Page 63 of The Christmas Fix
“Yeah? So?”
“So, what am I going to do now that I know I owe my life to you?”
“Noah, I’m the TV star here. I’m the one who’s supposed to be melodramatic. You would have popped up ten feet away from the boat, and we still would have hauled you aboard.”
He shook his head. “Let me thank you, Cat.”
Cat stepped up onto the first step leading up to her trailer so they were eye to eye. She gripped him by the shoulders and pulled him in a half step closer.
“No. I’m not going to let you thank me. But I am going to let you kiss me. And then I’m going to send you home because my sadistic trainer is calling me in three hours for a workout to ensure I don’t start busting out the seams of my jeans.”
“You’re one hell of a woman, Catalina King.”
“Don’t I know it,” she quipped.
And then he was kissing her. Her eyelids fluttered closed. The firm, warm pressure of his lips to hers sent a welcome wave of heat rushing through her. Her frozen toes uncurled in her sneakers, and she leaned into the kiss. She purred. He growled. And then he was parting her lips with his tongue. She tasted him, the beer, the pizza, the raw heat simmering under his surface. She let him be the aggressor… at least until she couldn’t take it anymore.
As his tongue stroked its way rhythmically in and out of her mouth, she lost the ability to just be. She needed to participate, control. She needed to win. She dove into him showing him just how she liked to be kissed.
Her gloved fingers dug into the lapels of his coat, holding him against her even as she pulled back.
“Are you kissing me because you think you owe me?” Cat asked.
“I’m kissing you because I want to.”
“Good answer.” Cat couldn’t quite catch her breath. She was shoving her hands under his coat, desperate for skin, for heat, for the feel of him against her when he stopped her. He grabbed her wrists and reluctantly dragged himself away from her mouth.
“Trainer. Five a.m.” Noah reminded her.
“Right. Trainer,” Cat breathed.
“I’m not done thanking you,” he warned her.
“I’m not done kissing you.”
He took her hand in his, turned it palm up, and placed a gentle kiss to the tattoo over her racing pulse. Cat had never in her life swooned over a man before. Maybe a new power tool or a supremely perfect pair of stilettos. But never a man. This was new.
“Goodnight, Catalina.”
“Goodnight, Noah.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“I got it,” Noah called over his shoulder as he hustled out of his bustling kitchen and down the hallway toward his front door. There was a heated argument about Canadian bacon and omelets happening between families behind him, and after another sleepless night thinking about Catalina King, he was happy to avoid the conflict.
It was a snow day, as predicted. And Merry’s second in a week when another storm rolled through right behind the first. While his daughter had shoved her arms into the air in a victorious V when he told her she could go back to bed, Noah battled the old, familiar sickness that gnawed at his gut.
Snow days for Noah as a kid weren’t a cause for celebration. Staying home, away from his only escape? The reality of not being able to escape to school made him feel scared and sick. Even as an adult, he was surprised that the same emotions could take hold. It gave him joy, fast and heady, to see his daughter growing up without that sick slide of fear. And maybe someday he’d forgive his past and move on.
But for now, he’d hide his discomfort, his bad memories. And he’d be the doting dad, making sure his daughter never had cause for the ice block in her stomach.
He wrenched open the front door, desperate for a snow day distraction.
The snowball hit him squarely in the chest.
Noah stood, blinking down at the snowy impact on his t-shirt.
“You have five minutes to get ready,” Cat announced, hefting another snowball.
