Coming Home For Christmas

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Chapter Five (#ulink_b1e56385-e329-5e6f-9a2b-ac20a424a522)

Keith wasn’t sure how he felt about the idea that he knew the person handling the so-called “estate” sale of the furnishings and other items within his mother’s house.

In recent years he’d come to feel that there was something to be said for anonymity. Since he and Kenzie had, in a manner of speaking, a vague sort of history together, he had an uneasy feeling that he was leaving himself open to an invasion of privacy somewhere down the road. He had little doubt that Kenzie would believe their having attended the same high school entitled her to ask questions and be on a familiar footing with him, whereas if they were actually strangers, he would be able to keep her at a distance more easily.

He was overthinking this, he told himself. After all, MacKenzie Bradshaw was a professional, and he sincerely doubted that his agent would have suggested her for the job if Kenzie wasn’t up to getting the job done—and more than just adequately.

Besides, he wouldn’t have to put up with any of this for long. He was flying back to San Francisco the second the funeral was over. His presence here certainly wasn’t necessary for the sale of either the house or the things that were in it. That was why he’d come to Maizie Sommers to begin with.

Sanctuary would be his very shortly, Keith promised himself—provided, of course, that he survived the next few days. There were times that he wasn’t sure of the inevitability of that outcome.

In a bid for simplicity and moving things along at an acceptable pace, Keith had reconsidered checking into a hotel as he’d planned after the first night. He’d grown up in this house, he reasoned, so he could endure staying here for a few more days rather than commuting back and forth from the hotel, braving traffic and steep hotel rates.

Ever practical, he saw no reason to complicate matters and have to pay premium prices just for a place to sleep, which was all that his stay at a hotel would have amounted to. The rest of his time while he was in Bedford would be spent either fielding Kenzie’s free-flowing questions or being involved in myriad details connected to his mother’s funeral.