Chapter 17

When Sakura awoke two mornings later, she knew exactly where she was. She was in what had once been her own bedroom in the Yakimizu house. Quietly, she threw back the comforter and padded into the next room to check on Kenji. He was sound asleep, on his stomach, looking as though he hadn't moved all night.

Poor little thing, she thought, he'll probably sleep another couple of hours.

After tucking the cover about him and smoothing his hair back, she went into the kitchen. But this kitchen bore no resemblance to the old kitchen she'd once tried to cook in. There were no more rusty, broken appliances, no more cracked and peeling linoleum.

Sakura wasn't surprised to see freshly brewed coffee in an automatic maker and muffins, still hot, on the counter. "With love, Hiro," the card beside the pot read. On a hunch, she opened the refrigerator door and wasn't surprised to see that it was fully stocked. There was a breakfast meal of crepes and strawberries for Kenji, a red bow tied around the top of the little basket. That Hiro somehow knew that Sakura and Kenji were now staying in the house where Kenji had spent his first seven months didn't surprise her. No one kept a secret in Konoha.

With coffee, two muffins, and a warm hard-boiled egg in her hand, she went into the living room, and smiled when she saw a fire in the fireplace—a fire that didn't smoke. It would be heavenly to sit and drink and eat and to be able to think in peace about how she got here in a mere twenty-four hours.

It had all started because Kenji wouldn't stay with Tsunade and the new nanny, she thought with a smile. But then, didn't everything start with Kenji?

Yesterday, as Sakura had entered the library, she could feel the heat of Kenji's body as he lay against her, his head down on her shoulder as he did when he was hurt or, as now, exhausted. Nine-thirty, she'd thought. She'd wanted to have two drawings transferred onto the walls by now, but instead she was just arriving at the library.

Sasuke had greeted her with a face full of fury.

"How do you expect us to get this done in just six weeks?" he said angrily. "Are you unaware of the time pressure we're under? The opening of the library is six weeks away. The Daimyo of the Fire Country is coming. Maybe that doesn't mean much to you, but it means a lot to the people of Konoha."

"Be quiet, will you?" Sakura said, not in the least intimidated by him. "And stop looking at me like that. I've had all I can take of bad-tempered men this morning."

"Men?" Sasuke said, his face darkening. "I guess your . . . your . . ."

She knew that he was trying to say "fiancé," but the word wouldn't pass his rigid lips. Maybe it would eventually be fun to play the little game that Tsunade had concocted, but not now. Now she was too tired.

It was as though Sasuke suddenly read Sakura's mind. "Kenji," he said softly. "You mean Kenji."

"Yes, of course I mean Kenji. He was awake most of the night. I think that being in a new place frightened him, and after a few hours he didn't like being pawned off on the nanny Tsunade hired. Kenji has never liked staying with strangers. He's very selective about the people he likes."

Sasuke gave her a raised-eyebrow look that said, That's how we got into all this in the first place, but he didn't say anything. Instead, with an ease that was as though he'd been doing it every day for years, Sasuke took the tall, heavy, sleeping toddler from Sakura and settled him on his shoulder, where Kenji lay bonelessly. "He's exhausted," Sasuke said, frowning.

"He's exhausted? What about me?"

"As long as I've known you, you've never had any sleep," Sasuke said quietly, his lips playing with a smile.

"True," she said, smiling back.

"Come on," Sasuke said as he walked toward double doors at the end of the room. When he opened one, Sakura drew in her breath.

"Beautiful, huh?" Sasuke said over his shoulder, his voice quiet so he didn't wake Kenji.

The room was indeed nice, but not because there was anything unusual in it, no carved moldings, no imported tile work. What made the room so beautiful was the proportion of it, with windows all along one side of the room, looking out over the little garden at the back of the library. Going to the windows, Sakura looked out and realized that the garden was walled off from the larger play area behind the main part of the building.

"Oh, my," she said. "Is that a private garden?"

"Of course."

"It looks lovely," she said, then turned back to Sasuke and held up her arms to take Kenji. "Here, let me have him. He gets heavy."

Sasuke didn't bother to answer her, but carefully put Kenji down on a couple of cushions that were piled on the floor, then pulled a Humpty-Dumpty quilt over him.

"Looks like you're prepared for children's naps," she said, turning her head away so she didn't have to watch him with her son. Sometimes Kenji stared at men as though they were creatures from another planet, and it made Sakura feel bad to think of his growing up without a father.

"Yes," Sasuke said as he held the door open, waiting for her to leave before him. He didn't shut the door but left it open so they could hear Kenji if he awoke. "I'm making that into a children's reading room," he said. "We'll have storytellers and as many children's books as the room will hold." He didn't ask, but his eyes were begging her to say that she liked the idea.

"The children of Konoha are very lucky," she said.

"Mmmmm, well," he said, embarrassed but pleased, she could tell.

"So where do I begin?"

"What?" he asked, staring into her eyes.

"The murals? Remember? The ones that can't wait."

"Oh, yes," Sasuke said. "The murals. I don't know. What do you think?"

"I need an overhead projector and some assistants and—"

"There's just me."

"I beg your pardon," Sakura said.

"Me. I'm your assistant."

"Look, I'm sure you're good at completely renovating a whole town, but I don't think that you can paint camels. Besides, you must have lots to do. After all, you are getting ready for your wedding, aren't you?"

"Wedding? Oh, yeah, that. Look, Sakura, I really have to explain."

Part of her wanted to keep her mouth shut and listen, but part of her was scared to death to hear what he had to say. She liked to tell people that she'd been happy when she was married but the truth was that the whole idea of marriage, maybe even the idea of a relationship, scared her to death.

"Could it wait?" she asked nervously. "I mean, whatever you have to tell me, could it wait? I really need to . . . to call Sai. He'll be worried about me."

"Sure," Sasuke said as he turned his back to her. "Use the phone in the office."

"It's a long distance call."

"I think I can afford it," Sasuke said as he went back into the room where Kenji was sleeping.

###

"It's awful between Sasuke and me," Sakura said to Tsunade over the phone. "Really awful. And I don't know how long I can keep this farce going."

She paused to listen. "No, he hasn't asked me to marry him. He's going to marry Hanabi, remember? Stop laughing at me! This is serious.

"No, Kenji is fine. He's sleeping in the Private Room. Sasuke is going to make that into a reading room for children.

"No! I am not going soft on you. It's just that I have never been good at being devious, underhanded, and deceitful." Pause. "Well, if the shoe fits . . . Wait. You'll never guess who just walked in. That's right, but how did you know? You sent her? And you bought her that dress? Tsunade! What kind of friend are you? Hello? Hello?"

Frowning because Tsunade had hung up on her, Sakura put the phone down and found that her anger at her mother-in-law had put some starch in her spine. Also the sight of Hanabi in a teeny, tiny blue dress that looked to be made of angora, a dress that she'd just found out her mother-in-law had bought for the woman, had sent more anger through her. Whose side was Tsunade on?

"Hanabi, don't you look lovely?" Sakura said as she left the office, then gritted her teeth as she saw the woman wiggle up to Sasuke. But when Sakura saw Sasuke watching her and not Hanabi, Sakura gave a big smile. "So when do we start looking for a house for you two, and buying furniture?"

"I think that we need to get these murals done first," Sasuke said sternly. "Every second counts."

"We have to eat dinner," Sakura said brightly. "So why not have take-out in the car on the way to a furniture store? Or, better yet, how about antiques?"

"Used furniture?" Hanabi said, sounding disappointed in Sakura. "I want new things."

"True antiques go up in value should you ever need to sell them," Sakura said, her eyes boring into Hanabi's. "Not that you ever would want to sell, but if you buy new furniture, six weeks later you won't be able to get what you paid for them. Antiques increase in value. You can sell them and make a profit."

With great solemnity, Hanabi nodded. "Antiques," she said softly, then nodded again.

And in that moment Sakura and Hanabi formed a bond. Sakura wasn't sure how Hanabi knew or for that matter how she herself knew what was going on, but both women knew everything. There was a look exchanged between them that said, you help me and I'll help you. Hanabi couldn't be so dumb as not to know that within a very few days she was going to lose her job for gross incompetence, so why not get what she could while she had the opportunity?

"Oh, Sasuke has no idea how long these wedding plans take. He won't even take time to look at all the goodies I've registered for over at the mall." Hanabi frowned and shook her head disappointedly.

"I bet you've chosen Waterford and sterling, haven't you?"

Hanabi's smile broadened. "I knew you were a good person. Isn't she, Sasuke, darling?"

"Look," Sasuke said, peeling Hanabi's hands off his arm. "I think we should get something straight here and now. I am not—"

"Oh, my goodness, look at the time," Sakura said. "Hadn't we better get to work? And, Sasuke, I would like it very much if you helped me paint. I can use the time to tell you all about Sai."

Sasuke's face darkened. "Give me a list of what and who you'll need and I'll see that you get everything." With that he turned and walked out of the library.

For a moment Sakura and Hanabi stared at each other; then Hanabi took a breath. "Tonight?" she asked. "You'll go shopping with me tonight?"

Sakura nodded, and Hanabi broke into a grin.

And that, Sakura thought now as she sipped her coffee and ate her muffin, had been the beginning of one of the most extraordinary days of her life. Looking back at that long day now, she couldn't decide who had been the strangest: Kenji or Hanabi or Sasuke.

Smiling, Sakura settled back on the cushions and tried to sort out her thoughts. First there was Kenji. She could understand his fit when she'd tried to leave him with his grandmother and the nanny; after all, both women were strangers to him. And, besides, she and Kenji hadn't spent more than three hours apart since he'd been born, so to suddenly spend a whole day apart would have been traumatic for both of them.

But in the end, Kenji had hurt her feelings by the way he'd attached himself to both Sasuke and Hanabi.

I'm glad he likes other people, she told herself, but still she felt some jealousy.

It had started at the art supply store, where Sasuke had driven them so she could buy whatever she needed for the job. As usual, Kenji started getting into everything, and out of habit, Sakura told him no, to leave that alone and don't break that and don't climb on that and get down from there and—

"Does he talk?" Sasuke asked.

"When he wants to," Sakura said, pulling Kenji down from where he was trying to climb onto a big wooden easel.

"Does he understand complex sentences?"

Sakura pushed the hair out of her eyes and looked up at Sasuke. "Are you asking me if my son is intelligent?" She was ready to do battle if he was insinuating that because Kenji's father was a drunkard that maybe Kenji wasn't as bright as he should be.

"I am asking about what a two-year-old can and cannot do, and I—Oh, the hell with it. Kenji, come here."

This last was said with authority, and it annoyed Sakura that Kenji obeyed at once. Even when she used her fiercest tone with her son, all he did was smile at her and keep on doing whatever she'd told him not to do.

Sasuke knelt down so he was at eye level with the tall toddler. "Kenji, how'd you like to paint like your mother does?"

"Don't tell him that!" Sakura said. "He'll get paint all over everything and make such a mess that—" She broke off because Sasuke had given her a look that told her her comments weren't wanted.

Sasuke straightened Kenji's shirt collar, and the boy seemed to stand up straighter. "Would you like to paint something?"

Kenji nodded, but he was cautious; he wasn't usually allowed to touch his mother's paints.

"All right, Kenji, little man, how'd you like to paint the room you slept in this morning?"

At that Kenji's eyes widened; then he turned to look up at his mother.

"Don't look at me; I've been told to keep my mouth shut," Sakura said, her arms crossed over her chest.

Sasuke put his hand on Kenji's cheek and turned the boy to face him. "This is between you and me. Man to man. No women."

At that Kenji had such a look of ecstasy on his face that Sakura wanted to scream. Her darling little boy could not have turned into a man already!

"So, Kenji," Sasuke said, "do you want to paint that room or not?"

This time Kenji didn't look up at his mother but nodded vigorously.

"All right, now the first thing you need to do is plan what you're going to paint, right?"

Kenji nodded again, his little face absolutely serious.

"Do you know what you want to paint?"

Kenji nodded.

Sasuke waited, but when the child said nothing, he looked up at Sakura.

"This wasn't my idea," she said."You are going to clean him up after this."

Sasuke looked back at the boy and smiled. "Tell me what you want to paint."

At that, Kenji shouted "Monkeys" so loud that Sasuke rocked back on his heels.

"All right," Sasuke said, laughing, "monkeys it is. Do you know how to paint monkeys?"

Kenji nodded so vigorously that his whole body shook.

Sasuke took the boy's shoulders in his hands and said, "Now, I want you to listen to me, all right?"

When Kenji's attention was fully on Sasuke, he said, "I want you to go with this lady, her name is Hanabi, and I want you to pick out everything you need to paint your monkeys. Big monkeys, little monkeys. A whole room full of monkeys. Understand?"

Kenji nodded.

"Any questions?"

Kenji shook his head no.

"Good. I like a man who can take orders. Now go with Hanabi while I work with your mother. Okay?"

Again Kenji nodded; then Sasuke stood and looked at Hanabi. She held out her hand to Kenji; he took it, and the two of them disappeared down the aisles of the art store.

"You have no idea what you've done," Sakura said. "You can't let a two-year-old have carte blanche in a store. Heaven only knows what he'll buy and—"

Taking Sakura's arm, Sasuke pulled her in the opposite direction. "Come on, let's get what you need and get out of here. At this rate the Daimyo will be here before the murals are started."

"Then maybe you should have ordered the supplies before I arrived. I did send a list to Tsunade so everything would be ready."

"And the supplies were purchased," Sasuke said under his breath.

Sakura stopped walking. "Well, then, why are we here buying more?"

Sasuke gave a sigh. "You wanted watercolors, so Hanabi ordered sets with those tiny squares of watercolors in them."

"But I ordered gallons . . . Oh, my. How many of those sets did she order?"

"Let's just say that every schoolchild in Konoha now has a brand-new set of watercolors."

"Oh," Sakura said, smiling; then she couldn't help but laugh. "I hate to ask about the overhead projector."

"Did you know that when you turn a slide projector upside down that all the slides fall out?"

"No, I've never tried it. How do you know that that's what happens?"

"Because Hanabi bought thirteen different brands of them and couldn't find one that could be used 'overhead.' "

"I see," Sakura said, trying unsuccessfully not to laugh out loud. "It's a good thing you're marrying her, or you'd be broke in another couple of weeks."

"Sakura, I need to talk to you about that."

"Really?" she said. "I hope you aren't going to tell me anything bad, as it puts my work off when I hear bad news. And Sai—Ow! What was that for?"

"Sorry, didn't mean to hurt you," he said as he released her arm. "You want to get what you need so we can get out of here?"

For the next hour and a half Sakura concentrated on what she needed to buy for the huge art project ahead of her, and she couldn't help thinking how wonderful it was to be told that money was no object. It was luxurious in the ultimate to be able to buy the best brands of paint, the best brushes, the best . . . "This is going to cost a lot," she said, looking up at Sasuke, but he just shrugged.

"What else do you need?" He was looking at his watch, obviously bored and wanting to leave the store.

"Men," she said, which made him look back at her. "Or women." She gave him her most innocent smile. "I need at least three of whichever to help me paint."

"Taken care of."

"That was fast."

"You may have heard that I used to run a business and I often did things quickly."

"Oh? I do believe I heard something about that. So why did you—? Oh, no," she said, without finishing her thought.

Down the aisle, coming toward the cash register, was Kenji, Hanabi following him. Only Kenji looked liked a young prince leading his elephant, for Hanabi was laden with three carry baskets of goods and a paintbrush in her mouth. Only she wasn't carrying the brush across her teeth as any one else would have done it. No, Hanabi had stuck the brush into her mouth so it was sticking out about eighteen inches.

She went past Sasuke and Sakura, spit the brush out onto the counter, then dumped the three big baskets by the register. Only then did she turn to Sakura, and say, "Your kid is weird"; then she walked away.

"Kenji, what have you done?" Sakura asked, but Kenji put his hands in his front pockets and tightened his mouth in an expression that Sakura didn't recognize as being just like one of hers.

But Sasuke recognized it and laughed.

"Do you want to buy all of this or not?" the bored clerk said.

"Sure," Sasuke said, just as Sakura said, "No!"

"So which is it?"

"We'll take it," Sasuke answered, getting out his wallet to hand the young man a platinum American Express card.

But Sakura was going through what her son had chosen to purchase, and she was beginning to agree with Hanabi that, if not the child, the child's purchases were indeed strange. "Kenji, honey, did you buy one of every brush the store has?" she asked her son.

Kenji gave a nod.

"But what about your colors?" she asked. "What colors are you going to paint your monkeys? And what about the jungle? Are you going to make them live in a jungle?"

Before Kenji could answer, Hanabi reappeared with four one-gallon cans of black acrylic paint and a step-ladder. "Don't look at me," she said. "He only wants black."

When Kenji stood there with his hands in his pockets, his face defiant, Sasuke laughed more.

"Don't encourage him," Sakura snapped. "Kenji, sweetheart, I think you should get another color besides black, don't you?"

"Nope," Sasuke said, ruffling Kenji's dark locks. "He wants black and he's going to get black. Now, come on, let's go. We have to get out of here before—"

"The Daimyo comes," Sakura and Hanabi said in unison, then laughed at Sasuke's scowl. Fifteen minutes later the back of Sasuke's Range Rover was filled and they were on their way back to the library.

And that's where Sakura first met Iruka. He was about seventeen years old, and he had the anger of the world in his eyes, along with an unhealed knife wound on his face.

She took one look at the young man, then grabbed her son's hand and started out of the door, but Sasuke blocked her way.

"Don't look at me like that," he said. "He was all I could get on such short notice. The other painter was bringing his assistants, and this boy needs to do community service."

"Needs?" she said in a high-pitched voice. "Needs? Or do you mean 'sentenced to'?"

When Sasuke shrugged guiltily, Sakura pulled Kenji to one side.

"You can't leave me," Sasuke said. "Just because the boy happens to look a little rough—"

"Rough? He looks like something off a Wanted! poster. How could you think of letting Kenji around him?"

"I won't leave you alone with him. I'll be here every minute. I'll carry a gun."

"Oh, now, that's reassuring," she said sarcastically. She didn't say any more because Iruka pushed past her and started down the library steps. When Sasuke grabbed the boy's arm, he said something in a

language Sakura couldn't understand; then, to her surprise, Sasuke answered him in the same language.

"Look, Sakura, you've hurt his feelings, and now he wants to leave. But if he does leave, he'll have to spend several months in jail. Do you want that on your conscience?"

Sakura could have burst into tears, for she knew when she was defeated. "No, of course not."

To her consternation Iruka gave a big grin, then walked back into the library.

"He never meant to leave," Sakura said under her breath. "He was manipulating me."

At that Sasuke laughed, picked Kenji up, and took him back into the library.

And that was just the beginning, Sakura thought as she ate the last of her muffin and stared at the fire. After that things were too hectic to pay much attention to any one thing. Once she got started with transferring her drawings onto the walls, she was too busy to think about being afraid of Iruka. All day long a steady stream of girls in ridiculously tiny bits of clothing trouped in and out of the library, all of them posing so Iruka could see them. But Sakura had to give it to the young man: he kept his mind on his work and never once did his concentration falter.

Not so Sakura, as her son seemed to have turned into someone she didn't know. He marched into the room Sasuke had said was his, Hanabi trailing behind him, her arms full of bags of brushes, and closed the door.

And Sakura hadn't seen him the rest of the day. Here she'd been worried that her son would fall into a traumatic fit if he was away from his mother for more than three hours, but now Sakura was thinking that he'd been wanting to get away from her for his whole little life.

"Don't be jealous," Sasuke said from behind her. "Kenji probably recognizes that Hanabi is his intellectual equal."

"I am not jealous!" she snapped. "And stop saying bad things about the woman you love."

Then, to add to Sakura's annoyance, Sasuke didn't make his usual disclaimer about Hanabi, but instead, said, "There are other things to recommend her," just so Sakura could hear him. As he said this, Hanabi was walking into the anteroom, and every male in the library stopped to watch her.

"Drop dead!" Sakura said, then stuck her nose in the air and walked away, Sasuke chuckling behind her.

But Kenji didn't seem to miss Sakura at all. In fact, they didn't see each other all day because Kenji used Hanabi as his emissary.

"He wants to know what monkeys eat," Hanabi said on her first trip out of the Land of Secrecy, as Sakura had immediately dubbed it after Kenji had told Hanabi not to allow anyone, including his mother, inside the room.

"What do I know?" Sakura said over her shoulder. "I'm only his mother."

"Vegetation," Sasuke said. "Fruits."

Hanabi went back into the room, but she came out again almost immediately. "He wants pictures of what monkeys eat."

When Sakura opened her mouth to speak, Sasuke said, "Let me"; then he went into the stacks and came back with some books on monkeys and their habitat. One of the books was Japanese.

Hanabi took the books into the room, but she was soon out again, one of the books in her hand. "He says he wants more books like this one. I don't know what he means, 'cause it looks like all the others to me."

"Japanese art," Sasuke said as he disappeared into the stacks again, returning with his arms laden.

As Hanabi took them, she said, "He's a weird kid."

At four o'clock, Tsunade showed up with three baskets full of food and told Sakura she was taking her out to "lunch."

"Lunch was hours ago," Sakura said as she studied the color of the face of one of the horses she was trying to paint.

"And did you have any?" Tsunade asked.

Sakura didn't answer, so Tsunade took her arm and pulled her toward the entrance door. "But I—"

"They're men. They're not going to work if there's food around, so we have about thirty-seven minutes all to ourselves."

"But Kenji—"

"Seems to be in love with Hanabi from what I've seen."

Sakura grimaced. "How long were you watching us?"

Tsunade didn't answer until they were seated in a booth in a coffee shop across the road, their orders placed, and drinks put in front of them. "I was only there for minutes, but Anko was in the library earlier to check out a book on abnormal psychology—actually she's engaged to the banker's boy, but she's got the hots for Iruka, so she went to see him—and she told her cousin, who told my hairdresser, who told me that—"

"Told you everything that's going on," Sakura finished for her.

"Of course. We're all dying to know what's going on between you and Sasuke."

"Nothing is going on, really nothing. All the men in there are so hot for Hanabi that all work stops every time she slinks in and out of that room. Even my own son—" Sakura paused to take a breath.

"Jealous," Tsunade said, nodding. "I know the feeling."

"I am not jealous. Will all of you stop saying that?"

"Sasuke told you you were jealous?"

Sakura took a drink of her Coke and swallowed, refusing to answer her mother-in-law.

"When Kenichi was a baby, we were never apart for the first year of his life; then my sister kept him one afternoon and that night Kenichi refused to let me put him to bed."

When Sakura didn't answer, Tsunade said, "So how are you and Sasuke getting along? Has he proposed yet?"

Sakura didn't say anything but looked down at the club sandwich that had just been set before her. "I know this is a game to you, but I don't want to make a mistake like I made last time."

"You want to talk to me?" Tsunade said softly. "I'm a good listener."

"I want to get to know Sasuke. I want to spend time with him. I made a big mistake the first time I got married, and I don't want to do it again."

She looked up at Tsunade with pleading eyes. She wanted to talk to someone, but she was well aware that this woman had been Kenichi's mother. "I don't want to think what my life would have been like if I were still married to Kenichi. And one of the few things I know about Sasuke is that he lies well. He lied to me about being gay, about why he wanted to move in with me, and about why he needed a home. In fact, everything I knew about him was a lie."

She took a breath. "So now I've been told that he's been searching for me for two years, but what does he really know about me, about my son? And what kind of man is he really? Can he take a joke as well as play one?"

Tsunade smiled at Sakura and said, "With the kind of money Sasuke has, who cares what kind of sense of humor he has?"

"Me. I care and your grandson cares."

"You're a hard woman to please."

"No, I just want to get it right this time. This time I have to think about a man who will be a good father to my son. I don't want Kenji to get attached to a man, then have the man leave when the going gets rough."

"Or put something in a needle and get out that way," Tsunade said softly.

"Exactly."

Tsunade smiled. "You've grown up, haven't you?"

"Maybe. During the last two years I think I was able to find out who I am and what I'm capable of. I can take care of myself and my son if I need to. In fact, I can make quite a nice life for the two of us. And I'm proud and happy to have found that out."

Tsunade reached for Sakura's hand. "And I'm glad you aren't after a man for his money. So tell me all about Sasuke and Hanabi. Tell me everything."

It was nearly six when Sakura got back to the library to find a furious Sasuke.

"Are you going to take a two-hour lunch every day?" he said to her.

"If I feel like it," Sakura said without blinking an eye.

"She was on the phone to her beloved fiancé," Tsunade said. "Love like theirs takes time. I think he might come to see her next week."

Sasuke's scowl deepened. "In the future, please conduct your personal life on your own time. Now, could we get back to work?"

Sakura looked at her mother-in-law and couldn't decide whether to be pleased by her comment or exasperated.

Tsunade felt no ambiguity about the situation. "Don't worry," she said, "you can thank me later." With that she turned on her heel and left the library.

So Sakura went back to work, even working through the delicious dinner that Hiro showed up with. "I owe everything to your son, who has the taste buds of a gourmet," he said over Sakura's shoulder.

She glanced around to see everyone eating, Kenji ensconced in the middle, a plate full of food before him. He didn't so much as look up at his mother.

At nine o'clock, Sakura decided that Kenji had to get to bed, whether he wanted to or not, and that's when she found out that the Private Room door had been locked against her and other intruders. Annoyed, she tapped on the door, and Hanabi answered.

"It's time he went home and went to bed," Sakura said. "This is too late for him to stay up."

"All right, I'll ask him," Hanabi said; then to Sakura's further annoyance, she shut the door against her.

Seconds later Kenji came out, rubbing his eyes from sleepiness, and Sakura felt guilty that she had allowed him to stay up so late. Outside, she strapped him in the car seat in the car Tsunade had lent her and drove Kenji home.

And that's when the trouble started, for Kenji would not go to sleep. He was usually a good-natured child, but that night he was a demon. He screamed at the top of his lungs, and when Sakura picked him up, he straightened out his arms and legs so rigidly that she couldn't get him into the bed.

At eleven he was still fighting, and Sakura could not figure out what was wrong with him—and Kenji only screamed, "No!"

"I'm going to call Sasuke," Tsunade shouted over Kenji's screams as she picked up the telephone.

"What good would that do?" Sakura shouted back. "Please, please, Kenji, tell Mommy what's wrong," she said for the thousandth time, but Kenji just yelled and cried, his little face red, his nose stuffed.

"Anything, anything," Sakura said as Tsunade dialed the phone.

Within minutes Sasuke was there, and from the look of him he had still been working. He hadn't showered and his clothes had paint on them.

But Sasuke's presence had no effect on Kenji. "Poor little man," he said as he tried to take him from an exhausted Sakura, but Kenji wanted nothing to do with him.

"I have an idea," he said at last. "Let's take him home."

"Home?" Sakura said. "You mean we get on a plane at this time of night?"

"No, I mean his real home." Sasuke didn't give Sakura time to say more as he took Kenji from her, the boy fighting him, carried him outside, and strapped Kenji into a car seat. By this time the child was too tired to fight, but he still cried.

Sakura got into the passenger seat and watched in amazement as Sasuke drove them through town to . . . At first she couldn't believe her eyes. He pulled into the driveway of what had once been the derelict old house that she and Kenichi had owned. When she left, she knew that the property would revert to Tsunade because she had co-signed on the mortgage, so Sakura hadn't concerned herself about the house. She'd assumed that Tsunade had sold it, maybe for the building materials, as it wasn't worth much else.

But now the house stood before her in perfect repair. It was what it should have been, beautiful beyond anything Sakura could have imagined. Sasuke had clearly made it his home.

Inside, she didn't have time to look at much as Sasuke carried a tired, but still whimpering Kenji through the marble-floored foyer, through the living room, then down the corridor into the room that had once been Kenji's nursery. It was preserved intact, just as it had been two years ago, everything clean and tidy, as though the baby who used it would be back any minute.

All in all, Sakura thought, it was rather creepy.

Sasuke put Kenji down, the child looked about for a second, then he relaxed, and finally, at long last, he went to sleep.

"He cannot remember this place," Sakura said. "He was just a baby when he left."

"No one ever forgets love, and he loved this house," Sasuke said.

And he loved you, Sakura wanted to say but didn't.

For a moment Sasuke waited, as though expecting her to say something, but when she was silent, he said, "You know where your room is," then turned away and went to what Sakura knew was the same room where he'd stayed when it was her house.

When she was alone, she went into what had been her bedroom. It was a far cry from what it had been when she lived in the house, and she knew that only a professional decorator could have made the room so beautiful. Even down to the fresh flowers, it was heavenly. Exhausted from her struggles with Kenji, she did little more than visit the bathroom, then fell onto the bed.

So now it was morning, Kenji was still asleep, and she guessed that Sasuke was still sleeping in the spare bedroom.

"And we forgot Hanabi's furniture," she said as she finished her tea, then she stood and stretched. She needed to get dressed so she could get to work. The murals needed to be done before the Daimyo's visit, she thought, smiling.

In her bedroom she wasn't surprised to find clean clothes, just her size, in the closet. And when Kenji woke up, she wasn't surprised to find that Sasuke had already left the house.