by Lucy Score
“What did you do?”
“I got this crazy idea in the middle of the night—none of us were sleeping back then. The next morning, I took a video camera to the job site and shot some footage of Gannon arguing with me, some demo. And I sent it off to the network. Two months later we got a call, and here we are.”
“You seem like you’re cut out for the work.” Noah pointed at the popsicles, and Cat tossed him a box.
“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”
“That’s how I meant it. You’re very comfortable in front of the camera and very competent behind it.”
“Well aren’t you just full of compliments today?” Cat mused.
“I feel like I may have misjudged you. Slightly,” Noah admitted.
“Oh, you mean when you accused me of kidnapping your daughter and called me an ambulance chaser?”
Noah grimaced. He’d been an ass. There was no excuse for it.
“Hey, can we get some donuts, too?” he asked, changing the subject.
--------
Loaded down with six bags of groceries and beer, they trudged across the parking lot. Noah looked down Peppermint Lane, the street that bisected Main. He shook his head.
“You know, by now we’d have already started decorating the street lights downtown,” he sighed.
Cat stopped and looked into the festive-less dark with him. “This year will be different, but that doesn’t have to mean worse.”
He sighed. “It’s more than just the traditions or the ornaments we’ve had for half a century. This time of year was really the only fun that I remember as a kid. Seeing it dark like this?” he shook his head. “It’s like we’re limping into the holidays.”
Cat sighed heavily. “I was saving this as a surprise mainly to piss you off.”
“What?”
“Follow me.”
She led him over to a box truck parked on the outskirts of Trailer Town and put her bags down. She climbed onto the back gate of the truck and flipped the lever. Grabbing the handle, she shoved the rolling door up.
“Are those—”
“Light up pole mount-ready reindeer with red noses,” she confirmed.
Noah was speechless. A passing comment, an opportunity to get under his skin, and Cat had jumped on it. “You’re diabolical and very generous at the same time.”
She shoved her hands in her pockets and looked at the neatly stacked decorations. “I am, aren’t I? So, you want to put them up?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Who knew sneaking up ladders on Main Street at two o’clock in the morning would put a smile that big on Noah Yates’ face? Cat watched as he tightened the mounting bracket on the very last gaudy reindeer on the very last lamp post.
He grinned down at her, his face awash in the white and red of Rudolph prancing mid-air, and Cat felt her stomach flip-flop. She should have been in bed hours ago. She’d ordered the rest of their misfit band of ninja elves to bed an hour ago so there’d be at least a few fresh faces on set when they started filming at seven.
But watching Noah enjoy a little mischievous public good was worth it.
He wasn’t quite the stick in the mud she’d thought him to be. There was a wound in there somewhere. One that made him embrace control and security and responsibility. Coping mechanisms of the wounded. He’d mentioned he wasn’t sure if he’d ever learned how to have fun. Obviously, the man didn’t know what a challenge like that did to her. Cat was already plotting.
Carefully, he climbed down the ladder and grinned up as Rudolph’s nose beamed bright red. “They’re hideous, aren’t they?” he asked cheerfully.
“Totally,” Cat agreed. “Merry is going to love them.”
“Shouldn’t you have filmed this? I mean, isn’t that something that would look good on camera?” Noah asked.
Odds were the reindeer lights would have to come down and be remounted for the sake of the cameras, but giving Merry and Noah a little something to smile about tomorrow—later today—was worth it.
“Eh, Paige will figure it out,” Cat yawned.
“I should take you home,” Noah said, checking his watch and wincing at the time.
“I’m three blocks that way,” Cat said. “I think I can find my way guided by the glowing Rudolphs.”
“You’re not walking home by yourself.”
“Why? Don’t you trust the mean streets of Merry?”
“The last street crime Merry saw was three years ago. It involved hot chocolate.” He fell into step beside her.
“And the crime rate skyrocketed,” Cat predicted.
“The crime rate skyrocketed when you assaulted Regis in the bar when you were filming here before.”
“Oh, here we go. Blaming the woman.”
“You were drunk, and you broke the guy’s nose,” Noah argued.
“He grabbed my ass. Twice. The second time after I made it very clear that his hands had no business wandering in that direction.”
“Oh.” Noah looked chagrined. “I don’t suppose there was a non-violent way to have ended it?”
“Let’s fast forward a few years. Your daughter’s out on the town having a good time, and some guy gets a little handsy with her. What should she do?”
“Break his fucking nose,” Noah said immediately.
Cat laughed. “Now we’re talking. I may blow off steam from time to time, but I’m not some hot-headed celebrity with a pack of lawyers on retainer to clean up my messes. I mean I am a hot-headed celebrity, but I don’t go looking for trouble.”
“Fair enough. I’m sorry for judging you.”
“Well, that’s big of you,” Cat grinned. “I promise you your crime rate won’t explode while I’m in town this time.”
“Merry’s too good-natured for crime,” Noah told her.
“Then why are you walking me home?”
“Maybe I don’t mind spending time with you when there’s no cameras around and you aren’t making it your life’s mission to manipulate me into a host of things I don’t want to do.”
“You were wrong about me, and you’re going to be wrong about what I can accomplish,” she said loftily. Cat enjoyed the zing of attraction that was playing between them. Would he kiss her when they got back to her trailer? Would she invite him in?
“I’m willing to admit I was most likely wrong about you. But I’m still not getting my hopes up about the festival. You’re not a miracle worker.”
“Oh, but I am. I’m Merry’s own personal miracle.” She tapped a finger to her chin. “I’m trying to decide what I want out of you when this year’s Christmas Festival annihilates your best year’s numbers.”
He laughed softly. “I do admire your confidence. Delusional though it may be.”
“You know, it’s okay to believe. You don’t have to constantly prepare for the worst.” She said it lightly, but Cat noticed the shadow that flickered over Noah’s face.
“Sometimes preparing for the worst is the only way you won’t be disappointed... or hurt.”
He wasn’t talking about a Christmas Festival now, and he also wasn’t talking about what she could or couldn’t deliver. There was a sadness in Noah that she hadn’t noticed before.
They walked on in silence for another block down the middle of the street at Cat’s behest. Merry slept soundly around them. Clouds had rolled in, blotting out the stars as they’d worked.
“Look,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. In the soft circle of light cast off from the streetlamp and in the glow of that Rudolph, they could see it. Snowflakes.
“Great. I forgot to reach out to the township to see if the trucks are running,” Noah said. “We’re supposed to get a couple of inches by tomorrow afternoon. I don’t know how much of our salt stock was damaged by the flood. And this probably means at least a snow delay for the schools.”
He reached for his phone as if he was going to solve all the problems right then and there.
She squeezed his arm. “Just shut up and look, Noah. There’s magic in the first snow.”
He did look but not at the snow. He was watching her.
“You’re lucky there isn’t more of this because I would hit you in the face with the biggest snowball I could make,” Cat threatened, tilting her head to watch the flakes float down.
“That sounds like something you’d do.”
She tucked her arm through his, enjoying the slight hesitation he had, and together they walked slowly down the middle of Main Street as the snow fell silently around them.
All was silent in Trailer Town. They tiptoed over cables and cords to the fold out steps of her RV. Decision time.
Cat turned to look at Noah.
He was staring at her, softly.
“Congratulations on your school, Cat.”
“Congratulations on your reindeer, Noah.”
“You have snowflakes on your eyelashes,” he whispered.
“So do you,” she reached up toward his face, intending to wipe away the snow that was collecting in his dark hair. But he stopped her. His hand gripped the inch of wrist that was visible between sleeve and glove.
He flipped her hand palm up and traced the tattoo with his gloved finger. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“What?”
“You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?” Cat asked.
“We met before we met,” he said, still staring at her wrist.
“Took you long enough,” Cat said lightly. She tried pulling her hand away, but he held fast.
He raised his gaze to hers. “You have no idea how many times I’ve relived that moment. How many times I wondered if I’d ever get to meet you, thank you. How those seconds have made me start reconsidering everything in my life…”
Cat held her breath, waiting for him to finish. She wondered if he could feel her pulse fluttering at hummingbird speeds beneath his fingertips.
“Were you going to tell me?” he asked.
“I was saving it,” she admitted.
“Like the reindeer?”
“I was saving it to rub in your face in the right moment. Something along the lines of ‘Yeah, you know what I regret? Dragging your bedraggled ass out of the flood waters on Mistletoe Avenue.’ Boom. Mic drop. Then I’d get in a limo—because that’s cooler than a production van—and drive away, and you’d spend the rest of your life regretting being such a dick.”
“You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”
“That fantasy kept me warm during several cold nights.”
“Any other fantasies keep you warm at night? No. Wait. You’re pushing me off balance as usual. There’s something I need to say to you.”
“You don’t have to be dramatic about it.” Cat was suddenly antsy. She didn’t want to know what Noah wanted to say. She wanted to go back to the flirting, the lightness.
“You saved my life, Cat.”
She started to argue, but Noah clapped a hand over her mouth. “Shut up, Cat. You saved my life, and then you let me act like an ass.”
She grinned against his hand.
“You never once educated me on the fact that you showed up here and dragged my friends and neighbors—and me—out of raging floodwaters.”
Cat pried his hand off of his mouth. “I wasn’t the only one out there on a boat. So, don’t make me doing it some kind of heroic feat. I was a regular person doing what regular people—including yourself—do.”
“I kissed you when I thought I didn’t like you.” Noah said.
“Yeah? So?”
“So, what am I going to do now that I know I owe my life to you?”
“Noah, I’m the TV star here. I’m the one who’s supposed to be melodramatic. You would have popped up ten feet away from the boat, and we still would have hauled you aboard.”
He shook his head. “Let me thank you, Cat.”
Cat stepped up onto the first step leading up to her trailer so they were eye to eye. She gripped him by the shoulders and pulled him in a half step closer.
“No. I’m not going to let you thank me. But I am going to let you kiss me. And then I’m going to send you home because my sadistic trainer is calling me in three hours for a workout to ensure I don’t start busting out the seams of my jeans.”
“You’re one hell of a woman, Catalina King.”
“Don’t I know it,” she quipped.
And then he was kissing her. Her eyelids fluttered closed. The firm, warm pressure of his lips to hers sent a welcome wave of heat rushing through her. Her frozen toes uncurled in her sneakers, and she leaned into the kiss. She purred. He growled. And then he was parting her lips with his tongue. She tasted him, the beer, the pizza, the raw heat simmering under his surface. She let him be the aggressor… at least until she couldn’t take it anymore.
As his tongue stroked its way rhythmically in and out of her mouth, she lost the ability to just be. She needed to participate, control. She needed to win. She dove into him showing him just how she liked to be kissed.
Her gloved fingers dug into the lapels of his coat, holding him against her even as she pulled back.
“Are you kissing me because you think you owe me?” Cat asked.
“I’m kissing you because I want to.”
“Good answer.” Cat couldn’t quite catch her breath. She was shoving her hands under his coat, desperate for skin, for heat, for the feel of him against her when he stopped her. He grabbed her wrists and reluctantly dragged himself away from her mouth.
“Trainer. Five a.m.” Noah reminded her.
“Right. Trainer,” Cat breathed.
“I’m not done thanking you,” he warned her.
“I’m not done kissing you.”
He took her hand in his, turned it palm up, and placed a gentle kiss to the tattoo over her racing pulse. Cat had never in her life swooned over a man before. Maybe a new power tool or a supremely perfect pair of stilettos. But never a man. This was new.
“Goodnight, Catalina.”
“Goodnight, Noah.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“I got it,” Noah called over his shoulder as he hustled out of his bustling kitchen and down the hallway toward his front door. There was a heated argument about Canadian bacon and omelets happening between families behind him, and after another sleepless night thinking about Catalina King, he was happy to avoid the conflict.
It was a snow day, as predicted. And Merry’s second in a week when another storm rolled through right behind the first. While his daughter had shoved her arms into the air in a victorious V when he told her she could go back to bed, Noah battled the old, familiar sickness that gnawed at his gut.
Snow days for Noah as a kid weren’t a cause for celebration. Staying home, away from his only escape? The reality of not being able to escape to school made him feel scared and sick. Even as an adult, he was surprised that the same emotions could take hold. It gave him joy, fast and heady, to see his daughter growing up without that sick slide of fear. And maybe someday he’d forgive his past and move on.
But for now, he’d hide his discomfort, his bad memories. And he’d be the doting dad, making sure his daughter never had cause for the ice block in her stomach.
He wrenched open the front door, desperate for a snow day distraction.
The snowball hit him squarely in the chest.
Noah stood, blinking down at the snowy impact on his t-shirt.
“You have five minutes to get ready,” Cat announced, hefting another snowball.
Noah wedged the door between them peering around the corner. “Five minutes for what?”
“You and Sara. Warm, preferably waterproof clothes. Five minutes. Go!”
He stared at her, attempting to formulate words. She was wearing a knit hat in cobalt blue that stood out against the honey blonde of her hair. Her parka was zipped to the neck and hid the tattoo that had changed his life on her wri
st. Her mittens were thick and matched the hat. She had knee-high snow boots on.
“Come on!” she said, hauling back as if to throw her reserve snowball in his face.
It was better than an omelet fight, Noah decided. “Sara! Find your ski pants!” he yelled and jogged up the stairs.
He left the front door open so Cat could come in if she so desired.
“Sara!” he yelled again, barreling into her room.
“Geez, Dad. It’s a snow day. Can’t a girl get some extra sleep?” she asked, giving him a disgruntled look from under her comforter.
“Cat’s here. She wants us in snow clothes in—”
“Four minutes,” Cat yelled from the foyer.
Sara went from sleepy preteen to energized kid in half a second flat. She threw her comforter on the floor and tore into her room. “Hi, Cat!” she yelled.
“Hi, Sara! Hurry up, Yateses! Get a move on,” Cat bellowed.
Sara giggled hysterically from the depths of her room. Noah dug through his closet until he found his never-worn ski pants, some old snow boots, and a thermal shirt.
He felt like an idiot speed dressing without any idea where Cat was taking them. Knowing her, she probably wanted to film some kind of orchestrated snowball fight. Or she could be driving them into the middle of nowhere to do shots and snowshoe. Wait, scratch that. She wouldn’t ask Sara to do shots.
He fumbled with the laces on his left boot and scanned the room for his winter coat, the one he saved for shoveling snow and fighting off the biting cold at mid-winter ribbon cutting ceremonies.
“Let’s go! Bus is leaving,” Cat called.
“Hurry up, Dad!” Sara grinned as she ran past his doorway, and Noah felt his heart lighten.
He dashed down the stairs after her, still fumbling for his gloves.
They met in the doorway. Cat grinned at him, and Noah felt a warm rush wash through his veins. She looked like an angelic devil, beautiful and up to no good.
She slapped a cafeteria tray to his chest. “Let’s go, Mr. Manager.” She handed another one to Sara.
Sara frowned at it. “Are we eating at a cafeteria?”