Cat gave a snort. “He’s wrong. I’m right, and he’s too thickheaded to grasp that. And speaking of the thickheaded, stubborn ass, can we have a PA get in touch with him?”

Paige looked up from her notes. “Why? So, you can deliver him a message of insults?”

“With ratings like that, I guarantee we’re going to be looking at an influx of volunteers. And while we could use the help, I don’t want Mr. No over there at City Hall scaring them off with the ‘we don’t need anyone’ spiel if they call him instead of us. We need all the hands we can get if we’re going to make this park festival-worthy by Christmas Eve.”

“I’ll pick a PA to be point of contact and volunteer coordinator,” Paige agreed. “We can get the number to Noah and his secretary so if anyone does call they’ll at least know where to forward them.”

Noah felt a new rush of annoyance. She wasn’t supposed to identify problems and fix them for him. He was supposed to be able to throw them in her face and then make her fix them.

He realized he was being petty and his behavior bore an unfortunate similarity to that of his pre-teen daughter when provoked. But Cat didn’t exactly bring out the best in him.

“Now, here’s something interesting,” Paige said, pulling the cap down over her ears. “Literally fifty percent of all Instagram comments on the posts from episode one want to know if you and Drake are back together.”

Noah held his breath and then immediately released it. What did he care who Cat dated? Or whatever. But still, he couldn’t quite seem to get himself to interrupt them.

“I figured,” Cat sighed. “I’ll talk to Drake first, but we’ll probably go with vague no comments for now. Might drum up some more interest.”

Noah cringed. What did that mean? Were they together or not?

“We could take a few behind-the-scenes pics of you guys staring deeply into each other’s eyes,” the woman on Cat’s left suggested.

“You’re coming along nicely, Jayla,” Cat teased. “Almost as diabolical as me.”

“I love learning from the masters,” Jayla grinned, pulling her gloves off to attack the bagel in her lap.

“Run it by Drake,” Paige agreed. “Okay, moving on...”

Noah debated whether he should crash their meeting or just skulk on back to his office

“Crap. One more thing,” Cat said, when Paige started to pack up her notes. “Do we have any room in the budget for a new roof?”

“How big?” Paige asked.

“Huge and inconvenient. Town Hall is a hot mess. While Yates was bitching at me about our generosity and great ideas, I couldn’t help but notice the half dozen buckets sitting around to catch leaks.”