Mr. Imperfect(2)

"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?"