Page 164 of The Skeikh's Games

“Well, I’m sure Jay will be happy to…mentor you. I hope you’re ready, we have a huge amount of work to do.”

If she was hoping Norah Quinn would be insulted by her inference about Jay’s mentorship, she was disappointed. Norah’s eyes glittered with excitement.

“Can’t wait to get started.”

After they’d left her office — she could hear them laughing as they walked down the corridor — she felt like the butt of some joke that she didn’t know had been made. She realized the pain in her chest wasn’t because of Norah Quinn’s beauty, or her obvious intelligence and spirit. It was because Jay had never looked at her the way he looked at Norah.

Like he was falling in love.

***

The care home was serenely quiet when Norah walked through its halls much later that evening. Just the occasional murmur of conversation or the soft beep of machinery gave away that the place wasn’t deserted.

Norah, her body, her brain exhausted from the day, let herself into her mother’s room to find her mom sitting up in her chair, gazing out into the evening gloom. The window was open, a warm breeze blowing in from the Louisiana night, occasional breaths of the bayou that lay on the care home’s grounds. Her mother looked over at her with watery eyes.

“Hello, dear. Are you the new nurse?”

It never stopped being painful.

“No, Mom, it’s me. Norah, remember?”

Her mom merely smiled and nodded. “That’s a pretty name.”

Norah sat on the edge of her mom’s bed and took her hands in her own. They were cold and Norah rubbed them to warm them. Her mom went back to looking out of the window.

“How have you been, Mom?”

“I’ve been just nifty, dear. I wish my girl would come visit me but she’s always so busy, she works so hard. She’s at Harvard, you know?”

There was a reason they called it The Long Goodbye. Alzheimer’s was the cruelest joke nature could play. A lifetime of love, life, experience gone. Wiped out. Norah swallowed the lump in her throat, felt it settle in her chest. “I got a job today, Mom, a really good job. And I think I met someone. A guy.”

She told her mother all about Jay, knowing that she wouldn’t remember anything. But it felt good to talk about him, the way he’d introduced her so kindly to everyone at the office. They’d all been so welcoming — with maybe the exception of Sloan Farmer but Norah couldn’t worry about her tonight.

When she’d told her mom about Jay, staring blankly out of the window, just seeing his handsome face, his boyish smile, the feel of his hand resting on the small of her back, she jolted herself back into the present and found her mom had fallen asleep. Norah closed the window and covered her mom with a blanket then slipped out quietly.

She caught the night bus back to her apartment and grabbed some cereal straight from the box as dinner. She switched on the t.v., found nothing she wanted to watch and flicked it off, sitting in the dim light of the light from the window. A hard tension had settled in her chest that way it always did when she saw her mom and she knew the only way to get rid of it was to bawl her heart out. Heartache and guilt. Heartache over her mother and guilt for feeling, the last two days, happier than she’d felt in years. Because of Jay. As her sobs subsided, she wiped her eyes and grabbed her phone. There was a message from him on it she hadn’t seen.

You rocked your first day, baby girl.

Norah smiled through the tears. All thanks to you, boss. I mean it, thank you.

A reply came back almost instantly. It was my pleasure and my good fortune, beautiful. Sleep tight, see you in the morning, J x.

She read it over and over until finally, exhausted, she fell asleep.

***

Jay McKittridge was feeling smug. Very, very smug. Sloan glanced at his face and groaned. “Just say it, whatever you are dying to say, just get it out.”

Jay flopped into the couch opposite her. “Come on, Sloan, you have to admit, Norah’s amazing.”

Sloan sighed. “She’s doing…well.”

Jay made a sarcastic noise and she shrugged. “It’s been two months, let’s not get too excited. Yes, she’s made a good start but…”

“Come on. I know you, you’re not that ungenerous. She’s completely taken the strain off us both. There’s a giant brain behind that beautiful face.”

Sloan sat back and jabbed a finger in his direction. “That. That right there is my problem. Are you sleeping with her?”

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