Jake had been right to tell her to watch her back.
“It’s just lunch,” Pearl said.
Nora sighed.
Pearl, correctly interpreting it as a sigh of capitulation, clapped her hands. “Yay! You are going to be our crown jewel.”
“Well, thanks, I guess, but I think you overestimate my draw. I just got here. No one knows me. Who’s going to bid on me?”
The chimes on the door tinkled, and in walked Jake.
Everyone said hello to Jake, who raised his hand silently in greeting and gave his father an extra nod. “I was hoping one of you knew how to get in touch with Harold…” He trailed off when he noticed her. “Oh. Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Hi,” he said again.
Nora’s skin started to prickle. She could feel everyone’s eyes on them—she felt like they were zoo animals. She just couldn’t figure out why. All they had done was greet each other politely.
“Harold Burgess?” Karl finally said. “Was that what you were asking? How to get in touch with Harold Burgess?”
“I know how to get in touch with Harold Burgess,” Nora said slowly, feeling like she was missing something. “Assuming we’re talking about Harold Burgess my landlord?”
“Right.” Jake shifted his weight from one foot to the other, none of his signature steadiness in evidence. “I actually need to talk to you, too.”
“You do?” Eiko asked, glancing at Pearl, who coughed.
“Yeah, it’s about your house.” Jake stopped shuffling, but his eyes darted around like he was looking for an escape. Maybe he had the in-the-zoo feeling, too?
“Well,” she said, “I have my first patient in thirty minutes. I have to get out of these gross running clothes. You want to walk with me to the clinic?”
He nodded and held the door for her. As she followed him out, Pearl called after them, “Be good, kids.”
“Gross running clothes” was not how Jake would have described what Nora was wearing. She had on form-fitting, black running tights and a bright-green tank top. She looked like an ad for an athletic magazine.
“I didn’t realize you were a runner.” He’d known she was getting up and out early these days—he had been seizing the opportunity to do some early-morning work on her house before other jobs, so they sometimes said a quick hello as he was arriving and she was leaving—but he’d thought she was just going to the clinic.
“I’m not. I’m doing this couch-to-5K training system that’s supposed to train you to run a 5K. But I’m so out of shape, I’m winded after like five minutes.”
“Out of shape” was another phrase he would not have used to describe Nora. Her legs weren’t long—she was short enough that nothing about her was long—but he was pretty sure he could span the entirety of one of her thighs with his hands. Theoretically. And he was going to hell, but as she strode up the sidewalk ahead of him, her ass, which was small and round and perfect, bounced.
“I have good genes, and I’m petite, so I pass for a fit person. But I’m actually not. One of the goals in the whole life-change thing was to work less so I could exercise.” She wrinkled her nose. “I hate running.”
“You should take up kayaking, or canoeing, or something that involves the lake. You like the lake, right?”
“I was thinking that. Or even walking on the beach.”
“What happened to the Tigers?”
She paused in unlocking her clinic, her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
Yeah, that had been a non sequitur from her point of view. “I was just thinking that had also been one of your goals in moving here. You wanted to go to Tigers games. But isn’t the regular season almost over?”
“It’s totally over. I dropped the ball on that one.”
Well, crap. In his quest to fix Nora’s house and build her vaccine van monstrosity, he’d forgotten about the Tigers. He would happily have driven to a game with her.
Whoa. He would happily have driven to a game with her?
That was more than a little weird. He didn’t follow baseball. The last time he’d been to the States had been before Jude was born, when he’d tagged along with Kerrie to a law conference in Cleveland. He hadn’t even been as far as Toronto in recent memory.
She ushered him into the dark clinic, and he followed her to the back, where she had an office.
She rummaged through a bag and pulled out a dress. “So you want to get a hold of Harold? Why wouldn’t you just ask me?”
Right. “I have some bad news.”
She