Chapter 6

"Got the job?" Sasuke asked as soon as Sakura entered the house.

"No," she said despondently, then reached eagerly for Kenji. "And I'm bursting with milk."

To Sasuke's embarrassment, she plopped down wearily on the worn-out old sofa, unfastened her dress, unsnapped her bra, and proceeded to feed Kenji, who eagerly began sucking.

"How about dinner out tonight?" he asked. "My treat."

"Ow!" Sakura said, then stuck her finger in Kenji's mouth and made him release her breast for a moment before he latched on again. "Teeth," she said. "You know, before he was born, I was in love with the whole romance of breast-feeding. I thought it would be something sweet and lovely, and it is, but it's also . . ."

"Painful?" he asked; then when she smiled in reply, he smiled back.

"I think I would have known that you were gay even if Naruto hadn't told me. You're very perceptive, and for all that you look hard and unfeeling, you're really a bit of a softie, aren't you?"

"I've never been called that before," Sasuke said as he glanced at a faded and cracked mirror hanging to his right. Did he actually look hard and unfeeling?

"So what did Kenji get up to while I was gone?"

At that Sasuke smiled and soon found himself expending a great deal of energy into making a funny story of his afternoon with Kenji. "I think for Christmas I'll give him a set of knives, something he can easily hurt himself with. As it is now he has to work so hard to hit himself in the face and to try to crack his skull. I think I'll make life easier for him."

Sakura laughed and said, "Knives with strings attached. Don't forget the strings, because how else can he choke?"

"Ah, yes. The strings. And I think I'll take him to visit a paper factory. I'll set him down in the middle of the place and let him eat his way out."

Sakura switched Kenji to the other breast, and when she did so, Sasuke motioned for her to lift her arm so he could slide a pillow under it so she wasn't supporting the weight of Kenji's head. "And don't forget drawers that he can roll out then close on his fingers."

They were really laughing now, and Sasuke suddenly realized that for the first time in years a woman was genuinely laughing at his jokes.

"How about a pizza?" Sasuke said abruptly. "A huge one with everything on it. And giant Cokes and garlic bread?"

"I'm not sure I should because of my milk," Sakura said hesitantly. "I'm not sure babies should have garlic-flavored milk."

"Doesn't seem to bother the Italians," Sasuke answered.

"That's true," Sakura said, then smiled at him. "Pizza it is. But only if I can pay for my share."

Before he thought, Sasuke said, "You're too poor to pay for anything," then was shocked at what he'd said.

"Too true," Sakura said good-naturedly. "Maybe over dinner we can figure out what to do with my future. Do you have any ideas?"

"None whatever," he said, smiling. "You could always marry some nice young doctor and never work again."

"Doctor? Oh, you mean Naruto. He's not interested in me."

"He's mad about you," Sasuke answered.

"You are funny. Naruto is in love with all the women in this town; that's why he's so popular. Besides, I'm not a gold digger and I don't want to live off any man. I want to do something, but I'm not sure what I can do. If only I had a talent, like singing or playing the piano."

"It looks to me like you have a talent for being a mother."

Sakura cocked her head to one side. "You're very sweet, you know that? Can you dial for pizzas on that phone of yours?"

"Sure," he said, smiling.

Later, as Kenji slept on the sofa, they lit candles and talked. He asked her about her life with Kenichi, and after an initial protest, she started talking, and he soon realized that she was hungry to talk.

And as she talked, he began to see the town drunk in a different light. Kenichi Senju had been a joke to the people of Konoha since he was fourteen years old and began to drink. He wrecked cars as fast as he could get into them. His parents mortgaged their house to pay Kenichi's bail to get him out of jail time after time. But Sakura saw something inside the man that no one else had.

Sasuke had ordered a giant pizza, and while Sakura talked, she didn't notice that she ate three quarters of the thing. Long ago Sasuke had forgotten what it was like to be in a position that a pizza was a rare treat.

As soon as the last bit of cheese was gone, Sakura gave a great yawn, and even though it was only nine P.M. , Sasuke told her to go to bed. Standing, she bent to pick up Kenji, but Sasuke brushed her hands away, then scooped the baby up without waking him.

"You're a natural daddy," Sakura said sleepily as she led the way into her bedroom.

Smiling at Sakura's assessment, Sasuke put Kenji into the beat-up old playpen that was his bed, then quietly left the room. Oddly enough, he too felt sleepy. Usually he didn't go to bed until one or two in the morning, but something about pulling a baby away from one danger after another had exhausted him.

He went to his bedroom, pulled off his trousers, and fell into bed in his shirt and underwear and was aware of nothing until he heard a high-pitched scream from Kenji. Leaping out of bed, he ran into the kitchen, where he saw Kenji in his booster seat and Sakura feeding him. They were both fully dressed yet it was still dark outside.

"What time is it?" Sasuke asked, rubbing his eyes.

"About five-thirty."

"What was that scream?"

"Practice, I guess. He likes to scream. Shouldn't you get some clothes on?"

Sasuke glanced down at his bare legs. "Yeah, sure." Then he looked up at Sakura's red face. She bared her breasts before him yet was embarrassed by his wearing more than he'd wear if he went swimming? With a smile at her turned head, he felt a little rush of pleasure that she was attracted to him.

Naruto, he thought. Naruto. Naruto is in love with Sakura.

"This was stuck in the front door this morning, and there's a car outside," she said, nodding toward a rolled-up newspaper on the kitchen table.

Ignoring her plea for him to get dressed, he rolled the rubber band off the newspaper and took out a note wrapped around the keys inside. It was a typed message saying that his clothes were in the back of the car and that the other matters had been taken care of. He would be contacted.

"Sounds like a spy message," Sasuke said under his breath, then looked up to see if Sakura had heard him.

But she hadn't heard anything, for her face was so full of excitement that at first he thought something was wrong with Kenji. But the baby was happily smearing oatmeal in his ear, so Sasuke looked back at Sakura.

Looking like a mime, she was pointing speechlessly at the newspaper he had left spread on the table. There was a double-page ad about a huge sale in a baby store in a town about ten miles from Konoha. The owner had put together entire nurseries, with furniture and bedding, and was selling the lot for two hundred and fifty dollars each. Sakura was pointing at a photo of a bed, a rocking chair, a changing table, and a mobile that looked as though it had cowboys and horses on it. She was making a strangling sound that was a sort of, "Uh, uh, uh."

Maybe a devil got into him, but he couldn't help teasing her. "Is there any cereal in the house or has Kenji eaten everything?" He picked up the paper and opened it. "Looks like gold prices are down. Maybe I should buy some." He was holding the paper so the huge ad was right in front of Sakura's face.

Sakura finally recovered her voice. Ignoring him, she said, "Can I afford it? Can I? What do you think? Maybe I should call Naruto and borrow the money from him. Oh, no, we have to be there when the store opens at nine. How can I get there? Maybe Naruto—"

At that Sasuke put down the paper and held the car keys in front of her nose, jingling them.

"We'll go see Naruto," she said hurriedly. "I'll pay you back for the gas later. Look here at the bottom. I wonder if clothes are included in the outfit? 'Everything for the baby.' Oh, heavens, but Kenji has never had any clothes that haven't been worn by someone else. May I borrow your phone to call Naruto?"

"I'll lend you the money," he said, wishing he'd included clothes in his orders to his secretary.

"No. I can pay Naruto back in work, but you don't need anything."

Sasuke frowned at that, and he wasn't sure why. Wouldn't it be better if she did borrow from Naruto? After all the whole idea was to get Naruto and Sakura together. And when it came to that, why hadn't Naruto come over to visit last night?

"Go look at my car," Sasuke said. "Then come back in here and tell me how much you'll charge to clean it."

With a "Watch Kenji" tossed over her shoulder, she scurried out the front door. Ten minutes later she returned. "One hundred dollars," she said grimly. "How can you be such a pig?"

All Sasuke could do was give her a crooked grin. Had Hyuga overdone it on the car?

"And another hundred and fifty to do something with those clothes in the back. Really, Mr. Uchiha, I had no idea you were such a slob."

"I, uh," he began, feeling like a little boy being bawled out by his mother.

"Now go put some clothes on, then come and eat your breakfast. I mean to be at that store when the doors open. He says he has only eight sets to give away. You know, I bet this has to do with a divorce. That's why he'd give this furniture away rather than let his wife have the money. Some people have no conscience. I wonder if there are children involved. Why are you standing there looking at me? Go and get dressed. Time is wasting."

Blinking in disbelief at the astonishing story Sakura had just concocted, Sasuke went to his bedroom to shower and put back on his dirty, wrinkled clothes. How had Hyuga known to fill the car with dirty clothes that needed Sakura's attention?

When he went into the kitchen to get his measly bowl of cereal, Sakura was looking like the cat that stole the cream. She was up to something, but he had no idea what.

"I borrowed your phone," she said sweetly. "I hope that was all right."

"Sure," he said, then looked down at his bowl. "Couldn't wait to call Naruto?" The words were out of his mouth before he caught them.

"Oh, no. Just a few girlfriends. But I'm afraid a couple of the calls were long distance. I'll pay you back . . . somehow."

"I have an apartment," he said, and they both laughed when Sakura groaned at the thought of cleaning the place.

Sakura made them leave the house at seven-thirty, and when Sasuke opened the car door, he was appalled. What in the world had been done to the vehicle? The inside was plastered in mud, which had seeped down into every crevice. He doubted if the windows would work because of the mud that had oozed down between the glass and the door. In order to clean the car, the door would have to be taken apart. In the back was a pile of clothes that had been given the same mud bath.

Having seen the car already, Sakura was prepared and she spread an old quilt over the passenger seat, then climbed in, Kenji on her lap. "You don't have to tell me," she said softly, once the door was closed, "but your lover retaliated by driving your car and your clothes into a lake, didn't he?"

"Something like that," Sasuke muttered, thinking he was going to have a word with his secretary. When he'd said dirty, he meant, maybe, soda cans and potato chip bags.

"It's odd that the engine isn't clogged with mud, though," she said as the car started easily. "Oh, no!"

As Sasuke swung the car into the street, he looked at her in question.

"He filled the car full of mud, didn't he?"

"Could we not talk about my personal life?" Sasuke snapped. He was sick of this talk of his male lover.

For a moment Sakura didn't say anything, and he regretted his outburst. "I hope they have a car seat," he said as he glanced over at her, and she smiled back.

"Do you have any cash? I don't—"

"Lots," he replied, glad the moment's discomfort was gone. "So what other jobs have you tried to get besides cleaning?" Sasuke asked as Sakura held Kenji firmly on her lap. If they were spotted by the police, they'd be arrested because Kenji was unrestrained. And Sasuke refused to think what would happen to Kenji if they had a wreck. On impulse he reached out and gave Kenji's little hand a squeeze and was rewarded with a toothy grin.

Sakura didn't seem to notice, as she was telling Sasuke about all the jobs she had applied for and even been hired to do, yet had lost for one reason or another. "Twice I've had to quit because the boss . . . Well . . ."

"Chased you around the desk?"

"Exactly. And it's just so difficult to find a job around here. I've thought I might be a good aromatherapist. What do you think?"

Sasuke was saved from answering that question by the sight of the store just ahead. But he was shocked at what he saw. Under the sign, Baby Heaven, there were about fifteen women with baby carriages waiting for the store to open.

"Oh, dear," Sakura said. "I only called seven friends. They must have called their friends, and, oh, no, there are more cars arriving and they have to be for Baby Heaven because the other stores don't open until ten."

"You called all these people?" Sasuke asked.

"I was afraid they wouldn't see the ad and afraid they might miss the sale. You know, it's odd that there aren't more people here than there are. What about the other people who saw the morning paper? Maybe they know that this is just a sales gimmick and it isn't real. Maybe the owner has done this before and there isn't any merchandise. Maybe—"

Before she could launch into one of her fanciful stories, Sasuke got out and opened the car door for her. "Come on, let's go around the back and see if we can get in a few minutes early."

"Do you think that's fair?"

With his back to Sakura, Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Probably not, but then this is for Kenji, isn't it?" he said as he took the baby from her. "Besides, it's too cold to wait out here and the store doesn't open for thirty minutes yet."

Sakura gave him a dazzling smile. "You do know how to fix things, don't you?"

As Sasuke turned away, Kenji snuggled comfortably in his arms, he couldn't help smiling, for Sakura had a way of making him feel at least ten feet tall. When he pounded on the back door and it opened, he was startled to see one of his top executives from his Suna office standing there wearing a gray coverall, a broom in his hand.

"You wanta see the stuff early?" the man asked, sounding as though he was not a graduate of Harvard Business School.

Annoyed, Sasuke could only nod. He didn't like it when his employees did things he hadn't first sanctioned. Even when Sakura briefly took his arm and squeezed it, Sasuke was still not appeased.

Once they left the back storage area and walked into the store, Sasuke was even less pleased, for there were two of his vice presidents, both men wearing coveralls, both moving baby furniture around.

"You are our first customer so you can have the pick of the lot," came a feminine voice and they turned to see a striking woman standing behind them. She was, of course, Sasuke's secretary, only she wasn't dressed in her usual Chanel suit, and her long black hair was pulled into a bun on top of her head. And there were three yellow pencils stuck into the lump of hair.

Hyuga didn't blink at Sasuke's or Sakura's speechlessness. "What would you like?" she asked. "Blue? Pink? Green? Yellow? Or would you like to see our one and only designer set?"

"Oooohhhh." Sakura emitted a sound that came straight from her heart and out her lips, then started following Hyuga as though she were in a trance.

Hyuga kept up a running stream of chatter as she walked. "It's all closeout goods. Nothing is used, but it's all discontinued merchandise. I hope you don't mind that these are really last year's goods."

"No," Sakura said in a voice unnaturally high pitched. "No, we don't mind. Do we, Mr. Uchiha?"

She didn't wait for Sasuke's answer because before her was a sample room and even Sasuke had to admit that his secretary had outdone herself. He could smell wallpaper paste, so she must have worked through the night to get this done, and he must say that they'd created a fabulous room. And with his eye for merchandise, he knew that what he was seeing was the top of the top line. Hyuga must have bought everything in Suna and brought it to Konoha in his jet.

It was a room for a little boy, with blue-and-white striped wallpaper with a border of boats sailing a rough sea. The bed looked like a new version of a sleigh bed, but with safety bars and sides that lowered; a whole set of Winnie-the-Pooh characters were tucked into a corner. The linens of the bed were hand embroidered with tiny animals and plants, something that Sasuke knew Kenji would love to look at. To test his theory, he put Kenji in the bed, where he immediately pulled himself up, then began to grab at the mobile until he got a horse's head in his mouth.

The rest of the room was filled with furniture of equal quality. There was a rocking chair, a changing table, a car seat, a high chair, a toy box and in the corner was a stack of white boxes.

"More linens and a few necessities," Hyuga said as she followed Sasuke's eyes. "There are a few pieces of clothing, but I wasn't sure of the size . . ." She trailed off.

"This costs more than I have," Sakura said, and there were tears in her voice.

"Two hundred and fifty dollars for the lot," Hyuga said quickly.

Sakura squinted her eyes at the woman. "Are these things stolen? Is this an outlet for stolen goods?"

"I would imagine that in a way, yes, they are stolen," Sasuke said quickly. "If these things are still in the possession of the store owner come tax time, he'll have to pay taxes on what they're worth. But if he sells them at a loss, he can write off the loss and be taxed on the amount he has received, which is a pittance. Am I right?" he asked Hyuga.

"Perfectly," she said, then turned back to Sakura. "Perhaps you don't like this room. We have others."

"No, it's perfect," Sakura said, then before she could say another word, Sasuke spoke up.

"We'll take it. Have it delivered today." As he said this, he glanced at his two executives leaning on brooms and watching the scene with smug little smiles. By tomorrow everyone is all his offices would know about this. "And I think you should throw in someone to hang the wallpaper."

At that Sakura gave a little whimper that said she was sure Sasuke was going to make the woman retract the deal.

"Certainly, sir," Hyuga said without a hint of a smile, then turned to Kenji in the bed. Now he was on his back and trying to kick the sides off, the sound reverberating through the store. "What a beautiful child," she said, then held out her arms as though she meant to pick Kenji up.

The baby let out a howl that shook the bed. Immediately, Sakura was there, her arms out to Kenji. "Sorry," she muttered. "He doesn't take to strangers very well." And at that Kenji made a leap into Sasuke's arms.

Sasuke wasn't going to look at his two vice presidents because he knew that they would assume that Kenji was his. How else to explain that Sasuke wasn't a "stranger" to the child?

"I'll pay while you look around," Sasuke said as he followed Hyuga to a nearby counter. "The pencils are overkill," he snapped as soon as they were out of earshot of Sakura.

"Yes sir," she said as she removed them from her hair.

"And what are those two doing here?"

"You had to buy the store in order to pull this off. I didn't feel that I had the authority to negotiate with that much money."

"How much could a tiny shop like this cost?"

"The man said to tell you that his name is Genma Shiranui and that you'd understand."

Sasuke's eyes rolled upward for a moment. In high school he had stolen Genma's girlfriend the day before the prom. "Did you manage to buy it for under seven figures?"

"Just barely. Sir, what do we do about the people waiting outside? The newspaper ad appeared in only your paper, but somehow . . ."

"They're friends of Sakura's." For a moment he looked around Kenji, who was trying to grab the telephone off the desk, to see Sakura running her hand lovingly over the baby furniture. "Give them the same deal. Give everything away at a loss. Make sure everything is given away for what they can afford. Split the rooms up so every woman out there gets something she needs."

When he looked back, Hyuga was staring at him with her mouth open. "And get those two back to Suna right after they hang the wallpaper."

"Yes, sir," Hyuga answered softly, looking at him as though she'd never seen him before.

Sasuke removed Kenji's hands from around a curtain hanging from the top of a cradle. "And, Hyuga, add some toys to that lot when you deliver it. No," he contradicted himself. "Don't add anything. I'll buy the toys myself."

"Yes, sir," Hyuga said quietly.

"Did Hiro get here?"

"He came with me. He's at your father's house, as all of us are." By her expression she looked to be on the verge of shock.

"Now close your mouth and go open the door to the other customers," he said as he peeled Kenji's hands off the curtain again and went back to Sakura.