The Scars That Make Us (Second Generation Book 3)

Chapter 24

CATARINA

“CATTY CAKES!!!!”

I have to pull the phone away from my ear at Nola’s screeching voice from the other end. She is acting like we haven’t spoken in years, but in fact we just talked two days ago and we have a constant text thread going. Granted that is mostly memes, but that’s still communicating. Kind of. 

“Seriously, Nola? You are going to ruin my hearing.”

“Sorry, babe, I’m just in such a good mood, and then you called and when I saw your name on the caller ID I remembered that in a week I’m going to see your stinking beautiful face and I got caught up with the excitement.”

“Well, when you put it that way, you’re excused from your craziness. God, I miss your pretty face too. How did your presentation go today?”

She groans a bit and I know this might end up being a long story. Nola has worked with the same consulting company since we graduated college and she’s constantly being paired with men in the office that don’t respect her talents. I suspect that they know she’s talented, but they don’t want to admit that she has good ideas so they just do the opposite or go behind her back to take credit for her ideas.

“It wasn’t horrible, except I’m pretty sure Bill fell asleep halfway through the presentation. That can’t be good, right?”

“Maybe they’ll see that you don’t need to be paired up with these old losers anymore?”

“Doubtful. Anyway, I don’t know. The big man is going to have his comments regarding our presentation on Monday so I guess we will see what he says. Bill is already bitching that I’m leaving for a week at the end of the week and another week between Christmas and New Years’. Meh, whatever, he can suck it.”

“That’s the spirit!”

“Alright, enough about me, how’s that hunk of cowboy doing?”

“He’s good. Working hard right now. I told you that they were going to be working on the basement at Mitch and Brielle’s right?”

“Uh-huh, making it into kind of a little apartment for Clemmy?”

“Yeah, so all the guys have been working on the ranch and then going over there and working there until dinner. I didn’t realize how handy they were. Even the guys who don’t do the manual labor have been over there.”

“Is my future ex-husband there?”

“Preston is not leaving his wife for you, Nola, give it up.”

She blows a raspberry into the phone in disgust, but she’s not being serious. Preston was on the ranch a couple of the days that we were doing different activities and she totally fell in lust over him. Nola is a giant flirt to every person in the universe, so there is nothing purposeful about it, she doesn’t REALLY want him, but she’s never once turned down a chance to talk about a hot guy.

“I don’t know what they put in the water here, but it has to be something. I swear I’m surrounded by hot men and sexy women. And these young kids? They’re all on their way to being great looking kids too. None of those awkward teenage years here.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I know.”

“I have one more surprise for you.”

“Oo, I love surprises.”

“So I talked to Sasha because she was asking me about my plus 1 and...well she was asking about you as well, but I’ll come back to that. Anywho, she asked who I was bringing at my plus 1 and I was thinking of just telling her nevermind that I’m just going to come with me, myself, and I, but Zach and I had coffee the other day and I told him I was coming here and he asked if he could tag along.”