The Billionaire's Innocent - Part 4 by Caitlin Crews

Author:Caitlin Crews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2015-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

JUNE EASED INTO July, bringing with it the grimy swelter of full summer in Manhattan, and Zair was gone.

At first, Nora thought it was only a temporary thing. She hadn’t been worried when she’d woken up that morning-after to find him gone. She’d assumed he had to sort things out on a diplomatic level in Washington and that once he did, he’d return. Or at least call.

He didn’t.

She spent the long holiday weekend up in Maine with her parents and brothers and the too-watchful Zoe. She let the crisp, sweet summer breeze move over her. She tilted her head back into the perfect blue of the down east sky. She ate lobster and went sailing and took long walks in the fragrant pines. And she told herself it would fade, this terrible longing. The vicious claws of need digging into her would ease their grip. People moved on. She would, too. Wouldn’t she?

Because she’d made herself a lot of promises while Harlow was away, and she couldn’t let herself drift any longer. She had to change her life. She’d sworn she would if Harlow came home. She’d sworn she wouldn’t waste any more time.

Are you kind? Zair had asked her. Are you good? Do you stand up for yourself or those weaker than you when it could hurt you? Do you do what’s right rather than what’s easy?

She hadn’t, Nora knew. Not ever. Not even when she’d encouraged Harlow to go off and do something real. But she could now.

“I hope this strange tabloid episode is over,” her mother said over breakfast one morning, managing to exude ruffled feathers and well-manicured outrage while wearing a summer dress festooned with embroidered ladybugs. It was one of her greatest talents. “I hope we can look at the last few months as a regrettable period for everyone concerned and move on to bigger and better and far more appropriate things.”

But Nora wasn’t the same person she’d been before Cannes. Before Harlow had come home with ghosts in her eyes. Before Zair had changed everything inside her and then left her anyway. And it was high time she started making that clear.

“I’m leaving the art gallery,” she said, the way she might once have asked for the salt to be passed. “I’ve taken a fellowship at an anti-human trafficking organization in Washington. I start in September.”

Her voice seemed unduly loud in the serenity of the morning room with only the blue water of the bay on the other side of the windows. Louder still, perhaps, because she knew this was something her mother didn’t want to hear.

“You can’t walk away from your responsibilities,” her mother began.

“I’m interviewing for a new person to run the gallery,” Nora replied calmly. She met her mother’s gaze across the table. “I understand that you have an aversion to ‘gritty’ jobs, Mom. But this is what I want. What’s the point of having been born to all this privilege if I can’t do something with it?”

Her mother only stared back at her for a long moment, then shifted her attention back to her bowl of fruit.

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