A Winter Wedding by Brenda Novak
1
“Your ex-wife is on the phone again.”
Kyle Houseman squeezed his eyes shut and massaged his forehead. There were few people in the world he considered as difficult as Noelle.
Actually, he couldn’t think of one.
“Did you hear me?” Morgan Thorpe, his assistant, stood at the entrance to his office wearing an impatient frown. Noelle (who still used his last name, which bothered him, since they’d been together for only a year) hadn’t been able to reach him on his cell. She’d tried three times in the past fifteen minutes and he’d let it go to voice mail. So she’d called his business line, which he’d specifically asked her not to do. He didn’t like the way she aired her complaints about him—and everything else—to anyone who’d listen.
His employees didn’t like it, either.
“I heard,” he replied.
“Are you going to take her call? Because if I have to talk to her again, I’m going to tell her exactly what I think of her.”
He gave Morgan a look to make sure she understood that would be a mistake. At forty-five, she wasn’t old enough to be his mother, but she often took a maternal approach with him, probably because she’d been working for him since he started First Step Solar. He’d hired her the same week she came out of the closet and moved in with her partner, who was as soft-spoken as Morgan was bold. “No, you’re not.”
“Why?” she cried. “Noelle’s a terrible person! She deserves whatever she gets!”
“We were once married. We still live in the same small town. We can figure out some way to get along.”
She rolled her eyes. “If it’s that easy, why are you avoiding her?”
She had a point. Dodging Noelle’s calls wouldn’t do him any good, anyway. She’d just track him down at his house or even a restaurant, if she had to. She did that kind of thing all the time—to plead for an advance on his spousal maintenance, a “small loan” to prevent her utilities from being turned off or money to get her car repaired. Once, she’d even asked him for five hundred bucks to go toward fixing her boob job (apparently, her body kept rejecting the implants, but instead of having them removed, she kept trying to make them work). It didn’t seem to matter that none of that was his responsibility anymore.
“Put her through,” he said with a sigh.
“That woman is insufferable. I don’t know how you tolerate her,” Morgan grumbled as she left.
He didn’t, either.
He glanced at the light blinking on his desk phone. Surely Noelle would find someone else and get remarried. He wished that would happen soon. It would save him $2,500 a month, not to mention the relief of not having to deal with her anymore. But he’d been wishing that for the past five years, ever since the divorce. He was beginning to suspect that as long as she had him to pay a hefty chunk of her monthly bills, she’d be unlikely to tie the knot with someone else. She wasn’t the type to part with a freebie. Besides, she saw his financial support as punishment for the fact that he’d never been able to love her—and, truth be told, he saw it in the same light. That was why he’d agreed to that amount and why he helped her out as often as he did. Guilt demanded it.
“Someday,” he muttered as he picked up.
“Someday what?” Noelle asked.
Someday he’d be rid of her. But he couldn’t say that. “Nothing. What’s going on? Why have you been blowing up my phone?”
“Why are you ignoring my calls?” she countered.
“Because I can’t think of any reason you’d need to talk to me. We are divorced, remember? And with all the money I’ve given you over the past few years—in the past several months alone—I’m a good six months ahead in my payments. That pretty much leaves you with no excuse.”
“It’s my water heater,” she said.
“Your what?”
“My water heater.”
She’d found something new to complain about? “What’s wrong with it?”
“It went out on me. I can’t take a shower or do laundry or dishes. I don’t have any hot water.”
He rocked back in his chair. “Then...shouldn’t you be looking up a plumber instead of bothering your ex-husband?”
“Why are you being rude? I’m calling because you happen to own a solar manufacturing plant. Can’t you give me a deal on a solar system? So I can get my hot water bill down?”
“I manufacture photovoltaic panels, Noelle. They run air conditioners and other electrical appliances. Anything that requires gas is a whole separate thing.” They’d been married, for God’s sake, and she still didn’t understand what he did for a living?
“You have connections for hot water systems, too. You put one in for Brandon and Olivia’s neighbor.”
Why had they told her he’d done that? “Mrs. Stein is nearly eighty and she lost her husband a year ago. I saw that she got a deal. That’s all.”
“You bought it from the manufacturer at wholesale and let her have it at cost. And your photovoltaic installers put it in for her.”
“Because she could use the break. Brandon asked me to help her out. Occasionally, I do favors like that for my brother.”