CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“You guys are like one big, messy family,” Noah noted as he closed the RV door behind them while Cat zipped her jacket up to her chin.
She laughed, a silvery cloud of breath escaping with it. “We are family. You spend this much time with each other, and you end up bonding whether you want to or not.”
“You don’t seem to mind,” he pointed out.
She shrugged, stuffing her hands in her pockets. “I love my job, and I couldn’t do that job without those yahoos in there. They’re very dear to me.”
They set off across the parking lot.
“I’m surprised at how much they seem to care.”
“Jesus, Noah. Do you realize how snotty you sound right now? Of course, they care. They’re human beings.”
“That came out wrong. Sort of. I wasn’t expecting this when you forced me into filming.”
“I told you we wouldn’t screw you over,” Cat reminded him smugly.
“Yeah, but how was I supposed to know I can trust that? You can’t expect me to believe that every crew would come in here and care.”
“No, of course not. Not all teams are equal. Mine just happens to be pretty damn superior in every way.”
“So far they seem great.”
“You are wound so tightly I’m amazed you haven’t popped a vein. Why are you always waiting for something bad to happen?”
Cat was prodding at a sore spot that he’d only just become aware of. “I’m not that bad.”
She jumped, landing with both feet on the mat in front of the automatic door. The doors slid open. “When’s the last time you had any fun at all?” she asked, shoving a cart at him.
“Six nights ago, in the alley.”
“Hmm.” The look she leveled at him gave nothing away. “I was wondering if you’d bring that up. I couldn’t decide if you were going to bring it up and apologize or pretend that it never happened.”
She led the way toward the snack aisle. Noah leaned on the handle and followed her. The store was all but deserted after eleven.
“Besides some ill-advised second basing, what else do you do for fun?” Cat asked, tossing a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of queso into the cart.
“I’ve been busy lately.”
“Basketball on the weekends with the guys?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“Whiskey club?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Book club? Darts? Karaoke? Running 5ks? Collecting baseball cards?”
“All nos,” Noah admitted.
Cat snapped her fingers. “Ballroom dancing?”
Noah grabbed a bag of pretzels and tossed it into the cart. “Do I look like the ballroom dancing type?”
Cat shrugged. “I haven’t seen you fall on your face yet. I bet you could show a girl a nice time on the dance floor.”
Cat King was flirting with him. Flirting. Another area he was pathetically rusty in.
“I read. I learn to make meals that Sara finds on Pinterest. And I work out.” And when he said it like that, he couldn’t have sounded more boring if he were a coma patient.
“Noah, you have to have some fun. Otherwise you’re just a tax-paying robot.” She stopped in front of the cookie section and groaned. “I want all these.”
“You can’t get them all.”
She pointed a finger in his face. “See? That right there is Mr. Responsibility. I’m not actually going to buy all of them, but you telling me I can’t have them makes that option even more attractive.”
“You’re like a teenage rebel. No one needs thirty-six different kinds of cookies.”
Defiantly, Cat dropped four packs into the cart.
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Look, I’m just trying to help you out here. You use that attitude and logic on Sara when she’s a teenager, and you’re going to push her into the arms of an irresistible bad boy who’s one in-school suspension away from getting kicked out.”
“Why do you insist on giving me parenting advice? You have zero children.”
“You’re missing out on the best part of being a parent.” Cat threw two packs of Oreos into the cart.
“What’s the best part of parenting?” Noah asked wearily.
Cat knocked a bag of chewy chocolate chip cookies into the cart. “Watching them turn into their own people.”
She sounded like his ex-wife.
“What do you suggest I do?” he asked, half afraid of the answer.
“Maybe take a step back on the ‘do this, do that stuff’ and see what she decides on her own. Maybe lighten up a little.”
“You say lighten up now, but wait until you’re in charge of making sure another human being not only stays alive but turns out to be a good person,” he argued.
“Get in the cart, Noah.”
He blinked. “I beg your pardon.”
Cat nudged the cart into him. “Get in the cart.”
“ In the cart?”
“I’m showing you how to lighten up. Now, get your ass in the cart.”
He stared at her trying to comprehend what she was saying.
“I’m not—”
“The store is empty. No one will see their city manager acting a fool. You can’t be worried about my opinion of you because I already think you’re a stuffed shirt with an attitude problem. And, I double dog dare you.”
Feeling like an idiot, Noah swung a leg into the cart. “Is this even going to hold me?” he muttered.
“Quit stalling.” Cat shoved the cookies and chips out of his way and crossed her arms over her chest.
He clamored the rest of the way in and sat, his knees hiked up to his chin. “Yay. This is so much fun I can barely contain myself,” he grumbled.
She grinned. “You look ridiculous.”
“I know I look ridiculous. I fail to see how this is teaching me anything valuable about lightening up.”
“Hang on to your frowny face,” Cat announced. She grabbed the cart handle and pushed off into a dead run.
Noah gripped the sides of the cart as they careened down the aisle. “Wheeeeeeee!” Cat hopped onto the bar that was meant to hold twelve-packs of soda and sent them sailing. The cart, its wheels squealing in protest under its load, lumbered to the side heading for an end cap display of salsas.
Noah was a split second away from jumping from the cart to save himself when Cat hopped off the back and dragged them to a stop. The front of the cart halted two inches from salsa destruction.
“You’re insane,” Noah growled.
“I had fun once. It was awful,” Cat mimicked.
“Can I get out now?”
“Nope! On to the beer and ice cream.” Cat took off at a jog again and Noah crashed back against the cart basket.
He felt her hop on behind him, heard her laugh as the cart wobbled its way across the back of the store. Noah twisted around to see her. She had her hands planted on the handle and was leaning forward, enjoying the apparent wind in her face. Cat made acting like an idiot look like a lot of fun.
She slowed them to a dignified crawl when the cooler section came into view.
“How come you can act like this without embarrassment, yet when someone congratulates you on your school, you look like you want the ground under you to open up?” Noah asked as they perused the ice cream selection.
“That’s easy. I don’t have anything tied to driving like a mad woman around a grocery store. Nothing’s riding on that. The school? That’s my future and hopefully the future of hundreds of women. I was lucky. I grew up in a family that didn’t care whether you had a vagina or a penis. You helped out in the family business. I had the opportunity and the expectation to learn.”
“Are your parents involved in the business?” Noah asked.
Cat shook her head and handed him a pint of mint chocolate chip. He handed it back. “No bowls. Try something handheld.”
She put the ice cream back and pushed him down another cooler. “My mom worked in the office off and on. But my dad’s the academic in the family. He taught high school history at a private school in Brooklyn—if you ever see a hammer in that man’s hand, run the opposite way. My mom stayed home with us and helped Nonni with the books occasionally. It was my pop and nonni who were eyeing Gannon and me up to be the heirs apparent.”
“How did you go from a family construction company to TV?”
Cat grinned, dumping a box of frozen Snickers into the cart. “That was my brilliant idea. When Pop died, the company was already barely scraping by. The economy sucked. No one was building or buying, and we were within months of closing the doors for good. It would have crushed Nonni. Everything they’d worked for, only to lose Pop and the business in the same year?” She shook her head.
“What did you do?”
“I got this crazy idea in the middle of the night—none of us were sleeping back then. The next morning, I took a video camera to the job site and shot some footage of Gannon arguing with me, some demo. And I sent it off to the network. Two months later we got a call, and here we are.”
“You seem like you’re cut out for the work.” Noah pointed at the popsicles, and Cat tossed him a box.
“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”
“That’s how I meant it. You’re very comfortable in front of the camera and very competent behind it.”
“Well aren’t you just full of compliments today?” Cat mused.
“I feel like I may have misjudged you. Slightly,” Noah admitted.
“Oh, you mean when you accused me of kidnapping your daughter and called me an ambulance chaser?”
Noah grimaced. He’d been an ass. There was no excuse for it.
“Hey, can we get some donuts, too?” he asked, changing the subject.
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Loaded down with six bags of groceries and beer, they trudged across the parking lot. Noah looked down Peppermint Lane, the street that bisected Main. He shook his head.
“You know, by now we’d have already started decorating the street lights downtown,” he sighed.
Cat stopped and looked into the festive-less dark with him. “This year will be different, but that doesn’t have to mean worse.”
He sighed. “It’s more than just the traditions or the ornaments we’ve had for half a century. This time of year was really the only fun that I remember as a kid. Seeing it dark like this?” he shook his head. “It’s like we’re limping into the holidays.”
Cat sighed heavily. “I was saving this as a surprise mainly to piss you off.”
“What?”
“Follow me.”
She led him over to a box truck parked on the outskirts of Trailer Town and put her bags down. She climbed onto the back gate of the truck and flipped the lever. Grabbing the handle, she shoved the rolling door up.
“Are those—”
“Light up pole mount-ready reindeer with red noses,” she confirmed.
Noah was speechless. A passing comment, an opportunity to get under his skin, and Cat had jumped on it. “You’re diabolical and very generous at the same time.”
She shoved her hands in her pockets and looked at the neatly stacked decorations. “I am, aren’t I? So, you want to put them up?”