“Seriously, Tara, you can’t just commandeer a house and decorate it. And don’t tell me someone put a listing on Craig’s List asking for a professional Christmas display and this is your job now.”
A spark came to her friend’s eyes that said she thought that was a wonderful idea, but then it dimmed into a steely resolve. “It’s mine,” Tara said simply.
“What’s yours?”
“The house.”
“This house?” Catherine choked out.
Tara nodded.
“You mortgaged a place just to be able to enter a competition to win an oil change?”
“Mortgaged is kind of a dirty word,” Tara said evasively.
“A dirty word? Either you did or didn’t. Unless you’re squatting—God, are you squatting? Do these people, whoever owns it, even know you’re here?”
“Of course! I’m not an idiot, Cat, I paid for it.”
But as far as Catherine was concerned that didn’t make her case for her. It might solidify that she wasn’t a thief or a trespasser, but it didn’t refute the idiot label.
“Great, huh?” Tara prodded. “It’s a terrific investment. Of course, it needs some work and updating, but I’m game. It’ll be a good change for me.”
“So you paid for it.” Holding back the air quotes.
“Free and clear. If you’d met me at Grossman’s for the closing, you would know that.”
Catherine groaned. So that was what the lawyer was all about. Not that it made it better.
“And, see, I bought this place before I even knew about the Christmas light competition. So there. I’m not just going all crazy and buying a place to win a competition. It’s like it’s kismet or something. My destiny.”
“Kismet?”
“Serendipity.”
“I know what it means,” Catherine smarted.
“Now I’m a genuine citizen of Nekoyah and therefore perfectly within my rights to enter the competition. Sophie Watts won’t even know what hit her.”
“A citizen?” she almost gagged.
“And since you are so hung up on the details,” Tara added, completely unruffled, reaching in the pocket of her jeans. “I even filed the paperwork. Every ‘t’ crossed; every ‘i’ dotted. Had my contest entry notarized too, just for shits and giggles.”
Catherine was stunned, staring at the paper, trying to wrap her head around what it meant and how any of this was possible. “Wait a second, where the fuck do you have the money to buy a house?” she demanded, no longer caring what she said or how old the ears who might hear it. There had to be something hinky afoot.
“Oh, I have the money. Don’t you worry.”
“You have money?” A snarky challenge, thinking about the Tara she’d known for years. They used to make about the same amount when they shared a cubicle in New York. Also, Tara had lived with a whole host of roommates in a cheap loft that screamed—bad with money or poor or dysfunctional on so many levels. She always assumed—
“I saved a lot over the years. And I have some family money too.”
“Mob money?” Catherine blurted bitchily.
“We aren’t actually in the mob, you know.” Her tone saying Catherine was being ridiculous and it was no longer funny.
“Tara, do you have any earthly idea what you’re doing here?” She shielded her eyes from the glaring sun that was bouncing off the snow now that it had broken through the clouds.
“I know exactly what I’m doing here.”
“Really?” Undisguised dubiousness.
“Yes, really. I’ve seen enough Christmas movies to get the general idea. Deck the Halls, Christmas Vacation, How the Gr—”
“Well, you got the Chevy Chase thing spot on,” Catherine cut in, referencing the tangled knots of lights on the ground. “But that isn’t what I’m talking about. And where did you get all of this stuff anyway?”
“I called in a favor.”
“Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Why are you here anyway, Cat?” Tara demanded, refusing to answer. “This has nothing to do with you, remember? You didn’t want anything to do with it.”
“Damn straight it has to do with me. You’re my friend. And people around here know it. They know that without me here, you wouldn’t be here causing havoc.”
“Havoc? What kind of havoc?”
Catherine was silent for a moment. Buying a place and then decorating it for Christmas was hardly something that could be elevated to the level of havoc, but doing so just to take down a respected although completely annoying member of the community might be construed as terrorism. “You really couldn’t leave well enough alone,” she said instead.
“Why should I?”
“But I told you—”
“You told me not to touch your house. To keep you out of it. That you had too much to worry about to play my reindeer games.”
“I didn’t say—”
“So I left you alone. Out of the loop. I’m not anywhere near your house.”
Actually, Tara was way too near her house. “Who does stuff like this?” Catherine asked the general landscape.
“Stranger things have happened,” Tara assured her.
“Not many.” And even those only happen to you… or because of you and being around you. You being the common denominator. “People think you’re nuts.”
“What do I care?”
“It’s a reflection on me.”
“That’s all everything is about for you anymore. How does this reflect on me? How does this make me look? What about me? Me. Me. Me.”
“That’s not true.”
Tara stared her down.
“I just—” But there was nothing more she could say. Back when they were friends in New York, Tara’s quirkiness blended in with all the other nuts and the pure volume of people made it hardly a problem. But here, in Nekoyah, there was nowhere to hide. People knew who you were and who you ran with and who was on top and who was on the bottom. It was like high school all over again. And staying out of the hair of the powerful, like Sophie Watts, was just smart living. Catherine had already tempted the fates and caused enough problems by herself, and she’d been put in her place for it. She didn’t need another run-in before Christmas.
“Uncle,” she blurted suddenly, taking a new tack.
“What?” Tara looked at her, panicked, like she’d just had a seizure.
She threw her hands in the air. “I can’t take it. Put up what you want. Fight the woman. Live here. Whatever you want. It’s your life.” It was pointless to reason with Tara who ran on pure unregulated steam and zest and verve, and even more frustratingly impossible to reason against reason. Even amid Tara’s insanity, Catherine had to admire her complete levelheadedness. Her take-no-shit-from-no-one attitude. Her grab-the-bull-by-the-horns strength and fortitude.
“So now you’re washing your hands of me?” Tara asked.
“I don’t know what I’m doing. You’re so bent that I can’t even begin to—”
“Cat, I just needed a change of pace. Some time to figure out… things.” She slumped her shoulders like some of the life was knocked out of her.
“That’s what a vacation is for, but here you are, taking it to the extreme. Just like you do everything. You frigging moved. People don’t do that.”
“But I’m done with New York. Nothing is there for me anymore.”
“Your whole life is there—”
“It’s not the same since you left. And Jason—”
“Jason what?”
“Nothing.” Tara shook her head, denying herself.
“You can’t just cut him out. Not now. Not like this. Not when you’re going to have—”
“It was a blip, Cat.”
She stared at her friend worriedly.
“I liked him, okay? He was from the right state and he fulfilled my needs… over and over again.” A smirk.
“This isn’t a joke, Tara.”
“I’m not joking. We had spectacu
lar sex.” She got spacey all of a sudden. “I mean completely above and beyond… and I never would have figured him for—” She shook out of it. “That’s not everything though.”
“No, it’s not,” Catherine agreed, her gaze trying to pierce through Tara’s give-or-take manner.
“And it’s over now.”
“Are you seriously telling me that your relationship with him was entirely sexual? Nothing more?”
“I needed him for my—”
“Tara, so help me, if you mention your PINK sex bucket list again I will—”
“You’ll what?”
Catherine was silent, staring. “Is anything you do ever about more than getting off?”
“You obviously don’t know how good getting off can be.”
“You didn’t just say that.”
“It’s okay, you’re repressed, I get it,” she continued to jab, keeping her up against the ropes.
“I’m not repressed. My sex life is just fine thank you.”
“Fine?”
“It’s perfectly—”
“Perfectly what? Average?” Tara chided. “At Fynn’s place. In Fynn’s bed. Missionary?”
An “O” of shock.
“Is that about right?”
“Okay, so I’m not a fucking whore like you, so what?”
“You tell bedtime stories with that mouth?” Tara asked.
“I can’t believe—I mean, what are you think—but then again, you don’t think, do you?—like I should even be asking you that question…. I mean it’s obvious considering—” Catherine gestured toward her friend’s midsection: exhibit A. And at the house: exhibit B.
“So I guess that’s it,” Tara said tightly.
“Yup, I guess it is.”
-32-
“She bought a house, Fynn. Right down the road!” Hissing the words, thankful they were finally alone. She had been seething all evening. Trying not to show it at dinner. Trying to get through the family game of Candy Land that Cara had mandated, using an extra pawn for a fifth player, a Hershey Kiss Pop-Pop kept threatening to eat. “Do you understand what that means? She’s going to be here forever. For-ev-er.”
Catherine had first shared the news of Tara’s new home blandly, while passing the butter at dinner, swallowing her animosity down with her mother’s meatballs that she’d already forgotten how to make since her lesson that afternoon. But with Tara on the brain it was no wonder that she couldn’t retain anything else. It was mind-blowing, what her friend was doing. And worse, her best chance for someone sharing her feelings about Tara’s brashness, Elizabeth Hemmings, seemed completely unconcerned (her exact words: “Oh, isn’t that nice.”). Catherine Marie would have gotten lambasted for the same. It figured.
“It’s a free country,” Fynn said.
“There’s a lot of that going around.” She hated the inconsequential nature those words brought to very consequential things. “You seriously don’t have a problem with this?” She plopped onto the bed, watching Fynn as he went about his getting-ready-for-bed business.
He emptied his pockets onto his dresser. “My feelings don’t matter. If she bought a house she bought a house. Unless she’s planning to turn it into a sex shop.”
“She probably is,” she grumbled.
“What?” His head snapped in her direction, stopping him in the midst of unzipping his jeans.
She held his gaze, conveying just how perfectly “Tara” that assumption was.
“She’s your friend. It can’t be that bad to have a friend in town. You used to get along perfectly fine living in New York together.”
“We didn’t live together. It was across town. Way across. And New York is huge, mind you. This, here, is like having her living in my apartment building. I would have had a problem with.”
“Wasn’t she just living in your actual apartment?”
“I sublet it to her after I moved out.” Get with the program, man! It wasn’t that hard: the size of the town was inversely proportional to the level of pain in the ass that Tara would be. “This is a small town, Fynn. Small. I can’t take that kind of closeness. And she is going to have a little Tara running around and wreaking havoc just like her! The same age as our baby. They’ll grow up together. Probably be in the same class all their lives. And our daughter will end up having sex by thirteen and be knocked up by sixteen because she’s friends with Tara’s daughter—or worse, Tara could have a boy who is the actual one who knocks her up because Tara sees nothing wrong with sex at any age with anyone at any time whatsoever.”
Fynn’s body reared back from the force of her onslaught. “Our daughter?” he choked out.
Catherine froze but for squirming little Eve in her belly—apropos, as they were both on the hot seat.
“A baby girl?” he asked again.
“I was—it’s just a… scenario… that I was making up. I mean, think about the far-reaching repercussions of this situation… if it was a girl.”
“You know.” His gaze was piercing.
“No. I don’t.”
“But you just said it.”
She shook her head, lips sealed.
“You’ve been keeping it from me?”
“It was an accident,” she rushed out, “seeing what I saw.” That much was partly true at least. “I knew you didn’t want to know, and I was afraid that if you knew that I knew then you would end up knowing soon enough because I can’t keep things from you.”
“Like this?”
“Yes, like this. And isn’t it a good thing that I can’t keep things from you?” she offered.
“Except you did.”
“I haven’t known that long. Besides, I thought you would want that.”
“I wanted us both to be on the same page. Knowing or not knowing. Being surprised together either way.”
“And we are. Look here. Right now,” motioning between them, “we’re both surprised.”
“I can’t believe you know. That you’ve known. And—” He came over to the bed and dropped down next to her, lost.
“I didn’t want to ruin it for you like I ruined it for myself,” she said earnestly, though she’d been happy to know apart from the treachery.
“You probably already have a name picked out too,” he added lowly.
“No.”
“You do!” he accused, so close now it made it even harder to avoid him.
“I just had an idea that I’ve been mulling over.” And thinking about and calling her and imagining her as—
“And what is this ‘idea’?”
Catherine was nervous enough to take up biting her fingernails, though she’d never done so in her life. It was one thing to pick a name she loved, a whole different thing to toss it out there to get brutally picked apart, and considering the circumstances, Fynn had every right to pick it apart. To deny her just for principle or just for spite—in this case one in the same.
Naming a baby was not for the faint of heart. And now that her heart was set on Eve, the last thing she wanted to hear was that Fynn had dated a girl named Eve who broke his heart into a thousand pieces and shot his dog and possibly turned into a serial killer somewhere along the way.
“I’m waiting patiently… like I was going to do until our due date,” he said pointedly.
“Eve.” It was but a squeak, and she winced as she said it.
“Eve.” A solid, single syllable right back at her. Not a question. No hesitation. Just Eve.
She ventured a careful look into his eyes.
“It’s simple. Classic…. I wish I hated it.”
“So you don’t?”
He shook his head. “Which completely pisses me off, and you know that you are going to have to let me give her a terrible middle name that you absolutely despise just to make it up to me.”
“Like what?”
“Andromeda.”
She tried not to think about her penance, focusing on the positive. “You really like it?”
“Yes, I like it,” he sig
hed. “I can’t believe it’s a little girl. Eve Trager…. We’re having a little girl,” he smiled.
“So you’re happy?” Catherine searched.
“Not so much with you, but yes, I’m happy.”
“I didn’t mean to find out.” At first. “It just sort of happened.” Minimizing her part.
“I never actually thought you would make it till the end,” he assured her.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Suddenly less shamed and more irate.
“You aren’t known for your patience.”
“And you aren’t known for your tact, Mr. Trager.”
“Fair enough. And you know what else would make things more fair?” He captured her in his arms and pulled them both down against the bed. “No excuses,” he warned, his hands wandering over her belly, cupping her breasts, breathing hot in her ear, tugging her earlobe with his teeth.
“What about—”
“What about nothing. You have to pay the piper.” The words steamy against her neck, followed by an electrifying jolt as his tongue touched a trail along her skin.
She squirmed, breathless with the tickle of excitement that coursed through her. She turned in his arms, facing him, “Do you think we are adventurous enough?” All seriousness, Tara’s words suddenly overwhelming her thoughts.
“Adventurous?” He played with the buttons on her blouse, flicking them open one by one. “What, are you wanting to travel?”
“No, not that kind of adventurous.”
“So you’re talking about…”
“Sex,” she said firmly, sitting up, staring down at him like it was an interrogation.
“Well we were about to adventure there, so I’d say, why don’t we keep going and find out,” he joked.
“Do you know that we’ve only ever had sex here? Right here in this house?”
“Except for those times when we didn’t.”
She rolled her eyes. “So a few times in New York at my place. My place or your place and nowhere in between,” she charged. “No beach or park or woods. Never outside. No backseat of the car. Or front seat. No airplane or pool. No—”
“And this is a problem?”
“Don’t you think it is?”
“Well—”
2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) Page 19