Coming from anyone else, that would be an accusation. From this dude... Kyle couldn’t tell for sure. Still, he was offended by the mere suggestion. “That must make your job easier, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to work a little harder on this one.”
His eyebrows slid up as if he was shocked by Kyle’s response.
“Check my finances,” Kyle said. “You’ll see that I’m not in trouble, that I’d have no reason to destroy what I’ve worked so hard to create.”
“I will check. I have to. It’s my job,” he said and went back to work.
Kyle would’ve slammed his door, if he still had one. “Unbelievable,” he muttered. Now he was under as much suspicion as Noelle?
*
Lourdes hadn’t intended to tell her family about her breakup with Derrick until after Christmas. But once the gossip rags had published what they did, she had no choice. So she assured her mother and sisters that she was handling the end of her engagement without any problem and that she’d find another manager in the New Year.
She was still having trouble convincing her mother that Kyle was just a friend, however. Not only had her mother read what had been reported, she’d heard the concern in Lourdes’s voice as she talked about the fire—and jumped to the obvious conclusion. Or what she saw as the obvious conclusion...
“If you won’t come home for Christmas, there must be something in Whiskey Creek that’s keeping you,” her mother insisted.
Lourdes was beginning to regret interrupting her precious work time to accept this call. She wouldn’t have done it had she not been struggling to concentrate—thanks to the anxiety she felt while waiting to hear what the police chief and fire inspector had to say. “I’ve finally made some headway on my new album, Mom. That’s why I don’t want to come home right now.”
“But if you were only trying to throw off the media by making those statements, why aren’t you moving back into the farmhouse now that the furnace is fixed? There must be a reason.”
“I told you, I’m comfortable here at Kyle’s, so comfortable that I’m starting to work again. The music is what matters. That’s what I came here for. I don’t want to mess up a good thing.”
“Then you don’t particularly like him?”
Lourdes blocked out the vision of being in Kyle’s bed last night. She’d spent far too much time thinking about that as it was. “Okay, yes. I like him. A lot,” she admitted. “But I’m not the kind of woman he’s looking for.”
“Any man would be lucky to have you,” her mother said.
Setting her guitar to one side, Lourdes got up for a drink of water. “I’d hardly call you an objective judge, Mom.”
“It’s true!”
“Kyle believes in me and supports me in what I want to do with my career, but he’s not interested in becoming personally involved. He envisions a different sort of life for himself, like Daddy did. He’s satisfied with staying where he was born. He wants a simpler life, and you know how frenetic it can get with me traveling and promoting all the time. Being gone so often, always pushing toward some big goal, especially one as elusive as making it in showbiz, is hard on relationships.” Which was one of the reasons she’d thought she and Derrick were perfect for each other, why she’d never questioned it—at least at first.
“You could work through that,” her mother said.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“I heard you say you care about him.”
“I do, but we’re not well suited. After seeing the concessions you made for Daddy, I don’t want to go down that road.”
“Oh, stop! My life hasn’t been so bad. I have no regrets.”
Lourdes rolled her eyes. “Yes, you do. We’ve talked about this before. Your voice is even better than mine. You could’ve been a star.”