Page 51 of The Catch

He offered her cream and sugar, then picked up the mug he was already drinking from. They each took a sip, their eyes locked over their cups. “I have something for you,” he said after a moment. He turned back toward the counter and reached for a white cardboard box, opening it as he approached.

Cat stretched to peek inside, her eyes going wide when she saw an assortment of pastries arranged neatly on a white and blue striped tissue. “Croissants?”

“That’s how you roll, right?”

“Always.” She was grinning so hard, she could feel all her teeth showing, and her cheeks burned from the stretch.Get it together, Cat. It’s just pastry.But it was no use—she was straight up beaming. She reached in and chose a perfectly iced, raspberry-filled croissant, and tore off a piece with her fingers while Josh watched.

“I hope you don’t think I was being presumptuous, assuming you’d be here for breakfast.”

“Not at all,” she said, savoring the sugary fruit. “I’m glad you picked up on my ‘better get croissants’ signals when we planned this.”

Josh laughed, looking pleased with her reaction.

“Are you going to have one? Don’t make me eat by myself.”

“I was just going to have some stale crackers and beer.”

She laughed around her mouthful of sugar. “Not on my watch,” she said when she’d finished her bite. “This is the only way to live.” She pushed the box toward him, and he looked inside, studying his options before selecting a plain one with no fruit and tearing it in two. He left one half sitting in the box and took a bite of the other.

“Are you on a new diet since I last saw you?” she asked, popping another piece in her mouth.

“Me? No. I’m just a bacon and eggs guy. I’m going to get a sugar rush from this thing. I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

Her giggling turned to belly laughing, with a hand over her mouth to keep from spitting out her food. Josh didn’t seem to mind her lack of table manners, though, as he watched her with a wide grin. She finally finished her bite and grinned back. “You’re sweet. You know that?”

“You say that like we just met. We’ve been doing this thing for a little while now.”

“I suppose we have. But I knew that right away.”

“I knew a lot of things about you right away,” he said with a cocky grin that she decided he’d earned.

“Like what?” She was intrigued to hear him verbalize his first impressions, though Minnie was right. He hadn’t put any effort into hiding them that night or any other time since.

He turned away to refill his coffee. “I knew how good it was going to be when we finally did this,” he said, obviously hiding a grin.

“Oh, really?” She laughed again. “You got that from one drink and a slow dance?”

“I did. Those hips. The way you moved with the music… ” He pulled his lower lip between his teeth and made a little hissing noise.

“Okay,” she said, not willing to let him off with a joke. “What else?”

“I don’t know.” His demeanor shifted back to reticent, and she decided she liked how easily he embraced both sides of himself, confident and vulnerable. “I guess I knew you were a force. Someone who knew what she wanted from this world and took it.” He shrugged, the tips of his ears turning a light shade of pink. “And I wanted to be what you wanted.”

The compliment rushed her bloodstream, making her skin burn. Sometimes it seemed like her life was in a constant battle with her strong personality. The one time she’d tried to want what everyone else wanted her to want, she’d fallen flat on her face. To hear Josh flatter her for being—as her sister put it—unyielding, was quite possibly the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her.

“You are what I want,” she said quietly, almost to herself. She did want him. She wanted him to be real—to be as good as he seemed. And if he wasn’t, she didn’t want to find out just yet.

Josh came around to her side of the breakfast bar and cupped her cheek, kissing her gently on the lips, then on the tip of her nose. Her heart slammed in her chest, and her belly flipped. God, was she really going to be that girl who sleeps with a guy and immediately falls in love? She squirmed in her seat, desperate to change the subject, or make a joke, anything to stop that free-fall feeling that had just come over her. But Josh wasn’t done.

“Good,” he said. “Because I’m not seeing anybody else. Maybe that’s obvious, since we’ve been together every weekend since that trip, but I wanted you to know.”

She nodded, feeling like a pupil in Josh’s course on emotional honesty. Was this how mature adults handled relationships? She certainly hadn’t been one the last time she was in a relationship. Maybe she wasn’t even one now, considering how she’d been acting. Josh was older than her. He’d been married before; he owned a house and a business. She wasn’t young and silly like Kasey, but she’d known most of her friends since she was eighteen, Dani even longer, and sometimes being around them made her still feel that way. And as far as her post-Micah dating life went, she was like a solitary animal that only emerged from her den to feed and prepare for the long winter alone. She’d also been known to bite the heads off of the opposite sex, just to show them who’s in charge.Though, she was getting the distinct feeling she wasn’t anymore.

“Oh,” she said when she realized she hadn’t responded yet. “I’m not seeing anybody else either.”

Josh smiled, two parts amusement at her awkwardness and one part relief, then he dipped his head and peered up at her with the sweetest pair of nervous eyes she’d ever seen. “What would you think about keeping it that way?”

“Are you asking me to go steady?” she asked.That’s it, Cat, flirt, act like your heart isn’t about to punch a hole through your sternum.

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