by Maggie Marr
“Oh, I’m not sure. I think it was when I nearly fell going to the bathroom this morning.”
“Fell? You nearly fell?” The doctor turned toward the nurse, who shrugged her shoulders as though this was the first she was hearing about Nonna’s dizziness or near fall.
“I’m sorry, I just really want to go home,” Nonna said, her voice soft and innocent. “I didn’t want to tell you.”
“You can’t do that, Mrs. Klaus,” Dr. Snow said. “We need to know the truth about how you’re doing and how you’re feeling. We can’t assess whether you’re okay to return home if you don’t give us all the information.”
Nonna nodded. “I’m sorry.” She pressed her fingertips across the blanket that covered her. “It’s Christmastime and I want to be at home.”
“Understandable, and we want you to be at home too, but only if you’re going to be okay there. We’ve still got some time before Christmas Eve. I’ll run a few tests, and if everything looks good, I can guarantee you’ll be at your house before Santa.” She turned from Nonna and looked at Nick and Noel. “A few more tests. I’m guessing one more night. If everything comes back clear and we get her blood-pressure medication adjusted so that she doesn’t keep getting these spells of light-headedness, then we’ll send her home.” She turned back to Nonna. “Mrs. Klaus, one more night here with us. Okay? I know you’re ready to get home to your own bed and your own things, but just give us one more day to make sure we’ve got all your meds straight and that you won’t have any more falls.”
“Okay,” Nonna said.
The doctor and the nurse exited.
Noel moved to Nonna’s bed and sat beside her. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Noel kept her voice calm, although her heart bounced about her chest.
“Oh, it’s nothing.” Nonna waved her hand. She looked beyond Noel to Nick. “Thank you for taking care of Noel while I’m here,” Nonna said. “It means a great deal to me. Did you get her to eat something last night?”
Nick took a step forward and Noel looked over her shoulder at him.
“I did.” A smile spread across his face as he looked at Nonna. “Noel was well taken care of last night.”
Her sex clenched and heat tingled across her skin. A hot rush flew up her neck. She had to be blushing. His gaze flitted to hers with a knowing look as though they maintained rich secrets about their night together.
“Oh, I am certain that she was.” Nonna reached out and squeezed Noel’s hands. “I remember before, when you two dated. I always felt as though you took such good care of Noel.”
“Okay, Nonna.” Noel squeezed her grandmother’s hand but gave her a gentle warning look.
“I guess with me in here for another night, I need you to look after Noel again.”
“I’m not a child,” Noel said. She creased her eyebrows.
“Oh, most definitely, Nonna,” Nick said. “I’d be pleased to take care of her again tonight.” His voice held hints of wickedness.
Tendrils of desire raced through Noel with the knowledge of just how Nick would take care of her tonight.
“And will you find a way to save my home before I’m released tomorrow?” Nonna asked. Again with the innocent look and wide eyes.
Nick dipped his head and pressed his hand to his mouth and coughed. One more night in the hospital wouldn’t be all fun and games after all.
“I’m working on some things. You do understand that a great deal of time and expense has already—”
“I understand that this is my home, Nicholas.” Nonna’s sweet voice drained away with her words. “I understand that your people made it seem as though we had no choice but to agree to your buyout. And, I also understand that you have a few other projects that are displacing people.”
“You’re aware that my company offers fair market value on the properties as well as relocation expenses.”
“And I’m sure you’re aware that some people still have no choice but to accept, what with the pressure you put on them? You had the city nearly oust us all, as though we were squatters in our own homes.”
“I hardly think—”
“That is exactly the problem,” Nonna said. Gone was the sweet old lady, replaced by the hard-core leader of a charity who in her day had managed to squeeze donations from the most miserly of hearts. “You didn’t think. You didn’t think that someone you knew could possibly be harmed by your greed and your desires for expansion.”
Noel held her breath. Even her words hadn’t been that harsh. Noel’s gaze flashed from Nonna, little adorable Nonna, who lay tiny in her hospital bed with a determined yet gentle look on her face. Her eyes filled with warmth although her words held steel. Then to Nick. A giant of a man who was used to the world bowing at his feet. He brought everyone to heel so that he might have what he wanted and make money while doing it.
Nick’s nostrils flared, his chest expanded with a deep breath in preparation for his words, which would most certainly be unkind and stern. Instead, one eyebrow rose. “I am doing my very best to ensure that something like this does not happen again.”
What? How had Nonna just managed to curb one of the biggest real estate moguls in the country with a handful of words and some guilt? Shock pulsed through Noel. A heart still beat in Nick North’s chest. He did still feel for her, for what they’d once had together. She closed her eyes for the briefest instant. Heat built in her heart. The warmth that cascaded through her wasn’t simply sexual attraction. The warmth she felt for this giant man, this powerful man who could be persuaded by Nonna, was deeper. Her strong feelings for Nick still rushed through her like a river.
“Thank you, Nicholas.” Nonna smiled and nodded at Nick. “All right then, you two run along. I do need to get some rest.” Nonna pressed the button on her bed and a motor whirred and the bed moved back into a sleeping position.
“I’ll be back later today to check on you,” Noel said.
“No need, dear,” Nonna said a self-satisfied smile on her face. “You just stay with Nicholas. You two work together to find a solution to the White Pines dilemma. Leave me to rest and get well.”
“Right.” Noel squinted her eyes at her grandmother. Nonna had already closed her eyes and appeared well on her way to a peaceful slumber, her Cheshire smile spread across her face.
Noel exited Nonna’s room into the hospital hallway, Nick right behind her. He pulled the door shut.
“I’m not sure how dizzy my grandmother was this morning.”
“You’re questioning the truthfulness of your eighty-year-old grandmother?” Nick said with feigned shock in his voice.
Noel squinted. “Maybe not her truthfulness, but whether she’s manipulating the situation. Do you think she’s trying to stay in the hospital?”
“The woman is a barracuda. She should run for the senate or at the very least be a CEO. She’s a smart lady with an agenda.”
“Unbelievable.”
Nick grasped Noel’s hand in his. “She wants her home to remain, and she believes the longer she’s in the hospital, the more likely that becomes.”
“Nonna does seem to get her way with most things, even when she uses passive resistance.”
Nick’s eyebrows creased. “Plus, she always liked me.” Nick squeezed her hand. “She always liked you and me together.”
A deep breath filled Noel’s lungs. Yes, Nonna had always thought Nick was the right man for Noel. Nonna hadn’t come right out and said those exact words, but she hadn’t needed to. Nonna’s look of sadness, even while being supportive of Noel’s decision that Christmas all those years ago, had told Noel that Nonna wanted Noel with Nick.
The challenges and the differences between them hadn’t disappeared in the past five years. If anything, Nick had become more like his family and Noel had become more rigid in her own beliefs. His current business practices, what had almost happened to Nonna and White Pines, were evidence of just how different they were. Their beliefs were different, what they wanted was different, how the
y saw life was fundamentally different. She did not want the chains that came with being Nick North’s wife. She wanted her freedom and the change she could effectuate with that freedom.
“Well, come on then,” Nick said.
“Excuse me?”
“We have things to do. Weren’t we assigned a task by your Nonna? You think I’m going to fall down on this job? We’re going to find a solution to the White Pines quandary. You and I.”
*
The town car pulled to a stop.
“Where are we?”
“Exactly the problem,” Nick said.
Black earth covered in a thin layer of frost rolled out beyond the road. At the edge of the tract of land was a clump of gray trees that were bare of leaves, and a run-down shed. He opened the back door of the town car and exited, then thrust his hand back in. Noel grasped his fingers.
A shock pulsed up her arm. His fingertips curled around hers, and he pulled her out of the warmth of the backseat and into the cold barren gray-skied winter.
“This is the other tract we considered,” Nick said. “For the Shopping Extravaganza.”
Noel’s eyes searched the horizon. “Well, it’s certainly big enough, and it doesn’t seem you’d be ousting anyone from their homes.”
“No ousting needed,” Nick said. “However, as you can see, there are also no customers nearby. There’s a two-mile perimeter all the way around before we even get to the nearest home complex.” His gaze scanned the empty lot.
“Is it expensive?”
“I own it,” Nick said. “The whole damn thing.”
“Of course you do.” She sighed. “And yet you want to knock down White Pines retirement village.”
“Noel, these are business decisions made with regards to numbers.”
Noel curled her hands into fists. “No, Nick, these are not just business decisions made with regards to numbers. These decisions impact people’s lives. How can you fail to understand that when you make decisions to knock down inhabited buildings, no matter how much money and how many relocation expenses you pay, that you uproot people’s lives?” Noel shook her head. She marched onto the empty field of rock and dirt and snow. Anger pulsed through her body. How could he not see that? How could he not feel emotion for all the people that his company displaced? How could he continue to change people’s lives even when they didn’t want the change?
The frigid wind blasted against her chest and bit her eyes. She stopped walking. Long, deep breaths cooled the anger in her belly. These were the reasons they couldn’t be together. This very fundamental difference in how they viewed the world. Nick wished to exploit and Noel wished to give.
“Noel?”
His voice, even when she was angry with him, even when she knew they could not be a couple and that their lives couldn’t be joined as one, still reached deep inside her body and flamed her heart. His hand pressed against her coat and into her back.
“Noel, I know we see things differently, but please understand my developments aren’t just about the money that I make. These developments are also about the opportunities I create.”
“Opportunities? What, by forcing people out of their homes?”
Nick shook his head and his gaze swept over the horizon. “No. I mean, sometimes that is a repercussion, but these stores, these places, also create jobs. Hundreds and hundreds of jobs. Each store has employees, the builders who build the stores, the workmen who do the electrical, the roads, the plumbing. Every individual who works on these projects has a family to feed, and while they’re here they are working. Don’t you see any benefit to this progress? To my construction?”
Wind hit Noel again and stripped away her breath. How had she failed to consider that Nick was creating something for the community? She’d only considered what he would destroy.
“Sometimes forty, fifty, sixty, people have to move, but we don’t even begin to consider a location until all the people agree to move. They sell their land and get relocated, but what we create is sometimes thousands of jobs. Millions of dollars, and not just for me. Perhaps it’s not as altruistic as you’d like, but it also isn’t nearly as opportunistic as you’d have the world believe.”
Noel clasped her arms around her chest and rubbed her hands across her upper arms. Maybe. Maybe there was some validity to what Nick said.
“There has to be a compromise,” Noel said. She looked up into his face, all hard lines and creased brows. “A way to make all parties happy.”
Nick shook his head. “Sometimes no. This is life, Noel, not a fairy tale. We don’t all get our happily-ever-after. Sometimes people are unhappy, they don’t get everything they want. But I do try to make sure they get is what’s fair. What helps them to create a new life out of what remains.” His jaw tightened. “Picking up the pieces of what you thought your life was going to be can be hard, but it can be done.”
Noel’s heart stopped in her chest. She turned her gaze from the frozen, empty landscape and looked into Nick’s eyes. He wasn’t talking about his Shopping Extravaganza, or White Pines, or his expansion plans for North Industries around the country. His words held the crystal-edged sharpness of pain, of experience, of feelings they’d each felt because of the other.
“I don’t know what to say … what to say to that.”
“Explain to me how you could leave? How you could leave without looking back? Without saying good-bye. You didn’t just leave me, you left an entire life. You even left your Nonna, and for what? For strangers on a different continent?”
Noel’s heart lurched in her chest. He deserved answers to these questions. How she’d left had been cowardly and unfair. She’d left the man she loved without any explanation. She pulled a long breath deep into her lungs. The cold felt harsh.
She met Nick’s gaze. “I left because I had to. I went so far away because I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t stay here, in this city, knowing you were here, knowing the love I was walking away from.”
“Then why, Noel?”
Noel closed her eyes. She’d asked herself this question night after night in a thatched hut with a cement floor in Tshanzhe. “I can’t answer it. I couldn’t answer it then and I can’t answer it now. I simply knew—I knew at the time that I didn’t have any other choice, that I had to get away, that I had—”
“You had to run.” Nick’s voice was cool and crisp. Hard and cold. The warmth, the need for answer, now void. “You were afraid of our love and you ran away.”
“I wasn’t afraid,” Noel bit out. No one in her entire life had accused her of being afraid. She was brave. She’d had to be brave. First she’d lost her parents when she was merely twelve, and then she’d lost her grandfather at fifteen. She’d been a very brave girl—just ask anyone who knew her. She and Nonna had gotten through everything together.
“How can you call me a coward?” Noel asked.
“I didn’t use the word coward,” Nick said. “That’s your word choice.” His eyes held a knowing, as though he refused to release her from his judgment. “You’re afraid of losing what you love.”
Pain sliced behind her ribs as Noel’s heart folded in on itself. A sharp gasp shot past her lips.
“That’s why you left. You couldn’t stand the idea of losing someone you loved again, the pain of it. Yes, you were brave, Noel, but you were brave because you had to be brave. What choice did a cruel and unkind fate leave you? But with me? With our love you had a choice, and instead of choosing love, you chose fear.”
Cold air blasted across the open frozen field. The sharp wind stung her cheeks and her eyes like pinpricks. Noel’s jaw dropped open. How could Nick say these things to her? How could he be this unkind, this cruel, this … this horrible to her?
“I chose fear?” Her jaw tensed and her throat was thick. Words, mean and hateful words, flitted through her brain. “What did you choose, Nick? If I chose fear, then you chose all that was easy, didn’t you? I may have rocked the boat, I may have broken your heart and mine by going to
Africa, but I forged a new path. A new way for myself. What about you? You did what was easiest. You did what was expected. You chose what your mother and your father wanted. What they’d planned for you since you were a child. You didn’t make a choice at all. You let everyone choose for you.”
He grasped her arms and pulled her close. “Not true,” Nick said. His gaze ravaged her face. Anger lit his eyes. “If I let everyone else make the choice for me, I would never have chosen you to be my wife. Don’t you know that? I made that choice. I made that choice for me, for us, because I believed in our love. I believed that we could be brave and kind and good and face all our fears and any resistance as long as we did it together. I believed we could face my parents and all the expectations that were placed upon us because I believed in the strength of our love. But you didn’t, Noel, you didn’t believe that our love was strong enough. When I turned to you with strength and belief and love, you turned away. You turned away and you ran from me. Afraid of our love, afraid of our future, afraid of what we could be.”
The sobs choked in her throat. Words wouldn’t form and tears, hot on her numb cheeks, rushed from her eyes. No, no, she hadn’t been afraid. She’d made a choice. A wise choice. A choice that was good and pure and true. A choice of altruism. A choice to help the world. To use what she had and what she knew to help those who needed her. She hadn’t run. She hadn’t. But the shaking of her shoulders and the wracking sobs that consumed her were evidence of a different truth. A truth she’d denied. Pain thrashed behind her ribs as her heart broke into a million bits. Nick’s words hit her full force as though each word of truth was a blow.
“I still love you,” Nick said. His voice cracked and he pulled her to him, against the cloth of his coat, into the warmth of his arms, where she rested her cheek and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.
Chapter Nine
Hours later, Noel was back in Nonna’s room. The return trip to the hospital had been quiet. Nick had taken business calls and Noel had responded to multiple e-mails from both former Peace Corps employees as well as the Fresh Water Fund, a nonprofit she’d collaborated with in Africa. Now she sat beside Nonna’s bed, staring absently at the muted TV.
