A Winter Wedding (Whiskey Creek)

by Brenda Novak

  He pressed his fingers to his temples. “Don’t tell me they believed her.”

  Olivia’s expression turned to one of sympathy and concern. “I’m afraid they might have. She acted so convincing. They said they were proud she had some ‘moral fiber.’ That she didn’t need you because they’d buy her a water heater.”

  Kyle hit the table as he surged to his feet, rocking the glasses and nearly tipping them over. “That’s bullshit!”

  “Kyle!” Paige said again, but no one was paying attention to her complaints about his language.

  “Why would she say something so terrible?” Bob asked, obviously disgusted.

  “Because she’s sick in the head.” Brandon gestured that Kyle should return to his seat. “Relax, bro. We know she’s lying. She lies about everything.”

  Olivia shot her husband a wounded look, as if her loyalties were torn, and that was all Kyle could take. He was glad the two sisters had formed some type of peaceful relationship, but it was beyond belief that Olivia, who’d once known him so well and been the victim of so much of Noelle’s unkindness over the years, had bought into the crap she was saying about him.

  “There’s something seriously wrong with her,” he said and stormed out.

  14

  Kyle drove past Noelle’s house on the way home. Sure enough, the water heater was right there, dented on one side and lying on the grass for everyone to see. That meant the story Noelle was telling would be familiar to more than Olivia and her family. No doubt the neighbors had heard he was trying to get back in Noelle’s pants, and God only knew the number of people they’d told.

  Too bad Noelle didn’t have whoever helped her remove the damn heater drop it in his yard. Then he could’ve disposed of it. But she wanted to make a statement, pile on the drama.

  Typical...

  “Damn you.” He parked at the end of the street and sat there glaring at her beat-up Honda, which was in the drive. Who did she think she was? Did she really believe she had the right to malign his reputation? He’d done enough to damage his own reputation when he’d gotten involved with her six years ago.

  She destroyed every life she touched. Instead of being angry, he should be thanking God he didn’t have a child with her, he decided.

  Putting the transmission back in Drive, he rolled closer to her house. He wanted nothing more than to go and knock on her front door and tell her exactly what he thought of her. His assistant was right. He’d been far too nice. There’d been so many times he’d bitten his tongue when he’d simply wanted to tell her to get the hell out of his life. He was dying to say that now.

  But any interaction would make things worse. She was trying to engage him. So, resisting actual contact, he pulled to the curb only long enough to put the water heater in the bed of his truck. Then he waved at Prinley Pendergast, who’d come to her door across the street holding one of her children.

  When she didn’t respond, just peered out at him as if he might inflict bodily harm on her neighbor, he hopped in his truck and drove off.

  He was almost home when he got a text from Noelle. He glanced at it while he was waiting at a stop sign.

  What the hell? Did you take my water heater?

  His fingers itched to reply. But he kept driving, and when he eventually reached home and parked next to Lourdes’s rental car, he was immediately distracted by the sight of her sitting on his porch all bundled up in the snow gear he’d let her use when they cut down the tree.

  Dropping his phone in his pocket without responding to Noelle, he turned off the engine and opened his door. “Isn’t it a little cold to be sitting out on the porch?”

  “It’s California,” she said. “I’m making it work.”

  With all that down in his jacket, and his hat and gloves, he figured she wasn’t in any real danger.

  “Good to see you out of bed,” he told her, “even if it is to sit outside in the cold for no particular reason.”

  “I’m trying to reset.”

  “And that means...”

  “I’m starting over. Embracing the future.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t have any Christmas lights up,” she said, studying his eaves. “There aren’t any decorations in the yard, either.”

  “There won’t be decorations in my yard until I have kids,” he said. “No point in doing that sort of thing just for myself. I wouldn’t pay any attention to them.”

  She zipped his coat up a bit higher. “Does the same go for lights?”

  “I don’t feel as strongly about lights. If they’re important to you, we can put them up at the farmhouse.” Anything to make her feel better...

  Folding her arms, she sank back, all but disappearing into his coat. “I’m not convinced I want to go to the farmhouse.”

  He froze for a second, then locked his truck. Now that he knew Noelle had a key to his house, and she was acting vindictive, he wasn’t going to create an opportunity for her to vandalize his vehicle. He’d get the locksmith out tomorrow, as soon as he finished up with the HVAC guy over at the rental. “What does that mean?” he asked. “Have you decided to go back to Nashville?”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  He experienced more relief than he should have, which bothered him almost as much as the anger he was feeling toward Noelle. “So you’re going to Angel’s Camp? Or somewhere else?”

  “Actually, I was hoping you’d consider taking me on as a roommate.”

  He nearly dropped his keys. “You want to stay here?”

  She met him halfway down the walk. “Why not? I’ll continue paying on the lease, of course. And if we start to feel crowded or irritated with each other, or I’m not getting enough work done, I’ll move.”

  She no longer wanted to be alone.

  He was flattered that she felt she could recover with his support. But he wasn’t sure she was as safe with him as she assumed. Olivia or no Olivia, he couldn’t forget the jolt of awareness that’d hit him when Lourdes first stepped out of that rental car. And there’d been other instances when he’d felt the same attraction—like that night he’d had her in his arms.

  “Um...”

  “You could do the shopping and I could prepare our meals,” she said, trying to entice him. “I’m not much of a cook, but I’d make you a hot dinner to come home to every evening.”

  A hot dinner after a day at work sounded nice. It was a luxury he hadn’t enjoyed since he was married. Even then, Noelle hadn’t inconvenienced herself to cook very often.

  Besides, the arrangement was temporary, Kyle told himself. For all Lourdes’s talk about being done with Derrick, she could reconcile with him at any time, and that would change her plans completely.

  So what was he afraid of? He couldn’t get too caught up with a woman who wouldn’t be around long enough for a relationship to happen...

  “Now you’re speaking my language,” he said. “Why not? Sounds like fun.”

  Her pretty but troubled eyes searched his. “Are you positive?”

  His hesitation had spooked her, made her suspect he might not be too eager to have her around. “Of course,” he said. “I was just worried that you wouldn’t get the privacy you came here to find, but—”

  “I feel comfortable with you,” she assured him. “I like it here.”

  Having someone to buy her groceries protected her from the curious stares and whispers she’d encounter otherwise. If news of her breakup with Derrick hit the tabloids, she’d have additional reason to avoid the public eye. He wanted to shield her from that kind of attention. But he could always do her shopping if she was living in the farmhouse...

  Or...maybe not. If they weren’t under the same roof, it was entirely possible that she wouldn’t feel comfortable calling him up to ask for the little things she needed.<
br />
  “Let’s give it December and see how it goes,” he said. The least he could do was get her through Christmas...

  She slipped under his arm and put her own around his waist as they headed to the door. “Thank you.”

  Releasing a sigh, he curved his hand around her shoulder. She felt good tucked up against him. Too good. He should send her back to the farmhouse, because he was no friend. Even now he felt a heightened sexual awareness.

  But she needed him, and he couldn’t let her down. “What are friends for?”

  * * *

  Noelle sat on the floor of her bedroom, painting her toenails with friend and fellow server Genevieve Salter. Noelle loved the bright red polish she’d bought. She planned to freehand some white snowflakes on top. Her red-and-white toenails would be perfect for the holidays, but it was tough to feel excited about Christmas or anything else when she was so angry with Kyle. According to her neighbor across the street, who’d called a few minutes earlier, he’d picked up the water heater she’d tossed in the yard and yet he hadn’t bothered to come to her door.

  How dared he ignore her! Didn’t he care that she was upset? Wasn’t he going to do anything about it?

  “I think he believes he can get Lourdes Bennett,” she told Genevieve. “Isn’t that the biggest joke you’ve ever heard? A country music star? I mean, Kyle’s good-looking and has a nice build and all that. But let’s be realistic. Lourdes can get a man with real money. A star like herself. Why would she settle for some small-time solar panel manufacturer who won’t leave this shit town even though there are so many better places to live?”

  Forehead puckered in concentration, Genevieve kept her head bowed over her knees so she wouldn’t make a mistake. “I like it here in Whiskey Creek.”

  Noelle rolled her eyes. “Because you just moved here last year, so it’s new—and you have more freedom now that your mother’s helping you raise Tommy.” He was at Genevieve’s mother’s house right now, thank God. Only two, he got into everything or threw a tantrum if he was refused. Noelle couldn’t stand the little monster.

  “A town can’t get any cuter than this one. As soon as my mother moved here, I knew I wanted to come, too.” She added a slight shrug. “But you grew up in this area. I guess you can’t fully appreciate it.”

  “What’s to appreciate?” Noelle wiped a red smear from the side of her big toe. “That I’ll never get my lucky break living with all these backwoods rednecks?”

  “We’re in California. There aren’t many rednecks,” she said with a laugh that only irritated Noelle further. “Unless you’re talking about timber country farther north. Anyway, you should go to the Midwest if you want to see a real redneck. You’re just mad at Kyle.”

  “Of course I’m mad at Kyle! He thinks he can screw me over whenever he wants.”

  The smell of acrylic intensified as Genevieve opened a bottle of topcoat. “Screw you over? That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think? What’s he done? He’s been making his payments. I know that, because it was his money we used to go to San Francisco last month.” She sent Noelle a conspirator’s smile. “You told him you were about to have your utilities turned off, remember?”

  “I was about to have my utilities turned off. I just told him I needed more than I did. I deserve to get out and have some fun every once in a while, don’t I? He does.”

  “At least he helped you out. And he gave you a water heater when yours broke, didn’t he?”

  Genevieve had stopped by while they were installing the water heater or she wouldn’t have known about it. That was sort of inconvenient, because it made Kyle look nicer than he really was.

  “This isn’t about money,” Noelle said.

  “Okay...but from what I can tell, he can’t be all bad. You should see what my ex-boyfriend was like.” She pointed to a jagged scar on her temple. “That’s where he hit me with the claw side of a hammer. If I hadn’t been stepping away from him at that exact moment, who knows what kind of damage he would’ve done?”

  Noelle scowled at her. “Why do you have to bring everything back to your ex? We weren’t talking about Doug.”

  “Fine. Jeez. What’s gotten into you? We can talk about Kyle, if that’s what you want. But he doesn’t seem so bad, and I thought you agreed. You were grateful for that water heater when you were installing it. You said it would’ve cost nearly a thousand bucks to buy a new one.”

  “That just goes to show how easily I let him buy me off.”

  Genevieve put the lid on the bottle of topcoat and stretched out to let her toes dry. “Does this have something to do with that meal you made him? Didn’t he like it or wouldn’t he eat it or—”

  “Yeah, he ate it,” she said, but that meal was just more proof of how hard she’d tried. She was tired of being overlooked and taken for granted, tired of feeling she wasn’t good enough for him. Even when they were married, he’d treated her as if she had some communicable disease, as if he’d rather not get too close. Whenever they made love, she had to initiate it, and then he’d make sure she got what she wanted, but he didn’t seem to enjoy it much himself.

  He’d never loved her, never given her a chance the way he should have. Now that she thought of all the pain and anguish he’d put her through, she couldn’t believe she’d ever had a kind word for him.

  “Do I have to keep guessing?” Genevieve asked. “Why don’t you tell me what he’s done and get it over with?”

  “I’d rather not go into it. Everyone thinks he’s so great. But they don’t know him like I do.”

  “Come on,” Genevieve said. “Quit being so mysterious. What’d he do to piss you off?”

  Besides making her feel like shit for the past six years? Wasn’t that enough? She remembered the day she went in to end her pregnancy. They’d had such a terrible argument a few nights before. She’d wanted him to suffer some backlash, to lose something he’d cared about. So she’d aborted the baby. She’d thought, when she told him she’d had a miscarriage, that he’d regret being so harsh with her, that he’d show her a little of the love and concern she craved. But even the comfort he’d tried to offer had been strangely devoid of true feeling. And he’d looked at her with that doubt in his eyes, as if he knew she hadn’t miscarried in spite of what she’d said. Worse, he would no longer touch her, not to achieve any pleasure of his own. He’d use his hands, his mouth, even a vibrator to get her off—anything to avoid the risk of another pregnancy.

  He’d never given her a fair chance, Noelle decided. He could’ve made her happy if he’d wanted to. But he refused to see anything except the worst in her, and now she was going to make sure he understood what feeling that shitty was like.

  “Noelle?” Genevieve prompted.

  Noelle dragged herself out of the hell of her own thoughts. “I don’t want to talk about it. Anyway, it’s too complicated.”

  “So you hate him now?”

  Shouldn’t she hate him? All she’d ever wanted was to feel the way he’d made her feel that first weekend. She’d never experienced anything so heady or exciting in her life. But whatever had made him want her had faded fast. After the first couple of days, he’d acted as if it was a chore just to put up with her.

  Unwilling to feel what those memories evoked, she turned her attention to the revenge she’d achieved instead. “I told my family that he’s been trying to get me to sleep with him again.” She’d known how much it would incense her parents to think Kyle was trying to use her. They were so adamant that she attend church, straighten out her life and have some self-respect that they’d immediately flown to her defense.

  Whether Olivia had believed her, however, Noelle couldn’t tell. Although her sister tried to be supportive these days, Brandon still wouldn’t give her the time of day.

  Genevieve’s eyebrows had drawn together. “Is it true?” When Noelle shrugged, Gene
vieve smiled broadly. “Because if that’s your only problem, send him over to my place. I’d be happy to have him in my bed—”

  “Shut up!” Noelle snapped. “Do you have to be such a stupid whore?”

  Stung, Genevieve sobered instantly. “Wow. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...to upset you. I was just making a joke.”

  “Well, it wasn’t funny.”

  “I’ve heard you joke like that yourself,” she said.

  The sullen note in Genevieve’s response made Noelle angrier. “I don’t care what you’ve heard. Get out.”

  “You want me to leave?” she asked, blinking in astonishment.

  “Yes, and if you can’t have more sympathy for me than that, don’t ever come back.”

  “But—”

  “Get out of my house!” Noelle shouted, and once they reached the door, she gave her friend a shove.

  * * *

  “Have you had dinner?” Kyle asked as he dragged various ingredients out of the refrigerator. “Would you like a sandwich?”

  Lourdes had come into the house with him, but then she’d gone to the couch to strum her guitar. “Don’t tell me you’re hungry,” she said. “You barely got home from dinner.”

  He gave her a grim smile. “Yeah, well, that didn’t go as planned.”

  She thought he’d returned awfully fast...

  Setting her guitar aside, she walked over to the counter. “You were only gone an hour or so, but I assumed you’d eaten.”

  “’Fraid not—although I probably should’ve stayed. Now I’ll have to go back later and apologize to my mom.”

  Once she could smell the food, Lourdes realized she was hungry and pulled some slices of bread from the loaf he’d gotten out. “What happened? Don’t tell me you got into an argument with your brother or his wife.”

  “No. Noelle’s causing trouble again.”

  “Trouble? That’s vague.”

  He slathered a piece of wheat bread with mayonnaise. “Trust me, you don’t want to hear any more about it.”