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“When you terminated the marriage adoption, I felt disgraced and wanted to forever cut any ties with you. But then I remembered how I worried about you when you were under threat, and realized I already consider you family. The real disgrace would be to cling to pride and put gossip and public censorship ahead of true relationships.”
Hashimoto suddenly leaned forward, took Raiden’s hand and Scarlett’s, gathered them together and held them in both of his. “After all the dust settled, I remembered when you said how you’d wished we would have been family. I still feel the same way. I am here offering you the name of our family, and the place at its head—the same things you would have gotten through the marriage adoption. But now I’m offering them through adoption alone.”
Though that was yet another development in a string of unexpected ones, the strange part was what Raiden had been so passionate about ten weeks ago didn’t turn a hair in him now. He truly had everything he wanted or needed as long as he had Scarlett.
He shook his head. “This is no longer something I want or need. My family is right here.” He tightened his arm around Scarlett’s shoulder. She only looked up at him with eyes that were at once stricken and admonishing.
“But this time we don’t only want you, we want to adopt you as a married couple,” Hashimoto rushed to add. “And this is what our family hopes you would both consider—both of you taking our family name, making our family yours.”
A long moment of silence followed his offer.
Then Raiden exhaled. “That’s a very generous offer, Takeo-sama, but I still have to decline.”
“But why, Raiden-san?” That was Megumi, at last breaking her usual silence. “We would have been catastrophic as spouses, but I just know it’s because you were meant to be my brother. And I would love nothing more than to have Scarlett-san as my sister.”
“And now Hashimoto-sama has agreed to give me Megumi-chan’s hand in marriage,” Hiro said eagerly. “I would no longer be only your friend, but your brother, too.”
Delighted for both him and Megumi, Raiden clapped him on the back again. “You move fast, don’t you, Hiro? Good for you.” He turned to Megumi, who was blushing delicately. “You two feel to me as if you were once one whole that was split into two. It’s so good seeing you becoming one again.”
“So won’t you reconsider?” Megumi asked, her eyes entreating. “Why are you refusing at all?”
He turned somber eyes to Hashimoto. “Because I haven’t forgotten what you said about Scarlett, how you viewed her. Scarlett is and has always been the most upstanding and heroic person I know. I don’t only worship her, but I respect and admire her more than anyone in the world. I would have nothing but the absolute best for her, and I would certainly never expose her to being considered an evil to be tolerated but secretly reviled, because your family still needs me.”
Scarlett threaded her arm through his and looked up at him, her eyes silently scolding. “Mr. Hashimoto was under too much pressure at the time, not to mention misconceptions.”
Hashimoto jumped on Scarlett’s life raft. “That is true, and I now regret my words, and my thoughts. I had no proof to support them but hearsay, just because your presence went against my family’s best interests. Can you possibly accept my apology and my assurances that my opinion was one of ignorance and self-service, but one that I have irrevocably changed?”
“Of course I accept, Mr. Hashimoto,” Scarlett said fervently. “I almost caused you all huge losses, just being there, just loving Raiden. And like Hiro said, it’s no thanks to me that everything has been averted and we’ve reached this happy moment.” As Raiden began to protest, she turned to him and hugged him around the waist, all her love in her eyes. “Let’s not dwell on anything that happened before today. The past is dead and gone. Let’s only remember the good parts of it, and look forward to a magnificent future.”
He knew what she meant. They might never be able to forget the past, but it had led them to this point, where they were unimaginably blessed by having each other.
She brought him down to her for a fierce, brief kiss. “But we both do need a family, to make up for the ones we lost. And it will be the best thing for our coming baby, and any other children we will have, to have a big family to dote on them.”
Suddenly unable to wait a second longer, he swept her in his arms, heaved up to his feet and strode back to her bedroom.
At her squeaking protest, he stopped, looked back at the trio, found them on their feet, looking crestfallen.
He raised a mocking eyebrow at them. “Uh, sorry, were you waiting for a response from me?” He groaned in pleasure as Scarlett gave his jaw a punishing nip. His eyes laughed down at her, then back at the guests. “Let me give you a tip for future reference. Once Scarlett has spoken, I am but the executor of her will. She wants us to be family, we will be family.”
After a moment’s uncertainty, the trio’s faces split with smiles, then they each advanced on them, all delighted relief.
At Scarlett’s loving nudge, he put her back on her feet so she could receive with him the hugs of the three people who would be their family.
After an interlude of mutual thanks and excitement, especially on the side of the ladies, who seemed to be delighted to have a girlfriend in their testosterone-dominated lives, Raiden swept Scarlett back up into his arms.
This time their guests took the hint and rushed to the door. Scarlett spluttered that he put her down, that they should stay longer, that she hadn’t even offered them something to drink. But this time he didn’t heed her, and the trio insisted on leaving. It was time, Hashimoto said, to leave the two of them to continue their reunion after such a harrowing separation.
Raiden called after them when they were at the door, “I am grateful we will be family. But remember, we will only be because Scarlett decreed it. Now you all owe her.”
Their voices rose in corroboration as they closed the door behind them. Then he raced with her to her bedroom.
Putting her down on the still-rumpled sheets, as if he was laying down his heart, he pulled off his clothes, then hers, and came down into her arms.
“I wasn’t just making him squirm, you know,” he said against her lips. “I was going to insist on refusing.”
She flushed with passion and embarrassment, unable as usual to take her dues. “But you didn’t, and now you’ll have everything you ever dreamed of and deserve. I won’t have to feel perpetually sad and guilty that my presence in your life deprived you of such a huge thing.”
“It will be huge only because I will share it with you. But if not for you, for your forgiveness and your desire to be part of a family, I wouldn’t have accepted. So they do owe you. Just as I owe you my happiness, my very life.”
