Page 72 of The Christmas Fix
“I’m a little rusty when it comes to flirting,” Noah admitted. “And I still feel new at this whole divorce thing.”
“Do you still love her?” Cat asked, kicking herself for asking a question she didn’t really want the answer to.
“Of course,” Noah said, looking perplexed.
“Oh.” It was the only word she could manage. Noah was still in love with Mellody?How had she gotten her wires so crossed?Embarrassed and more than a little devastated, Cat turned her focus on the dessert table. Dozens of homemade pies, cakes, and candies were lined up. A smorgasbord of goodies.
“Where’d you go, Cat?” Noah asked. His fingers closed around her arm just above the elbow. A warm, hard pressure.
“Oh, ah, I was just thinking about how much work I need to get through after dinner.” She gave a careless shrug of her shoulders. Careless. Right. She didn’t care if Noah was still carrying a torch for his ex-wife. The ex-wife who was counting down the days to her wedding. Maybe Noah was lining Cat up as a rebound? But Catalina King was no man’s rebound.
“You look like you’re enjoying yourself,” Cat said, changing the subject, casually sipping the sludge like coffee.
He leaned in conspiratorially and pointed at his table. “I am. I never get Sara for Thanksgiving. It’s too… depressing at my mother’s. So Mellody and I agreed that it’s better for Sara to spend it with her family instead. It’s usually just me and my mother, sitting quietly, staring into space for two hours with a meal that we reheat from a grocery store.”
“That’s… awful,” Cat managed. So, the ghost of a woman was Noah’s mother after all. A thousand questions landed at the tip of her tongue. What about his father? Was his mother always so cold, empty? What was his childhood like? He’d made allusions to the fact that it hadn’t been a happy one. She wondered how much of his overprotectiveness now was due to the way he was brought up.
“But with this Merry-wide Thanksgiving celebration? It was something Sara would hate to miss, so Mellody generously offered to share her today.”
“You two seem to have a really good relationship,” Cat said, feeling like she was choking on the words.
“It’s getting better again,” Noah agreed. “I’m happy about that. Anyway, enough about me. How are things going with the school? Are you getting a lot of submissions in the location contest?”
Cat nodded mutely. She felt tongue-tied and brain freezy. He’d yanked the rug out from under her feet with his declaration of love for his ex-wife. Moments earlier, she’d been debating whether she should invite him home with her tonight so she could finally peel off all those layers of clothes and get a close-up look at the muscled physique she’d felt every time they’d touched. She’d wanted to kiss him again, dizzyingly, brashly.
But Cat was no second fiddle no matter how attracted she was to someone.
“Uh, yeah,” she said, still nodding. “I need to go over the latest submissions, but it looks like we’ve got a couple possibilities that would be good fit for us.”
“Pretty exciting,” Noah prodded.
“Yep. Yeah. Sure is,” Cat said without the enthusiasm. She shook herself. She was a woman to be lusted after. She was not a pouter. If Noah Yates had his stubborn head shoved up his own ass that far that he couldn’t see the amazingness that was right in front of him? Well then, he didn’t deserve to see her naked.
She squared her shoulders. “Well, I’d better go share my Thanksgiving thankfulness. Uh, thanks again for this, Noah. It was really thoughtful of you.”
She left him alone by the motor oil coffee and plopped down at the first table she found with an empty seat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Noah raised his fist ready to knock and then shoved it back in his pocket. He walked away, shaking his head. He was an idiot. And in this case, he didn’t know exactly what idiotic thing he’d done or said, but it had been enough to get Cat to stop flirting with him and become desperate to get away from him.
He paced back to the trailer door. He could hear the TV on inside. Or was that voices? Maybe she had someone in there with her. Maybe she had a boyfriend, and he’d been misreading everything since Day One… or whatever day he’d decided he wasn’t going to keep fighting this attraction to her.
Maybe it wasn’t a boyfriend. Maybe it was a hookup.
Oh, god. He paced to the back of the trailer. Was he coming here for a hookup? Or was this something more? Why would Cat be up for something more? She had a life in New York. She had a TV show. A glamorous, busy schedule that didn’t leave room for a torrid, long-distance affair with a boring Connecticut city manager or being a stepmother to a 12-year-old.
Noah tripped over a cable running beneath two trailers.Well that had mentally escalated quickly.He rubbed the back of his neck. He went from thinking about having sex with Cat to thinking about having a life with Cat.
See?His inner conscience blared at him. He wasn’t cut out for flings or one-night stands. He was a boring, monogamous guy who just wanted to settle down and build a boring, stable, predictable life around himself.
Definitely an idiot. He needed to leave. Thank God he hadn’t humiliated himself by knocking. Noah wasn’t exactly sure what he’d planned to do once she’d answered. Demand to know why she got weird at the dinner? Start taking his clothes off in hopes that she’d follow his lead? Break into a dissertation on all the reasons they would be better off not having sex?
He hated that he went stone hard the second he thought “sex” and “Cat” in the same sentence. He was no better than a teenager.
Yeah, he was going home to take a cold shower and let this thing die a natural, uncomplicated death.
“You’re wearing a ditch in the asphalt.” Cat’s calm observation came from where she leaned against the doorway of her trailer.
