A Winter Wedding. Brenda Novak

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      “Your ex-wife is on the phone again.”

      Kyle Houseman squeezed his eyes shut and massaged his forehead. There were few people in the world he considered as difficult as Noelle.

      Actually, he couldn’t think of one.

      “Did you hear me?” Morgan Thorpe, his assistant, stood at the entrance to his office wearing an impatient frown. Noelle (who still used his last name, which bothered him, since they’d been together for only a year) hadn’t been able to reach him on his cell. She’d tried three times in the past fifteen minutes and he’d let it go to voice mail. So she’d called his business line, which he’d specifically asked her not to do. He didn’t like the way she aired her complaints about him—and everything else—to anyone who’d listen.

      His employees didn’t like it, either.

      “I heard,” he replied.

      “Are you going to take her call? Because if I have to talk to her again, I’m going to tell her exactly what I think of her.”

      He gave Morgan a look to make sure she understood that would be a mistake. At forty-five, she wasn’t old enough to be his mother, but she often took a maternal approach with him, probably because she’d been working for him since he started First Step Solar. He’d hired her the same week she came out of the closet and moved in with her partner, who was as soft-spoken as Morgan was bold. “No, you’re not.”

      “Why?” she cried. “Noelle’s a terrible person! She deserves whatever she gets!”

      “We were once married. We still live in the same small town. We can figure out some way to get along.”

      She rolled her eyes. “If it’s that easy, why are you avoiding her?”

      She had a point. Dodging Noelle’s calls wouldn’t do him any good, anyway. She’d just track him down at his house or even a restaurant, if she had to. She did that kind of thing all the time—to plead for an advance on his spousal maintenance, a “small loan” to prevent her utilities from being turned off or money to get her car repaired. Once, she’d even asked him for five hundred bucks to go toward fixing her boob job (apparently, her body kept rejecting the implants, but instead of having them removed, she kept trying to make them work). It didn’t seem to matter that none of that was his responsibility anymore.

      “Put her through,” he said with a sigh.

      “That woman is insufferable. СКАЧАТЬ