Page 103 of The Christmas Fix
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 eventwo,” 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 would be so wrapped up in the Christmas Festival, Noah would never be able to separate them.
Thatwas 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 andProperty Rehab,” Cat offered.
“After pizza andSubmarines 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.”
