since she came back from her honeymoon. She's lucky beating her butt was all I did to her."
"You've changed," Juanda said. "You didn't used to be so vindictive. Where was Ichiro during all of this?"
"Home," Shaundra replied. "He'd just returned from a business trip and was tired. We had already made plans to go out for a while."
"Does he know?"
"Most of it. He did show up toward the end before the police arrived."
"The police? Please don't tell me that you went to jail."
"No, but Yori and his wife did."
"And you're still sharing a house with them?"
"Yes."
"Are you crazy? What happens if she wants to retaliate?"
"Then I'll deal with her."
"Mother, fifty-year-old women should not be fighting over a man."
"I know," Shaundra replied. The more she talked to Juanda the more her head hurt. And she felt a bit feverish. "But I had to defend myself. I couldn't let her get away with slapping me like that. Maybe I shouldn't have danced with Yori, but I'm no one's punching bag."
"I know," Juanda said. "Just do me a favor. Please stay away from them."
"I will," Shaundra replied. "They'll be moving out a soon as they can find a house."
"You do know that I worry about you, and Japan is a heck of a long way to be traveling to visit you in the hospital."
"How are the kids?"
"Fine," Juanda replied. "And don't change the subject."
"I thought you were through. Listen. I appreciate the concern, but I can take care of myself."
"Yeah, you've got a real mean right hook."
Shaundra chuckled.
"This isn't funny, Mother. I swear, sometimes I think our roles have reversed."
"Ich wants us to adopt a baby."
Silence.
"What?"
"Ichiro wants us to adopt a baby."
Juanda squealed. "That's good news. Am I getting a brother or a sister?"
"I haven't agreed to it yet."
"Why not?" Juanda asked, sounding disappointed.
"Because I don't know if I can handle a baby. That's a big responsibility for someone my age."
"But you were a great mother, and my kids love you."
"Yeah, and I can send them home to you when they start to get on my nerves. I can't do that with an adopted child."
"Too bad you can't have one of your own or find a surrogate mother. Then the child would at least be Ichiro's."
"Are you volunteering?" Shaundra asked.
"Hell no," Juanda answered. "I'm trying to send the ones I have back."
Shaundra laughed. The twins were quite a handful. "I hope he changes his mind. We're both at the top of our careers, and we don't have time for changing diapers."
"Not even to save your marriage?"
"My marriage isn't in trouble." Shaundra rubbed her forehead. It throbbed unmercifully.
"Mama, you were belly-bumping with Yori. Ichiro has to have seen that video by now."
"I love Ichiro and I would never do anything to harm him."
"I know that. Only love would have made you leave the United States, but he's still so young. He does not understand that you wouldn't cheat on him."
Juanda was right. Things were a mess, and it was mostly her fault. "I'll have a long talk with him tonight when he comes home."
"And give the adoption thing another thought. You have plenty of love to share. I'll try to call you again next week."
"Bye, baby," Shaundra said, hanging up. She sighed. From now on she'd be the epitome of good. She yawned. But at the moment she still felt like crap. She walked out of her office and crawled back into her bed.
Four bedrooms, three baths, a place to practice, and even a workshop Amaya could use for designing her clothes. Yori opened a cabinet. Plenty of space for food and a nice-sized kitchen. There was even a formal dining room and a room for entertaining. "Well, what do you think?" he asked Amaya.
"It's kind of small," Amaya replied. "I envisioned us in something bigger."
Yori sighed. "Why? It's just the two of us. How much more room do we need?"
"You're a famous idol. You deserve to live in a mansion."
With billions of people in Japan, they were lucky to find this home. "Idol does not equate to billionaire. This place is affordable, and it's close to both our parents' homes."
"But the farmhouse is so much larger. Why can't Shaundra and Ichiro move in here and we take the farmhouse?"
Yori smirked. No matter what he said, Amaya would never be satisfied. "Because we all agreed that Ichiro and Shaundra could have the farmhouse. What am I supposed to do, throw them out?"
Amaya nodded. "You don't even like Ichiro. Why are you being so generous?"
Yori stared at his wife. "To get the record straight, Ichiro is like a brother to me. He's Aomori's maknae. Just because we're having a few issues doesn't mean that I hate him." He wasn't lying, but he still intended on making Ichiro pay for that kick. It was disrespectful, and his back still ached. With the China tour less than two weeks away, he had to go see a chiropractor or something to get back into shape.
"Your brother? I'm your wife. It is your duty to make sure I'm happy, not Ichiro."
Yori chose to ignore her. Sometimes it was the best approach to dealing with her. "We could look around a little more, but I don't think we'll find another place better than this on the market right now. It's just a starter home. We'll get something larger as the family grows."
"Huh?" Amaya asked.
"You know, when we have kids."
Amaya made a face. "You never mentioned kids. I assumed you didn't want any."
Yori stood over her and looked into her eyes. "Oh, yes, I want loads of kids."
Amaya backed away from him, frightened. "As a matter of fact," he continued, "we should start right away." She had nowhere to run. He had her trapped against the kitchen cabinets. Yori lifted her, placed her atop the cabinet and wiggled his way between her legs, then leaned in for a kiss.
Amaya closed her eyes and waited.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Waiting to be kissed."
Yori shook his head. She hadn't a passionate or compassionate bone in her body. He pecked her against the lips and turned away.
"Hey, where are you going?"
"Home," he replied. "I need to call the realtor to tell him to show this house to someone else because we're looking for something bigger to raise a family in. I guess we can stay in my little suite in the farmhouse until we return from China."
"Wait, don't make that call," Amaya said, hopping from the counter and running behind him. "Let's take this place. It's just the right size."
Yori smirked. The idea of having multiple babies terrified the hell out of his wife.
"That has to be illegal," Satoshi said to Takumijo as they watched a video on the computer in the den.
"What?" Ichiro asked, entering the room.
Both he and Takumijo jumped in front of the monitor.
"Nothing," Satoshi replied.
"Are you guys watching porn?" Ichiro asked.
"Yes," Takumijo answered.
"No," Satoshi replied.
"Ah, come on, you guys. I'm over twenty-one. Let me see."
Satoshi and Takumijo stepped aside, and Ichiro looked down at the screen. "Oh my," he said. "When did this happen?"
"The other night," Satoshi replied. "At the club before the fight."
"Now I see the reason for the fight. Why didn't you guys tell me about this?"
"We didn't know how to," Satoshi replied. "Things are already messed up between you and Yori."
Ichiro rewound the video to the beginning and replayed it.
"Yori has done some pretty low things in his lifetime, but this is ridiculous."
"You can't blame it all on him," Satoshi said in his leader's defense. "He's not dancing alone. And by the way, your wife has a great ass."
Ichiro rolled his eyes at Satoshi.
"What are you going to do?" Takumijo asked.
"Have a very long talk with my wife. Where is she?"
"I don't know," Satoshi said. "I haven't seen her since last night."
"Me either," Takumijo said. "But I think she's here, because I've been hearing music coming from your room."
Ichiro stormed out of the den.
"Maybe we should stop him," Takumijo replied.
"Ich would never hit a woman," Satoshi said.
The bedroom door opened and slammed, startling them.
"Are you sure?" Takumijo asked.
Shaundra sat up with a start in her bed. Ichiro stood at the foot of the bed, looking angrily down at her. "What's wrong?"
she asked.
"I just saw you and Yori on YouTube," he replied, breathing hard.
"Oh," she said, sliding back down on the pillows and pulling the covers back up to her neck. She closed her eyes.
Ichiro snatched the covers from her body.
Everything on her body still ached, and he was messing with her.
"Oh, is that all you have to say?"
Shaundra opened her eyes again. "What do you want me to say? I told you that I slow-danced with Yori the other night."
"That's not a slow dance, Shaundra, that's intercourse."
Shaundra sat up. "Be for real. We're fully dressed and there are about two hundred people in the club." She didn't like the way he looked at her.
"I have tried to be patient with you, but you've really crossed the line this time."
Oh no he didn't. Shaundra's brain went on the defense despite the terrible headache. But she wasn't going to give him the benefit of seeing her suffer. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and walked over to face him. "What line have I crossed?" She put her hands on her hips. Damn, they hurt too. "If you have something to say, just come on out and say it."
"If I wanted a whore for a wife I would have married one.
That video is not only trashy, it's disrespectful. Why do you refuse to act your age?"
There it is. She knew it would come out of his mouth sooner or later. "And how is someone my age supposed to act?"
"You are a grandmother, for Pete's sake. You're not supposed to be clubbing or doing half the stuff you do. One of these days you're going to have a heart attack."
A pain shot through Shaundra's head, and she wobbled a little.
Ichiro looked at her and then reached for her.
Shaundra backed up from him. She was tired of people telling her what to do and telling her to act her age. And she sure was not going to take it from Ichiro.
"Are you ill?" he asked.
"No," she lied. Now she felt worse than crap.
"Why are your eyes so red? Have you been drinking?"
"No, you know I don't drink alcohol." It was probably the flu, and her blood pressure being elevated didn't help.
"Let me see if you have a fever." He touched her, and she pushed him away.
"No thanks," Shaundra replied. "I'll be okay." She didn't need him babying her or feeling sorry for her. Like he'd said, she should act her age, which meant being independent and not having others do things for her.
"Maybe you should lie back down."
"Don't tell me what to do, Ich. As a matter of fact, why don't you go back downstairs and join your little friends. I've been by myself all day. What's another couple of hours?" She walked back over to the bed and sat down before she fell.
Ichiro took one last look at her and then left.
"Jackass," she mumbled. Oh God, she felt like she was dying. Maybe she shouldn't have been so hasting and sent Ichiro off packing. No, she argued with herself. She didn't need him to help her. She lay down on the bed, pulled the covers up to her neck again and closed her eyes.
Satoshi looked at Takumijo as Ichiro stormed past them, grabbed his car keys from the hook in the foyer and left the house. Moments later they heard a car driving quickly away from the premises.
"Trouble in paradise," Takumijo observed as he walked back toward the music room.
Satoshi took one more look at the stairs, hoping to hear Shaundra come out of the room and read Ichiro the riot act.
Nothing. He followed Takumijo. He didn't like the vibes in the air. It was like something was forewarning him that trouble was coming. He'd never seen Ichiro so upset, never heard him raise his voice so loudly, or heard him speak to anyone the way he'd spoken to Shaundra. Sure, what she'd done was foolish, but to call her a whore was reprehensible.
He entered the music room and sat down at the piano.
Maybe he should have suspected something was wrong when she didn't come out of her room at all today. Normally she'd come down for lunch. Why isn't she eating?
Ichiro usually took care of her and made sure she ate well.
God, he hoped she wasn't ill. "Don't you think Ichiro overreacted just a bit?"
Takumijo shrugged. "How would you have reacted if she was your wife and you saw her on YouTube bumping and grinding with Yori?"
"Well, first of all, I would have accompanied her to the club no matter how tired I was, and second, Yori never would have gotten the opportunity to get close to her. This is as much his fault as hers."
Takumijo nodded. "Why hasn't she come down today?"
See, it wasn't just his imagination. Takumijo knew her routine as well as he did. "I was just thinking the same thing."
"Do you suppose that she's ill? Doesn't she suffer from hypertension?"
Satoshi nodded. "The last time it got her down was when one of her fans tried to blow her up. The stress from the event sent her pressure soaring."
Something hit the floor loudly upstairs.
Satoshi looked at Takumijo, and they ran from the music room and headed toward the staircase.
Takumijo's long legs took the stairs two at a time, but Satoshi managed to catch up with him and pass him at the top of the landing. He beat Takumijo to Ichiro's door. He knocked. "Shaundra, are you okay?"
He heard a groan.
"I hope she's decent," Takumijo said, turning the doorknob and entering. "Shit. She's on the floor."
Satoshi followed him in, gasping as he saw blood oozing from a wound on her forehead. He hurried over to her and knelt beside her. "Shaundra, honey, are you awake?" No answer. He lifted her hand. It felt hot, and her pulse raced.
Her breathing was a bit off.
"We need to call an ambulance," Takumijo said nervously.
"No time," Satoshi said. "Call Kenshin and tell him to bring the limousine around."
"Kenshin isn't here," Takumijo said. "He took Masaaki into town and hasn't returned yet."
"Then we'll have to take her."
Takumijo nodded. "You stay here with her and I'll go get my car."
Satoshi agreed. Takumijo left the room. His big footsteps sounded down the halls and down the steps. Satoshi continued to hold Shaundra's hand. Her face looked flushed and sweaty. "Hold on, honey. We'll take care of you."