A Winter Wedding(30)
“We don’t have any groceries to speak of,” Lourdes said. “I checked. Unless you want to eat leftover lemon chicken and rice pilaf for breakfast, you’re going to have to go to the store.”
He should’ve done that last night and would have, if Noelle hadn’t surprised him with dinner. He’d brought the wine from work—a gift one of his vendors had sent him for Christmas—and stopped by to see what Lourdes wanted to eat. But with food on the table, going out again hadn’t been necessary. “For both of us?”
“I’ll contribute to the cost. The shopping is on you. I don’t want to be seen, remember?”
He winced against the hangover that had asserted itself the moment he opened his eyes. “Don’t worry about paying for groceries. It’s the least I can do to compensate you for the inconvenience of having to move in here. But how can you talk so loudly? Isn’t your head killing you?”
“Fortunately, I had some ibuprofen in my purse, because there doesn’t seem to be any painkiller in your cupboards.”
“I doubt I’ve ever bought any. I can’t remember the last time I needed it.”
“Well, I can tell you need it now. And, after last night, I guessed you might wake up feeling a bit off, so I set a glass and two tablets on the counter for you right there.” She indicated the spot before going back to whatever she was doing on her computer.
It was thoughtful of her to anticipate his need...
“So...is this a good sign?” he asked after he’d swallowed them. “Is this you getting back to work?”
“No, this is me fulfilling my promise to you. Since we only have three months, I thought I’d better get started. Plus, it gave me a reason to get out of bed this morning.”
“There’s always that album you have to write.”
“Stop reminding me,” she grumbled. “You’re only adding to the pressure.”
He definitely didn’t want to do that... “I take it you haven’t heard from Derrick.”
“Actually, I have. He texted me at six this morning to say I’m being unreasonable.”
Which brought up the question—what was Derrick doing last night? Lourdes didn’t volunteer that she had any concerns on the subject, so he didn’t mention it. Kyle did wonder, however, if that brief message from Derrick would be enough to change the situation. Maybe she wouldn’t stay. Maybe she’d go back to Nashville to fight for her man. “And you responded...how?”
“I haven’t. I figure if he can let me stew for a day, I should have the same privilege.”
He smiled at her. “You’re talking tough this morning.”
She pinched her bottom lip with her fingers as she studied something on her screen. “I’m distracting myself from the pain.”
“By doing me a favor.”
“No one can write a more appealing solicitation for a dating site than I can.”
He slammed his water glass down on the counter and hurried around to the table. “Oh, no,” he said. “You’re not...”
She seemed taken aback by his displeasure. “What’s wrong? There won’t be a woman on Single Central who wouldn’t want to respond to this ad.”
“I don’t do online dating.”
“Obviously—because you’re not doing any dating. We established that last night.”
He read through what she’d written so far. “I look like Dierks Bentley? No, I don’t. Come on, don’t put that up.”
She scowled at him. “How are you ever going to get over Olivia if you won’t even try?”
“It’s not that I won’t date. It’s just that online dating seems so...desperate. Especially once you reach my age.”
“It’s not desperate, it’s practical. Especially for someone with such a limited dating pool.”
“Lourdes, no.”
“Don’t resist the very thing you need!” she argued. “You never know who you might meet. And don’t worry. I’ll help you vet the women who respond. I’ll make it easy.”
“If you think it’s so easy, why don’t you create a profile for yourself, too?” He figured that would put a quick end to it.
“I can’t,” she said. “And you know why. Besides the reaction it would cause in the media, and the gold diggers who’d step forward, I’m in love with someone else. That makes me emotionally unavailable.”
He opened his mouth, but she spoke before he could.
“The person you love has been married to your brother for nearly five years. You have to release her. It’s time.”
“But I can’t afford to get together with another woman like Noelle—someone who might be completely narcissistic and obsessive!”
She tapped her fingernails on the table as she considered this latest objection. “Granted, there’re a few horror stories connected to online dating. But there are also a lot of people who meet this way and end up living happily-ever-after. We’ll be able to spot the undesirables and weed them out.”
“It’s not that simple. If undesirables were that obvious, they wouldn’t continually screw up the lives of innocent bystanders.”
“If you look for the right qualities, it isn’t hard,” she told him. “You can’t let yourself be blinded by a pretty face, or a nice set of...well, you know.”