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

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE