Page 98 of The Christmas Fix
Cat slipped her arm through Noah’s in the privacy of the dark night. “I was very stealthy.”
“Did you meet boyfriends after curfew?” Noah asked.
“On occasion.” Rules of good conduct held no allure for Cat, not now and not when she was a teenager.
“I want to be impressed, but all I can imagine is the fresh hell I’ll be living with Sara in a few years.”
Cat rested her head on his shoulder as they walked. “She’s a good kid and comes from two great parents. I think you’ll all survive.”
“I appreciate your vote of confidence.”
“Do you wish you’d grown up differently?” Cat asked.
Noah scanned the night quietly. She could hear his wheels turning, weighing his answer.
“If I could go back and have two parents that came to my baseball games and cheered. A dad who took me fishing. Food on the table every night. Heat in the winter. Clothes when they were needed. If I could have all that and still end up right here, right now, I would wish it.”
Cat rubbed his arm with her hand. “But since you can’t?”
He looked down at her. His eyes sparkling in the light of the lone streetlamp. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. Except maybe in my bed with you.”
“I hate that you had to grow up that way, Noah.” The pain of knowing that he’d suffered, that he’d been scared and unprotected, welled up in her unexpectedly. “You deserved better.”
He stopped, pulled her around to face him. “I wouldn’t change anything, Cat. Not since it brought me right here.”
Using the thumb of his glove, he brushed snowflakes off her eyelashes.
“Do me a favor, Noah?” Cat breathed.
“Anything.”
“Kiss me right here, right now.” She wanted to remember this. The feeling that it was just the two of them in the whole world under a sky of stars and snowflakes.
Understanding what she was asking, he lowered his lips to her gently, softly. They melted, melded like metal. Warm and sweet. Noah’s lips moved over hers until she opened to him. Cat fisted her mittened hands on to the lapels of his jacket for life as he brazenly, tenderly left a mark on her heart.
There was something about this man, this night, this town that had worked its way under her skin to swim through her veins.
Tenderly, he tasted her as if he had all the time in the world to sample and tease.
She breathed him in, his air, his scent, his flavor. Inhaling Noah.
It was a mistake. She shouldn’t have asked for this. Should have kept it light. But the kiss was the light, a new kind of illumination that warmed her and guided her.
CHAPTER FORTY
“My dad wants to invite you to dinner tonight,” Sara announced, sliding into the diner booth across from Cat.
Cat’s wrap fell from her hands onto the plate. She’d scored an honest-to-goodness lunch break that had landed the first official “Cat Wrap” in her freezing cold hands and had been busy warming herself up remembering each and every orgasmic detail with Noah the night before. At least, she had been before she was interrupted by the man’s daughter.
“Uh. Huh?” Cat wiped her mouth with a napkin and prayed she didn’t look like she’d been fantasizing about Sara’s dad naked.
“Dinner. Our house tonight,” Sara repeated.
“Is there a special occasion?” Cat asked, feeling like she was missing an essential piece of information. April Hai peered around the end of the counter at them holding a to-go bag.
Sara shrugged. “I aced my Earth Sciences test?”
“Congratulations?”
