Coming Home For Christmas

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 (#ulink_5514d136-11b0-5415-9adf-846e5fe823d2)

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.