A Winter Wedding(28)

“And there’s that old flame who’s standing in the way. What’s her name?”

He wished he’d never mentioned Olivia. Maybe if he stopped acknowledging how he felt about her—even to himself—he’d stop missing her, wanting her. “There’s no one else.”

“I’m talking about the one who’s married to your stepbrother,” she said.

“I know. Let’s forget about her.”

“Sure. No problem. And I understand what you’re saying about options. I come from a small town, too, remember? Angel’s Camp isn’t all that different from Whiskey Creek. But three years...” She whistled. “Go to a bigger place every once in a while, why don’t you?”

“Maybe if I were in my twenties, I would. At thirty-eight? Don’t you think going out just to get laid would be a little...shallow?”

“Yeah. Don’t listen to me,” she said. “I’m drunk.”

“Precisely why I’m not taking anything you say to heart. Besides, it’s not only because of Olivia that I don’t do more about that area of my life. I don’t like putting myself in uncomfortable situations.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Sex makes you uncomfortable? I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

He rolled his eyes. “No. It’s expectations that make me uncomfortable, and nothing creates expectations like sex. The last girl I was with—in that way—”

“Three years ago,” she broke in.

“Yes. We’ve established that.”

She shook her head. “It’s just hard to believe.”

He ignored that. “Anyway, this woman tattooed my name on her arm after we’d been seeing each other for only two weeks.”

“You must be good,” she said with a laugh.

“She couldn’t have been all there.”

Lourdes made a clicking sound with her tongue. “You seem to bring out the crazy in a woman.”

“Fortunately there’s no danger of bringing out the crazy in you.”

“True.” She grimaced. “Derrick’s already done that.”

Although he wasn’t pleased that Noelle had gone inside his house when he wasn’t home, he was hungry, and the food smelled good...

“There’s lemon chicken in the oven,” Lourdes said when she noticed that his attention had shifted to the food.

“I love lemon chicken.”

“She made all your favorites.”

That softened the blow of knowing she had access to his house, as it was probably intended to do, since Noelle hadn’t gone to any great pains to hide it. How would she have explained being able to get the food inside had Lourdes not been staying with him?

She’d say he’d forgotten to lock the door, which he occasionally did, since he worked close by and there was so little crime in the area. “I should package this up and drop it off at her place,” he said. “Eating it will only encourage her to do this again.”

“But it saves you from cooking, doesn’t it? And maybe she’ll just think you’re even. You helped her, and she repaid you.”

“That’s a positive way to look at it.”

“We shouldn’t let this go to waste.”

She was hungry—and so was he. “You have a point,” he said. “I rarely get any home cooking these days.” And he got even less now that he was avoiding Sunday dinners with his family. “Should we dive in?”

She rounded the table and pulled out a chair. “I was afraid you’d never ask.”

He chuckled. “You read a private note and nearly polished off the wine, but you didn’t feel you could eat without me?”

“I didn’t want to go too far,” she said with an impish grin.

She was cute in spite of her dishevelment. Derrick had to be a fool, Kyle thought as he got the lemon chicken out of the oven. Lourdes had said Derrick was forty. What could twenty-three-year-old Crystal possibly have to say that he’d find interesting?

“Do you have any plans tonight?” she asked.

He’d hoped to go out and do something, even if he had to do it alone. He hesitated to spend too much time with Lourdes. But she didn’t seem to be in the best shape...

“No, I’ll stay here and drink with you.”

“Great,” she said. “Pour me another glass.”

*

By ten, they were both drunk. And laughing. Kyle wasn’t sure why everything seemed to be so funny, but he hadn’t let go like this in ages. They challenged each other to card games like Speed and War. They played beer pong. They even competed in feats of strength, including arm wrestling, which she’d insisted, for some strange reason, that she could win, which was laughable, since she couldn’t even put up much of a fight. Kyle couldn’t remember when, exactly, they’d put on a movie, but when he woke up, it was almost three in the morning, they were lying on the floor with a pillow and a blanket—and Lourdes was asleep on his shoulder.

He felt a jolt of panic when he found her in his arms—until he realized they were still dressed.

“Hey,” Kyle said, waking her. “It’s late. We’d better get to bed.”

When she looked up at him, he felt an unexpected tenderness. For someone so famous, she wasn’t remotely arrogant. And, even though her hair was a mess and he hadn’t seen her in anything more stylish than her baggy sweats, he found her no less attractive than when she’d gotten out of her rental car that first day.