Chapter 11

As soon as Sakura left with Naruto, Sasuke picked up his phone and called his father's house. When his father answered, he was startled at the noise in the background. "What's going on?" Sasuke half shouted into the phone.

"If it isn't my newly turned gay son," Fugaku Uchiha said. "So how's the gay scene?"

Sasuke looked toward heaven and again vowed to kill his brother. "Could you cut the jokes, Dad, and put my secretary on the line?"

"Hinata?"

"What? I can't hear you. I want Hyuga."

"Hinata Hyuga, son."

"Ah. Right. I knew that." And he did, he told himself. Vaguely, he remembered thinking that Hinata was an odd name for an icy woman like Hyuga. "Would you put her on?"

"Sure thing. I think she's in the kitchen with Hiro."

At that, he put the phone down, and Sasuke could hear his steps on the wooden floor. "Hinata?" Sasuke whispered. "Hiro?"

"Yes, sir," Hyuga said when she picked up the phone, and for the life of him, Sasuke couldn't imagine a more inappropriate name for her than "Hinata." "What can I do you for?" When Sasuke was silent, she said, "Sorry. I've spent too much time in Konoha."

"Yes, well," Sasuke murmured, not knowing what to say in reply. "I need you to do something for me."

"I assumed as much. I didn't think it was a social call."

For a moment Sasuke held the phone away from his face and looked at it. When this was over and he got back to Suna, he was going to pummel his staff back into shape.

"I'm going to dictate a list of toys that I want you to buy; then I want you to wrap them up in white tissue paper and tie them with red or green ribbon. You are to put labels on the gifts saying they're from Santa Claus. Got that?"

"Rather easily," Hyuga said.

Again, Sasuke grimaced. His secretary was really being too insolent. "And I want you to deliver them into the house on Christmas Eve. Put them under the tree."

"I see. And how do I get into the house?"

"I'll leave a key under the back doormat."

"Ah, the pleasures and safety of small town life. How I miss it."

"Hyuga, when I want your personal comments, I'll ask for them."

"Yes, sir," she said, but she didn't sound contrite in the least. "Is there anything else?"

For a moment Sasuke felt a bit guilty for his outburst. It was just that too many things in his orderly world were coming apart. "Do you have your dress for tomorrow night?" he asked in an attempt to be less dictatorial.

"You bought me an Oscar de la Renta, quite expensive."

"Good," he said; then, not knowing what else to say, and hearing laughter in the background, he hung up without a farewell.

In the next moment, he made another call and issued an invitation.

###

"Well, well, well," Tsunade Senju said when Sasuke opened the door, Kenji on his arm. "So you're the angel Sakura keeps going on and on about. Don't just stand there; let me in; it's cold out here."

"You're not going to tell her, are you?" Sasuke asked, sounding like a little boy begging her not to tell his mother.

"Tell Sakura that her gay guardian angel is really one of the richest men in the world?"

"Not quite."

"Come here, darlin'," she said to her grandson, and the baby went to her. "So you want to tell me what's going on here? Why are you masquerading as some gay man when I happen to know that you pursued every female in Konoha all during high school, and how many homes do you have around the world?"

"I can see you haven't changed," Sasuke said, smiling."Still nosy as ever."

"I'm interested in Sakura," Tsunade said simply. "I want what's best for her."

"Since Kenichi isn't here to give it to her?" Sasuke asked.

"That was a low blow and you know it. My son may have had his faults, but he did one good thing in his life: he married Sakura and produced this child." She gave Kenji a hug and a kiss, then said, "No, that's not true. He did another good thing. On the night he died Kenichi was drunk, very very drunk, and he was driving about sixty on the twisty old River Road. But he was sober enough—and kind enough—that he turned his car into a tree rather than hit a busload of kids coming back from a ball game."

"I always liked Kenichi," Sasuke said softly.

"I know you did, and you were always good to him. And that's why I came by to see how you and Sakura were getting along. Sakura is the best. She sees the good in people. Don't get me wrong. She's not one of these idiots who thinks that everyone who doesn't have a tail and horns is a good person. It's just that Sakura can see good in a person when others can't. And her belief in them makes them try harder. Maybe if Kenichi hadn't died, she'd have made something good out of him. But then . . . Oh, well, it's better not to speak ill of the dead. Kenichi left behind a beautiful wife and Kenji."

Her head came up. "So now, you want to tell me what's going on and why you're living with my daughter-in-law in this falling-down old heap?"

Sasuke ignored her question. "You want to baby-sit tomorrow? I have to go somewhere."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You know, a lot of odd things have been happening lately, like someone buying Baby Heaven and Candlelight Gowns and—"

"What? Someone bought a dress shop?"

"Yeah. That shop that put on the drawing today for that Dior gown. Now, we may be pretty country in Konoha, but we do know that a place like Candlelight Gowns doesn't carry a one-off Dior gown. Do you know what that dress cost?"

"I imagine I'll be told," Sasuke said heavily. "Tell me, did you hear the name of the buyer for this dress shop?"

Tsunade smiled at him as she shook a rattle for Kenji. "Only that he was from Suna. Did you know that the owner of the shop was an old football rival of yours? I seem to remember one game where you were to pass him the ball, but you didn't. Instead, you ran with it, and made the touchdown that won the game. What was that boy's name?"

"Kisame," Sasuke said heavily.

"That's it. He married a girl whose father owned that shop, and Kisame tried for years to make a go of it but couldn't." She was watching Sasuke's face and her smile was broadening. "So now maybe he finally found someone to take that shop off his hands. Someone who can afford it."

"Don't look at me. I used to be rich, but then I came to visit Konoha and my resources have plummeted."

"Can't make a profit on a dress shop in Konoha even when you give away twenty-thousand-dollar gowns as a sales gimmick?"

Suddenly, Sasuke grinned at her. "You are still the nosiest gossip. You want to baby-sit tomorrow?"

"So you can go to the Amaterasu Ball? I hear that that jet of yours is paying so much to Izumo to use his landing strip that he's thinking of retiring."

Sasuke groaned. "All right, you win. You get your gossip, but I get someone to take care of Kenji tomorrow. Deal?"

"Sure. You call and order pizza while I get the bottle of sake from the car. It's no use looking to see if Sakura has any in the house. She'd probably be afraid that Kenji would drink it."

"You haven't changed, Tsunade. Not one bit."

"Neither have you," she said, smiling. "And you were always my favorite."

"Along with all the other boys in town," he said, smiling as he picked up the phone.

###

"And you should see him play with Kenji!" Sakura was saying. "He'll spend twenty minutes encouraging Kenji to crawl; he has endless patience. And everything good seems to happen when he's around. I win things, find great bargains, and did I tell you that he does the ironing and lets me sleep?"

"Twice," Naruto said, looking down at his salad.

"Oh, sorry. It's just that I've never lived with anyone so unselfish. Not that I'm really living with him, but, you know . . ." She trailed off, moved her fork around in her lettuce, and wondered what Mr. Uchiha and Kenji were having for dinner.

"Sakura, would you rather go home?" Naruto asked, leaning across the table to her.

"No, of course not. I'm having a wonderful time. It's great to get out of the house."

"You certainly look nice. That color suits you."

"Mr. Uchiha bought this for me," she said before she thought. "All right, that's it. I promise not to mention his name again. Tell me, did you save any lives today?"

"Half a dozen at least. Would you like to go dancing after this?"

"Can't," she said, stuffing her mouth full, trying to make up for lost time, since Naruto was nearly finished and she had been talking too much to eat. "Milk," she muttered.

"What did you say?"

Sakura took a drink of her lemonade. "Milk. I have to feed Kenji. I told him that I should work in a dairy, since I can't get a job anywhere else."

"You told Kenji that?"

"No, uh, I told . . ."

"Sasuke. I see." For a moment Naruto was silent; then he looked up at Sakura. "Did he tell you about the ball tomorrow night?"

"Yes, but not until after I'd won a dress by Dior."

"You won a dress? And by Dior, no less. You have to tell me about this."

Sakura couldn't help herself as she rattled off about the whole day, starting with Sasuke's ironing, then seeing Ayame in the mall and how Sasuke bought Kenji all those clothes. "Of course he has to take them back," she said, her mouth full of steak, "and he will, but he hasn't done it yet. We just have to talk about it."

"What about the dress?"

"Oh, yes, the dress." Sakura told him what Ino had said about the store going out of business, then having been bought by a new owner, so they were giving away a dress. "And I won it. And a makeover, so tomorrow I should look presentable."

"You always look presentable," Naruto said, but Sakura didn't seem to notice the compliment.

"In my case I'm glad the dress is strapless, as it makes for easy access." She had meant that as a joke, but when she looked up at Naruto's intense stare, she turned red. "Sorry. I'm forgetting where I am. I make breast-feeding jokes all the time and I shouldn't. They're tasteless." Heaven help her, but she couldn't stop herself. "Well, maybe not tasteless to Kenji. Especially after I eat something hot and spicy." She gave Naruto a weak smile. "Sorry."

"Do you and Sasuke share jokes?" Naruto asked softly.

"Yes. He's a good audience, and he laughs at my jokes no matter how tasteless they are."

"But not to Sasuke."

"I beg your pardon."

"You just said that your jokes weren't tasteless to Kenji, and I said they weren't tasteless to Sasuke either."

Sakura looked at him blankly, still not understanding. "Yes, of course. This is good; what is it?"

"Beef."

"Ah, yes. Did I tell you about Hiro?"

"This is another man?"

"No, silly, he's the one who makes the baby food you gave me. He's a beautiful man, and you should have told me the truth."

"Yes, I should have. Why don't you tell me the truth?"

"You'd be bored."

"No, honest," he said. "I'm beginning to find this whole story fascinating. I'm meeting new people I've never met before. There's the very funny and unselfish Sasuke. And there's Kenji the Huggable. And now there's Hiro the Beautiful. Who else is in your life?"

Sakura jammed a piece of meat the size of a golf ball in her mouth, then made motions that she couldn't talk until she'd chewed it.

"Sakura!" came a masculine voice from beside them. "Don't you look divine? Are we still on for New Year's Eve?"

Sakura waved her hands and pointed toward her full mouth as she looked up at Kiba Inuzaka.

"I think Sakura is going to be busy on New Year's Eve," Naruto said firmly, glaring up at the man.

"Is that so? Did you get my Christmas gift, Sakura?" Kiba asked, smiling down at her.

Sakura, still chewing, shook her head no.

"Oh? Then I'll have to bring it over myself on Christmas morning. Or maybe I should say that I'll drive it over." He turned to Naruto. "How's that little clinic of yours doin', Doc? Still beggin' people to donate to it? And are you still livin' in that tiny house over on River Road?" Before Naruto could reply, he turned back to Sakura, winked, waved, and was gone.

"I really hate that bastard, don't you?"

Sakura found that she hadn't yet finished chewing the huge piece of steak.

"You want some dessert?"

"Milk," Sakura mumbled. "Kenji."

"Yeah, sure," Naruto said, then signaled for the waitress to bring the check. "Might as well leave. What a night!"

###

Sakura wouldn't allow Naruto to walk her to the front door. She felt guilty that she didn't, since, after all, he had paid for such a nice dinner for her and he was taking her to the ball tomorrow, but still, she just wanted to be inside. "I'm home," she called out softly, and when there was no answer, she had a moment of panic. Had Mr. Uchiha gone? Had he taken Kenji?

But in the next second Sasuke appeared, Kenji in his arms, tears on the baby's face. "Gimme, gimme," Sakura said, stretching out her arms. "I'm bursting." In seconds, she was on the couch and Kenji was happily sucking.

"Have a good time?" Sasuke asked, standing over her.

"Oh, sure. Great. Is there any of that casserole left from lunch?"

"I think so," he said, smiling down at her pleading look for a moment; then he went into the kitchen and filled a plate full of cold salad and cold meat. "You need one of those quick ovens," he said as he handed her the plate.

Sakura took the plate with one hand, but she had no lap to set it on. While looking about, Sasuke took the plate from her, cut off a bite, and fed it to her on a fork. "A microwave," she said when her mouth was empty. "But Hiro's food is good cold or hot. Did you have dinner?"

"Yes, and I thought you did too, so why are you hungry?" He fed her a piece of potato in a dill sauce.

"You know," she said, waving her hand; then she turned sharply. "What's that?"

"The coffee table," he said, scooping up cold beef cooked with red wine. "Or it's supposed to be, I guess. Maybe we could find a furniture store that's going out of business." He was referring to the big electrical spool that she had in the middle of the room.

"No, that," Sakura said, mouth still full.

"The glass? It's a glass. Haven't you seen one before?"

She ignored his attempt at humor. "What is on the glass?"

Sasuke turned, stared at the single glass sitting on the table; then, with his back to Sakura, he smiled. He schooled his face when he looked back at her. "Lipstick," he said. "Red lipstick."

"It's not mine." She was looking at him as hard as she could as he put more food into her mouth.

"Don't look at me. It's not mine either."

"I know that all gays aren't cross-dressers," she said. "So whose lipstick is that?"

"Hn."

"Sasuke!"

"What happened to 'Mr. Uchiha'?"

As she switched Kenji to the other side, she still glared at him. "Did you have a guest?"

"I did, actually. Nice of you to ask."

"I don't think you should have," she said tightly. "You never know what a person has in mind when a baby is involved. I am very concerned about Kenji's safety."

"Me too, but then this was a woman I've known for a while." He fed her the last bite on the plate.

"I think you should have asked my permission before you invited a woman into this house. Into my house, that is."

"I'll do that next time. You want something to drink? I have some beer. Kenji would probably like it."

"So who was she?"

"Who was she who?"

"The woman who left red lipstick on that glass, that's who."

"Just a friend. What about a Coke? Or a Seven-Up?"

Sakura glared at him. "You're not answering me."

"And you're not answering me. What do you want to drink?"

"Nothing," she said, inexplicably feeling very angry. Kenji had fallen asleep before he'd finished nursing, and she knew she should wake him, but she didn't have the heart to do it. Instead, she just wanted to go to bed. What business was it of hers if he had visitors, male or female?

"I'm very tired," she said, picking up Kenji and turning toward her bedroom. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Good night," he said cheerfully, then went to his own bedroom.

###

Hours later Sasuke awoke to the sound of glass breaking and immediately swung his long legs off the bed. He had fallen asleep in his clothes, the light still on as he went over a market report for a company he was trying to buy.

In the kitchen he found Sakura, a broken glass on the floor, and she was trying to pick up the pieces with her bare hands while walking about in her bare feet.

"Get back from that," he said, annoyed. "You're going to cut yourself." When she looked up at him with pain-filled eyes, he knew that something was wrong. Striding across the glass in his bedroom slippers, he swept Sakura into his arms and carried her to a chair by the kitchen table. "Now, tell me what's wrong."

"Just a headache. It's nothing," she managed to whisper, but even that slight sound made a look of pain cross her face, and she shifted uncomfortably on the seat.

"Nothing?" he said. "How about if I drive you to the emergency room of the hospital and let a doctor have a look at you?"

"I have some pills," she said, then gestured vaguely toward her bedroom. "They're in—"

She broke off because Sasuke had left the room, but in seconds he was back with his cellphone to his ear. "I don't care what time it is or whether you ever get any sleep," he said into the receiver. "I'm not a doctor, but I can see when someone is in serious pain. What do I do with her?"

"Right," Sasuke said into the phone. "And how long has she had these? Uh huh. Uh huh. I see. I'll call you if I need you again."

Sasuke put down the phone and looked at Sakura. "Naruto said hot compresses and massage. And he's given you pills that you were to take at the first sign of pain. Why didn't you take them?"

"I was busy," she said, looking up at him with mournful eyes. "I'm sorry to keep you up, but my head hurts so much."

Sasuke went to the sink, turned on the tap, let it run to get hot, then soaked a tea towel in the hot water. "Here, now," he said, handing it to her. "Wrap this around your forehead and tell me where the pills are."

But when Sakura started to speak, she had to close her eyes against the pain, so Sasuke bent, swept her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom. In her bathroom medicine cabinet he found a bottle of pills that were labeled "For migraine," so he brought two of them and a glass of water to Sakura.

He meant to leave her then, but she was curled into a ball and he knew that tension and lack of sleep had as much to do with the headache as anything else. Naruto said on the phone that new mothers often got headaches and what they needed more than pills was TLC.

When Sasuke sat down on the bed beside Sakura, she started to protest, but he didn't listen to her. Instead, he leaned back against the headboard and pulled her up so she was leaning against his chest. The washcloth had grown cold, and her hair around her forehead was damp, either from the compress or from sweat, he didn't know which.

Gently, he put his long, strong fingers to the back of her neck and began to massage. At the first groan from Sakura, that was all the encouragement he needed. Slowly, he stroked her neck and up to her head, and as the minutes ticked by, he could feel her neck and head relaxing. "Trust me," he said when she didn't want to seem to relax completely.

But his deep strokes made her forget any awkwardness of their being in bed together, and seemed to make her forget everything else in the world. His hands moved down her back, running along her spine, then outward over her ribs, then back up her arms. There was a lot of tension in her upper arms, and he managed to release it.

After about thirty minutes she was limp in his arms, fully supported by him, as trusting of him as Kenji was.

In another ten minutes Sasuke realized that she was asleep, so he gently put her down on the pillow and eased his long legs from under her body. When he was standing by the bed, he pulled the cover over her; then, on impulse, he kissed her cheek and tucked her in as though she were three years old.

Smiling, he turned away to leave the room.

"Thank you," he heard Sakura whisper as he started back to his own bedroom, and Sasuke smiled in answer.