CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Somewhere between the best slice of pumpkin pie Cat had ever had and the worst cup of coffee, Sara popped up at her elbow. “Hi, Cat!”
“Hey, Sara. Guys, this is Noah’s daughter Sara.” Cat made the introductions to her parents and grandmother.
“My grandma is here too,” Sara said. “I’ll go get her!” She skipped over to the table and pulled the woman in the gray dress out of her chair. It looked like she rose with great reluctance. Her hair was streaked with gray, her face was bare and lined. Her forearms seemed painfully thin.
“Grandma, this is my friend Cat and her family.” Sara made the introductions like a pro. “This is my grandma, Louisa.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Louisa,” Cat said offering her hand.
Louisa stared blankly at it for several seconds before accepting it limply. The skin of her hand was paper thin. “Hello,” she whispered, her eyes flat and dark, looking everywhere but at them.
“Sara,” Mellody said, appearing at the table. “Why don’t we let Grandma get back to her pie?” she suggested cheerfully.
Louisa gave them a ghost of a nod and left.
“Cat, this is my husband-to-be, Ricky,” Mellody announced, drawing the man in the argyle sweater to her side.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ricky,” Cat said, offering her hand.
He shook it warmly. “Great to meet you.”
Cat made the introductions around the table. “It’s really nice of you to give up your own plans with your family to spend Thanksgiving with us,” she told Mellody.
“Merry is family, and best of all, I didn’t have to cook or clean up,” Mellody grinned. “Best holiday ever.” She snuggled into Ricky’s side.
“Shall we check out the pie, babe?” Ricky asked.
“We shall.” Mellody waved her good-bye as they made their way over to the dessert table.
Cat watched them go, curious whether Louisa was Mellody or Noah’s mother. Whoever she was, it seemed that the will to live had left her long before. Cat rubbed at the goosebumps on her arms. She felt as if she’d just crossed paths with a ghost.
Cat rejoined her family’s conversation and listened to Gannon and Paige banter about work and babies. Her parents doted on each other and little Gabby. Nonni struck up a flirtatious conversation with Drake and Henry.
It felt so good, so right, being in this funny little fire hall on a holiday like today. Outside the brick walls, a town was on its way to being rebuilt, and spirits and expectations were rising. She wouldn’t let them down.
Cat grabbed her Styrofoam cup and headed over to the coffee table.
“That stuff will scrape the lining off of your intestines,” Noah warned, nodding at the thermos.
“I’ve had worse,” Cat said, filling her cup. “Not much worse, but worse.”
She turned to study him as he filled his own cup. “Thank you for this,” Cat said gesturing around the room that was full to bursting. “You gave my guys a family holiday even without their families.”
Noah shrugged. “After everything that they’ve done for us, what kind of town would Merry be if we didn’t give back?”
He looked relaxed, happy. “Well thank you anyway. This was a really sweet, unexpected gesture.”
“I had to make up a little bit for being such an ass,” Noah teased. “I mean, you did save my life and all.”
“Ah, yes. And now I’ll be saving your town,” Cat said airily. “However will you thank me for all of my goodness?”
He eyed her long and hard. “I can think of a few ways,” he ventured.
Noah Yates was flirting with her. Suggestively.
“What kind of ways?” Cat asked, testing him by stepping a half step closer. She watched his reflexive nervous glance toward his ex-wife and snickered.
“What?” Noah asked.
“You look like you’re looking to Mellody for permission to flirt with me,” Cat pointed out.
“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.