sat down on a seat next to him. "Not really. I didn't pay too much attention to the girl group."
"Why not?" Satoshi asked, looking deeply into her eyes. "They're a very good group."
Shaundra smirked. "I'm not into girls."
"I don't understand."
"Why look at a bunch of girls when there are so many beautiful men around to gaze at?"
Satoshi actually blushed.
"Oh, not you too. You guys need to stop that blushing. It makes me feel like a dirty old woman when I pay you a compliment."
Satoshi raised an eyebrow. "Are you?"
"Am I what?"
"A dirty old woman."
Shaundra slapped him on the arm. "No, you're the first guys younger than me that I've taken an interest in."
Satoshi tried to duck the hit. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why us?"
Shaundra lowered her head. "I have no idea. I saw a picture of you guys before I came to Japan and, I don't know, I think something inside of me woke up. I've never been attracted to men outside my own race or age group before."
He used his finger to lift her chin. "You mean we turned you on?"
She nodded. "Totally," she said, going back to her questions.
"But you can't date all of us."
"I know that. Where did you grow up?"
"Are you trying to change the subject?"
"I'm supposed to be working, not fantasizing about what I would do if I was stuck on a deserted island with all four of you."
"Okay, let me make this easy for you. I know you don't like me that way, and you can barely tolerate Takumijo, so that just leaves Yori and Ichiro. How do you really feel about Ichiro?"
Shaundra sighed. "He's so hot. I think I lose my fricking mind whenever I'm around him. He makes me feel so alive."
"But he doesn't talk," Satoshi said sarcastically.
"He does to me."
"That's what bothers me. What is it about you that makes him animated? We've been trying to get him out of his shell for years. And what do you see in him that you don't see in the rest of us?"
Shaundra smirked. She could not possibly tell him that.
Satoshi laughed. "It's the hair, isn't it?" He laughed. "I knew it.
You've got a thing for Ichiro's hair."
"So do you, and that's down right freaky."
"Would you still desire him if he was bald?"
Shaundra stopped and thought about it. "That's a good question. Hell yeah."
Satoshi moved away from her. "Why? What is it about him that makes you desire him so?"
Shaundra shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. I think when two people click, it just happens."
"What about Yori?"
Satoshi would have to go there. "What about him? "What do you desire about him?"
Shaundra thought about it. "Nothing anymore. He's engaged."
"I saw the two of you dancing in the lounge one night and then making out in the hall outside of your hotel room."
"That seems like a million years ago. What do you want me to say?"
"Explain to me how you can be in love with both of them."
"I'm not, okay?" she said angrily. "I only love one of them."
Two weeks went by in a blur. It was hard to believe that she would be returning to the United States in a couple of days, ending her stint as a journalist and returning back to her normal life.
"This is a pretty damn good story," Harper said as they ate lunch in the hotel restaurant.
"You say that like it is a surprise."
"It's not. I knew that you were a journalist before you started writing novels. Why did you give it up?"
"I wanted a family," she confessed. "The next thing I knew, I was too old to compete with all those youngsters that came after me."
Harper flipped the page and continued reading. "You surprised me, though. I thought you would have written a bigger story on Ichiro."
"That would be bias and I wanted to give all of them equal treatment.
Besides, Ich is a very private fellow and doesn't like all the hoopla."
Harper put the paper down and reached from her hand. He held on to it. "How long are you going to play this little cougar game? You're going to break his heart when we leave the day after tomorrow."
"Why does everyone think that I'm playing a game? Is it that hard to believe that someone my age can actually fall for someone his age?"
"Yes, it is. But I get it. You're in a foreign country and you want to sow a little wild oats before you're back in grandma mode."
Shaundra removed his hand from his grasp. That response was another reason