CHAPTER THREE
THE KITCHEN WAS an enormous, high-ceilinged room, gloomy even in midsummer. Long, scratched stainless-steel benches and a large table in the center of the room added to the barracks feel.
There were three women in the kitchen, aprons protecting their clothes, one buttering slices of white bread, one mixing cake dough and the third plating chicken pies, oven-bronzed and fragrant, doing their desperate best to cheer the dank room. Déjà vu slammed Christian against the wall and held him there.
"Are you all right?"
He couldn't answer, closing his eyes against the faintness stealing over his senses. The scrape of a chair, then Kezia's hands forcing him to sit, pushing his head down between his legs, the sharp exclamations of anxious women.
By sheer force of will he sat up. "I'm fine now."
"Are you ill, son?" One of the woman asked, her white apron encasing her generous girth like an over-stuffed pillowcase.
Son. Christian closed his eyes again, racked by an old guilt. "Didn't eat breakfast," he managed to say. It got the desired result.
He sensed movement as they hastened to gather food, releasing him from scrutiny. He opened his eyes, his emotions unguarded and raw, and his gaze collided with Kezia's. She still crouched anxiously in front of him.
"Oh, my God, Christian." She reached for him as one would a child, to comfort and console.
He stopped her with a glance. "I need to get out of here."
"Fresh air will do you good," she agreed.
He pushed to his feet. "I mean, leave, Kez."
"Okay." But her dismayed expression made him understand that he couldn't do this to Muriel-or to her. He sat again.
"My mother worked here," he said in a low voice. She'd died of cancer when he was twelve, well before Kezia's arrival at sixteen, and he'd never talked about it. "I used to come here after school, eat the leftovers and study at that table. I'd forgotten … until I walked in." He dredged up a weak smile. "This place is caught in a time warp."
"We'll change the kitchen first," she said seriously.
"No, the public areas have precedence. Anyway, I'm over it now. Stupid to get a hit for someone twenty years dead."
Kezia frowned, but before she could say anything the coffee arrived-steaming hot and so full of sugar he could smell it. With it came a slice of bread, door-stop-thick and slathered with creamy butter. "We're cooking you a decent meal, son," said the large woman. "You and Kezia take yourself to the dining room and I'll bring it out."
"This will do fine," Christian answered. "Please don't put yourself to further trouble-" he looked at her name tag "-Peach?" It suited her round-cheeked abundance.
"We can't have you fading away or we'll have nothing to look at," said Peach.
"Just as long as I know what I'm here for."
Peach glanced at Kezia. "Oh, we can think of a few uses for you. I hear you two were sweethearts once."
"We're not talking about it," they said together.
SITTING IN THE DINING ROOM, watching Christian scan her summary report while they waited for his meal, Kezia wondered how he did it. Ten minutes ago he'd revealed a grief so deep she still ached to give him sympathy. Now his self-possession was intimidating.
Peach arrived, carrying two plates piled high with bacon and eggs, hash browns and toast. She forestalled Kezia. "No arguments. Coffee does not count as breakfast."
"Just so we know who's in charge here," Kezia grumbled as she picked up her knife and fork.
"You are," said Peach. "Except when I am." She turned to Christian, her face softening, and Kezia was torn between amusement and irritation. The damn man exuded a potency that dazzled anyone with estrogen. Thank God she'd been immunized. "She got skinny living away," Peach confided, "but I'll fix that." On that ominous promise, she departed.
Christian put the report aside. "You moved out?"
Kezia stabbed at her bacon. "No, time stopped the day you left."
His blue eyes glinted across the table. "That sound patronizing?"
"Very." He waited and she added shortly, "Up until two months ago I shared a town house in Everton with another teacher." In the district hub, a township barely ten kilometers south of Waterview. "I hadn't officially lived here for a couple of years although I came back to help out most weekends."
"Tell me about your life, Kez." Christian picked up his cutlery and attacked his heaped plate. "When I'd ask Muriel, she'd turn frosty and say, 'Call and ask her yourself.'"
"Did she?" Kezia paused in her breakfast. "She told me the same thing." She reached for the last piece of toast. "Of course, I have the advantage, the tabloids had no such reticence."
He laughed at her, unrepentantly male. "So much for my hobbies. What about yours?"
She took her time applying butter. He lived his life on a big canvas and could never appreciate the incidental pleasures of country life. But not telling him meant his opinion mattered. "I taught primary school for most of it, though it was always understood I'd eventually run the family business. I'm also on the Waterview town council, I help out with Age Assist once a week-"
"Those are duties, not hobbies. What do you do for fun?"
"Meetings can be very social." Kezia didn't like the defensiveness in her voice. She had to lighten up. "Did I mention I'm a campanologist?"
That intrigued him. "You study camping?"
Kezia tsked. "And you with a college degree."
"I'm mortified." He looked no such thing. "Now explain."
"Some call me a swinger." She enjoyed the play of expressions on Christian's face.
"Baseball," he concluded.
Kezia made a moue of disappointment. "A man of the world not knowing what a swinger is? Pass the honey, please."
"You're pulling my leg."
"There is a lot of pulling involved," she allowed, "but not of legs. The honey?"
Christian handed it over, his gaze assessing, but Kezia kept a straight face. "Come along to our next meeting, we're always looking for new members." She put just the tiniest emphasis on the last word but the gleam in his eye told her she'd overdone it. Fortunately, Peach arrived and started clearing plates.
"Kez tells me she's a swinger," he said while his subject, unconcerned, applied honey to her toast.
"One of our best," said Peach proudly. "There's some that think giving it a tug and setting up a racket is the go, but you need a light touch to be any good at it."
For the first time Kezia saw Christian nonplussed. "You swing, too?" he asked carefully.
"No, but my husband does when his back isn't playing up." She turned away with a stack of plates. "It's great to hear you laugh again, Kezia," she called over her shoulder.
"Okay, put my imagination out of its misery," Christian demanded. "What the hell is campanology?"
"Church bell-ringing," she gasped. "Very difficult to do."
He evinced skepticism with one eyebrow. "Pulling a rope?"
"Knowing when to let it go takes more skill," she answered, regaining her composure. Campanologists were used to teasing.
"Sounds like it ranks with bungy-jumping for excitement."
"And danger," she added serenely.
"Rope burn?"
Kezia bit her lip, determined not to smile. "People have-"
"Gone deaf?"
"Died! The bells can weigh up to two tons a piece." Okay, those five fatalities were probably spread over several hundred years, but no point in spoiling a good story.
"I'm sure the insurance premiums are huge," he remarked, and she laughed despite herself. Christian grinned back with a boyish charm that made Kezia catch her breath. "You know," he said, "the biggest surprise for me was finding you single. Somehow I expected you to be married with lots of kids. You always wanted them."
Abruptly she changed the subject. "We should get back to work. Now that I've bought you up to date, what's your verdict?"
Shrugging, he reached for the report. "Please tell me you own that town house in Everton, because we haven't a snowball's chance in hell with the bank without some security or cash."
Kezia had known it would come to this. Still a miracle would have been nice. "I don't own the town house but I do have something to sell-six acres about two kilometers from here."