by Lucy Score
“Your job involves taking advantage of real people. I’m not letting you turn my town and my citizens into a bunch of pitiable victims.”
“You’d better back up right now, Noah, if you value that pretty nose of yours,” Cat fumed. She drilled a finger into his chest. “I’m giving your neighbors a safe space to tell their story and giving complete strangers the opportunity to care.”
“Don’t dress it up, Cat. You work for reality television. You’re one step up from an ambulance-chasing personal injury lawyer promising his clients a fortune for their slip and fall.”
“What is your problem, Yates?” she snarled.
They were so close he could smell her shampoo, something citrusy.
“My problem is you drag my daughter on set—without my permission—and expose her to the sordid drama—”
“Oh, you want to talk about kids absorbing things? Great. Yeah, kids are always absorbing what’s around them, and you know what’s around Sara? You telling your daughter her interests aren’t good enough.”
Noah saw red around the edges of his vision. “You’re going to want to tread lightly,” he said, his tone icy.
But Cat wasn’t one to take cues. No, she was one to throw a canister of gasoline on a fire just to watch the explosion.
“No, I think you are. If you keep steering your daughter away from what she enjoys, what’s important to her, what do you think the outcome is going to be? ‘Gee, thanks Dad for never supporting my interests. I’m so glad I became an insurance adjustor and married an asshole who thinks he knows what’s best for me.’”
“I’m not taking parenting advice from a reality TV star! And I don’t appreciate you filling her head with fantasies of fame and glamor.” Noah’s voice was low enough to be a growl.
“Glamor?” Cat spat out. She ripped the cap off her head. “I have mud in my hair. I’ve been working since five this morning dragging debris out of your fucking park so your town can have its Christmas. I have bags under my eyes from dealing with production issues until all hours of the night because you’re trying your damnedest to make this as difficult as possible. I’ve got an entire crew of landscapers down with the 24-hour bug, and I have to find another ten grand in the budget to get April the treehouse she and your daughter have always wanted.”
That finger was back, and it was drilling a hole into his chest.
“I haven’t done laundry in a fucking week, and these jeans are going to disintegrate at any given moment. I didn’t fill your daughter’s head with glitz and glamor, you fucking asshole. I filled it with the rewards of hard work and what being a strong, independent fucking woman means. Now get the fuck out of my way before I really tell you what I think.”
With less than half a second to decide, Noah wisely stepped aside. Cat stormed past him down the sidewalk. She whirled around and opened her mouth as if to give him one final parting shot, then closed it again. She settled for an obstinate middle finger and a glare hot enough to burn down his world before stalking off down the block.
Noah heard a low whistle behind him. Still shell-shocked, he turned. Drake Mackenrowe looked out of place leaning against a minivan in a flannel that must have been sewn on him. “You sure pissed her off,” he stated the obvious with a blinding grin.
“She’s not going to come back here with a weapon or anything, is she?” Noah asked, feeling just a little like he just wanted to limp off to lick his wounds.
Drake laughed. “No, man. Her verbal skills are usually the first line of defense, and if a solid warning doesn’t work, she’ll go with a right hook.”
Noah shook his head, processing. His brain was reeling from confrontation that had gone decisively in Cat’s favor.
A now fresh-faced April skipped out onto the porch. “Hi, Noah! Where’s Cat?” The resilience of children, Noah sighed to himself.
Sara peeped between parked cars. “Dad? Can I come back and hang out if we’re not leaving yet?” Sara’s question was teetering on whining.
The Hais’ front door opened again, and Jasper and Kathy appeared. Of course, they had been there for the filming. Noah swiped a hand over his face and found he was sweating in the chilly air.
“Oh, hey, Noah! Mind if we steal Sara for dinner tonight?” Kathy asked. “Jasper’s parents are cooking up a feast, and we need more mouths or we’ll be bringing fifty pounds of leftovers back to your house with us.”
April and Sara embraced as if it had been weeks not minutes since they’d seen each other. “Please, Dad?” Sara begged.
“Yeah, please, Mr. Yates?” April added her sad puppy eyes to the equation.
“Hi, Drake,” Sara said slyly.
“Hey, cutie,” Drake said with a grin designed to devastate pre-teens. Sara and April giggled in response.
“Have you guys seen Cat?” Jasper asked. “We were going to ask her if she wanted to join us since shooting’s done for the day. We all worked up an appetite, didn’t we?”
“Dad, you should have seen it,” Sara said, bouncing on her toes at his side. “Cat and Drake were all like ‘show us your house,’ and April got to give the tour, and Kathy and Jasper were on camera too. It was so cool!”
“You seemed pretty upset there,” Noah prodded April. He couldn’t have completely misread the situation, could he?
April nodded earnestly. “It’s hard to see our home in such disrepair and seeing Mom and Dad worry. But Cat’s right, it’s only stuff. And stuff is fixable. And even though it’s okay to feel downtrodden, it’s better to do something about it. She’s going to help us, and so I’m going to help someone else.”
“Cat calls it paying it forward,” Sara nodded.
Everyone calls it that, Noah wanted to point out.
“Noah, would you like to join us for dinner?” Kathy offered, a hand on each girl’s shoulder.
“Uh.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Thanks, but I’ve got some work to do tonight.” Still a little dazed, he watched them walk down the block to Jasper’s sedan. A tight little group made somehow brighter and more hopeful than they had been this morning.
He had a feeling that Cat was the orchestrator of that turnaround.
“You okay, man?” Drake asked. “You look like you could use a beer.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“So, you two are dating, right?” Noah asked for the third time.
Drake shook his head and grinned. His gleaming white teeth were blinding in the near dark of the Workshop, Merry’s one and only bar. It was always darker than midnight inside the bar, but that didn’t stop the dozen or so female patrons from sending admiring glances Drake’s way.
“No, man. Well, not now. I don’t know if we were before or not.” Drake shrugged his massive shoulders as if dating or not dating a gorgeous, fiery TV star didn’t really matter.
“Wait, how do you not know if you’re dating?” Noah was feeling a pleasant warmth from the third beer that had magically appeared in front of him.
Drake shrugged. “In our profession, you can not be dating a lot of people. It’s a busy lifestyle. Never in one place for very long and just when you get comfortable in the offseason, it’s time to start shooting the next season. Cat and I ‘dated’ very briefly a couple of years ago. But neither one of us was invested enough to start changing our work schedules around.”
“So, you’re exes, and you work together?” Noah was determined to figure this out. He’d assumed, from their greeting, that Drake and Cat were together and was surprised to find out that wasn’t the case. He wasn’t sure why it mattered so much. He was probably just trying to get to know his enemy better, he decided.
“I guess so. I think of us more as friends. She’s awesome. No one can out work her. This industry isn’t usually very friendly to women, but Cat demands better. There’s a lot more there than just a great face and sexy body, and she doesn’t let anyone forget it.”
“Well, which one of you two nobs do I have to blame for awak
ening the dragon?” Henry, Cat’s assistant, slid onto the unoccupied stool to Noah’s left. The sleeves of his Oxford were precisely rolled up to his elbows to show off the cuffs. He rested his head in his hands for the briefest of moments.
Guiltily, Noah raised his hand.
“Yeah, that’d be him,” Drake tattled. “I had nothing to do with it.”
Henry paused long enough to give the brunette next to him an appreciative glance before raising a finger to catch the bartender’s eye. “Long Island iced tea, strongest you’ve got.”
Drake whistled. “That bad, huh?”
“If you find a drink with more alcohol in it, I’ll order it.”
“She taking her mad out on you?” Noah asked sympathetically.
Henry gave him a rueful look. “No, man. Cat’s not like that. She just doubles down harder. You piss her off, and she’s going to work her ass off to make you look like a twat. Pardon my British. She’s going to run herself into the ground if I can’t get a decent meal in her and six or seven hours of sleep.”
The bartender set the tall glass in front of him, and Noah watched Henry down half of it. He felt every female eye in the bar was zeroed in on them.
“You set him straight yet?” Henry asked Drake.
“We haven’t gotten past the ‘are you dating’ portion of the evening.”
“Set me straight about what?”
“We’ve all picked up on the fact that you don’t like Cat,” Henry began.
“It’s not that I don’t like Cat,” Noah argued. But it was. He didn’t like what she stood for. And he didn’t like how often he found himself thinking of her. And he really didn’t like how every time he saw her, his focus zeroed in on her like she was the only colorful thing in a world of grayscale.
“Yes, it is,” Drake countered. “But the thing is, you don’t know her.”
“You got the wrong impression,” Henry joined in. “And you don’t like to be wrong so you’re ignoring all evidence to the contrary.”
“I like to think that I’m open-minded.”
Drake gave him a sideways glance. “You do realize that your nickname in town is Mr. No, right?”
“You try managing the annual budget for a town that thinks installing a six-figure ice skating rink in the middle of town for six weeks of use would be a great investment,” Noah argued. It was tough being the voice of reason, but that’s what they’d hired him for. It was his job to protect his town whether they liked his methods or not.
Drake held up his palms. “I’m not saying you are Mr. No. I’m saying that’s how you’re perceived, and perceptions can be wrong. Including your own.”
“She plays for the camera.”
“That doesn’t mean she’s pandering. It means she’s a smart businesswoman. Cat’s doing what works. She’s done her research. She’s put in the time. She knows this business inside and out. That’s why she’s producing now. She knows more than any of the last five producers I’ve worked with. And don’t even get me started on how tireless she is in front of the camera. Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to be ‘on’ all the time?”
Noah did not.
The bartender dropped drink tokens in front of each of them.
“Who are these from?” Noah asked, frowning at his.
The bartender shrugged. “Take your pick.”
Drake grinned. Henry straightened his tie. “I quite like this town.”
“Consider yourself a good-looking novelty. We don’t get a lot of people like you here,” Noah quipped.
“What? Black?”
Noah spit out his sip of beer in cartoon fashion. “Jesus, no! I meant style.” He pointed at the man’s orange and purple checkered shirt that, on anyone else, would have looked like Skittles vomit.
Drake guffawed, drawing even more appreciative glances and a handful of longing sighs. The women of Merry were going to combust before Christmas Eve.
“I’m just messing with you. Let me ask you this, Noah,” Henry said, steering the conversation back on track. “In your job, do you ever find yourself saying or doing something that you wouldn’t in other circumstances?”
Noah had a feeling he knew where this was going. “Maybe.”
“Because if you said or did what you wanted to, things wouldn’t go the way you needed them to?”
Noah thought back to the reindeer street lights. “Also, maybe.”
“So, you assess the situation, determine what needs to happen, and then make adjustments, correct?”
Noah nodded. “Yeah, but I’m a human being. She’s some perfect blonde robot from the future designed to sell us something.”
“We’re all selling something, man,” Drake cut in. “Even you.”
“Okay, fine. She’s a smart businesswoman. What about the fact that she emotionally blackmailed me into saying yes to the show?”
Henry’s lips quirked in the closest expression to a smile the stoic Brit seemed to have. “She gets shit done with single-minded focus. You were standing in your own way, and she simply removed your head from your arse.”
“I didn’t want a bunch of TV cameras coming in here and painting Merry as a town of pathetic victims who can’t help themselves. The last time she was here, the whole town was in an uproar over her and her brother. Kids were cutting school to watch filming, grown men were begging to volunteer so they could stand next to her on camera. Oh, and she got into a bar fight in this very establishment.”
“She wouldn’t start a fight without a good reason,” Drake said firmly.
“That was before my time. What did she say happened?” Henry asked, leaning in, his glass nearly empty.
“That’s the thing. I don’t know. I came straight home from a vacation I shouldn’t have taken with a TV show coming to town. They wouldn’t even let me talk to her. I went down to the set after news spread to straighten it out. And they said she was ‘busy.’ But she was sleeping off a hangover in her trailer.”
Henry and Drake shrugged at each other. “That part sounds like her,” Drake admitted affably.
“She works hard and plays just as hard,” Henry agreed. “Not often, but every once in a while, she lets loose. In those instances, I keep my phone on in case bail is required.”
“How is that responsible?” Noah demanded, frustrated.
“Who says anyone has to be responsible one-hundred percent of the time?” Henry argued. “I’d like to see anyone work as hard as she does, deal with as much shit as she does, and not cut loose every once in a while. You forget how to have fun, and you’re forgetting how to live.”
Noah didn’t like that that particular sentiment struck a big, fat chord with him.
When was the last time he’d cut loose, had a little fun? He couldn’t remember the last date he’d been on. The last time he’d laughed really hard. Hell, the last hangover he’d suffered through. He couldn’t recall anything other than working, nagging Sara about her homework, and sitting down with a good book in recent months, maybe years.
“The point is man, you’re way wrong about Cat. You can’t go around treating her like some gold-digging ratings skank,” Drake said, signaling for another round.
“I know gold-digging ratings skanks,” Henry announced. “And Cat is not one of them.”
“Ah. Good ol’ Meeghan Traxx.” Drake shuddered. “How is our favorite shrewish psychopath?”
“I wouldn’t know, thankfully,” Henry said primly. “Meeghan is my former employer,” he explained to Noah.
“Meeghan?”
Henry took a fortifying gulp of his drink. “She is the meanest, most vapid, selfish, monstrous ‘person’—and I use that term very loosely—on the planet. You look at Cat like she’s a Meeghan. Meeghan is the kind of person who will do anything to get what she wants. She’s had more plastic surgery than all seasons of Botched combined. The BOTOX she gets every month is a serious danger to the rest of us mere mortals because her face is so frozen we c
an’t tell when she’s about to freak out and get out of her way. She’s a hell hound.”
Drake shook his head. “In just one shining example of the kind of person Traxx is, she tried to ruin Cat’s sister-in-law’s career because Meeghan wanted Gannon for herself. She showed up on the set of their show during filming after he and Paige started dating and kissed him on camera like they were together. Then she went after Paige on a red carpet on camera. Her nails are like talons, man.”
“She sharpens them that way on purpose. She likes to dig them into her assistants.” Henry held up his wrist. She drew blood my first week on the job. Thankfully, she made the fatal error of going ballistic on me in public. Cat’s agent just happened to be in the restaurant, knew that Cat would enjoy a chance to stick it to the harpy asshole, and texted her. The next day Cat offered me a job and doubled my salary. I walked out of Meeghan’s penthouse with both middle fingers flying. She threw a Baccarat vase at me. I will owe Catalina King until I go to the grave.”
“You realize that you both sound like you’re in love with her,” Noah pointed out.
They shrugged again not overly perturbed by the observation. “I think most people are half in love with her. She’s pretty fucking awesome,” Drake said.
“You’d have to be more than a bit daft to not love her,” Henry agreed.
“And you want me to join Team Cat?”
“You don’t have to love her like the rest of us. We’d just appreciate it if you’d appreciate her a bit more,” Henry told him.
“Did you know she donated her entire salary back to the budget? Didn’t you wonder how you were getting an entire landscaping revamp in the park?” Drake asked. “Even with sponsorships, that shit ain’t cheap, my friend.”
“I’m sure she’s still getting something out of it,” Noah said stubbornly. “I mean, her family’s company is getting paid to be here.”
“No, the crew is getting paid through Kings Construction—despite their resistance. But the company is getting nothing,” Henry insisted.