“Should you be worried?”
You don’t want me as your enemy, Kyle... He knew she had a temper, and not much of a conscience, but it was difficult to conceive of her doing anything that might seriously harm someone. He wouldn’t put it past her to do other things, pettier things. “No, not really.” He glanced around the house, wondering what else she might’ve touched. This was an obvious display of power, a way to show him he wasn’t as out of reach as he thought. “But it’s well past time to get those locks changed.”
“Will changing the locks even do any good? You told me her uncle’s a locksmith.”
“He’s trustworthy.” Shit, weren’t situations like this supposed to get easier with time? It’d been more than five years since they were divorced.
But Noelle hadn’t found someone else in all that time. That was why she wouldn’t move on and forget about him. And she perceived him as having money, which she was convinced would solve all her problems.
“She certainly knows how to kill the Christmas spirit,” Lourdes said.
Kyle crumpled the note and threw it away. “This is nothing. Don’t let it upset you.”
She didn’t seem capable of forgetting it, though. “Maybe we should go over to the farmhouse to sleep tonight. She doesn’t have a key to that, does she?”
“No.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want to become the subject of some Dateline episode.”
He was fairly certain she was joking, but Noelle’s sudden rage did make him uncomfortable—because it was so unprovoked, and there was nothing he could do to placate her. He wasn’t going back to her no matter what. “It’s too cold at the farmhouse, remember? We’ll be fine here.”
Although she’d taken off his coat, and it was warm in the room, she rubbed her arms. “Spurned lovers can do some crazy things.”
“We divorced more than five years ago. That’s got to make a difference. She can’t be as into me as she thinks she is.”
“Maybe you’re not as easy to get over as you think you are.”
Their eyes met in one of those moments when neither seemed capable of looking away, even though that shouldn’t be happening. “Olivia got over me without any trouble,” he said, to break it.
She frowned at him. “She still cares about you. Most people can’t say anything nice about their past partners, but Olivia genuinely admires you and wants you to be happy. At least, I got that impression.”
“Well, we are sort of related these days.”
“I’m guessing she’d feel that way regardless.”
Determined to conceal whatever sizzle he felt when he was with Lourdes, he crossed the kitchen to stare into the fridge. “I should’ve waited to piss Noelle off until we’d finished the food. The water heater should’ve been worth that much.”
“You got a lot of groceries this morning,” she said. “I’ll throw a meal together.”
He turned. “You can cook?”
“Believe it or not.”
“What are you making?”
“How about you go ahead and put the lights on the tree and I’ll surprise you.”
Although he felt more like calling Noelle and having it out, he agreed. Coming into his house when he wasn’t home—even if it was to get her dishes—underlined how delusional she was. It didn’t matter that they’d been married. She didn’t have, and shouldn’t have, the same kind of access to his house and belongings as she once did. What was there about “divorced” that she didn’t understand?
“She’s so maddening,” he muttered. But Lourdes had used her smartphone to put on some Christmas music, and he could smell delicious scents wafting out of the kitchen. He didn’t see any reason he should let Noelle ruin the good time he could have with Lourdes.
So he put his ex, and her nasty note, out of his mind.
12
Derrick kept texting her.