2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series) Read online

  “Hello?” a faraway voice called out to her.

  Damn you, big bumbling fingers!

  “Catherine?”

  Her heart started beating double-time. Of course it was him. “Brown Eyed Girl” was his song for her and so she’d made it her ringtone for him. She’d always hated her brown eyes, wishing she had a more unique shade of blue or green or blue-green—basically anything less shit colored. But Fynn always made her feel special, even sang that song to her during karaoke when his sister insisted on that as her birthday outing, saying her gift was getting to watch him suffer.

  “I can hear you breathing,” he said plainly, a slight uptick of frustration noticeable.

  She quickly held her breath and debated hanging up the phone. She wasn’t ready to talk to him. She wasn’t sharp enough straight out of sleep, or even certain of what she wanted or needed to say. Her head was too foggy and her eyes, well, she was blind.

  “Seriously?” Fynn asked. “You have nothing more to say? Shit is going to be your last word to me?”

  “Excuse me?” she played dumb, wishing her voice sounded less I-just-woke-up and more I’m-trying-to-place-where-I-know-you-from (considering all the other men who’d been calling her since the breakup).

  “I was returning your call,” he said, enunciating slowly and firmly. “I just got in.”

  That one hit below the belt. Just got in? I’ll see that and raise you…. Thinking as quickly as her sluggish mind would allow, she said, “Hold on a second, I was in the shower and I had to run for the phone. I’m dripping wet.” Take that! She hoped picturing her naked would be like a knife to his gut, just like imagining what he’d done last night was doing to her. Where the hell did he go? Who was he with all night? Did he up and screw the first girl he saw? The thought just about killed her even though she had given him—both of them—license to do just that. Too bad she hadn’t thought of doing it. She pulled the phone from her ear for thirty seconds, the longest seconds ever, and then put it back in place again. “You still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.” His voice was strained but steady.

  “How are you doing?” she asked, cringing in expectation of the answer. That damn Catherine Marie and her automatic pleasantries. This was not the time for such things. There was only one good answer to this question: I’m miserable, thanks for asking.

  “How do you think I’m doing?” He sounded surly now.

  “I don’t know how you’re doing. You seemed fine with being alone this weekend… and there you are, alone,” she jabbed smartly, going back to the original point that had set her off in the first place—a dangerous move.

  “Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I—”

  “Listen, I just called to find out why you called since you didn’t leave a message. Unless ‘shit’ is the message,” he said, cutting her off. Obviously, on second thought, he’d decided he was uninterested in what she meant.

  “I guess I must have butt-called you.” She tried to say it lightly, reining in the animosity that was percolating because he sounded so completely pissed off. She could feel her breathing going a little wonky with the lie, and she could hear Catherine Marie in her head, scolding her for playing games rather than just coming clean.

  “What?”

  “I had my phone in my pocket. My ass must have dialed when I wasn’t looking,” she snorted, something she found embarrassing but he for some reason had always found endearing.

  “Well, I guess that’s it then.” No mingled humor in his words. No smile in his voice. He just sounded ready to end the conversation.

  Okay, so he used to find me endearing.

  It seemed that he wasn’t going to make this easy. She would have hoped that by now he would understand she could be totally irrational at times—like the other day when she dumped him. It was the B-side of her passionate personality.

  “Have a nice life, Catherine Hemmings,” he said, his voice suddenly as warm and buttery as ever.

  “That’s not fair,” she pointed out quickly before he could hang up. He knew what that voice did to her. She felt it through her whole body.

  “I don’t think you should be the one crying foul right now.”

  She could hear the hurt, smothered in buttery goodness. She checked her frustration and tried to sound magnanimous and normal. “I’m glad you called me back,” she said quickly, putting herself out there just far enough—using glad to sound appropriately interested but not desperate. Dealing with relationships was a chess game of intonations and inflections and carefully chosen words.

  Silence greeted her, like maybe he’d already hung up.

  “I mean, what if you were my one call from jail or something,” she snorted nervously again.

  “Well, considering we are worlds apart, I should hardly be your one and only.” He let the words she’d used against him dangle there in the miles between them.

  “Touché,” she said simply, allowing him the direct hit and swallowing back the certain dread that was rising in her throat. He wasn’t one of those boyfriends you could yank in and out of a relationship. Fynn wasn’t into dating games. She took a deep breath and tried to plow on. “How was your New Year’s?”

  “Seriously?” Cold and abrupt.

  “Yeah, I mean, I thought we could still talk. I thought we could be friends—”

  “You want to be pen pals? Is that what you want?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I wanted to—I was rea—” he stopped, frustration oozing through the phone like a physical presence. “Listen, I don’t need any more friends.”

  “But I don’t want to lose you completely,” she practically whined.

  “You just don’t want to see me anymore.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Then what exactly does breaking up mean in your world, Cat?” he asked icily.

  The tone, his words, totally shattered her. He didn’t call her Cat. He never called her that. Her friends called her Cat. But isn’t that what she was asking him for? Friendship? “I just asked a simple, civilized question,” she said piteously.

  “Oh!” he exclaimed, drawing it out like it was a revelation. “My New Year’s—my whole weekend—was absolute crap. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “No.” She felt her lips begin to tremble. Actually, she did want to hear that; she just felt bad that she had caused it. “You were out all last night… it couldn’t have been that bad,” she pointed out, undisguised fishing.

  “I was at my sister’s. Babysitting my nephews so she and Klein could go out.”

  “Oh.” She felt like a total heel. But she was also incredibly relieved to banish the thoughts of him entwined in some other woman’s arms and legs and—

  “What did you expect I would have been doing? Up until Friday I had a girlfriend I really cared about. Love doesn’t go away that fast. Especially not when you’re blindsided by the end.”

  The silence was hers this time as she weighed her courage and strength to say what needed to be said. This was the moment to fix things if that was what she truly wanted. She looked at the pictures on the end table, her tired eyes finally able to focus on the truth before her: there was love in those frames—friends, family, Fynn—while the flesh and blood Catherine was adrift. The past forty hours had been torture.

  “You have nothing to say?” he prodded.

  “I knew I was wrong the moment it came out of my mouth,” she admitted in a rush, remembering the overwhelming feeling of emptiness that had suddenly overcome her when she let him go.

  “Then why didn’t you say something right then?” he asked plainly.

  “Because I’m—”

  “Stubborn?” he offered. “Hardheaded?”

  “Because I was an idiot,” she said lowly, embarrassed and yet feeling a sense of relief sweep through as Fynn’s voice softened into a cautious version of the good-humored tone she knew him for.

  “It completely blew my mind how yo
u could—I mean, I thought everything was fine between us. Great in fact,” he said seriously.

  “It was—it is,” she said hopefully.

  “Then why would you put on the brakes? Why would you try to see other people? Did you meet someone?”

  “No. It’s not that. Not at all,” she assured him quickly.

  “Because you get what you get with me, Catherine. If you’re interested in someone else, then you should go ahead, but I won’t wait here on the other end for you to figure it out. I don’t need to date around. I know what I want.” His words were absolutely liquid.

  She felt tingling warmth spread through her, knowing she was the only one in his sights.

  “So what is it you want?” he asked earnestly.

  “I want to see you. What time is it?” she asked breathlessly, his words like kisses against her skin.

  “It’s eight.”

  “Your time or mine?”

  “You know I always speak to you in your time so you don’t get confused,” he said, and she could hear the smile on his lips.

  “And you know I always ask.” God, she wanted to tackle him right through the phone. She ran through the mental calculations—how long it would take to get to the airport, to Minnesota, into his bed.

  “Catherine,” he warned, “I can hear your mind churning.”

  He knew her completely and it was terrifying and exciting all at once. “I want to come see you. I’ll take whatever flight I can get,” she said excitedly, new life filling her to bursting. “I’ll call you when I land so you can get your new girlfriend out of the house before I get there.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Are you serious? After the other night, are you sure that’s what you want?” He sounded tentative, like he was feeling out a crazy person.

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “It’s just another wild swing. Maybe it would be better—”

  “Fynn, I was just frustrated and annoyed, and I’d been running myself ragged to reach the airport… and then to have the flight canceled; it just seemed like everything was purposely in my way the other day. Like fate was putting up obstacles.”

  “Fate?”

  “I know. It’s ridiculous. I guess I just lost it because you didn’t seem to be that upset when you found out I couldn’t make it for the New Year.”

  “What was I going to do, stomp around and spit nails and rail against God himself?”

  “Maybe,” she said, thinking that was exactly what she’d done. She wished he had been that mad. Sometimes his overly rational and laid-back acceptance of what was out of his control was unnerving. Especially when she was so impassioned about everything from getting her Quarter Pounder meal and finding she’d gotten stiffed out of the second slice of cheese, to getting splashed with muddy water by a passing cab. Or missing the elevator that would have gotten her to work under the wire…. Or any number of other mundane things. In her mind, if he really cared at all about her, he would have been irate about the weather coming between them. So she’d freaked out a teensy bit. It wasn’t pretty, but it was the truth.

  “Listen, I wanted to spend New Year’s Eve with you. I have the champagne in a bucket of lukewarm water as we speak. It was already chilling when I heard the flight was canceled.”

  She felt the smile spread on her face. “I wish you’d told me.”

  “It was going to be a surprise. When I knew you couldn’t make it I was taking it in stride for you. I didn’t want you doing something crazy—”

  “What? Like dumping you?” she prodded jokingly, cringing that perhaps it was too soon.

  “Like hopping in the car and driving here,” he said gravely. “I didn’t want you on the road in all the snow…. Getting dumped? I never saw that coming.”

  “And I didn’t mean it.”

  “You sure sounded convincing.”

  “I spent seven years of my life as a teenage girl. We specialize in creating drama.”

  “Good to know,” he said grimly, and she wondered if he was thinking about dealing with her or the coming years with Cara.

  “So can I come for a visit?”

  “Only if you plan to make the last couple days up to me, several times over.”

  She felt the blood rushing to her nether regions. “I can do that.”

  “You know, I actually considered hopping in my truck with Magnus and coming to you for New Year’s.”

  “You did?” she swooned.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Then why didn’t you?” she challenged, thinking it would have saved them both a heap of trouble.

  “Because you’re fucking crazy,” he jabbed.

  “It’s not like I hid that from you. That much was obvious from the day I met you,” she said, quite seriously, reminding him that he had chosen to take up with the girl who barreled into his life last spring with a ridiculous request and then hounded him for a week until he gave in, only to decide she didn’t so much need what she’d been stalking him for. Actually, when she looked at it that way, it made it seem like this whole breakup episode was really just par for the Catherine course.

  Monday, January 3rd

  -11-

  The Christmas decorations that had turned Nekoyah into a little gingerbread town for the entire month of December (cute enough to eat) had been taken down since she was here last week. But the town was still beautiful all dressed in white, the snow fresh and clean rather than that gray it seemed to turn the very moment it hit the ground in New York. Even the fact that it was butt-ass cold couldn’t spoil this morning. She was immune, snuggled in her warmest coat and the proper snow boots Fynn had bought for her and left by the door on Christmas morning right next to his. They were actually her first true snow boots since she’d worn Moon Boots knockoffs when she was little in Pennsylvania. For some reason once she’d grown out of the snow fort and snowball stage, she’d moved on to boots with heels and cool buckles and faux fur trims—nothing suitable for walking in actual snow—certainly nothing suitable for a Nekoyah winter.

  He took care of her.

  She felt that tide of love rush over her again, just as it had at the airport yesterday when Fynn met her with that devilish grin on his face that reminded her how lucky she was that he was the levelheaded and rational one. Someone in this relationship had to be. If he was as crazed as she was, he never would have called her back. Shit! would have been the end of it. Nothing more between them. Nada. Zip. Zingo.

  “White Christmas” startled Catherine out of her thoughts. Tara. She would have to find a new offensive ringtone for the New Year—payback for Tara using “Jumper” for Catherine’s calls, like she was suicidal about still being unmarried. Hardly. And it wasn’t like she was single; she was in limbo—phew, dodged a bullet there. Thank God Tara hadn’t heard the news that broke over the weekend or Catherine would never hear the end of it, especially after Tara had worked so hard to get the two of them together in the first place. But that was old news now; after yesterday and last night and this morning, she was taken—over and over again.

  “When are you coming in?” Tara asked—no hi, hello, or how do you do.

  “Shit!” This seemed to be her new go-to greeting.

  “Don’t tell me. You’re not coming in,” Tara groused.

  “I—” It’s Monday? She had literally forgotten she had a job to go to; Fynn had screwed her silly. “Could you—”

  “No, I will not put your vacation in for you. I’m coming over to drag your sorry ass out of bed.”

  “But I’m stuck—”

  “Let me guess, you’ve fallen and you can’t get up?” Tara snickered.

  “Not exactly.” Catherine eyed an empty spot at the curb and pulled into it.

  “Ooh, Cat, it’s bad enough that you spent New Year’s Eve at your parents’ house; don’t tell me you’re still there.”

  What? Had she still been driving she would have slammed on the brakes. What the hell did Tara know about
her weekend? She hadn’t spoken to her since Thursday.

  “You are still there!” Tara charged. “I can’t believe you crawled home to Mommy and Da—”

  “It was a party, Tara,” she stressed, wondering how she knew about it at all—she was probably invited too—all my friends were.

  “A party of old people.”

  “It was better than sitting alone in my apartment for New Year’s Eve.”

  “And whose fault would that have been?” Tara prodded.

  “Um… Mother Nature,” Catherine pointed out patronizingly.

  “Oh, there you go blaming the snow!”

  “My flight was canceled because of the snow,” she enunciated carefully.

  “But the snow didn’t break you two up—”

  Huh? Her face screwed up in a question mark for no one’s benefit. Her mother was the only one who knew about that. And her dad. And Fynn, of course…. And anyone he told—God, I hope he didn’t tell anyone. Catherine had purposely left her friends out of that loop. Georgia was in her own little world these days, tiny human beings garnering all her attention. And Tara would just tell her to get back on the horse—any old horse would do—and ride away. A good screw solved everything as far as she was concerned.

  “Your silence is your guilt,” Tara said simply, sounding like she was speaking mid-bite, probably using her morning donut time to give her a beat-down.

  “We didn’t break up.” Catherine attempted conviction but it came out as more of a whine.