Dear Diary,

The Matchmaking Mamas have found our latest project! There are lots of lonely hearts to heal this Christmas, but we’ve discovered a special two-some that we hope will meet under the mistletoe on December 25.

Keith O’Connell is a handsome lawyer who’s headed home for the holidays … but not to celebrate with his family. Sadly, he was estranged from his mother, who’s since passed away. Now he’s back in town to sell his childhood home.

So far, we have seen a few signs of Keith opening up to someone, a woman he’s known for years. She’s beautiful and smart, and she seems to be luring him out of his shell, bit by bit, this holiday season.

I know Kenzie Bradshaw had a crush on Keith back in junior high, but they’re both all grown up now. And she’s still got a thing for the guy in a buttoned-up suit with a closed-off heart. Keith is one puzzle that Kenzie is determined to unravel, but will they realize how perfect they are together in time for Christmas? I can’t wait to watch and find out.

Love,

Maizie

Matchmaking Mama Extraordinaire.

Coming Home

for Christmas

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

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To

Elliana Melgar,

Welcome

To

The

World.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

It felt very odd to be back.

In all honesty, he never thought he’d be back here again. Not back in this city. Certainly not back in this house.

But then, he never thought his mother would become someone he’d be forced to think of in the past tense, either.

Granted, he and his mother hadn’t spoken in almost ten years. But despite his criticism the last time words—angry, hot words—had been exchanged between them, she had always struck him as being a force of nature. Forces of nature didn’t just cease to exist. They continued. Whether or not someone was there to witness the force, it continued.

Somewhere in his unconscious, he had thought his mother would be the same way. She would just continue.

But Dorothy O’Connell didn’t continue. Quite abruptly, without any warning, without any lingering diseases, her heart just suddenly gave out and she died. If it hadn’t been for the phone call he’d received from her neighbor, he wouldn’t even have known this had transpired.

Well, now he knew. Knew when there was nothing further he could do about it. Knew that there would never be an opportunity to mend the rift that had existed between them.

Not that there would have been much chance of that, even if she were still alive and they had another twenty years. The wounds had gone too deep.

And he had lost his mother long before he’d walked out of the house that day.

Keith sighed as he looked around the first-floor family room. You would think, after ten years—and knowing that she was gone—he wouldn’t expect to see her come walking into the room. Wouldn’t, on some level, strain to hear the sound of her voice as she called out to him, or to Amy.

Or both.

The house had always been filled with her voice and her presence. At least, he amended, for most of the years he’d lived in it. It was only after—after the car accident—after Amy wasn’t around anymore—that everything changed.

And somehow, in an odd sort of way, it had stayed the same. Except tenser. So much tenser. He supposed that part of it had been his fault, too.

Keith shrugged even though there was no one there to see him do so. No one there to call him on it.

It didn’t matter. All the tension, the things that were said, the things that weren’t said, none of it mattered anymore. It was all in the past now.

Just like his mother was in the past.

He was here. Here to tie up all the loose ends, to tend to the arrangements. To shut down that chapter of his life and put it all away in a box.

After all, life went on. Except, of course, when it didn’t.

Keith resisted the fleeting temptation to go upstairs and look into rooms he hadn’t looked into in ten years. There was no point to that. He wasn’t here to thumb a ride down memory lane. He was here for one purpose only: to sell the house and everything in it. The items in the house were of no use to him and hadn’t been for a very long time.

Squaring his shoulders, Keith got down to business. The sooner he was finished, the sooner he could get back to the firm up north in San Francisco and to his life.

And forget all about the house on Normandie in Bedford and the woman who had lived in it.

Chapter One

With her trim figure and attractively styled light blond hair, Maizie Sommers looked far younger than the actual years noted on her birth certificate. She liked to tell people that her family and her real estate company kept her vital and young, which was true.

And then there was her other hobby, the one she was involved in with Theresa and Cecilia, her two best friends since the third grade. The hobby that, she firmly believed, aided her in finally getting the son-in-law and grandchildren she’d always hoped for. She, Theresa and Cecilia were very skilled at, quite unashamedly, matchmaking.

Specifically, covert matchmaking. The unassuming objects of their selfless efforts were never aware of what hit them when love came barreling into their lives.

The matchmaking tasks were usually undertaken at the behest of either one unwitting participant’s relative or the other, most often a parent. And the ladies happily took it from there.

As it turned out, they were enabled in their altruistic endeavors because of the companies they had formed during the second half of their lives. After each woman had raised her child—or, in Theresa’s case, children—and found herself squarely faced with widowhood, all three friends had met the resulting emptiness in their lives the same way. They turned their attention to whatever skills they had and transformed those into what eventually amounted to lucrative livelihoods. Maizie went into real estate, Theresa undertook catering and Cecilia, always the very last word in organization and neatness, began her own housecleaning service.

Each of these three businesses, now quite nicely successful, brought into their collective lives an ever-changing and growing pool of people.

It was within this pool that the three friends found their likely candidates: unattached people who were in need of soul mates in order to reach their own full potential and thrive.

Maizie, Theresa and Cecilia thought of their matchmaking as a calling.

Even as they conducted business as usual, all three women were on the lookout for their next matchmaking success stories.

And none was as proactive as Maizie, whose cache of candidates was always changing.

Maizie had an eye not just for excellent property buys, which in turn were responsible for bringing money into her company, but also for loneliness, no matter how well disguised that loneliness might be within the person who crossed her path.

Such was the case, she felt, with her latest client. The tall, good-looking young man walked into her office on a Wednesday morning, wearing a somber expression and an expensive gray suit. He had green eyes and very precisely cut thick, dark brown hair, and his incredible straight-arrow posture made his broad shoulders appear even broader than they were.

“Maizie Sommers?” Keith asked as he approached her desk.

He’d gotten her name from the same neighbor who had notified him of his mother’s sudden passing. He felt one real estate firm was as good as another, but perhaps a smaller one was a little hungrier than a corporation so the agent could be persuaded to sell the house faster. At least, that was his reasoning when he’d found her on the internet and then came here immediately after that.

Maizie looked up into his eyes and gave the young man her best maternal smile. It usually went a long way in disarming her prospective clients and getting them to trust her.

She didn’t do it for any devious or self-serving purpose. What she was trying to convey to her clients was that it wasn’t a matter of her versus them but a matter of them and her. She thought of herself and her clients as a team, and she intended to be on her clients’ side.

Sales were not final until the clients were happy with the home they were buying. She took any misgivings they might entertain very seriously. Their ultimate satisfaction was always her bottom line.

And if, along the way, said client also turned out to be an unattached person who would be decidedly happier as part of a twosome—Maizie was a very firm believer in love—well, so much the better.

That part of what she and her friends did—the matchmaking—was undertaken without any thought—or collection—of financial rewards. Maizie, Theresa and Cecilia all unequivocally believed that the soul needed nurturing as well as the body. And in the case of their matchmaking efforts, with each success—and thus far, they had only successes—they felt even more fulfilled than they did when the actual jobs they did collect fees for were successfully executed.

Thus, until she knew otherwise, Maizie viewed the young man who walked into her office this morning as quite possibly a candidate on two fronts.

The smile on her lips came from deep within.

“Yes, I am, young man,” she told him warmly. “What can I do for you?” she asked, rising ever so slightly from the seat behind her desk to shake his hand.

The woman reminded him of his mother.

It wasn’t so much that this Maizie Sommers he had come to see actually resembled his mother visually, but there was an enthusiasm—as well as a kindness—that seemed somehow to radiate from this woman. Such was often the case with his mother.

At least, his mother the way she had been those years when he was growing up. The years before Amy had died. The three of them had been a happy unit then, bolstering one another. And no matter what, he and Amy had always been secure in the knowledge that although there was no father in the picture for a good deal of the time, all was well in their lives because their mother was with them. They were convinced Dorothy O’Connell could handle anything. Nothing would ever hurt them as long as she was around.

It turned out to be a lie.

Keith realized that he had lapsed into silence when he should be saying something. Attempting to recover ground, Keith cleared his throat and took a stab at apologizing, something he hardly ever did.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare,” he said, deliberately averting his eyes from her. “For a minute, you reminded me of someone.”

Maizie’s bright blue eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled at him. “A pleasant memory, I hope.”

“Yes, well, it was. Once,” he allowed, stumbling ever so slightly over the words coming out as he continued looking away.

“I see,” she responded, hoping he’d continue. Her prospective client appeared to be somewhat uncomfortable, though. One of the things she prided herself on the most, an ability she had honed both as a mother and as a successful independent businesswoman, was putting someone at ease.

Glossing over the young man’s last words, Maizie purposely went on to the reason she assumed that he had come to her in the first place. In her judgment, he appeared to be the type who was more comfortable sticking to the business at hand than touching upon anything even remotely personal.

Still, she couldn’t help wondering if he was married or, at the very least, spoken for. The young man was clearly the kind who fell into the “drop-dead gorgeous” category, as Cecilia’s daughter liked to say. If he wasn’t married, well then, she just might have met her newest challenge.

“Are you here looking to buy a house, Mr....” She let her voice trail off, giving him the opportunity to state exactly why he was here as well as introduce himself.

“Oh, sorry.” Keith upbraided himself. He really wasn’t on his game today. Going straight from the airport to the house and then staying there overnight had done that to him. He would have been better off booking a hotel room.

He was going to have to see to that as soon as he finished up with this woman.

“Keith O’Connell,” he told her, shaking her hand belatedly. Given their proximity and difference in height—Maizie was petite while he was six-foot-two—he didn’t have to lean over her desk because she was standing up. “And I’m looking to sell, not buy, actually.”

“Sell,” she repeated slowly, as if she was pausing to taste the word. “You own a home here in Bedford?” she asked.

“In a manner of speaking.”

He couldn’t think of himself as being the actual owner. That had been his mother, who had worked long and hard, stitching together disjointed hours so she could be home for Amy and him when they were younger and needed her, but still provide for them. It was his mother’s sweat and dedication that had managed to pay for the house. He had just lived there—until he didn’t. And now it was his by default.

Because there was no one left.

“It is—was,” Keith corrected himself, “my mother’s house.”

Maizie sensed another wave of discomfort sweeping over her client-to-be and interpreted it the only way she could. He was having second thoughts about the fate of the house.

“Are you sure you want to sell it?” she questioned gently.

“Yes.” The single word was emphatic, exploding from his lips almost like a gunshot. And then Keith backpedaled just a shade. “I live and work in San Francisco, and there’s no reason for me to maintain a house down here. I’d like to sell the house as quickly as possible,” he added.

Maizie had remained on her feet. “Well, then, let’s go take a look at it, shall we?” she suggested brightly.

Keith nodded. “My car’s parked in front of the restaurant,” he told her. Striding ahead of the agent, he opened the office’s front door and held it for her.

Maizie glanced over her shoulder at the young woman seated at a desk in the corner. “I should only be gone for a little while, Rhonda. Hold down the fort,” she instructed her assistant cheerfully.

The woman she addressed looked as if she was eager to be the only occupant of the “fort.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“She’s in training,” Maizie confided to her client-to-be once they were outside the office and the door had closed behind them. “More willing than able at the moment, I’m afraid. But with luck that should change soon.” At least, she hoped so. “We’ll take my car,” she announced as she stopped in front of a cream-colored Mercedes.

Keith glanced over toward his own dark blue sedan parked several yards away. He was accustomed to taking charge, no matter what the situation. He was also accustomed to being the one behind the wheel. “I thought that—”

Maizie neatly cut him off, her maternal smile widening considerably.

“No reason for you to use up your gas,” she informed him cheerfully. Aiming her key fob at her vehicle, she pressed it, and a melodious signal announced that the door locks had been released.

Without hesitation, Maizie got in, buckled up, then looked to her right and waited. After a beat, her would-be client got in on the passenger’s side. She hadn’t quite comprehended how tall the man was until he more than filled that section of her vehicle.

Hands resting on the steering wheel, she paused until Keith buckled up before saying, “Now, if you just give me the address, we’ll be on our way.”

Keith gave her the house number, adding, “That’s in the—”

“West Park development,” Maizie acknowledged. She flashed a smile at Keith as she pulled away from the curb. “I’ve been at this for a while now,” she told him.

Good for you, Keith thought as he stared, sphinxlike, straight ahead through the front windshield. With luck, this would wind up being one of his last drives to his mother’s house.

* * *

“It’s a lovely home,” Maizie concluded after her tour of both floors, the three-car garage and the backyard.

She preferred to build up her own rapport with the house she was to sell, but many of her clients insisted on leading the tour. She’d noticed Keith had hung back a little after he’d unlocked the front door.

It was very evident he had no desire to be here.

Either that or Keith was reluctant about selling the house in the first place but found himself in a financial situation forcing him to take this path.

“How fast can you sell it?” he asked her abruptly the moment he saw that she had finished her initial inspection.

Maizie watched her newest client for a long moment, studying him before she finally replied.

“I’m afraid that all depends on the market, the price of the house, what you—”

“You do it,” he said abruptly.

“Do what, exactly?” Maizie asked. He looked to be on edge. Why? she wondered. Did it have to do with the house or something else? There were a lot of gaps she would have to fill. It didn’t necessarily help with the sale of the house, but the information would be useful in other ways.

“You determine the going price for the house and sell it for just under that,” he explained.

“Under the going rate?” Maizie questioned. Why would he want to sell it short? This was one of the more popular models in the development, and its orientation was ideal. The morning sun hit the kitchen and family room first. By the time the afternoon arrived with its heat, the sun was hitting the driveway, leaving the house enveloped in comfort.

Maizie looked at her new client more closely. “What’s wrong with the house, Mr. O’Connell?”

“Nothing.” He had to hold himself in check to keep from snapping. That wasn’t going to help. Besides, it wasn’t Mrs. Sommers’s fault that closure felt as if it was eluding him. “There’s nothing wrong with the house. I just want to get rid of it. I told you, I don’t live in this area anymore, and I just want to sell the house and get back to my work.”

“What is it that you do, Mr. O’Connell?”

“I’m a lawyer.” Usually he experienced a tinge of pride accompanying that sentence. But this time there was nothing, just this odd, hollow feeling, as if being a lawyer didn’t matter anymore.

That was ridiculous. Of course it mattered. He was just fatigued, Keith insisted, silently scolding himself for the irrational thought.

“A lawyer,” Maizie repeated with an approving nod of her head, surprising him. “The son and daughter of one of my best friends are both lawyers,” she told him conversationally. And then she sobered slightly and she asked in as kind a tone as she could, “Did your mother die at home, by any chance?”

Because if the woman had, that put an impedance on the idea of a quick sale. Legally, at-home deaths had to be stated as such, and there were a great many people who wouldn’t dream of buying a home that supposedly came with its very own ghost to haunt its hallways.

Keith blinked. “What? No. Why?” The single-word sentences were fired out at her like bullets, shot one at a time.

Maizie’s tone continued to be kind as she answered him. “I thought that might explain why you seem so...tense,” she finally said for lack of a better word.

She didn’t want to offend the young man, but she did want to get to the heart of what might be troubling him, because he was troubled. Anyone could see that.

“Jet lag,” Keith told her dismissively, as if that explained everything.

“San Francisco is in the same time zone,” she pointed out gently. There was no reason for him to be experiencing any sort of jet lag.

“Of course it’s in the same time zone. I’m not an idiot,” Keith protested. “Sorry,” he murmured, doing his best to bank down his temper. Over the years, he’d schooled himself to be emotionally reserved. But what he’d learned was escaping him right now. “I was in New York on business when I got the call that—” Abruptly he changed the course of his response, correcting his last words. “My firm took a call from my mother’s neighbor saying that my mother had passed away. My assistant called me. So I caught the next plane back,” he told her.

And then he stopped cold.

Keith wasn’t accustomed to explaining himself. He hadn’t done that in a very long time. This had all caught him completely by surprise, and he was revealing more than he’d intended.

“That doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” he informed her stiffly.

“No,” she agreed, “it doesn’t. But I was just trying to get a feeling for the situation—and you. It helps me do a better job.” Maizie knew she had to sell this to the young man, who needed far more than the sale of this house to tie up loose ends.

He needed peace, she thought.

“I don’t care what you get for it. Just sell it,” Keith was saying. “I don’t want it hanging around my neck like the proverbial albatross.”

“You might not care about the sale price now, but you will someday soon. Perhaps even very soon.” Maizie paused, her sharp eyes sweeping over everything in the living room. “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you planning on doing with the furnishings?”

“Furnishings?” Keith repeated uncomprehendingly.

“The furniture, the clothing in the closets, the books—”

He hadn’t even thought about that. He supposed he was still coming to grips with the idea that as far as his mother was concerned, there would be no more tomorrows and all that entailed.

Replaying the agent’s words in his head, Keith waved his hand, dismissing the problem. “Get rid of it. All of it.” The things she’d enumerated represented a place in his life he had no intention of revisiting. “Throw it all away.”

That would be a terrible waste, and Maizie wasn’t about to be wasteful if she could possibly help it. “I think if you do that, if you just throw all this away, you’ll live to regret it.”

He was already regretting this conversation. However, he told himself that it cost him nothing to hear her out. “All right. What do you suggest?”

Maizie thought of the conversation she’d just had yesterday with Theresa over a late lunch. It involved the daughter of a mutual friend.

The single daughter of a mutual friend.

A wide smile blossomed on Maizie’s lips. “I think I have an idea you just might like.”

Chapter Two

“You do realize you work too hard, right?”

Marcy Crawford aimed the question at her younger sister, MacKenzie Bradshaw, as she followed her sister around a showroom that was nothing short of an obstacle course for anyone who wasn’t a size three. And in her current state of pregnancy, Marcy admittedly hadn’t been a petite size three for a little longer than eight months now.

Her question was a rhetorical one, and it was meant to get Kenzie, the youngest of five and the one everyone in the family doted on, to reassess her present life. However, her supposedly impromptu visit to Kenzie’s place of work wound up getting the latter to fall back on her usual evasive maneuvers. Whether or not she actually meant to, Kenzie was weaving her way in and out of small pockets of space. Pockets that Marcy was frustratingly finding close to impossible to get into. Thus she was completely unable to follow.

Kenzie glanced over her shoulder, pausing only long enough to blow her light blond bangs out of her eyes—she had to find time to get a haircut, she silently noted. With Christmas almost here, business had been good lately, really good. The turnaround at her shop, Hidden Treasures, both with items coming in and going out, had been more than a little gratifying.

“Said the woman who’s more than eight months pregnant and carrying a fourteenth-month-old around in her arms,” Kenzie pointed out.

She dearly loved her sister—loved all four of her siblings and her mother—but she instantly went into withdrawal mode the moment Marcy or the others felt compelled to change around the structure of her life. She liked it just the way it was—busy and profitable.

“Exactly my point,” Marcy said, shuffling so that she was finally able to move in front of her sister by coming in from the other side. The less than fluid movement managed to trap Kenzie with an ornate carved turn-of-the-century credenza at her back while she, with her sheer girth, barred her sister’s escape from the front. “All this effort you keep putting out, it should be going toward your own family, not toward pawing through dead people’s junk.”

“Hidden treasures,” Kenzie corrected her with just a touch of indignation, taking offense for both her clients and the one-of-a-kind items in her shop. “One woman’s junk is another woman’s prized possession.”

“Call it whatever you like,” Marcy told her with a sigh. Alex, her sleeping fourteen-month-old son, was growing increasingly heavy and she shifted him from one side to the other in an effort to balance his weight. “Just say you’ll come to dinner tonight.”

“I’d say it,” Kenzie replied willingly, “but you know I don’t believe in lying.” She fixed her sister with a penetrating look. “Look, Marce, I’d come over in a heartbeat if you weren’t setting me up.”

“Setting you up?” Marcy echoed, torn between sounding utterly innocent and completely indignant at the suggestion that she would do something so underhanded—even though that’s exactly what she was doing. Her free hand was pressed against her offended breast. “Who’s setting you up?” she asked, her voice cracking as it went up just a little too high at the end of her question.

“You are,” Kenzie replied without blinking. Turning, she found an opening next to a vintage Singer sewing machine console and wiggled through it, leaving Marcy to lumber over to a wider aisle.

Marcy valiantly attempted to keep up the ruse. “I am not. Why would you say that?” she demanded. When Alex began to whimper in response to her elevated voice, Marcy was forced to lower it to a whisper. “Why would you say that?” she repeated in almost a hiss.

Kenzie gave her a knowing look. “You told me not to wear my jeans and to remember to fix my hair.”

Because of her hectic schedule and the fact that she had to dress well for work, in her off hours Kenzie enjoyed kicking back and being comfortable during her get-togethers with her family. Apparently, in her sister’s estimation, there was such a thing as being too comfortable.

Marcy sniffed. “I just happen to think you look nice with your hair up.”

Kenzie felt compelled to point out the flaw in that excuse. “Marcy, you spend your days running after a kid whose energy levels rival the Energizer Bunny and you’re about to give birth in a month or less. Why would you even care if I shaved my head before I came over for dinner?” she challenged. “Unless, of course,” she went on, “you’re inviting an extra guest to attend that dinner.”

Marcy sighed, giving up the pretense. “Okay, you got me. I had Bob invite his friend George to dinner. But George is very nice—”

Kenzie immediately cut her off. This line of conversation had no future. There was no point in letting Marcy just go on and on.

“I’m sure he is,” she said, patronizing Marcy just the slightest bit, “but I’m never going to find out because I’m not coming over to dinner.”

Marcy looked at her pleadingly. “C’mon, Kenzie, don’t be stubborn.”

“You call it being stubborn. I call it surviving. Stop pulling a Mom on me,” Kenzie requested, then added a little more kindly, “I have no desire to be set up. My life is full enough as it is.” With that, she went on adjusting a new display of furnishings.

Marcy cast a disparaging look around at her sister’s most recent acquisitions. “Yeah, full of dust and allergens,” she grumbled.

Kenzie paused for a moment to pat her sister’s cheek. “C’mon, Marcy. Don’t pout. Your face might set that way,” she teased. It was something their grandmother used to threaten them with when they were little and scowled at being reprimanded.

“What am I going to tell George?” Marcy asked. “I’ve already built you up to him as the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

“Tell him I ran off to feed the masses,” Kenzie joked. And then she sighed, shaking her head. She would have thought Marcy would know better by now. “This can’t be coming as a surprise to you. You know how I feel about setups.”

Marcy shifted Alex over to her other hip again, clearly physically uncomfortable. “But that’s when Mom does them.”

“That has nothing to do with it,” Kenzie pointed out. “A setup by any other family member would be just as rotten.”

Marcy played her ace card. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at her youngest sister. “You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

“Nobody’s getting any younger, except for Brad Pitt when he played that weird guy in that movie a few years ago.” Kenzie congratulated herself on delivering the comeback with a straight face.

Marcy’s hands were full as she held onto her son. Otherwise she would have used one to anchor her sister and get her to agree to dinner tonight. “I’m serious, Kenzie.”

“And so am I, Marce. I’ve got a rocking chair with my name on it at the retirement home. The second I turn thirty, I’ll be sure to get my butt over there and start rocking in it.”

“This isn’t a joke, Kenzie,” Marcy complained. She clearly wanted her sister to enjoy the sort of happiness she herself had a handle on: home, husband and an expanding family.

“Neither is being set up.” Maybe if Kenzie issued a blanket warning, her siblings would cease and desist once and for all in attempting to manage her life. “Pass the word along to Marilyn. And while you’re at it, you can also tell Tom and Trevor in case they’re entertaining any ideas to jump in and pick up where you dropped off. I don’t want to be set up. Got that?”

“I got it,” Marcy grumbled with a sigh. “But someday, you’ll regret this when you find yourself alone.”

Kenzie suppressed a laugh. “Marcy, I have four married siblings with seven kids among them. I will never find myself alone. Besides, this way I get to be Fun Aunt Kenzie to the short tribe.

“Now please, I’ve got work to do and I’m going to be here all night if you don’t let me finish it.” She paused for a second to kiss her sleeping nephew and brush her lips against her sister’s cheek. “I appreciate what you think you were doing for me, but trust me, setting me up will only lead to disaster. Now go before Pablo comes in with his duster. If you wind up staying here, you’ll be sneezing for a week,” she promised. “Go, Marcy.”

Scowling her disapproval at the way things had turned out, Marcy murmured a few disenchanted-sounding words and then backed out of the space she was in. She was still scowling when she slowly made her way out the front door.

Kenzie breathed a sigh of relief. Finally!

She had exactly sixty seconds all to herself before the phone rang.

She made it to the counter, where the store phone was located, by the second ring. Managing to collect herself to convey cheerfulness, Kenzie lifted the receiver from its cradle and declared, “This is Hidden Treasures. How may I assist you today?”

The moment she heard the voice on the other end of the line, the smile she had deliberately forced to her lips widened of its own accord, generously spreading to the rest of her.

“Hello, Theresa,” she said warmly to her mother’s close friend and the woman who had handled several catered affairs for her. “What’s up?”

* * *

It was a nice house.

Kenzie recognized it instantly. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but still very nice. And well kept.

The company her mother had founded and then passed on to her six years ago had her traveling up and down the California coast, visiting estates, regular homes and houses that fell somewhere in between. It was the middle group that tended to present her with the most surprises, yielding the occasional hidden treasure—which was why she had decided to change the shop’s name to that.

Her work had taught her never to judge a book by its cover. She’d discovered that the most incredible things could be found in old cigar boxes—or their equivalent—left forgotten in the recesses of an attic, under a bed or in a seldom opened closest. Anything—from a vintage pack of playing cards once held in the hands of a famous gunman, to a great-grandmother’s precious missing cameo, to a deed to forgotten property—could turn up if some effort was given to the hunt.

What she liked most about her work was entering a different world while she assessed the belongings and, in some cases, prepared to undertake the sale of them. She always gave 110 percent of herself so her clients wound up receiving the maximum amount for their things while the items found homes with people who appreciated their worth.

Kenzie liked to call her undertaking a win-win situation.

Every place, be it a simple home or an estate, had its own kind of hidden treasure, no matter how unimpressive that item might appear to an outsider. With that in mind, Kenzie couldn’t help wondering what she would find in this pleasant residential home that Theresa Manetti had sent her to.

She knew it was just serendipity that brought her here because she doubted Theresa had any idea she’d once known Amy, the girl who had lived here—or that she’d had a wild crush on Amy’s older brother.

Parking her car next to the curb, Kenzie got out and slowly made her way up the front walk. She did a cursory evaluation of what she saw as she went.

The property had been well maintained, although there was one hearty weed making its way up against the fence as if waiting to let loose with a growth spurt the moment no one was looking. The rest of the front yard, though, had been well tended.

The house was at the end of a cul-de-sac in an upper-class residential neighborhood. All the houses in West Park appeared to be cared for. Holding a successful estate sale here with just a little bit of advertising would require next to no effort on her part, Kenzie decided just as she reached the front door.

For a second, snatches of memories came scurrying her way, stirring questions.

One thing at a time, Kenzie, she told herself.

It seemed to her that the exact instant she touched the doorbell and pressed it, the front door flew open. She hoped she managed to hide her surprise from the tall, dark-haired man who answered the door.

Oh, God, is that...?

Yes, it is him. Keith. This is still his house, then.

Kenzie struggled to subdue her erratic pulse. She forced herself to breathe normally.

Had he been standing by the front window, waiting for her? Or was this just a coincidence? Mrs. Manetti had told her that according to her real estate agent friend, Maizie Sommers, the owner of this house was extremely eager to sell it and everything inside.

But somehow, until this moment, she hadn’t made the connection. She knew Keith had moved away but assumed that his mother had, too.

Because of what Mrs. Manetti had said, she should have realized this was still the O’Connell house. She supposed it was the story that threw her. Mrs. Sommers had said the seller had grown up here, which meant it was his childhood home. If anyone had told her that her parents’ house was being sold, she would have been upset, not indifferent. And if she were forced to pack up whatever belongings she wanted to take with her, she would have had to hire a large moving van, not carelessly ask to have it all sold off to strangers.

But then, not everyone was as sentimental or attached to things as she was. And, she supposed, in a way there was a cloud over this house. Maybe that was what Keith had been thinking when he said he wanted everything sold.

The moment she looked up at Keith, that old queasy-stomach feeling came over her. She had to fight to keep it in check. This was business, Kenzie reminded herself. Her smile increased its wattage. Partially it was the saleswoman in her, and partially it was just the woman in her responding to the man.

He had only gotten better looking.

It figured. Was he married?

It had been ten years since she’d seen him. Of course he’d gotten married.

Hadn’t he?

Kenzie dealt with a great many people in her line of work, and she was accustomed to all types crossing her path. As far as looks went, Keith, with his chiseled features, somber expression and sad green eyes, was definitely in the top 3 percent. She allowed her well-organized mind to wander just a little bit.

She had to admit that if Marcy or Marilyn had wanted to set her up with someone who resembled Keith, she probably wouldn’t have turned the offer down, principles or no principles.

The next moment, Kenzie sternly upbraided herself for allowing her mind to wander this far off course, even for a split second. Even if it was Keith.

Grow up, Kenzie.

This was definitely not how she conducted business. It didn’t matter if this was Keith, just as it didn’t matter if she was dealing with a man who looked like Prince Charming or resembled a diseased frog. The only thing that mattered was whether or not she could help him sell the possessions inside his house. She could if those items were in decent condition or, barring that, if they were unique and interesting.

And even if that wasn’t the case, she could offer suggestions on the measures he needed to take to make some money on the items.

All these thoughts went racing through her head in far less time than it took for an outsider to actually review what had happened.

Showtime, Kenzie thought. She was ready. She liked to think of herself as always ready.

She handed him her card. “Mr. O’Connell?” she asked, her throat feeling remarkably dry as she formally said his name. She waited for him to recognize her.

Green eyes went up and down the length of her, taking measure of her. Her breath backed up in her lungs.

“Yes?” Keith answered. There was absolutely no recognition in his eyes.

Banking down her disappointment—reminding herself that she had done a lot of transforming since she’d been in high school—Kenzie forced a smile to her lips and extended her hand to him. “Mrs. Sommers called to tell me that you were looking for someone to help you find a new home for your things.”

The woman standing in front of him with the thousand-watt smile seemed far too youthful to be handling anything with the word estate in it. He felt as if he had just accidentally wandered into a children’s story time. The underage woman made it sound as if his mother’s things were animated with lives of their own.

Which was beyond ridiculous.

A distant, formless memory hovered about his brain, teasing it, but when he tried to capture it, to nail it down, it eluded him.

The woman on his doorstep reminded him of someone.

Who?

He pushed the thought aside.

“Technically, they’re not my things,” he informed her. “I don’t care if they find a home or not. I just need to get them out of the house. Mrs. Sommers seems to think the house will show much better—and sell better—if there are no distracting pieces of furniture scattered throughout the house, cluttering it up.”

Kenzie nodded, hurt that there was no recognition in his eyes when he spoke to her. Reminding herself that she looked quite a bit different now didn’t help.

Give it time, Kenzie.

“Okay,” she said gamely to him once she was inside the front door. “Why don’t you show me around so I can see what I’ve got to work with?”

He hadn’t been into all the rooms since he’d returned home himself. More specifically, he hadn’t seen most of the rooms since he’d left home ten years ago.

Even when he’d returned yesterday, he’d deliberately remained downstairs, sleeping on the living room sofa. When he’d woken up after a less than restful night, he’d ventured only as far as the kitchen to make himself some breakfast.

As for the rest of the house—his room, Amy’s, his mother’s bedroom, the bonus room they used for a TV room—he hadn’t gone into any of it. And he wanted to keep it that way until he felt up to viewing the other rooms—if that time came.

But saying anything of the kind to this woman felt far too personal.

Keith supposed he could just beg off, or murmur some noncommittal excuse that accomplished the same thing. But he had a feeling this woman wasn’t the type to accept no for an answer, at least not without a really good reason.

To be fair, he decided to make one attempt at accommodating her while maintaining the balance he was searching for.

“You can just find your own way through the house. I don’t mind if you poke around,” he added, thinking she probably wanted a chance to review what might sell and what just needed to be carted away.

The smile was lightning fast as she attempted to coax him into accompanying her. “I’m bound to have questions,” she told him. When he made no response, thinking she’d take the hint, she just continued. “If you come along as my guide, it’ll go faster that way. I promise.” Turning on her heel, she led the way to the staircase.

He was really beginning to regret this.

Chapter Three

Walking ahead of him, Kenzie had just managed to climb up one step on the staircase when melodic chimes announced that there was someone on the other side of the front door.

Keith looked from the door back to the woman standing just ahead of him. He was hard-pressed to say which bothered him more—going upstairs with the woman he was still trying to place, or dealing with what had to be a prospective buyer. He wanted the house emptied almost as much as he wanted it sold. He just didn’t want to be the one dealing with either firsthand.

Looking at his expression, Kenzie could almost read his mind. It occurred to her that for a relatively uncommunicative man, Keith didn’t keep his thoughts all that well hidden.

“It’s too soon for a prospective buyer to be turning up on your doorstep, and even if there was one this fast, he or she would be coming in with Mrs. Sommers. They wouldn’t be here on their own, ringing your doorbell—I’m assuming you gave her a set of keys.”

How had he forgotten that? Though he hated to admit it, even to himself, all of this had shaken him up more than he thought it would.

“Yes, I did,” he answered.

As if on cue, the doorbell rang again, sounding a little more demanding this time around, if that was actually possible.

Kenzie withdrew from the first step, facing him squarely, toe-to-toe. “I can get that for you if you’d like,” she offered.

“No, thanks. I can answer it myself,” he retorted stiffly, then glanced at her expectantly.

It took her a second, but again, she seemed to sense what he was thinking. “Why don’t I just start the tour without you?” she offered.

His grunt told her that she’d guessed right again. “That sounds good.”

Having no other recourse, Kenzie turned back around and went up the stairs. It was only after she had reached the landing and the doorbell had rung for a third time that she heard any sort of movement on the floor below. Keith was finally opening his front door.

Kenzie shook her head. She remembered a far different Keith. While not exactly gregarious, he’d been popular and friendly. What had happened to him in the past ten years to change him into this stoic, distant man she’d met today?

Putting Keith out of her mind, she scanned the small bedroom she’d entered. Amy’s room. Judging by the soft decor, the pastel accent colors and the white eyelet comforter on the four-poster double bed, the bedroom had not been touched since the girl had died.

Amy had been a very pretty, popular teenage girl, Kenzie recalled, looking at the photographs tacked onto the cork bulletin board above the small desk. The montage included some shots from her childhood, but for the most part, it depicted her high school years. There was even, Kenzie realized as she drew closer, a picture of Amy and her. Her heart ached a little as she looked at it. It had been taken at one of the baseball games they’d attended at school. She could remember standing next to Amy when someone had snapped it.

The next moment, another photograph caught her eye, and Kenzie paused to examine it. Amy had her arms around Keith, who appeared to be teasing her.

That was the Keith she remembered. A wave of nostalgia hit her. The man she’d left downstairs seemed to be light-years away from the teenager in the photograph she was looking at.

He was decidedly happier in the picture, Kenzie thought. He had laughter in his eyes. The man answering the door downstairs didn’t appear as if he actually knew how to smile.

Kenzie swiftly took account of the closet and the other items in the room. Although the bedroom had apparently been cleaned on a regular basis, nothing had been touched or moved. It had been preserved like a shrine to Amy’s memory. She guessed that had been Amy’s mother’s doing, because unless she’d read him incorrectly, Keith was definitely reluctant to come up here.

Had he been here since Amy’s death? The thought saddened her that maybe he hadn’t. Taking it a step further, she began to think that quite possibly he hadn’t even been back to the house in all this time, which meant that he and his mother had been estranged at the time of her death.

Her first impulse was to run downstairs and throw her arms around him, saying how sorry she was. Of course, since he didn’t seem to remember her, that would only spook him. She’d approach this more subtly, she decided—but she did intend to get to the bottom of this and find the answers to her questions. If nothing else, she owed it to Amy to see to it that Keith made peace with whatever demons were haunting him.

Kenzie went through the other two upstairs bedrooms as quickly as she could. After doing this job for a number of years, she’d developed an eye for what could sell and what would be passed over. Since Keith had told her he wanted to get rid of everything, she inventoried the clothes and furnishings, placing everything into two categories: what would sell and what would ultimately have to be disposed of in some other fashion.

When she was finished, Kenzie made her way downstairs quietly. She was just in time to hear the person—an older woman—who had rung the doorbell tell Keith, “I could drive you over to the funeral home if you’d like.”

Keith guided the woman in his mother’s foyer toward the door. He’d been polite, letting her elaborate on how she felt when she’d let herself into the house and found his mother unconscious on the floor, but he didn’t know how much longer he could maintain his facade. He didn’t want details. Details would only reel him in, and he wanted to remain distant.

It was time to send the woman on her way.

“No, I know where it is. Thanks, anyway, Mrs. Anderson.”

Peggy Anderson lingered in the doorway. “It’s just not going to be the same without your mother living next door to me,” she told him sadly. “Your mother had a way of lighting up everyone’s life the second she came in contact with them.”

“So I’ve heard,” Keith replied, an extremely tight, polite smile underscoring the words.

Observing him, Kenzie could see that he was holding himself in check. Keith was probably afraid that if he allowed his guard to go down, he’d fall apart.

Sympathy flooded through her.

It intensified as she drew closer.

Ushering Mrs. Anderson out of the house, Keith closed the door firmly behind the talkative woman. He stood there for a moment, looking at the closed door, his entire body a testimony to rigidly controlled grief.

Or so it seemed to Kenzie.

There were men who wanted only to be left alone when they were dealing with their darkest hour. However, she had never learned how to accommodate them, because everything within her cried out to offer a grieving person as much comfort as she could render.

And besides, this was Keith. There was no way she could stand on ceremony.

Coming up behind him, she placed her hand on his rigid shoulder, trying to convey her availability to comfort him in his grief. She said with a great deal of sincerity, “I’m so sorry.”

Keith almost jumped when he felt her hand on his shoulder. He’d forgotten all about her. How long had she been standing there? She was supposed to be upstairs, taking inventory, not down here, eavesdropping.

He swung around to look at her. “You can’t sell any of it?” Keith asked, assuming that her apology referred to the things she’d found in the upstairs bedrooms.

“What?” It took Kenzie a minute to untangle his reaction. And then she understood. They were talking about two entirely different things.

“Oh, no, I’m not apologizing about anything that has to do with your estate. I just wanted to tell you how very sorry I am about your loss.” And then Kenzie frowned, shaking her head. “The words are trite,” she was quick to admit, “but that doesn’t make the sentiment any less genuine.”

“I’m sure it is,” he said crisply, cutting the young woman off in case she had more to say on the subject.

This whole thing was much too private, and he didn’t want to talk about it. However, he could see that she felt she had to say something. He shrugged away any obligation she might have thought she had in this case.

“Everyone’s got to die sometime, right?” He needed to get out—and he actually did have somewhere else to be. “I have to leave for a while. Go on with your tour. Let me know if you think you can sell these things and what they might go for.”

“Absolutely,” she promised, then asked, “Where are you going?”

He wasn’t prepared to be questioned, so he didn’t have a lie on tap. Which was how the simple truth wound up coming out. “I’ve got to go see about making funeral arrangements.”

Now there was something she’d find oppressive if she had to face it on her own. “Are you going alone?”

Again, she’d caught him off guard. And there was that weird feeling again, as if he knew her from somewhere. But that wasn’t possible, was it?

Either way, Keith thought that was an odd question for her to be asking him. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

“I just thought you might want some company. You know, someone to talk to. This isn’t exactly a run-of-the-mill errand you’re about to undertake,” she pointed out.

He turned the tables on her by saying, “If you need to talk to me, we can meet later.”

With that, and a mumbled “See you later,” he walked out before Kenzie had a chance to say that she thought he was the one who needed to talk, not her.

Instead of going back to her work—she had yet to inventory the first floor—Kenzie went to the front window, moved aside the curtain and stood in silence as Keith walked down the driveway to his car.

Here was someone who was either oblivious to, or more likely in denial about, the extent of his own grief.

Watching him, Kenzie made up her mind.

* * *

There were too many damn questions to answer, Keith thought wearily half an hour later.

Mrs. Anderson had told him that, per his mother’s wishes, upon her death, Dorothy O’Connell wanted to be laid out at Morrison & Sons Funeral Home. He’d assumed from this information that all the paperwork had been taken care of.

He’d assumed wrong.

He supposed he could have just taken the easy way out, called the funeral director to ask about the costs and then assured the man that the check would be in the next day’s mail. To be honest, Keith still wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing here. It all seemed rather perverse and against what he’d always felt his role would be after his mother’s final breath had been taken.

This process wasn’t supposed to matter to him, but it did.

He supposed that somewhere—very deep inside—was still a sliver of the kid he had once been. The kid who had gotten along with his mother and had wanted nothing more than to take care of her and his sister. He’d wanted to be the man of the family.

He must have been all of ten or eleven years old at the time.

Before the age of reason, Keith silently added.

“I can write up a full accounting,” Abe Morrison Sr. was telling him.

The funeral director looked exactly the way Keith would have expected the man to look. Tall, thin, somber, with a touch of gray at his temples and a soft voice, as if he knew that speaking above a certain decibel level would be intruding on the next-of-kin’s grief.

But Keith was hardly listening to the man. He just wanted this part of it to be over with.

Hell, he wanted all of it to be over with.

More than anything, he wanted to be on a plane flying back to San Francisco and his life, his future, not sitting here with a stately old man, stuck in the past as he listened to him talk about a woman who was in essence a stranger to Keith and had been so for close to ten years.

Abe Morrison, however, seemed to know her very well. Why the thought irritated him so much, Keith wasn’t sure, but it did and that contributed to his feelings of intense restlessness.

The man’s whisper-soft voice was beginning to annoy him, as well.

“She was very explicit, your mother,” Abe was saying. “She didn’t want to burden you with a lot of details.” A mass of wrinkles around his eyes became prominent as the funeral director offered him what appeared to be a fond smile. “Not all our clients are as thoughtful as your mother was.”

Keith nodded dismissively. He didn’t want to be here in this place where the dead were made to look lifelike. He took out his checkbook, hoping that would signal an end to Morrison’s narrative.

Placing his checkbook on the edge of the man’s mahogany desk, his pen poised, Keith asked, “So, what do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” Abe replied serenely.

Keith looked up at the man. Was this some sort of a game? If it was, the point of it was lost on him. “Nothing?” he questioned.

“Nothing,” Abe repeated, then went on to explain. “Your mother wrote out a check once she’d decided what she wanted. Always knew her own mind, that lady,” Abe commented with just a hint of an appreciative laugh. “She prepaid her funeral expenses. She just wanted you to fill in the paperwork.”

He should have known. She’d become almost flighty in that year after Amy’s death, but at bottom, she was an exceedingly proud, responsible person who always insisted on paying her own way. He supposed funeral expenses were no different for her. Making him fill out the paperwork was just her way of reminding him that she was still in charge, even though she was no longer around.

Closing the checkbook again, he slipped it into his jacket’s inside breast pocket. “So I guess if there’s nothing further you require from me, I can be on my way.”

Abe’s finely curved eyebrows drew together as his brow furrowed. He gazed at Keith as if he couldn’t comprehend what had just been said.

“Don’t you want to view the body?” he asked, seemingly convinced that Keith hadn’t really meant he wanted to leave without seeing his mother. “Our in-house cosmetic artist did an excellent job,” he added quickly. “In case you think seeing her this way might be too difficult for you, I assure you that your mother just looks like she’s sleeping.” The lanky funeral director was already on his feet, ready to lead the way into Dorothy O’Connell’s viewing room. “Come, I’ll take you to the room myself. You’ll be the first one to see her—other than my staff, of course.”

Keith wanted to tell the man there was no need to bring him to his mother’s viewing room. He wanted simply to beg off and leave. After all, he hadn’t spent any time with his mother in the last ten years of her life. Why would he want to spend any time with her now that she was dead?

But he had a very strong feeling that if he left, the funeral director would only keep after him until the man got him to change his mind—or lose his temper. He might as well spare himself the aggravation. And this way, after he got this viewing over with, he’d be done with it once and for all.

So, against his better judgment, Keith allowed himself to be led into the viewing room.

He was prepared to mumble a few token words of grief for Abe Morrison’s benefit and then leave the funeral home and this part of his past once and for all.

What Keith wasn’t prepared for was that the funeral director would leave him alone in the viewing room.

And he definitely wasn’t prepared for the impact that being alone with his mother’s body would have on him. Logically, he knew it wasn’t her. It was just the empty shell of what had once been his mother.

And yet...

She still seemed to be right there, a part of everything. A part of him.

Keith felt as if someone had stolen the breath out of his lungs, then sat on his chest, daring him to suck air back in.

He couldn’t.

For just a second, before he regained control over himself, Keith thought he was going to black out.

“Guess you got in the last word, after all, didn’t you?” he asked his mother, the question barely above a whisper.

Keith felt tears gathering in the corners of his eyes, and he damned himself for it and her for making him have to go through this.

“This doesn’t change anything, you know,” he told her gruffly. “This death thing isn’t going to soften me and make me decide you were right and I was wrong. I wasn’t wrong. You were. Wrong to act like life was one great big party, wrong to act like you were a teenager, living life to the fullest—and more.

“I know what you were trying to do,” he told the still form lying in the blue silk–lined casket. “You were trying to live Amy’s life for her after she couldn’t live it herself. But you couldn’t do that,” he pointed out, the very words he uttered scraping against the inside of his throat. “Nobody gets to live someone else’s life. Everybody’s got one chance to live, and if that’s taken away, well, then it’s gone.”

He leaned over the casket just a tad, bringing his face in closer to hers. Damn it, the funeral director was right. She did look as if she were sleeping.

He felt as if Death—and his mother—were rubbing his nose in the fact that she was gone.

“There are no do-overs, even if you thought there should be. You don’t get to decide things like that,” he informed her. And then his voice grew louder as his anger came to the fore. “Don’t you think it tore me apart, seeing you do that? Acting like Amy when Amy wasn’t there anymore? You were her mother—my mother. You were supposed to act like one, not like some teenage girl with a mission.

“And where did all that get you in the end?” he demanded heatedly. “Nowhere, dead on a slab, that’s where it got you.” Because now that he thought about it, his mother’s erratic, age-denying lifestyle must have contributed to her demise. “Now your life’s gone, too, just like Amy’s.”

The disgust abated from his voice, and it softened again just a hint. “Maybe you could have lived longer if you hadn’t lived so crazy. I don’t know, and it’s too late to find out.” He turned to leave, then stopped, another wave of recrimination hovering on his lips. “But you shouldn’t have done it. You shouldn’t have,” he repeated, stopping short of raising his voice to the level of shouting.

He didn’t want to attract anyone to the room. Having a meltdown here in the middle of the funeral home was bad enough without it being witnessed by a bunch of strangers.

Still, Keith stood there in the room for a few more moments, doing his best to pull himself together. Searching for a way to reconcile the fact that he was never going to see his mother’s face again. This was to be the last time he’d see her, and he told himself that he shouldn’t care.

But he did.

Calling himself a fool, Keith squared his shoulders and turned to walk out of the small viewing room. He didn’t have time for this, didn’t have time to let something as useless as grief eat away at him. He had loose ends to tie up and a busy life to get back to. He wouldn’t stand around and mope over a woman who had had no regard for him whatsoever, who had shut him out when he’d tried to reach her and make her accept reality.

This, he thought, taking one last look at Dorothy O’Connell, was the final reality.

Turning, he took a long stride out of the room—and walked straight into the young woman he couldn’t quite place, who was standing just outside the room.

And who was apparently, if the expression on her face and the tears glistening in her eyes were any indication, listening to every word he’d just said to his late mother.

Chapter Four

It was a toss up whether he was more surprised or angry to find her there.

“Please tell me you’ve found a buyer for all those things in the house. Either that, or you suddenly need a funeral home, because otherwise, you have absolutely no reason to be here right now, hovering outside my mother’s viewing room,” he informed her.

He wasn’t all that sure he could tolerate the truth, but he wasn’t about to put up with any kind of lie.

“You’re my reason,” she told him, her voice as quiet as his was sharp.

Stalker.

The word flashed through his head in big, bold letters. Was that what he’d done, hired a stalker? The possibility made him angrier.

The scowl on his face was meant to be intimidating. “You’re going to have to explain that. Carefully,” he warned.

His eyes held her prisoner, as if to say that he could see right through her and would immediately know if she was lying to him.

Because he seemed so angry, Kenzie deliberately curbed her habit of speaking quickly. Instead, she enunciated every word that she uttered so he could absorb it.

“You were coming here alone, and this isn’t the sort of thing a person should have to face alone,” she told Keith with feeling. “I thought you might need a friend, so I came.”

Keith stared at her. “You’re not my friend. We have a working relationship,” he reminded her tersely, then added, “I don’t make friends that easily.”

That she could readily believe, despite how popular he’d once been. Still, even though he had apparently changed, that didn’t alter the way she felt about what he was going through or what had initially compelled her to come to the funeral home, looking for him.

Given what she’d heard him say when he thought no one was listening, she knew better than most what he was going through.

Kenzie approached the subject slowly. “I had an argument with my father.”

Keith’s scowl deepened. “I’m not your priest, either, which means I don’t do confessions.” And then his curiosity about what she was thinking got the better of him. “What does your argument with your father have to do with me?” he demanded.

Kenzie pretended that he hadn’t asked any impatient questions. Instead, she went on as if the man she addressed was quietly waiting to be enlightened.

“My father definitely had opinions about my lifestyle, my choice of friends. You know, all the usual reasons fathers and daughters butt heads. I put up with it for a while, then decided that if that was how he felt, it was his loss, not mine, and I stopped talking to him. I refused to return his calls and, to make a long story short—”

“Too late,” Keith informed her tersely.

He was making it difficult for her to get her point across, but she pushed on. “I smugly put him in his place—or so I thought.” Her voice became more serious as she continued. “I also thought there was all the time in the world to resolve these differences between us when I was good and ready to.”

Kenzie took a breath. She and her father had had more than their share of differences, but she’d loved him, and it still hurt to think about him no longer being part of her life.

“My father died before that happened. To this day, I really regret not mending those fences. And I regret not getting off my high horse and just declaring those differences we had to be meaningless water under the bridge.” She looked up into Keith’s eyes. “So I know firsthand what it’s like to have someone die on you before you have a chance to make up.”

“I had no intentions of making up,” he informed Kenzie.

Kenzie shook her head. “You say that now, but you don’t really mean it.”

“Look—”

Kenzie wasn’t about to back down from her position. She was certain that she was right and he was in a state of stubborn denial.

“No one but the Tasmanian Devil wants to live in a state of perpetual warfare.” She looked past Keith’s shoulder toward the casket. “I’d like to pay my last respects to your mother.”

That really didn’t make any sense to him. “Why would you possibly want to look at the earthly remains of Dorothy O’Connell?”

Moving into the room, Kenzie gazed down at the woman and then at Keith before turning back to the deceased again. “I’m looking at more than that.”

“An estate sale with a side order of philosophy,” Keith said sarcastically. “Does that come as a package deal, or am I required to pay extra for it?”

“You know,” she said in a tone that was devoid of judgment and composed solely of concern, “you might do a lot better getting along with yourself if you just dropped the attitude—and the ‘philosophy,’ as you call it, is free. As for our business arrangement, I only get a percentage of the total sales once they’re final,” she pointed out. “That’s written in the contract I brought with me,” she told him before he had a chance to ask about it.

Circumventing him, Kenzie went straight to the casket for a closer look at his mother. “She was always a pretty lady,” she observed softly. Her mouth curved a little as she added, “She looks so young.”

He shrugged, telling himself he didn’t care about his mother, about any of it. “That was her goal.”

His retort was cynical. Kenzie raised her eyes to his. When had his soul become so tortured? she couldn’t help thinking.

“Everyone deals with grief in their own way.” Her comment had him eyeing her quizzically. “I heard you talking to her,” she told him, thinking it was best not to elaborate any further right now.

“Of course you did,” he responded. She could tell he struggled to curb his annoyance.

She watched his expression as she said, “I was just trying to help.”

“You want to help?” he retorted. “Don’t eavesdrop. Don’t follow me. Just sell the damn things in the house. That’s all I need or want from you.”

He needed more than that, Kenzie couldn’t help thinking, even if he didn’t consciously realize it. But for now, she pretended to go along with his instructions and nodded her head.

“I still have to go over some of the inventory with you.”

He’d hired her at the agent’s suggestion so he wouldn’t have to deal with any of that. Now she seemed determined to pull him in to do exactly what he didn’t want to do.

“Why?”

“So I can put a proper price on the items,” she replied innocently. She had more of a motive than that—she wanted to help him deal with his feelings and the past—but saying so would only accomplish the exact opposite.

“Isn’t that up to you?” he asked. “You’re supposed to be the one with the expertise in vintage clutter.”

He was hiding behind insults, but she had an idea that wasn’t how he felt about it, not really, not deep down.

“I’d need you to point out the items that have more sentimental value for you—”

Keith immediately cut her short. “Well, that’s easy enough. There aren’t any.”

The house was filled with clothes, photographs and other things. It seemed impossible to her that he didn’t have at least a few favorite items amid the rest.

“None?” she asked.

His answer was firm. “None.”

Kenzie studied him for a long moment. “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe me or not. I really don’t care what you believe. All I want from you is to deal with the facts as they exist.”

When it came to battles, Kenzie had learned that picking the time and place gave her some advantage. For now she acquiesced. “If you say so.”

His eyes narrowed. “I say so.”

His voice was firm, but Keith didn’t believe what she’d just said for an instant. This woman didn’t strike him as the type to withdraw suddenly like that. Even after only a couple of hours, she seemed a bit more of a fighter than that. If he were to put a bet on it, he’d say the woman was a great example of sneak attacks and most likely was the human personification of guerrilla warfare.

Kenzie pressed on in her own fashion. “I’d still take it as a favor if you would give me some sort of a bottom-line price on some of the things I found in your mother’s closet.”

Keith grunted something unintelligible in response as they left the funeral home. He had no desire to go through the things in his mother’s closet.

Kenzie turned toward him once they were outside in the parking lot and asked, completely out of the blue, “When’s the funeral?”

There was nothing boring about this woman, Keith thought. “In three days. My mother, according to Mrs. Anderson and confirmed by the funeral director, left very specific instructions as to what she wanted. She thought three days would give all her friends enough time to say goodbye.” He was reiterating what the director had told him.

It was obvious to Kenzie that he did not appreciate the time frame. Stepping over to the side, she tried to put what he seemed to view as an ordeal in a more flattering light.

“That was very thoughtful of her.”

He, apparently, didn’t see it that way.

“Or vain,” Keith countered. “Think what it says for her to believe she has enough friends that they would fill up three days of a calendar. I don’t know of anyone short of a Hollywood celebrity who could have that sort of a following.”

What had made him so bitter? Kenzie wondered. There had to be something else at work here, not just an estrangement between a mother and her son. Had Amy’s death been the trigger?

“Oh, I don’t know,” she told him. “I’d like to think that people who touch other people’s lives on a regular basis might get that kind of a send-off when their time comes. Your mother obviously meant a lot to many people.”

Keith studied her for a moment before turning away and going to his car.

This woman his agent had recommended was definitely a Pollyanna type, he thought disparagingly. Just his luck. The last person he wanted in his life right now was Pollyanna.

He made an attempt to set her straight, admittedly more for his sake than hers. There was just so much cheerfulness and optimism he could put up with listening to, and he was past his limit.

“People aren’t nearly as nice as you seem to think they are,” he told her.

“And,” Kenzie interjected, “they’re not nearly as evil, self-centered and hot-tempered as you seem to think they are.” The look she gave him said they were at a stalemate and for now, she was willing to let it go at that.

“Better safe than sorry,” he pointed out.

She pressed her lips together, aware that since he was the client and she was in essence working for him, she should just drop this.

And she did.

For about five seconds.

“Being safe is highly overrated,” she told him.

Kenzie paused for a moment, back to debating whether or not to reveal who she was. Initially, she’d decided not to mention it, but as things began to progress, she’d gotten more and more tempted to let him in on the truth.

She decided to begin slowly and see where this went. “You know, it’s okay for you to grieve. People will understand.”

“What they won’t understand is not grieving,” he pointed out, then shrugged as he added, “But, well, you can’t show what you don’t feel, right?”

“I don’t believe that,” she told him quietly. His comment didn’t jibe with what she knew about him, or had once known, at any rate.

Keith was about to tell her that he didn’t care what she believed or didn’t believe. But he never got the chance, because she went on to say with more conviction than he felt she should exhibit, “Your mother was a very special lady.”

Keith sorely disliked people preaching on things they couldn’t possibly have any idea about. “And you came to this conclusion how?” he demanded. “By standing and looking at her for a total of, oh, about sixty seconds?”

“No, it was a lot longer than that.”

There was contempt in his eyes. “Maybe you’d better learn how to tell time.”

Okay, now she had to tell him the rest of it, Kenzie decided. The moment she’d recognized him and realized who he was, she’d wavered on whether or not to tell him right off the bat. But he’d been so removed, so distant, she’d decided there was no point in saying anything. He might even be suspicious why she’d bring this into their dealings. But now she didn’t see how she could avoid it.

“I don’t have any trouble telling time,” she informed him.

Keith ushered her impatiently over to the far edge of the sidewalk, away from the funeral home’s entrance. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

She took a breath before beginning, then plunged in. She began with the most obvious line. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Remember you?” Keith repeated, confused. Okay, something familiar about her had been nagging at him, but she had no way of knowing that. “You came to my door this afternoon, saying that my agent sent you. I admit I’m out of my depth here, but my memory’s not exactly Swiss cheese. I remember you from this afternoon.”

She made no comment on his response. Instead, she went straight to the part he needed to hear. “We went to school together.”

His eyes narrowed as he focused on her face. “‘We’ as in you and I?” he questioned suspiciously.

She nodded, then added, “And Amy.”

Kenzie watched as her client’s face darkened. She could tell that he thought she was making this up. That for some perverse reason, she was using his sister to get him to trust her or open up to her.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

“I don’t remember you,” he told her in a low, somber and dismissive voice. He meant for it to terminate the conversation before it went any further.

But it didn’t.

“I was in Amy’s homeroom and a few of her classes. We were friendly.” She could see that he still didn’t believe her—most likely because he still didn’t recognize her. In an odd way, she took that as a compliment. It had taken her a long while to learn how to play up her assets, how to style her hair and perform all the other small tricks that it took to make a silk purse out of what had been, in her opinion, a sow’s ear.

Taking out her phone, Kenzie began to flip through something on the bottom of her screen.

“Are you planning on calling someone to back you up?” Keith asked.

“No, I thought this might jar your memory a little—not that we exchanged more than about five or six words in high school.” It had been the classic scenario. “You were the sophisticated senior at the time, and I was the klutzy sophomore.”

What she was flipping through were the photographs on her phone. Most of that space was devoted to the merchandise she had acquired and was attempting to sell in her store.

But in addition to those photographs, she also had a good many photographs of her family. And she had made it a point to have one photograph of herself in that collection. The photograph captured the way she looked back in high school. She kept it to remind her never to allow herself just to coast along. Appearance, success and everything in between required constant work.

Settling for a status quo eventually led to failure.

“This was me in high school.” Turning her phone around, she held it up for his perusal. “Now do you remember me?”

He’d only meant to glance at it and dismiss what she was saying. But the second he looked down at the screen on her phone, a memory began to stir within the recesses of his mind.

The distant memory that been elusively playing hide-and-seek with his brain was back again. He stared at the photo for a handful of minutes—and then the light bulb went off in his head. Stunned, he looked at her in disbelief.

“You’re Clumsy Mac.”

The wince was automatic. She hadn’t heard that name in years and would have thought she had risen above reacting to it.

Obviously not.

“Not the most flattering nickname, but yes,” Kenzie admitted, “I was called that.”

Taking the phone from her, Keith stared at the screen, then looked back at her before looking down at the photograph again.

There was only one word that was applicable here. “Wow.”

Kenzie’s generous mouth curved. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

He hardly heard what she said. He was having a great deal of trouble believing that Clumsy Mac and the woman standing before him were one and the same person. He asked the obvious.

“Did you have surgery done?”

She tried not to pay attention to the fact that his question could be taken as an insult. She sensed he hadn’t meant it that way, which was all that counted.

“Actually, no. This is the result of a good hair stylist and learning how to use makeup.”

“Learning?” he echoed. “I think you graduated,” he murmured, looking back at the person captured on her mobile phone.

The difference between that teenager and the woman standing in front of him was like night and day—and, in his opinion, nothing short of a miracle.

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