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.
“What’d you say?” she murmured, still half-asleep.
“I said we’d better get into our beds.”
She lifted her head to look at the TV, which was playing an infomercial on some diet drug. “Did Derrick call?”
“I don’t know,” Kyle replied. “I don’t think you’ve checked your phone.”
“Well, that’s saying something,” she said. “I can probably make it through the next few months—when our breakup hits the tabloids and pictures of him and Crystal begin to show up—if I continue to soak my brain in alcohol.”
He assumed she was joking. “I doubt that’s the direction you want to go.”
“What are the drawbacks again?”
Now he knew she was joking, but he answered as though she’d asked a serious question. “You’re planning to write an album. Being drunk would interfere with that. Besides, there’d be no sweeter revenge than reclaiming your success—without him.”