An extremely nice distraction.
And there’s no danger of this turning into something more. We’ve both agreed it is only what it is, which makes my argument against spending every night with him have no merit.
So yeah… it was nice waking up with him.
Today, Dominik is off doing whatever it is that multibillionaires do. I have plans with him later. He insisted we go out to a nice restaurant, which means I’m going to have to shop for a nice dress.
That’s fine, but for now… it’s time for me to meet Nora.
I’d been in Kosovo for just over a month prior to coming to Phoenix for the playoffs. As a photojournalist, I travel all over the world. That particular assignment was to cover the twentieth anniversary of the Kosovo wars.
Unbeknownst to me, my brother’s teammate Tacker had started counseling with a woman by the name of Nora Wayne. She owns Shërim Ranch, and she uses horses in some of her therapies.
Nora, in a strange twist of small-world fate, had lived in Kosovo. She’s Albanian, and her family was made up of rebels who were tragically wiped out by the Serbs. She was just a child and the only survivor.
Dax and Tacker called me a few weeks ago, putting me on speakerphone. They told me all about Nora and what she’d been through, and Tacker had asked me for a favor. I gladly did it for him and Nora, whom I didn’t even know.
That’s going to change now.
I exit my vehicle, then make my way up the porch steps of the main ranch house. Nora invited me to breakfast because I have stuff to share with her.
There’s no time to even raise my hand to knock on the front door before it’s thrown open by Tacker Hall. Granted, I’ve seen him since I’ve been back, but it’s mainly been out on the ice where he’s totally tearing it up.
But there’s no doubting the grinning man is different from the one I’d known before I left.
Dax had explained about Tacker’s transformation. How the normally taciturn man was now easy to laugh, lighter on the ice, and had bonded the team back together with his return.
Yet, I’m still surprised when he steps across the threshold and wraps me in a big bear hug. He squeezes me hard. “So good to see you.”
When he releases me, I laugh. “You really have changed. Dax told me you weren’t an asshole anymore, but I couldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes.”
Tacker tips his head back and gives a booming laugh, his eyes shining bright as he shakes his head with amusement. “I like how you always call it as you see it.”
I study him a moment, and it’s plain as day.
He’s healed.
His heart has been mended.
His soul reborn.
“Come on in,” he says, backing up and motioning me in. I step inside, noting several boxes in the living room.
“You move in?” I ask when he shuts the door.
“Yeah… just before the playoffs started. My apartment was such a dump, and it’s not in the greatest area. Since Nora works here, it’s just more convenient if we stay here.”
“This place is beautiful,” I remark as Tacker leads me through the house.
“I love it out here,” he replies over his shoulder. “Nora’s even got me riding horses, and I used to hate the damn things.”
When we enter the kitchen, my eyes land on Nora, who is bent at the waist and pulling a pan of what looks and smells like cinnamon rolls from the oven. She places them on the stovetop, then twists toward us with a smile. My breath catches at the sight.
She’s stunning.
I mean… supermodel gorgeous.
Her smile causes her beauty to be magnified to almost painful proportions, but it’s the light in her eyes that adds to the magic of her. It’s obvious she’s a good human being.
Tacker introduces us. “Babe… this is Willow Monahan.”
Nora takes off the oven mitt before approaching me. When I stick my hand out, she bypasses it, wrapping me up in a warm, all-encompassing hug that sticks for several moments. Without a word passed between us, I can feel her gratitude seeping from her body into mine.
She pulls back, hands on my shoulders, and looks at me straight on. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”
“It was nothing,” I say, my cheeks heating up a bit.
She scoffs. “It was everything to me.”
My cheeks heat up and she releases me, motioning toward the table. “Sit down. You want a cup of coffee?”
“That would be great,” I answer as I move to take a seat.
“I’ll grab the coffee and rolls,” Tacker offers, and I do a double-take. He truly has changed. “You two sit and talk.”
Nora saunters to Tacker, puts her hand on his hip, and rises on her tiptoes to kiss him. He closes his eyes to receive her lips, and my heart flutters in response to their love. For a moment—a mere wisp of time—I think perhaps I might want that someday.
Then stark reality slaps me in the face, a reminder I did try it once. Love had shit all over me—so badly I will gladly go without that kind of devotion, thank you very much.
“Sit,” Nora says as she heads to the table.
I pull out a chair, plop into it, and remove my iPad from my cross-body satchel. “I brought you some photos.”
Nora freezes, butt halfway to the padded chair beside me, her eyes wide with surprise.
I turn on the tablet. “I spent some time in Albania and Kosovo, including the Drenica Valley.”
Nora finally lowers herself. Sucking in a deep breath, she releases it slowly.
“If you’d rather not,” I offer quickly. It never occurred to me that she might not want to see the area that had once been her home. When Tacker invited me out, he’d said Nora was hungry for information on Kosovo and what it was like today. She’d not been back since she left twenty years ago.
“No,” she exclaims, giving me a confident smile. “I do want to see them. It’s more than I ever thought would be possible. I mean… you finding my family’s graves and—”
She trails off as it’s a heavy moment. I had, indeed, located the graves. Two of them—the massive hole in the ground they’d unceremoniously tossed the rebels’ bodies into after they were slaughtered, and the decent burial sites the international peace workers gave them years later. I took a lot of photographs of both, along with some of the beautiful countryside, old buildings, and interesting people.
With the help of the embassy, I had also gotten the ball rolling on figuring out how to get Nora’s family disinterred and moved to the United States to be buried on Shërim Ranch alongside her adoptive mother, Helen Wayne. It’s the main reason I thought Nora and Tacker wanted me to come out today, so I could tell them everything I’d learned.
“I can’t imagine the horrors you suffered,” I say. Dax had told me all about it and if I’d had to watch my family be gunned down, I’m not sure I could have survived it the way Nora had. “So, I’m not sure if these photographs will be healing or not. But they are beautiful. Albania is gorgeous, as I’m sure you remember. And the people there are just as beautiful. We could start with those if you want.”
It’s where she was born. My understanding is she didn’t live there long before her family moved to Kosovo, but it’s still her heritage.