"It's my funeral car," said Christian.
"You have another?"
"One or two." He looked at Don's shocked expression and grinned. "Actually, four altogether."
Don opened the door, inhaled the smell of expensive leather with relish. "Well, you can give me a lift to the wake in this one. Damned if I'm going to watch them bury her."
Christian's grin faded. "I wasn't planning on staying."
"An hour won't kill you," growled the old man. "Muriel put a fine whiskey aside for this. The least you can do is toast her memory. Then we'll step into my office and do the handover."
Don Muldoon, being a pragmatist, owned the building adjoining the hotel. "Be where your customers are," was his maxim. He'd even gone so far as to add an interconnecting door, fuelling gossip about the true nature of his relationship with Muriel, which both had reveled in.
He'll miss her badly. Christian wished he hadn't thought of that, wished he'd just handed the old codger some money for postage and left the dairy-farming flatland behind him-with a squeal of tires for old times'sake. But he still owed Don for keeping his secret. Sighing, he crossed to open the passenger door. "Thirty minutes."
Then wondered if his sympathy had been misplaced when Don winked at him. "I'm sure even you and Kezia can exchange pleasantries for that long."
KEZIA NEARLY DROPPED the cupcakes when she pushed through the saloon doors into the cool dimness of the lounge bar and saw Christian leaning against the fireplace mantel, flanked by her grandmother's elderly cronies.
The afternoon rays beamed through the stained-glass window and fell in prisms on the group. Bernice May was yellow, Don Muldoon, green, and Christian-very appropriately, she thought-glowed red. But nothing could leach the color from those extraordinary eyes-pupils like black atolls in a sea of Pacific blue. Eyes measuring her reaction as she measured his, each looking for a cue from the other.
Kezia rearranged the pink-iced sponges that had tumbled off their pyramid while she decided how she felt. So many times over the years, and in so many moods-hope, despair, righteous anger-she had imagined this meeting. Even when she no longer loved him she'd fantasized about what psychologists called closure and Kezia called having the last word. How ironic that in this maelstrom of grief for her grandmother she felt … nothing.
Across the room he smiled at her and her heart remembered why she'd loved him, while her mind thanked God she'd got over him. One woman could never hold a man with a smile like that. There were shadows under those intensely blue eyes, she noticed, and shadows in them. Through her numbness she saw an understanding of her grief, and she frowned because she didn't want to connect with anyone ever again. Least of all Christian.
Civil, she decided, putting the plate on a sideboard already groaning under the weight of cakes and club sandwiches. She would be civil. As she headed toward the group, holding out a hand in greeting, Kezia returned Christian's smile. "How nice of you to make the trip." She heard how facile that sounded even before his eyes narrowed. "Nice" had never applied to Christian. He made no move to take her hand. "I mean, Nana would have appreciated it." Even now, trying to retrieve the situation, she'd put the stress on the wrong word. The unspoken implication-but I don't!-hung in the air. Kezia stared up at him helplessly. "Will you please just shake my hand?"
"I don't think we need to be that formal." Christian put down his glass and drew her into an embrace that was half awkward, wholly familiar and so full of reluctant sympathy that Kezia was torn between burying her face in his broad shoulder and never coming out and giving him a sharp slap for his insensitivity.
She jerked away to see his eyes leveling the same accusation at her and realized with a shock that she was being selfish. Others suffered, perhaps as much.
On an impulse she took his hands-big and broad with long, tapered fingers-and cradled them, trying to ignore the frisson of awareness that passed between them. "How are you coping?"
Christian removed his hands, reached for his glass. "Like a man," he said lightly. "Work harder, play harder."
She remembered the tabloids and couldn't resist the temptation. "How is Miss September?"
His eyes gleamed. "I'm between months at the moment."
A laugh, almost painful through disuse, escaped her.
"Toast Muriel with us," said Don approvingly. "We're celebrating her life by telling outrageous stories about her."
Oh, that sounded tempting. But Kezia eased her shoulders back. "I need to pour coffee and serve food."
"No, Kez." Christian handed her a glass. "You need a stiff drink and to talk to old-" he paused "-friends. Let someone else dole out the culinary relics."
"Keep your voice down. Everyone brought food," Kezia cautioned. They hadn't parted friends but if Christian had the manners to pretend otherwise then so did she.
"And I was one of those volunteers," said Bernice May tartly. She poked Christian in the ribs with a bony finger and pointed to the fairy bread on the mahogany bar beside them-thin triangles of white bread topped with multicolored sprinkles embedded in thick yellow butter. In the heat, the corners were as curled as Aladdin's slippers.
"Bernice May, you've been peddling that rubbish ever since I can remember." Unrepentant, Christian refilled the old lady's empty glass. "You're a terrible cook and you know it."
"Bernice May is famous for her fairy bread," Kezia insisted, biting into one. Sugar balls grated against her teeth.
"She's always saving people's feelings," explained Bernice May complacently, watching Kezia try to swill down the sprinkles with whiskey. The combination was indescribably foul but it took Kezia's mind off Christian's raised eyebrow. "Anyway, I thought you were a ladies' man these days," the old lady complained. "Where's your legendary charm?"
"Saved for ladies," said Christian.
Kezia choked midsip but Bernice May laughed until she cried and ended up wiping away most of her pencilled eyebrows. "Come home, Christian," she suggested. "With Muriel gone we need another hellraiser to keep this town interesting. Don't we, Kezia?"
"Yes," said Kezia, emboldened by his instinctive recoil. "Come home, Christian. Swap the penthouse for a farmhouse, the Bentley for a tractor and your tourism empire for a pitchfork. I believe there are at least three single women for you to date." She realized she was enjoying herself in a perverse way, taking on someone who could match her, whose feelings she couldn't hurt, even if she wanted to. But she was also appalled at her meanness-and at a time like this.
"Do you count yourself, Kez? If so, we'll have to drop that number back to two. I never date the same woman twice."
"And I never repeat the same mistake twice." Somehow the fun had gone out of it. "What makes you think I'm single anyway?"
"You're doing this alone," said Christian, and Kezia fell back into the bleak present. She put down her glass. "I should mingle," she said, and saw quick remorse in Christian's eyes.
"Kez-"
Don interrupted. "First I need you both in my office to go over the finer details of Muriel's estate."
"Why?" Bernice May's voice echoed Kezia's.
"It'll be private in my office," Don added pointedly.
Kezia shot a suspicious look at Christian. He shrugged. "No idea. But let's get this over with. It's time I left."
She needed no further convincing. "Okay." Besides, pretty soon she'd need to cry. He had to be gone before that.
DON DIDN'T BEAT AROUND the bush. He pulverized it.
Mentally, Kezia collected all the pieces and tried to fit them together. "The hotel is verging on bankruptcy because Nana's had a bad run on the horses?"
"It appears Muriel remortgaged some years ago but most of the capital was spent on meeting running costs, interest payments and, later, medical bills. When her health started deteriorating she obviously panicked and bet on the track to try to recoup that money." Don shuffled papers on his battered desk. "Which is exactly the sort of harebrained scheme Muriel would adopt rather than admit she needed help. I'm sorry, Kezia."
"There's nothing for you to be sorry about," she said perfunctorily, still trying to take in the enormity of his disclosure. "No wonder she retained bookkeeping when I took over two months ago." Swallowing her terror, she asked, "Can I trade out of this?"