Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Stone
T ime moves way too fast.
One minute I’m at the top of my game and then I’m not. One month of good behavior and I’m yesterday’s news. Millspace Pharma will continue to use my company. I should be thrilled, and I am, at least for my career. Millspace will be the most lucrative deal I’ve taken on.
But.
My mother isn’t getting better. The results of her latest PET scan came back, and she’s worse. The cancer’s spread. If I wasn’t convinced she was on the placebo before, I am now, and by the look on Noa’s face when Ma told us her results, she agrees.
Yet Ma presses forward, demanding our Thanksgiving feast take place despite the bad news and that we enjoy each other as friends and family.
I kept the Millspace deal to myself, mulling it over for over a week, then determined to put it aside as the holiday approaches.
Aaron’s convinced my lack of answer will kill my career, but that’s him in a nutshell.
Panicky, bull-headed, annoying, and brilliant.
This is partially why he’s headed to Falcon Haven, uncaring of Thanksgiving, since he has no family of his own and is too busy for friendship.
Another reason I’m delaying the decision to go to Singapore and solidify the deal is her .
The girl standing across from me right now, humming as she writes the last notes to her holiday food plan, bent over the counter with her ass waggling side to side, beckoning me to part her and slide my dick in.
The thing about medical scrubs is that elastic waist. So easy to slide down her hips and expose her, so tempting to wrap her ponytail around my wrist, put my other hand on the small of her back, and ride her.
Prudish thoughts aside, there’s more to Noa than her looks and allure.
She’s the sweet girl I remember, but now with a little ginger snap thrown in.
Spicy and hot on the throat. Her confession that she’d given up everything to take care of her mother and then fell into the position of caregiver so others wouldn’t have to go through what she did rocked me more than I expected.
And if she thinks I don’t know how she stays up every night to refine the chef’s dishes, she has it wrong.
I spend those nights with my arms folded behind my head, listening to her quiet patters and gentle humming as she goes, noises I’m coming to rely upon to feel comfortable and drift off to sleep.
I may not be the boy who left Falcon Haven without a second glance anymore, but even now, with the wisdom I’ve accrued, I still wouldn’t give up my dream the way she did.
If it were my mother diagnosed with cancer when I was eighteen with the chance at a new life beckoning, would I have stayed? I’d like to think so. I love my mother more than life. But I wonder, and I’m relieved, that I never had to make that kind of decision.
Where Noa is selfless, I am selfish. Where she is polite, I’m calculated. And where she is devoted, I’m paying penance for my bad actions.
Our opposites are glaringly present, yet I can’t look away despite the warning so bright it’s blinding.
Lavender, what am I going to do with you? With us?
She lost our baby, and I left her to deal with it alone. I never contacted her because I thought she hated me and wanted nothing more to do with me. Christ, we were so young. I figured she’d pick herself up and move to Paris like she’d planned before I begged her to follow me instead.
I didn’t know.
I didn’t fucking know.
But is that enough of an excuse?
Watching her tuck an errant strand of dark hair behind her ear as she completes her planned feast for my mother makes me think it isn’t.
I could stare at her all day. I clear my throat to shake myself out of it. “What have you decided on?”
“Hmm?” Noa looks up, her eyes glazed over with inward focus.
A strand of hair she tried to tuck away is stuck in her lip gloss. Christ, how badly I want to touch her cheek and brush it aside.
“Your special side dish,” I say instead. “Ma said something about you wanting to cook one of your famous recipes.”
Her gorgeous eyes become more gorgeous as enthusiasm trickles in. “Actually, I’d love your opinion on it.”
“You would?” I wonder if my eyes are doing the same.
She laughs, pushing off the counter and straightening. “You’ve been my sous chef for a few weeks and in the trenches with me. I’d say you’re entitled to an opinion.”
Her flattery tightens my chest more than scoring the title of the most ruthless man in the industry—and I was proud of that award.
I straighten and clear my throat so as not to appear too eager.
“I want to use some skills and techniques we’ve learned from Chef Toussaint.”
I stifle a sneer and turn it into a resigned twist of my lips instead. “Mm.”
“What do you think about creamed leeks and asparagus in a puff pastry for the appetizer and a cranberry crème br?lée for dessert?”
That sounds fucking delicious, but I regard at her carefully. “Is pumpkin pie also on the menu?”
This time, her tinkling laughter lifts the surrounding air, if that’s even possible. But it has to be, because the hairs on my arms stand up and there’s a tangible shift of the atmosphere against my ears.
It’s at this moment I realize how heavy the environment is in Ma’s home, filled with negative anticipation, dread, cautious hope. None of it feels like Noa’s unhindered laughter. Nothing sounds like her, either.
“I’d never deny you America’s dessert,” she says.
“Good.” My approval comes out tight with restrained emotion as I wrestle with the reality of our relationship. “It’s the one holiday where I get to cheat on my nutrition plan.”
“What do you normally do for Thanksgiving?” She cocks her head. “You haven’t celebrated it in Falcon Haven for a long time.”
Noa doesn’t ask it with judgment. She’s curious.
“Usually, I’m at a hotel somewhere. Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated in countries other than North America, and a lot of the companies I work with aren’t American, so …
sometimes nothing. Or when I happened to be in LA, I had Ma join me.
I’d take her to a fancy restaurant that had a Thanksgiving meal as their special. ”
I shut my mouth because I’m embarrassingly close to blabbering, which I simply do not do. I want to keep having a conversation with her.
She smiles. “Sounds delicious.”
“It was.” I jerk upright. “It won’t compare to what you cook, though.”
Noa laughs again. “I appreciate the flattery.”
“You damn sure should.” My statement comes out husky with lust.
Noa fidgets, a light blush creeping along her cheeks.
All I want to do is make it bloom.
She notices. “What’s wrong?”
I want to jump you and make you smell like the ingredients you’ve laid out as I grind you into them. “Nothing. Do you need assistance?”
“Stone. You can talk to me.” Her gaze slides away and then comes back.
I give a sad smile, then scrub my face with one hand, reminding myself Ma is awake in the other room.
Noa pulls her lips in, regarding me—differently. My jaw works under her study, my tongue ready to peel off the top of my mouth and ask her what she’s thinking. If she has any positive emotion left for me at all. If, without my mother keeping her here, she’d give me the time of day.
I stroll around the counter and pluck the list out of her hands. “Let’s get these groceries before the Merc sells out.”
Thankfully, Noa allows the subject to change. “You really are rusty on the holiday. We’d be in big trouble if we were shopping for all this now. I pre-ordered the groceries a week and a half ago. Our bags should be ready in an hour.”
“Of course you did.”
Noa follows me out the door.
I know this because I look back at her to make sure.
After we pick up the groceries and dump them in the kitchen, Noa gets to work.
Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and according to her, we can make most of these recipes ahead.
I’m not one to argue and fall into her assistant role like I was always meant to be there, chopping and stirring and station cleaning.
Ma joins within the hour, perching on the stool and observing Noa and I dance with food.
Somebody breaks out a bottle of white wine and we all pour a glass, Ma’s being the heaviest. She side-eyes anyone who tries to tell her otherwise, reminding us that during this holiday, she will drink and dine all she damn wants.
I sneak glances at her more than once, enjoying her alertness and constant questioning of Noa’s culinary decisions.
Our bike rides are way more enjoyable than I thought, and I look forward to them every morning.
It doesn’t matter that I’m at Rome’s ranch before dawn, hauling hay and mucking stalls.
When I return home in the morning, I turn right around and take my mother for a ride around the block.
She was slower this morning. We made it maybe one block before she asked to turn around, but I put that worry out of my mind as she sips on her wine and asks questions about Noa’s leek preparation instead.
Noa gives one last look-see at my plastic wrapping skills to cover our prepped plates and put them in the fridge, then says, “Okay! We’re done.”
I can’t keep the excitement out of my voice. “Can I go watch football now?”
Noa gives an amused shake of her head and takes my arm with Ma on the other side. Noa’s on her second glass, her cheeks flushed with the ruby glow of fermented grapes and her lips loose and easy in the corners.
It occurs to me I haven’t seen her this relaxed since returning to Falcon Haven.
She’s always either tending to Ma or checking on her other patients, constantly in professional mode.
The holidays must mean a lot to her for these needed days off, and I want to kick myself for not noticing it earlier.
Ma leans into my side, redirecting my thoughts, and I glance down at her with concern. The energy it took to stay with us all afternoon seeps out of her, and she sags against the sofa chair as I gently help her into it.