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 isher. 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 brûlée for dessert?”
