Now it had all gone wrong. Now she would pay the price. Her hands were shaking as young Minako prepared for the worst. “I well….” The young Japa...ese girl’s cheeks flush a shade of hot pink. Her stumbling words faltered and her tongue felt thick and numb and useless in her mouth. How do you admit to kissing a white man? This was something scary and new. She would of course be fired. David Sugihara looked perplexed as his intern babbled some meaningless words he could not understand. Why was she. They were interrupted, thankfully, by the phone ringing. It was his publisher, who had read the romance novel and was ecstatic."Of course the original book is still on," he said. "But I convinced my boss to take this romance novel and the rights to that other book you were talking about, to make up for your lack of progress on the original book. I just wanted you to know." How much do I get for the romance novel?" asked Kris."We'll negotiate that later," said the man. "I need to get it edited. I raised an eyebrow. “And why, pray tell, was the rather taciturn innkeeper regaling you with all of this terribly fascinating information about Wycome?”She flushed, and I laughed. “Never mind. Did he tell you anything about the market?”We spent a couple of enjoyable hours wandering through an open air market, looking at everything from local produce to imported silks, hand made pastries to exotic weapons. I picked up some sweets to take back to the inn for Alistair, and a second, thin stiletto. I was ranked third in the class, mostly because I didn’t do sports. I wanted to play softball, but they had an issue with it and I just gave up. They did say I could play in the fall if I wanted, so I’d think about it. I might still be busy with the flight thing. We were up in the air, flying toward Iowa, just Charlie and me. Funny story. I’ll get to it in a minute. Anyway, I asked him about softball and he said it was more important for me to do that than any other thing. It was something I.