by Lucy Score
“I live here.”
No shit, Captain Obvious. “I meant, what are you doing lurking in the hallway?”
He entered the room, agitation pumping off him, and crossed to the bookcase. He adjusted a stack of hardbacks, a family photo, and gave a jerky shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. It’s not even my home anymore. It used to be. Now I’m just lurking in corners while everyone else lives here. I even have a cat now.” He pointed as Felipe strutted past the doorway. “He didn’t belong to anyone before the flood. Had seven houses he’d visit like a time share cat, and now he’s decided this house is where he wants to settle down. I don’t even like cats.”
She wasn’t going to feel sorry for him. Nope. Ice Queen Mode engaged.
“I feel like I’m failing them.” Noah stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared unseeingly into his backyard.
His confession disengaged Ice Queen Mode.
“Noah, don’t be an idiot.”
“We were unprepared for the flooding. We’ve got residents displaced from their homes. There’s a possibility our major source of revenue will go bust. And I have to depend on you to fix it all.”
She had a feeling that was the part he was most worried about. “You’re not failing anyone. No town can be completely zipped up and prepared for eleven-plus inches of rain. It’s not possible. Your residents are all going to get to go home. You’ll get your house back. And the Christmas Festival will kick ass.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“This town? These people? It’s my life and my livelihood. I grew up here. We’d be inventorying decorations by now getting ready for the day after Thanksgiving. I can’t imagine Merry without our Christmas. It… it was my favorite thing growing up.”
“It’s going to be different,” Cat acknowledged, joining him at the window. “But different doesn’t have to mean worse. If anything, it’s going to mean a whole hell of a lot more to people after what you’ve all been through.”
Noah sighed and said nothing.
“You’re right to be skeptical, to be protective. Not every show that could have come in here would have Merry’s best interests at heart. But we do. I do.”
“I know what you were doing with Jasper,” Noah admitted. “I get it, and it’s nice of you.”
“What? Trying to get him to saw off his own arm for ratings because his family doesn’t have enough going on right now?”
“Sorry for that. I’m tired, stressed. I don’t usually take it out on people, but for some reason, your mere existence pushes my buttons.”
“Right back at you.”
“I wonder if I’d feel the same way in different circumstances?” Noah posited. Felipe padded into the room and rubbed up against Noah’s legs. Reluctantly, he bent to ruffle the cat’s ears.
“You mean if you didn’t have to watch me like a hawk to make sure I’m not ruining your town for advertising dollars?”
He straightened. “Pretty much, yeah.” His smile was wry, and when he looked at her like that, Cat felt a little hiccup zing through her blood. Noah Yates was a good-looking man. Too bad about the whole personality thing.
“Well, I guess we’re never going to find out, are we? Now let’s go get you mic-ed.”
“Mic-ed? Oh, no. I’m not participating.” Noah shook his head.
Cat smiled and showed her teeth. “The handsome city manager opening his home to his neighbors and a stray cat? Oh, yeah. You’re participating. And you’re going to hold Felipe in your lap.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Six weeks to Christmas Eve
Well, it had happened. Just as he’d known it would. Noah slammed the phone down into the receiver. The first episode of Merry’s Christmas had aired two days ago, and the calls hadn’t stopped. Volunteers offering their time, contractors who suddenly found openings in their schedule, businesses hoping to give Merry residents discounts on this and that.
Cat King was hell-bent on turning his life, his nice quiet town, into a circus.
And now he was the one fielding all the calls. Well that wasn’t going to fly. He had a job to do, a town to provide for. Noah didn’t need to be the network’s answering service.
He shoved his arms into his coat. “I’m going out,” he told his part-time secretary Carolanne.
It was cold, and the forecast was calling for snow this week. But his anger, his sense of inconvenience kept him warm.
The field producer had decided to carbon copy him on all shooting schedules so he knew where he could find Cat. Part of him recognized that he should be bringing the issue to the field producer or Paige. But he’d prefer to yell at Cat. It was more satisfying.
Noah decided to walk the four blocks to the park. He’d spent so many hours the past few days holed up in his office, the amount of cleanup progress surprised him. The buildings that had seen floodwaters licking at their foundations had all been power washed and a temporary week-long parking restriction on the last three blocks of Main Street had allowed a team of street sweepers to clean up the leftover mud clogging gutters and curbs.
Window cleaners had made quick work of the entire downtown. The town was still devoid of any actual holiday decorations. While the bulk of the decorating didn’t happen until Black Friday, there were still touches here and there that he missed. The storage shed that held most of the park’s decorations had yielded the disappointing news that nearly every item had been damaged if not destroyed.
Cat hadn’t seemed fazed by it, but Noah couldn’t help but mourn the decades of history wiped out by relentless inches of black water.
There was a crew stacking drywall and materials in front of Reggie’s diner. Cat and her ambitions. How was one woman and a tightly run crew or two going to turn a flooded park into a winter wonderland, return a destroyed diner into the breakfast mecca it had been, and redo half a dozen houses into livable homes all in time for Christmas?
She wasn’t. And that fact was plain as day. Cat King was getting people’s hopes up, and they were only going to get crushed. It didn’t matter how many volunteers showed up with cleaning supplies and tools. There was no way in hell that some pretty little actress could save his town.
And he’d be the one to pick up the pieces when she packed up and left town. He’d be the one sweating over budgets and bills, making the tough choices that needed to be faced. Through his fog of anger, Noah waved at the handful of people who greeted him. Frieda Fawkes poked her head out of the hair salon to holler a hello, and Ismail Byler called a greeting over his newspaper from the bench in front of the insurance agency he’d run since 1967. Their cheerfulness grated. Noah knew they were weeks away from disappointment, and he wished he could prepare them for it.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and pressed on.
The park was a hive of activity. Landscaping crews were blowing in mulch to beds revitalized with new evergreens. A crew of cleaners was pressure washing the salvaged benches and trash receptacles. A tree surgeon was in the process of examining the remaining pines and hemlocks for damage.
They’d lost enough trees, buried enough sidewalks in mud, that North Pole Park seemed a foreign landscape to him. The river, calm again, had returned to its banks beyond the park and sparkled icily in the morning light, giving no hint to the destruction it was capable of.
It made him think of Cat. Beautiful, fun to look at, but danger lurked beneath the surface.
Noah spotted the small village of production tents and pop-ups and headed in that direction. Picking his way over cables and boxes and leftover storm debris, Noah headed toward the voices. It sounded like a meeting was in progress.
He poked his head around the corner and spotted a handful of crew huddled together under a two-sided pop-up, clutching coffees and papers.
“Let’s talk ratings.” Paige’s voice cut through the murmurings around her. She was sitting on the ground, leaning against Cat, who looked as if she were asleep. Cat’s back rested on the
skinny leg of the tent. Her long, denim clad legs were stretched out straight in front of her, a cup of something steamed between her knees. Her eyes were closed. Another woman in a powder blue beanie leaned against her opposite side.
Everyone was yawning. Must not be morning people, Noah decided. Cat seemed like the type who would lounge about in bed until noon every day if given the chance.
Cat cracked open one eye. “Must you with the numbers? I’m too tired to comprehend.”
Paige kicked her good-naturedly in the foot and rattled off a series of stats.
Cat’s eyes were closed again. “I told you,” she said smugly. “I told you this was going to strike a chord with a lot of people.”
“Yeah, a lot of people who wanted to get on camera next to Cat and Mr. I Make Preteen Girls Giggle,” Noah muttered under his breath.
“I’m very pleased with the numbers, and I have a feeling they’re only going to go up from here. We could be looking at a big finale.”
“Color me shocked.” Clearly Cat was gifted in sarcasm.
“I’m not the one who was arguing with you,” Paige pointed out.
“No, that judgmental lout of a city manager was. But he’s not here for me to be snarky to, so you’ll have to do.”
Noah decided to let Cat shove her foot further down her throat before alerting her to his presence.
“What is it with the war between you two?” the woman next to Cat demanded, shifting her head to rest on Cat’s shoulder.
Cat gave a snort. “He’s wrong. I’m right, and he’s too thickheaded to grasp that. And speaking of the thickheaded, stubborn ass, can we have a PA get in touch with him?”
Paige looked up from her notes. “Why? So, you can deliver him a message of insults?”
“With ratings like that, I guarantee we’re going to be looking at an influx of volunteers. And while we could use the help, I don’t want Mr. No over there at City Hall scaring them off with the ‘we don’t need anyone’ spiel if they call him instead of us. We need all the hands we can get if we’re going to make this park festival-worthy by Christmas Eve.”
“I’ll pick a PA to be point of contact and volunteer coordinator,” Paige agreed. “We can get the number to Noah and his secretary so if anyone does call they’ll at least know where to forward them.”
Noah felt a new rush of annoyance. She wasn’t supposed to identify problems and fix them for him. He was supposed to be able to throw them in her face and then make her fix them.
He realized he was being petty and his behavior bore an unfortunate similarity to that of his pre-teen daughter when provoked. But Cat didn’t exactly bring out the best in him.
“Now, here’s something interesting,” Paige said, pulling the cap down over her ears. “Literally fifty percent of all Instagram comments on the posts from episode one want to know if you and Drake are back together.”
Noah held his breath and then immediately released it. What did he care who Cat dated? Or whatever. But still, he couldn’t quite seem to get himself to interrupt them.
“I figured,” Cat sighed. “I’ll talk to Drake first, but we’ll probably go with vague no comments for now. Might drum up some more interest.”
Noah cringed. What did that mean? Were they together or not?
“We could take a few behind-the-scenes pics of you guys staring deeply into each other’s eyes,” the woman on Cat’s left suggested.
“You’re coming along nicely, Jayla,” Cat teased. “Almost as diabolical as me.”
“I love learning from the masters,” Jayla grinned, pulling her gloves off to attack the bagel in her lap.
“Run it by Drake,” Paige agreed. “Okay, moving on...”
Noah debated whether he should crash their meeting or just skulk on back to his office
“Crap. One more thing,” Cat said, when Paige started to pack up her notes. “Do we have any room in the budget for a new roof?”
“How big?” Paige asked.
“Huge and inconvenient. Town Hall is a hot mess. While Yates was bitching at me about our generosity and great ideas, I couldn’t help but notice the half dozen buckets sitting around to catch leaks.”
Noah took a step back. He felt the annoyance at her potential relationship status dull. Damn it. She wasn’t supposed to be thoughtful. She was supposed to be a vapid, self-obsessed, train wreck of celebrity.
City Hall’s roof was a year past dire. But without tapping into emergency reserves, there was no way to fund it without raising taxes. And that wasn’t going to happen, especially not after what they’d been through with the storm and the flood. He’d resolved himself to working with buckets for at least another year. On the bright side, he probably wouldn’t need a humidifier.
“I ran into Carolanne, Yates’ secretary, at that damn cookie place that I can’t stay away from—by the way remind me to remind Henry to schedule me some training sessions or else I’m going to be wider than Santa by Christmas,” Cat said. “Anyway, she said there’s no funding for it. I know it’s not a sexy project. But at least it would be one thing we wouldn’t need to shoot.”
Paige nodded thoughtfully. “If you’re right, and we’re on the verge of having a ton of volunteers and donations coming our way, we should be able to swing it. I agree that it’s not sexy, and we don’t need to cull out any shooting time. Maybe a drone shot for B-roll would work?”
“Awesome,” Cat nodded. She picked up the cup between her legs and sipped.
“Interesting that you’d think to do something nice for your sworn enemy,” Paige said slyly. Noah took a step to the left so he was hidden behind a hastily tied tarp that cut the wind.
“I’m not doing something nice for Asshat Yates,” Cat argued. “He’s not the only one who works in that building.”
“So, you don’t find him the least bit attractive?” Jayla asked through a bite of everything bagel.
“Shut up, Jayla,” Cat snapped. Jayla laughed.
“Come on, Cat. Admit it. He’s pretty easy on the eyes.” Noah felt his ears warm in embarrassment. He wasn’t used to overhearing such things about himself. Conversations about him around Merry usually involved what project he’d just shot down and what initiatives he’d declined to pursue. This was new.
“Yeah? Well too bad his personality is an arid desert of human feelings,” Cat shot back.
That was more like it.
“You can admit he’s handsome and still be mortal enemies,” Paige pointed out.
“Can we please get back to work?” Cat groaned. “I’m exhausted already, and it’s barely nine.”
“No one twisted your arm to be here so early,” Paige reminded her.
Cat yawned, and Noah caught a glimpse of her stretching her arms overhead. “Back to the agenda, ladies. I need some breakfast before the next scene.”
“Next on the agenda is: who’s going to work with Drake about his wooden delivery?” Paige asked. Noah peered around the tarp to see Paige and Jayla touch their fingers to their noses.
“Not it,” Jayla proclaimed.
“Yep,” Paige agreed.
“Damn it. I hate when you guys do that,” Cat grumbled. “Fine. I’ll talk to him. Again. He’ll be fine. We just need him to be able to play off of people onscreen. Let’s give him to Mrs. Pringle and let her chase him around set for a day. He’ll be fine.”
“Ladies.” Cat’s assistant Henry appeared with a tray of coffees. They pounced on him like alley cats on a mouse.
“No spilling!” he cautioned them, brushing at the sleeve of his coat. “This is Italian wool. Oh, hey, Noah.”
All eyes turned to him and Noah felt his face flush. He’d eased a little too far forward while they were calling him attractive. He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to look as though he hadn’t just been busted for eavesdropping.
“Uh. Hi. I just got here,” he lied.
Cat’s eyes narrowed over her fresh coffee as she shot him a witherin
g glare. “What can we do for you No-ah? Did you decide to revoke our permits?”
“I wanted to come down and see if there’s anything you guys need,” he said, remembering to add an easy smile. There was nothing more in this world that he wanted than to wipe the smirk off her face.
He saw Paige rise and give Cat’s boot a kick. “That’s very kind of you, Noah. I think we’re all set for the day. Did you get the shooting schedule for the week?”
He nodded, eyes still on Cat. “I did. Thanks for including me. It was helpful to know what to expect. Also, do you have anyone on your end coordinating volunteers? We’ve been getting some calls about the show, and we’d be happy to transfer them to the right contact.”
Cat made a growling sound that had him grinning and Jayla scrambling to her feet. She put her five-foot-two self between Cat and Noah.
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Jayla said, grabbing his arm and pulling him away from Cat. “Why don’t you come with me, and I’ll introduce you to… someone.”
Noah raised his hand over his shoulder as Jayla dragged him out of the danger zone. “Bye, Cat.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cat pushed through the door of Merry and Bright, ignoring the jingle of bells. Instead she zoomed in on the scent of hot, fresh caffeine. It was eight a.m. on a Saturday, and for the second day in a row, she’d been up for nearly four hours dragging debris and downed tree branches out of what was left of North Pole Park.
It was par for the course when it came to her jobs. As a general contractor, she knew how to do everything from demo to finish carpentry. As a TV star, she was used to long, monotonous hours. On a typical shoot, she worked like a dog for eight or ten days straight and then had a week or two off to sleep, eat, and get a half-dozen massages. In Merry, she’d be pulling thirteen and fourteen hour days for three weeks.
Her new holiday plans included sleeping through Christmas.
“What the hell is a butterscotch latte?” she wondered out loud. And was it as carby as it sounded?