Free The Christmas Bouquet by Sherryl Woods

she said. “Is that part of your tactic these days?”
    “I didn’t know I needed a tactic,” he claimed innocently.
    “You’ve been closeted with my grandfather for close to an hour. Only a fool would believe there weren’t tactics being discussed, no matter how you’d like me to believe otherwise.”
    Now it was Noah’s turn to laugh. “I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
    The game, if he wanted to think of it that way, was just beginning.

5
    “W ell, we got out of town without a shotgun wedding,” Caitlyn remarked to Noah when they finally had some time to sit down and talk. Their schedules had been so hectic once they were back at the hospital and on duty that they’d barely crossed paths for the past week. He’d even slept at his own place or in the on-call room at the hospital. That should have been a relief since it had postponed any serious discussions, but her bed had felt awfully lonely without him.
    Noah grinned. “I’m not sure I see that as a good thing. I half wonder if it’s not going to take something as dramatic as that to get you down the aisle.”
    Caitlyn frowned at him. “Pressure’s not helping,” she remarked. Even though Nell’s words and the reassurances from her mother had helped, she still wasn’t ready to take the plunge into a marriage she wasn’t convinced would be best for her and Noah both. And a marriage license under those circumstances would not guarantee the best life for their child, either.
    With time on her hands, she’d spent the afternoon trying to master Nell’s recipe for Irish stew and thought she’d finally gotten it. She spooned it into bowls and set it on the kitchen table in the small apartment that she’d made cozy with mismatched castoffs from a variety of O’Brien homes. A bouquet of daffodils that reminded her of home sat in the middle of the old oak table.
    “Try this,” she said, still standing. “I think it might be a huge improvement over last time. Of course, it was probably a mistake to make it so soon after you had Nell’s. I doubt there’s any comparison.”
    Noah took a taste, while she watched him nervously.
    “It’s good,” he said slowly, then grinned. “Very good, in fact. You might have a very limited repertoire of recipes, but we won’t die of starvation.”
    Her expression brightened at his teasing. “Seriously, Noah? It’s actually good?”
    “Would I lie to you?”
    “If you thought it would put me in a good mood, you might,” she said. “You are anxious to get your own way, after all.”
    “Sweetheart, if I thought praising your cooking would do the trick, I wouldn’t be in the kitchen cooking most of our meals myself when I’m over here.”
    She frowned at his attempt at humor. “You’re losing ground, pal.” Then she couldn’t help chuckling. “Okay, I now have one edible dish I can safely prepare for company. It’s better than last week, when I had none.”
    She joined him at the table and took her own first bite of the stew, then sat back in astonishment. “Wow! It really is good.”
    “I told you.”
    She sipped her water and peered at Noah over the rim of her glass. “We haven’t had a chance to talk about the weekend. Or maybe I should say you’ve been pretty evasive whenever I’ve asked.” She gave him a stern look. “No more, Noah. I want to know what you and my grandfather discussed while I was in the kitchen with Gram. I doubt it was sports. Other than knowing there are football and baseball teams in Baltimore, you don’t know enough to hold your own in that conversation.”
    “Hey, I play basketball.”
    She rolled her eyes. “With a bunch of medical residents, who are equally clueless about other sports. When I mentioned the Ravens to Mike Hardesty, he thought I’d gone bird-watching.”
    “He did not,” Noah said. “He was just pulling your leg.”
    “I’m telling you the man didn’t have a clue.” She waved off the subject. “Not the point. I want to know what you