Page 73 of The Christmas Fix
“Oh, I was just uh…”What? Inspecting the parking lot? Looking for permits?
“You might as well come in, Noah, before you freeze to death trying to come up with a lie.”
Cat stepped back from the door, and Noah felt that he had no choice but to follow her inside. He shut the door behind him with a bang and was relieved to note that it was the TV he’d heard and not the dulcet tones of some Latin lover Cat had flown in to satisfy her needs. She was watching a Christmas movie.
A tiny fiber optic tree was plugged in in the corner shifting from pink to blue to green.
“Why do you look sick and mad?” Cat asked, flopping down on the small couch.
She was wearing a tight white tank with nothing, zip, zero underneath it. The thin straps looked like they might break under the strain of her very visible, very full breasts. He’d never wanted to touch anything so much in his entire life. He’d slide his palms up over her stomach to the lower curve—
He was instantly harder than he could ever remember being.
She wore cropped sweatpants that ended just below the knee. There was an inch of skin visible between the waistband of her pants and the hem of her tank top. And Noah wanted to run his tongue around it.
Her face was bare, hair piled on top of her head, and she was surrounded by papers, a laptop, and a tablet.
“Yoo-hoo?” Cat snapped her fingers, and Noah woke from his breast-induced trance.
“Sorry. What?”
She looked amused. A woman like Cat would be used to having men slobber over her. It was part of the job, wasn’t it? Being attractive, being a brand. He hated that he was just one more man lusting after her. He wanted more than that for them both.
“I was asking what you’re doing here,” Cat reminded him.
“Why did you close up at the fire hall?” He blurted the question out forgetting each and every carefully crafted segue he’d worked on in his head since she walked away from him.
“Noah, you can’t be serious.”
“We were flirting, talking. And then you just clam up and walk away,” he argued.
“Yes, we were flirting, and I was thinking about inviting you over tonight so I could run my tongue over every inch of your body.”
Noah’s knees buckled, and he slid bonelessly into one of the chairs around her miniscule dining table.
“W-what?”
“Oh, but that was before you confessed to still being in love with your ex-wife.”
Noah blinked. He wasn’t sure if he’d been struck dumb by Cat’s breasts or her announcement about her intended plans regarding her tongue. But either way, he had no idea what she was talking about.
“I’m in love with Mellody?” he asked.
“Yeah. You already told me,” Cat said, leveling those pretty hazel eyes at him.
“That’s—that is not what I meant or said. You asked…” He brought his fingertips to his eyeballs behind the lenses of his glasses. If he kept his eyes closed, he wouldn’t be hypnotized by those breasts that seemed to be begging for his hands, his mouth. “You asked if I still loved Mellody.”
“Yep,” Cat said, clearly not thrilled with the outcome.
“I said yes.”
“Oh, I remember very clearly,” Cat said picking up the remote and flipping through the channels as if she didn’t have any stake in the conversation.
“You didn’t ask if I wasinlove with her,” Noah pointed out, rising out of the chair.
Cat’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the difference?”
Could the woman really know so little about love?he wondered. “You love your nonni, right?”
