CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
One day to Christmas Eve
The eve of Christmas Eve found Noah playing host to half of the men of Merry. Cat had arranged a spa afternoon for the women including Sara, Paige, Angela, Kathy, and April. She’d also thoughtfully included Mellody in the mix, and off they all went, chauffeured by Pete King to do God knew what with their hair and nails.
“We have to look good, Dad. The finale’s live,” Sara had explained the night before as she and Cat browsed nail art on Pinterest.
Noah was well aware of the finale and just exactly what it meant. The excitement of finally opening the Christmas Festival was dampened to ashes by the thought that his time with Cat was coming to an end. Sara seemed to have accepted it. Now if only he could force himself to do the same…
The idea of moping around alone was enough to have him throw out a half-assed invitation to the men who would be abandoned for spa day.
Gannon brought Gabby and cannoli. Drake and Henry brought beer, a lot of it. Jasper brought sausages. Ricky—because if Cat was kind enough to include his ex-wife, Noah didn’t have much of a choice in extending an invitation to his ex-wife’s fiancé—arrived with two-dozen deviled eggs, a bottle of vodka, and Mellody’s famous brownies.
Noah called in an obscenely large order of wings and cued up college football on the living room and kitchen TVs while everyone talked around him.
“Man, you look morose,” Henry observed, popping the top on a fancy pale ale. He propped a hip against the countertop and pointed at Noah with the bottle. “Bit of a let-down, isn’t it?”
“What is?” Drake asked, sidling into the conversation and shoving a deviled egg into his mouth.
“Noah here preparing to miss us.”
“And by us, you mean Cat,” Drake corrected his friend.
“Can we not revisit that train wreck of a conversation?” Gannon growled, pulling Gabby’s chubby little hands away from the vodka and lemonades he was mixing. Noah’s mixer supply was limited to whatever Sara brought home from the grocery store. So, it was either blue sports drink or lemonade… or straight vodka.
“I’m not talking about anything,” Noah said, holding up his hands.
“Here.” Gannon thrust a drink in it. “Drink this and keep not talking.”
He drank like a man walking through the Sahara.
“She’s something though,” Jasper said, blissfully unconcerned by Gannon’s discomfort. “I mean, it would be hard not to fall for Cat. Even my wife has a crush on her.”
“We’re not talking about my sister and anyone having any kind of feelings for her,” Gannon cut in.
“So, what are you going to do?” Henry asked Noah.
“Do?”
“You know, the grand gesture. How are you going to tell her how you feel and that you want her to stay or you want to go with her?”
“Guys, neither of those things are options. My life is here in Merry. Sara’s here. Mellody… and Ricky are here. My job. Everything.”
“We’d work something out with you, man,” Ricky promised amiably.
“Then ask her to stay,” Drake shrugged.
“Her entire life is… well, everywhere but here. She travels all the time. She works long hours when she’s filming. And she’s only going to get busier.”
“Yeah, even if she does make the move to L.A., I don’t see her slowing down any time soon,” Gannon said.
Noah blinked. “L.A.?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Why can’t you two just get your heads out of your asses and talk to each other?” Gannon groaned, exasperated.
“Ffff. Ffff.” Gabby was gleefully trying to eke out her first four-letter word.
“Nobody react,” Gannon ordered. “Just insert ‘funky’ into the conversation every other sentence, and we’ll be fine. Be cool about it.” He was sweating though.
“When in the funk did Cat decide she was moving to L.A.?” Noah demanded. Drake and Henry looked just as surprised. Ricky and Jasper were too busy in an apparent head-to-head egg eating contest to react.
“I don’t know man. I don’t think she’s decided yet. The offer’s on the table. The network wants her to build her school there and turn it into a show.” Gannon was backing toward the door to the living room.
“Well, now you have to make a grand gesture,” Drake insisted. “You can’t just let her jet off to the other side of the country when you’re in love with her.”
“I didn’t say I was—”
Gannon, Jasper, and Ricky burst out laughing. “Ah, funk. It’s so cute when they try to fight it,” Jasper said, slapping the countertop.
“It’s written all over my stupid funky face, isn’t it?” Noah sighed.
“Oh, totally.”
“Funk yeah.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Fffffff.”
Then why hadn’t Cat noticed? Or had she, and she was too busy crafting an exit strategy to react?
Noah took a gulp of his second drink. It wasn’t awful. Not like the clawing panic in the back of his throat. He was in love, and the woman who’d turned his life upside down was going to walk out of it tomorrow night and never come back. Unless…
He pulled a chair out from the breakfast table, sat. “She saved my life. Did she tell you?”
“Are we talking metaphorically here?” Ricky asked, pulling another beer out of the fridge.
Noah shook his head. “She was here in the flood. Pulled my ass out of the water when I went under.”
“She funking did what?” Gannon choked on a sausage.
Henry took Gabby from him, and Drake slapped him on the back until he stopped coughing. He washed down the rest of the sausage with an entire vodka lemonade.
“She came here to prove to the network that this would be a better holiday special than some decorating contest. And while she was here, climbed aboard some guy’s fishing boat and started pulling people out of their houses.”
Gannon shook his head. “She said she gave a ride to a few people, not saved actual lives. Between my wife, my sister, and my daughter, I’m going to die young.” He took a long pull of beer.
“One of a kind, man,” Henry said, jiggling Gabby on his hip.
“I hope you don’t mind if I weigh in here,” Ricky said, brushing brownie crumbs off the front of his sweater vest. “But if a woman waltzes into your life, saves it, and then changes it, you’re totally funked.”
“I am totally funked,” Noah nodded. “What the funk do I have to offer her that would be better than L.A.?”
“If any of you assholes say ‘cock’ I’m going to murder you all,” Gannon cut in. “I don’t want to hear it about my sister.”
“No one say ‘cock,’” Henry cautioned. “I don’t feel like getting murdered before Noah’s grand gesture.”
“Stop saying ‘grand gesture,’” Noah said, picking up another vodka lemonade. They were tasting better and better. And every one of them helped dull the panic and nausea just a little more.
The doorbell rang.
“Wings!”
They trooped to the door as a pack scaring the hell out of the delivery kid.
“Uh, here you go, Mr. Yates,” he said holding up two bags of to-go containers.
Noah’s guests pounced and stripped the guy of his food like a vulture with a roadkill.
“Thanks, Edmund.”
“You having a going away party?” he asked.
“Let me ask you something, Edmund. Can I call you Edmund?”
“That’s what my mom calls me.” The boy’s voice cracked. Puberty was never kind to teenage boys.
“Edmund, if you were in love with a beautiful woman who was leaving town in less than forty-eight hours, what would you do?”
“Uh, well. I guess write her a song?”
“A song?”
Edmund’s head bobbed. “I play a mean accordion. Do you need me to serenade anyone? My rates are reasonable.”
“Thanks, Edmund. I’ll, uh, let you know.”
Noah handed over the bills and closed the door. He pushed his glasses up his nose and listened to the wing unloading chaos coming from the kitchen.
He wasn’t a risk-taker, Noah thought. But he’d had plenty of missed opportunities in life that he’d lived to regret. Was he prepared to add Cat to that list?