The Christmas Fix

by Lucy Score

  She felt Noah’s gaze heavy on her. Maybe they hadn’t pushed this discussion this far before, but it was something they were both aware of. They both knew there was no future here. Just fun. And disappointing a twelve-year-old made Cat feel like a monster. She didn’t want to feel guilty for choosing herself over Noah. But damn it, that’s what she wanted in life. She shouldn’t have to feel guilty for choosing what was best for her. That’s why she was single.

  “What I’m hearing are a lot of problems and no solutions,” Sara said as she steepled her fingers. Now the kid sounded like Mini Noah.

  “Sara, this is something that is really between Cat and me,” Noah reminded her.

  Sara rolled her eyes. “Dad, you make it everyone’s business when you’re mooning over each other and then sneaking into alleys to make out.”

  Cat covered her eyes with a hand. “Ah, crap.”

  “Look, what you two decide to do is your choice. All I’m trying to do is save you the energy of pretending to hide it and asking that you at least consider what a future together could look like.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  “I feel like I just sat through a three-day interrogation in the desert,” Cat said, collapsing on a stool in the kitchen.

  Sara was upstairs doing her homework and video chatting with April, leaving the mess to the “grown-ups.” She’d gone without a fuss, and Noah considered that a victory.

  He slid the last of the plates into the dishwasher and shook his head. “When did she get to be so damn smart? It feels like yesterday she was throwing herself on the floor and screaming because the pictures in her book were upside down because she was holding it upside down.”

  It hurt him to think that his little girl worried that he was lonely.

  He wasn’t even sure if that was true. Before Cat, his life was… quiet. And now? Everything was so much brighter, busier, louder. And he didn’t mind it.

  Cat laughed. “She seems to have gotten wiser since then.”

  “Apparently I haven’t. I thought we were pulling one over on everyone,” Noah admitted. He topped off Cat’s wine glass and slid it toward her.

  “It’s kind of weird knowing that your neighbors are basically watching our every move,” Cat said, wrinkling her nose.

  “Goes with the territory in a small town.”

  “Do you think she’s going to expect a report from us on all the reasons a permanent relationship won’t work?” Cat asked, leaning against the counter next to him.

  They were barefoot, relaxing after cleaning up from dinner. It was such a normal scene for so many couples around the world. But for them? They were just playing at a relationship. Noah cleared his throat. “I’m sure. With footnotes.”

  He felt… disappointed. It wasn’t that he’d been planning to spend the rest of his life with Cat. They both were aware of the temporariness of their situation. However, it still sucked to hear her say the words, to know that she wasn’t even willing to consider.

  Cat’s eyes narrowed over her glass. “What’s wrong?”

  Noah topped off his own glass and avoided eye contact. “Nothing. Just surprised at how grown up Sara’s become without me noticing.”

  “She’s smart,” Cat commented, nudging him companionably with her elbow. “And she’s got a great eye. The designs she was thinking for her room? There’s talent there. As a non-parent offering unasked-for advice, I’d recommend that you support her interest in fashion marketing.”

  “As a parent accepting unasked-for advice from a non-parent, I’ll take that into consideration,” he said, raising his glass.

  She clinked her glass to his, and Noah felt a war of wants. Wanting to kiss her as if it were the most natural thing in the world and wanting to back away and figure out if it was too late to protect his heart.

  “A friend of a friend in Manhattan runs this immersive summer camp kind of experience for teens. They basically act as lowly gophers for whatever fashion house is hottest that season. Long hours, no pay. She’s too young now, but if she’s still interested in a few years, it would probably help Sara decide whether it’s something she wants to pursue.”

  “Will we still be in touch in a few years?” Noah asked. He was surprised at the bitterness that colored the words.

  Cat frowned. “Noah, you and Sara are special to me. Just because there’s no future doesn’t mean it has to end badly. I couldn’t stand that.”

  Noah’s heart sank as he realized that, no matter how this ended, he’d be the crushed and broken one. Cat would move on to the next project, the next excitement. He’d be left here picking up the slivers of his heart.

  It was a joke. And he was the punchline.

  Cat would be gone, and in a few short years he’d also have to face that Sara would be growing up, moving on, building her own life.

  Noah stared skeptically at his glass of wine. He wished it was scotch. A bottle of it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Two weeks to Christmas Eve

  Cat’s foot twitched in Noah’s lap when he tickled her bare sole. “Focus, Yates,” Cat ordered from her end of the couch. They were both wading through opposite halves of a stack of papers.

  He handed her another application. “Maybe pile.”

  Cat dropped it onto the stack on the coffee table and groaned. “Who knew it would be so hard to find a location for a school?”

  “Literally anyone who ever tried to start one themselves,” Noah said mildly.

  “We’ve got a hundred definitely nopes and like six maybes,” Cat lamented. “And not one of them feels right.”

  “You may need to visit the ones at the top,” Noah mused, flipping over another application. “Nope pile.”

  She tossed it onto the growing mound on the floor.

  “I can’t start hiring staff until we know where this damn building is going to be.”

  “And you can’t wait until you have a building to start hiring staff,” Noah said, familiar with Cat’s cyclical frustration. “Now drink your wine and keep reading.”

  Dutifully, Cat picked up her wine and cocked her head. “What would you say to canning the research for the night and just pretending we’re normal people who order pizza, watch TV, and have sex?”

  Noah tossed his stash of carefully organized papers in the air, and Cat laughed.

  “You’re dying to pick them up, aren’t you?” she accused.

  “It’s killing me. Please pretend you don’t see me putting them back in order.” He shuffled and stacked and placed them neatly on the end table.

  Cat laughed again. “I’ll order the pizza.”

  “You’re actually going to eat a slice and not just shovel salad into your face and whine about how good my pizza smells, right?” Noah asked as he organized Cat’s paperwork.

  “I’m not filming tomorrow, so I think I can afford a slice, maybe even two,” Cat said with a wink.

  Playfully, Noah clutched his heart. “Well, in that case, order a large.”

  She took her wine and headed into the kitchen. She pulled the short stack of takeout menus out the last drawer of the peninsula that also housed flashlights and leftover cat treats from furry flood victim Felipe’s stay. Cat pawed through Noah’s bulletin board by the door until she found a coupon.

  Noah appreciated frugality. A leftover, she assumed, from his childhood. Sometimes she pictured him, a little boy, going to bed hungry in a cold house with thin walls. His only escape from the constant fear was his town’s Christmas Festival.

  This year would be one for the record books, she promised herself. She’d been determined to make it big first to prove him wrong, then to prove herself right. Now, she just wanted to give Noah a gift that he would appreciate all the way down from his city manager practicality to his little boy holiday joy. She wanted that for him. And she’d be lying if she pretended that a part of her didn’t want him to always associate her with the festival. After this year, memories of Cat King wo
uld be so wrapped up in the Christmas Festival, Noah would never be able to separate them.

  That was a kind of fame that Cat could really embrace. Being unforgettable to a man like Noah.

  She dialed the pizza place and ordered what had become their usual. A grilled chicken salad and sausage and pepper pizza. They’d fight over the remote. Cat usually watched competitors’ shows for research while Noah preferred documentaries on the History Channel. Each proclaiming the other didn’t know what entertainment was.

  “Pizza will be here in twenty,” Cat told Noah when he entered the kitchen. He pressed a kiss to her cheek and reached around her for the refrigerator.

  “Hmm, not enough time to get you naked.”

  She laughed and twined her arms around his neck. “There’s always time for you to get me naked.”

  He picked her up and settled her on the counter. “Naked yes. But fully exploring your nakedness? No.”

  “After pizza and Property Rehab,” Cat offered.

  “After pizza and Submarines of the Pacific,” Noah countered.

  “Hmm, I wish Sara was here as a tie-breaker.” Cat had been joining Noah and Sara for dinners regularly, to the girl’s delight. Sara’s entertainment choices ran toward binge watching sit-coms. “That reminds me, Henry passed along some crazy recipe his mother always made him growing up. I thought we could try making it and invite him over so he could tell us how horribly we failed.”

  “Sara cooking dinner for a handsome British guy?” Noah mused. “Sounds like a father’s worst nightmare.”

  “Oh, then we definitely have to invite Drake, too,” Cat teased.

  Noah grimaced. “Put it on the calendar. I’m sure you’ll be Sara’s favorite human in the world for another week if you pull that off.”

  “Hey, have you ever thought about redoing your kitchen?” Cat asked, running her fingers through his hair. She liked it messy.

  “No, but I can see your wheels turning every time you’re in here.”

  Cat grinned. “Guilty as charged. Don’t take offense. I do it to every room I’m in.”

  “What would you do in here?”

  “I’d kill this peninsula,” she said, slapping the counter she sat on. “Put in an island, a huge one, running length-wise. Bar stools. Black leathered granite. Extend the cabinets on to this wall.” She pointed.

  “What? No walk-in pantry?” Noah teased.

  “I’m trying to reconfigure that too-tiny-to-be-useable powder room and the space under the stairs into something workable.”

  “Your brain is a wonder,” Noah said, placing a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

  “I like your house, Noah. Your kid, too,” Cat admitted.

  “I like having you in my house, around my kid.”

  “I’m going to miss this,” she said, feeling a pang of sadness. “When we wrap filming next week, when I’m on the road. I’m going to miss nights like this.”

  “You say that like you’re confessing some deep, dark secret,” Noah said, rubbing his thumb across her lips.

  “I love my life,” Cat said. She was reminding herself as much as him. “I love the hustle and the travel and the cameras.”

  “But you like this, too,” he pointed out.

  She nodded. “I like you a lot, Noah. More than I’ve ever liked anyone else.” She needed him to know that.

  “What’s not to like about a stick-in-the-mud city manager who tried to throw you out of town?”

  “You’re a good, kind, smart, sexy, attentive, interesting man, Noah Yates. Don’t sell yourself short.”

  “You’re kind of okay yourself,” Noah teased.

  The doorbell rang, cutting her off before she could make him understand just how serious she was.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “If you keep frowning like that, you’re going to need to buy stock in BOTOX,” Henry said, handing her a bottle of water with a straw so she could sip without ruining her makeup. Cat slapped a demonic fake smile on her face as she scrolled through her phone as Elton the hairstylist fortified her high ponytail with enough hairspray to freeze a woolly mammoth in place.

  “I’m not frowning, I’m concentrating,” she told Henry with a haughty look.

  “Wrinkles,” he said, tapping her forehead between her eyebrows.

  “Don’t you have some lunch to order and fetch for your evil boss or something?” Cat asked pointedly.

  “Grilled chicken salad heavy on the veg and unsweetened green tea are already on order. And if you’re a good girl, there’s a tiny bowl of squash soup in it for you.”

  Cat was a sucker for squash soup. “Consider my frowning finished. What else is happening?”

  Henry pulled out his phone and scrolled through notes. “I took a run at your email backlog and flagged everything that needs a personal response. I proofed your next two blogs for this week and got in touch with the jeweler for those earrings everyone was asking about. She gave us a coupon code to use on the blog.”

  “Nice,” Cat said, only half listening.

  It was strange, this feeling of disconnect she had staring at those little red icons declaring she had four hundred new followers, thousands of new likes. They had entertained and sustained her before when shoots went long or she got a little lonely so far away from her family.

  Before Merry, showing up on set to shoot had been the highlight of her day. Now, with Gannon and Paige and her parents nearby, with Noah and Sara and the Hais, she found herself looking forward to the end of the day. To washing off the makeup and grabbing a glass of wine with loved ones… and liked ones.

  Cat brushed it aside, chalking up the uncharacteristic sentimentality to the holidays. She was about to embark on the most important project of her life. She’d been dreaming about starting a school like this since she was the only girl in shop class in junior high.

  Henry was still plowing through their combined to do lists when Maria, a newbie production assistant appeared.

  “Ready to roll in five,” Maria told Cat.

  The Hai reveal was finally here and energy on set was nearing Red Bull danger zones. Cat could hear the rumbles of the crowd just outside the makeup trailer. The post-production team was having aneurysms about turning around an episode in barely enough time to shoot one, but Cat had faith that they’d deliver. They had to. It was the next-to-last show to air before the live Christmas Eve finale in two weeks, which would be an even more complicated production nightmare.

  Half the town had turned out on the street and sidewalks to watch the action.

  Cat slipped out of the stylist’s cape and pulled on her down vest. Henry slung her parka over his shoulder. They’d be shooting outside first to make the most of the light which meant the front of the house reveal and the treehouse. Between takes, she’d be cuddling with a portable heater until they could get inside where she’d sweat through her layers with the press of dozens of crew squishing themselves into corners to shoot.

  “You ready?” Drake asked, meeting her outside the makeup trailer.

  Cat nodded. “Let’s knock their socks off.”

  April, in a red dress with green and red leggings that Sara had picked out, hopped from one foot to the other in front of her parents who looked damp-eyed already.

  “Who’s the first to cry?” Drake asked, nodding at the family.

  “Oh, my money’s on you today,” Cat grinned. “I saw those baby blues glistening when Mrs. Pringle was singing your praises.”

  Drake gave her a nudge with his shoulder. “Shut up.”

  Cat waved to Sara who was standing behind the wooden barricade in the street keeping the crowd at bay. She was holding a sign that said Welcome Home, Hais. Noah, handsome as always in his black wool coat, gave Cat an anything but innocent smile.

  Cat pulled out her phone and stabbed out a text through her thick gloves.

  Cat: Have time to get naked tonight?

  She arched an eyebrow at him as she hit
send and enjoyed watching him fumble through his pockets for his phone. When he managed to free it from his coat pocket, Cat swore she saw steam coming off his head.

  Noah: You’re killing me. I’m handing Sara over to Mel at eight.

  Cat felt the slow burn of anticipation ignite.

  Cat: Maybe I’ll sneak into your bedroom after curfew?

  He looked up at her, heat in his gaze, and Cat grinned wickedly. She winked at him and then waved to the rest of the crowd. Usually reveal crowds were full of strangers, but not in Merry. Rubin and Elizabeth Turnbar held up a sign thanking the show for “cleaning up Merry.” It had their dry-cleaning logo on it. Elroy Leakhart, the school principal was trying to keep twenty-five high school seniors in line, nervously mopping at his forehead with a handkerchief. Freddy and Frieda Fawkes made a rare appearance together with Sadie, chief of emergency services, who finally looked as if she was getting regular sleep.

  Cat and Drake shuffled over to Paige and the production team. “You all ready to make people happy?” Cat quipped. It was the question she always asked before the reveal on her own show.

  Her team put down their energy drinks and coffees and put their hands in.

  “One, two, three, Hais!”

  The crowd, already primed for excitement, cheered.

  Cat and Drake took their places on the Hais’ new front porch.

  “Cue the limo,” Paige called into her headset.

  --------

  “I still say she cried first,” Drake insisted.