Page 14 of Catching My Dreams

“Ooh, Christmas with her family,” Ella teased. “Things must be getting serious.”

Becca’s cheeks tinged a pretty pink. “Yeah, they are.” She was too cute.

Ella slouched in her chair. “I guess I’ll be spending Christmas with my gran while you two have amazing holiday sex with your significant others then.”

“Holiday sex?” Becca asked with a snicker.

“False,” Jasmine was quick to interject. “You know there won’t be any of that funny business with me and Mark.”

“Right.” Ella sometimes forgot that the woman was waiting for marriage. It wasn’t something she’d ever wanted for herself, but she admired Jasmine and Mark for sticking to their beliefs. “Just some regular holiday smooching for you.”

“And how is holiday smooching different from normal smooching?” Jasmine asked.

“So many ways,” Ella sighed. “I don’t have time to get into them all.”

Becca chuckled. “Sure.”

“Can we please stop saying smooching?” Jasmine gestured to Ella’s nails. “I see green is the color of the week,” she said, changing the topic.

Ella put down her coffee and held out her hands. “Yep. It was between this and a burgundy.” She wiggled her fingers happily.

A scoff sounded behind her, and Ella’s fingers froze mid-dance. She would know that scoff anywhere. She gritted her teeth and turned in her chair, her gaze landing on Satan himself.

“You really know how to hold scintillating conversations, don’t you, Montgomery?”

God, Ella hated him. She hated that smug smirk and that unfairly gorgeous face. Someone so abhorrent shouldn’t be allowed to have warm blue eyes that made her think of tropical beaches and bright summer skies or soft brown hair that was the perfect length to run her fingers through while he—

Nope, not going there.

Ella resisted standing up and slapping that smirk right off his face. “Noah, what a wonderfully awful surprise. Back early from clubbing some baby seals?”

A twitch of his eyes was the only indication that her words had affected him. “And here I thought that was your job. Kill any puppies on the way to get your nails done?”

She sent him a scathing glare. “I forgot that in your mind, anyone brazen enough to get a manicure is shallow and unworthy of being in your good graces.”

“Just the ones who keep getting weekly manicures when their best friend has gone missing,” he retorted, his words so much more effective and sharp than hers could ever be.

Ella couldn’t hold back her flinch, and for a second, Noah almost looked guilty, but the look was so fleeting she was sure she must have imagined it.

“Noah,” Chris said tiredly from where he stood beside his friend. “Just leave it.”

Ella shook her head. “No. Let him say what he came here to say. It’s not like he can do anything worse than he already has. Right, Noah?”

Noah narrowed those deceitfully stunning eyes. He already had a height and size advantage when she was standing, but with her sitting in front of him, she felt miniscule, insignificant.

“What exactly did I do that was so bad?” he asked challengingly.

Ella glowered. If he thought she’d admit that he’d managed to manipulate his way into her bed in front of Chris and her friends, he was crazier than she thought.

“You know what you did,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

“I really don’t,” he disagreed, looking as cool as a cucumber while she was close to losing it.

A part of her wanted to blurt it out, to see how everyone would react if she admitted he’d lied about wanting her, slept with her, and not ten minutes later revealed his true intentions before calling it a mistake. But it would be too humiliating.

She couldn’t face other people knowing she’d wanted him so badly she’d ignored the fact that he’d called her a selfish bitch before he’d kissed her, that he’d made her forget that he’d never shown her even a hint of anything other than disdain before that moment.

She was so stupid.

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