Coming Home for Christmas (6 page)

Much to his frustration, the feeling of nostalgia refused to abate. It grew. Grew until he could feel it emanating from every corner, from every nook in his room.

Even looking at his high school jacket, the one with the letter he'd been so proud of, wound up being another occasion for nostalgia to ambush him. It happened not just when he put it on but also when he slipped his hands into the pockets. He expected them to be empty.

They weren't.

His fingers in his right pocket came in contact with something soft. When he pulled it out, he found it was a ribbon. For a moment, he stared at it, unable to remember whom it belonged to.

And then he remembered all too well. His stomach tightened.

The ribbon had belonged to Amy. It had come undone from her hair and she'd lost it. He'd found the ribbon, and out of habit, he picked it up. Amy was always losing things. Ribbons, schoolbooks, those funny little dangling earrings she loved so much. He'd teased her, saying that with her penchant for losing things, she was lucky to have kept her clothes on.

Trying to shake off the feeling, he shoved the ribbon back into his pocket and stripped the jacket off. He threw it into the bottom of his closet and quickly closed the sliding closet door, as if hiding it from view could somehow erase the feeling he was experiencing.

It didn't.

Kenzie chose that moment to come walking in. “It's done,” she announced.

His mind still elsewhere, Keith looked at her uncomprehendingly.

“I called all the people in your mother's book.” To say that it had been a grueling ordeal would have been an understatement. But no one had forced her to do it. She'd volunteered, she reminded herself, so she had no right to complain. “Everyone is profoundly sorry to hear about your mother's passing. They had some really nice things to say about her. It might have been good for you to hear,” she couldn't help telling him. “I jotted some of the things down if you want to see for yourself.”

She held the pad she'd used out to him.

Keith deliberately ignored the pad. Rather than accept it, he just shrugged. “I'll take your word for it.” He got back to the only thing that mattered here as far as he was concerned. “So it's done?”

“The notification part, yes. It's done.”

“What other part is there?” he asked, then realized what she was probably referring to. “Oh, you mean attending the funeral.”

“Actually, I was referring to the arrangements for the reception.”

The reception. He was hoping she'd forgotten about that. He should have known better.

“Yeah, about that. There're too many details to see to at this late date. I don't think that I can—”

“But I can,” she interjected, reminding him of what she'd said earlier. “I'll handle it for you,” she volunteered.

She was turning into his own personal valet, and he had to admit, he really did appreciate the help. But he had to draw the line at this. There was such a thing as abusing an offer of help, no matter how willing she seemed to be.

“It's too much,” he maintained stubbornly.

She glossed right over his protest.

“We can hold it here—after all, this is where all of your mother's friends were probably accustomed to coming. The house has that kind of warmth to it,” she added when he looked at her quizzically. “And the reception doesn't have to be anything fancy. All it has to do is
be
,” she stressed.

And then she tackled the biggest obstacle that he could raise before he had a chance to do it. “I happen to know someone who could cater this for you at a more than reasonable price,” she promised, thinking of Mrs. Manetti.

Okay, this was getting into the realm of being too good to be true—which meant that it ultimately wasn't. Somewhere down the line, there had to be a catch.

“So, aside from selling vintage furnishings, you moonlight as what—a magician, is that it?” Keith asked almost accusingly.

“No,” she told him, doing her best not to pay attention to his skeptical tone. “I just happen to have a lot of connections.”

I just bet you do
, Keith couldn't help thinking. Anyone who looked the way this woman did undoubtedly had
lots
of connections.

Chapter Six

I
n the end, though it was against his better judgment, Keith gave in and told this woman who had popped up out of his past to go ahead with the arrangements for the reception.

It was proving to be easier to say yes than to argue with Kenzie. To the casual observer, she might appear to be incredibly easygoing, but obviously in this case looks not only could be deceiving but also actually were.

The enterprising young woman was tenacious.
Extremely
tenacious. Keith quickly discovered that when she thought she was right about something, Kenzie just dug in. He had a feeling that if he didn't tell her to go ahead with the reception, she would keep chipping away at him until he finally gave in.

This way spared him a lot of useless grief.

What actual business this was of hers he had yet to figure out, but since his mother's friends did seem to expect there would be a reception held after the funeral and Kenzie was willing to make all the arrangements for him, he figured there was no point in fighting it.

He supposed it was, in essence, a win-win situation—except that he didn't actually want a reception after the funeral in the first place...

But then, he really didn't want to have to go through with the funeral service, either. However, there was just no way around it.

The situation he found himself facing made him think of one of the senior partners at his law firm, Nathan Greeley. Greeley had a large family, and one or more of them were always giving the man grief. He'd once asked Greeley how he put up with it. The senior partner had told him he just threw money at the problem until it finally went away.

At the time, he'd thought the response seemed like a rather cold—not to mention wasteful—philosophy. But he could fully appreciate the man's thinking right now. He could also readily embrace it now that he was dealing with Kenzie and his mother's funeral.

Keith supposed that, in all honesty, he couldn't really complain. Kenzie was actually doing the work. He just had to pay the bills.

For the second time, he couldn't help thinking that he had certainly gotten more than he'd bargained for by hiring Kenzie.

In more ways than one.

She was definitely a far cry from the awkward, unsure teenager he only vaguely remembered from high school.

But then, to be fair, he supposed that
he
was a far cry from the person he had been back then, as well.

Shrugging, Keith pushed any further examination of those years aside. It served no purpose. He was who he was.

A man without a family.

The thought just seemed to pop up in his head out of nowhere. Jagged and painful in its brutal simplicity, it proved to be hard to push aside.

The funeral, and everything that was associated with it, was supposed to have been just a sidebar. The sale of the house and its furnishings were supposed have taken center stage for him until they were effectively history for him, as well.

But things weren't progressing nearly as swiftly as he would have liked. It felt as if the sale was on temporary hold until after the funeral and reception were over.

He wasn't quite sure how that had happened. Kenzie had mentioned something to him in passing that postponing putting the house up for sale was just showing the proper respect for his mother. He'd been tempted to say that his mother never bothered showing him any proper respect, but he bit his tongue and refrained.

The funeral would be held in three days, and he supposed he could wait until then.

Besides, mercifully, Kenzie seemed to be really invested in making all the arrangements. To her credit—if he could call it that—she did try to pull him into every decision, but he kept abdicating his position and telling her to do what she felt was best—as long as it remained simple.

Even so, Kenzie kept trying.

She even came to him with a choice of three different menus for the reception.

He was on the sofa at the time, trying to distract himself by finding something vaguely entertaining on television. Never an avid viewer, he was striking out rather badly.

Armed with printed material, Kenzie bent over the coffee table and spread out the menus for him to review.

“What looks good to you?” she asked.

Keith glanced away from the set and looked in her direction. The first thing he noticed wasn't any of the menus she'd laid out for him. It was the way her light blue blouse dipped down, allowing him to glimpse just the slightest hint of cleavage—only enough to distract him—as she fussed over the menus.

As if his brain was on some delayed timer, when he realized what he was doing—and that she was looking at him—Keith said the first thing that came to mind that didn't include her.

Or food, for that matter.

Clearing his throat, he muttered, “A shot of vodka comes to mind.”

Kenzie effortlessly took his response in stride, incorporating it in her answer. “There'll be a bar for those who feel the need for something a little more bracing than soda.” Straightening up as unobtrusively as possible when she realized that her neckline had dipped down, Kenzie tapped an index finger once on each of the menus. “I meant, which of these menus do you want at the reception?”

None stood out from the other two. They looked equally acceptable. Keith waved a dismissive hand at the array. “It doesn't matter.”

The look he caught her giving him in response said that it did matter.

“Okay, you pick,” he told Kenzie, adding for her benefit, “I defer to your judgment. You seem to be in tune to what these women want.”

She couldn't help wondering if Keith knew how aloof he sounded. She refused to believe he really felt that way. There was a human being underneath all that. She was sure of it. He couldn't have changed all that much from the person she remembered when she'd had that massive crush on him in high school.

“What they want is the opportunity to get together and trade favorite stories about your mother. And what I want,” she added quietly, catching him by surprise, “is for you not to patronize me.”

Keith frowned. He hadn't realized that he'd allowed his facade to slip down. He was usually a lot better at keeping his mask in place when dealing with a distasteful situation.

“I wasn't patronizing you,” he protested.

Kenzie laughed dryly and rolled her eyes.

“Oh, please. I'm an optimist, not an idiot. You're angry. I get it. But eventually, the anger's going to pass. If you don't do this, if you just turn your back on your mother, her friends and everything else, you're going to regret it. And regret has amazing staying power. It has a tendency to haunt us for a very long time.”

He doubted that Kenzie had ever regretted anything in her whole life. He, on the other hand, did. And that was what he was attempting to deal with right now.

“More philosophy?” he asked flippantly.

“Call it whatever you like. And no, it's not part of a package deal. It's on the house,” she added with a tolerant, lopsided smile.

With that, she scooped the menus up off the coffee table and began to walk out of the room.

The woman was trying, and he shouldn't be making it this hard for her. With an inward sigh, he called out to her. “Kenzie?”

Kenzie paused, then glanced at him over her shoulder. “Yes?”

“Which one did you decide on?”

“The one with chicken. There are people who have issues with beef or pork, but almost everyone likes chicken,” she told him.

It made sense, and Keith nodded. Just as she did cross the threshold, he added what he'd left unsaid. “Thanks for doing this.”

Again, she looked at Keith over her shoulder and smiled. “No problem,” she assured him.

And she sounded like she actually meant it.

* * *

It was the smell of coffee that woke him the next morning.

At first, as the aroma wafted into the misty domain comprising his dormant, unconscious state, Keith was sure he was just dreaming.

But he could still smell the strong aroma when he opened his eyes.

What the...?

He was certain that he hadn't set the coffee machine on a timer. Last night came back to him, and he remembered watching
Executive Decision
, a favorite movie he must have seen at least twenty times, if not more. Flipping channels, he'd encountered it—a few scenes into the story—on one of the cable stations, and it was like running into an old friend.

Watching it was somehow comforting. He couldn't recall falling asleep, but he must have.

When had he turned off the set?

Or had he?

As Keith struggled to clear his head and piece together the tail end of his evening, the scent of coffee became stronger.

And then he realized why.

“Hi, you're up,” Kenzie said as if it was an event she'd been waiting for. She placed a large cup of coffee—black—in front of him.

His brain still hadn't fully clicked in, but he distinctly remembered Kenzie going home last night. “What are you doing here?”

“Putting coffee in front of you,” she responded brightly. Kenzie knew that he wasn't really asking that, so she answered what she assumed was his actual question. “I let myself in this morning. I hope you don't mind.”

The fog was still hovering around his brain, clouding it. “I gave you a key?” Keith couldn't remember doing that.

And, it turned out, with good reason.

“No,” Kenzie answered. “But there was an extra front door key hanging on the key rack in the kitchen, so I took it last night. I need to get an early start this morning, and I didn't want to wake you up.”

The information was going in, but it still wasn't finding a proper home. “Early start?” he echoed. “Doing what?”

“Inventory,” she answered. And then she prodded his memory a little more. “You hired me to organize an estate sale, remember?”

“I know,” he bit out impatiently, “but what I remember is you taking over my mother's funeral arrangements—not that I'm not glad you did,” he quickly interjected, afraid that she might just back off and subsequently out of everything if she thought he was complaining. Now that apparently everyone was coming to the house after the funeral, he definitely wanted Kenzie to remain and act as his buffer.

Looking to move on, Keith picked up the mug from the coffee table. The coffee immediately drew the focus of his attention. In this day and age of designer coffee, his own taste in coffee had remained unchanged.

After taking an appreciative first sip, he raised his eyes to hers and asked, “How did you know that I take it black?”

“I guessed,” Kenzie confessed. “No cream, no sugar, just black. It seemed to me that would be your style,” she added.

“And strong.” Which he discovered after taking his second sip of the hot brew. His first reaction hadn't been a fluke. The coffee tasted as if it could double as a paint remover.

“Another guess,” she admitted. “There's also breakfast in the kitchen if you like,” she added. Keith must have looked puzzled, because she elaborated. “Eggs, bacon, toast. Nothing fancy, just hot.”

“I didn't see any eggs or bacon in the refrigerator.”

“That's because there weren't any. I stopped at the store on my way here.”

That seemed to him unnecessarily complicated. “Would've been easier stopping at a drive-through,” was his assessment.

“Maybe,” Kenzie conceded. “But I like to cook, and most breakfasts are simple enough to make. This certainly was,” she added. “So, if you're interested, the plate's on the stove, still warm.”

With that, she turned away and headed toward the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Keith asked. He got up, holding the coffee mug in both hands.

“Upstairs. Inventory,” she answered again. Then she asked with a patient smile, “Remember?”

Keith frowned. He figured that he had to in order to maintain the ruse that he was effectively keeping Kenzie at arm's length, even though that length was definitely shrinking—by the moment, it seemed.

He wasn't happy about it. At the same time, he didn't seem to be able to do anything about it.

In self-defense, he allowed his temper to surface.

“Yes, I remember,” he answered curtly. “I'm not senile yet.”

“Yet,” Kenzie echoed with a grin, clearly amused.

It was slowly working out, she thought as she hurried up the stairs. He sounded reasonably awake and somewhat cheerful—until he realized he was thawing and made a stab at grumpiness. She figured it was best to quit while she was ahead.

Besides, she had a lot of work cut out for her that had nothing to do with the state of his disposition—even though it interested her a great deal.

Later
, she promised herself.

* * *

He'd finished eating and the dishes were in the sink, obviously waiting to be washed at some future date, whenever he felt like getting around to it.

Since Kenzie hadn't been gone all that long, he was surprised to see her.

The expression on her face was difficult for him to decipher. As a lawyer, he'd learned how to read jurists, but she was a challenge. Though she was deceptively laid-back with amusement in her eyes, he knew there was a great deal more to her than was visible at first.

“Something wrong?” Keith asked.

She wouldn't have called it “wrong” but just something that needed to be addressed. “I found a box,” she began slowly, wondering how he was going to react.

“So?” he asked, waiting for some sort of further explanation.

“It's a box of letters,” Kenzie told him, sounding slightly breathless as she placed the box on the coffee table in front of him.

Keith shrugged. He refrained from touching it, as if not touching the box allowed him to negate the validity of whatever might have been inside. He regarded it uneasily without knowing why.