Coming Home for Christmas Read Free

market, the price of the house, what you—”
    â€œYou do it,” he said abruptly.
    â€œDo what, exactly?” Maizie asked. He looked to be on edge. Why? she wondered. Did it have to do with the house or something else? There were a lot of gaps she would have to fill. It didn’t necessarily help with the sale of the house, but the information would be useful in other ways.
    â€œYou determine the going price for the house and sell it for just under that,” he explained.
    â€œUnder the going rate?” Maizie questioned. Why would he want to sell it short? This was one of the more popular models in the development, and its orientation was ideal. The morning sun hit the kitchen and family room first. By the time the afternoon arrived with its heat, the sun was hitting the driveway, leaving the house enveloped in comfort.
    Maizie looked at her new client more closely. “What’s wrong with the house, Mr. O’Connell?”
    â€œNothing.” He had to hold himself in check to keep from snapping. That wasn’t going to help. Besides, it wasn’t Mrs. Sommers’s fault that closure felt as if it was eluding him. “There’s nothing wrong with the house. I just want to get rid of it. I told you, I don’t live in this area anymore, and I just want to sell the house and get back to my work.”
    â€œWhat is it that you do, Mr. O’Connell?”
    â€œI’m a lawyer.” Usually he experienced a tinge of pride accompanying that sentence. But this time there was nothing, just this odd, hollow feeling, as if being a lawyer didn’t matter anymore.
    That was ridiculous. Of course it mattered. He was just fatigued, Keith insisted, silently scolding himself for the irrational thought.
    â€œA lawyer,” Maizie repeated with an approving nod of her head, surprising him. “The son and daughter of one of my best friends are both lawyers,” she told him conversationally. And then she sobered slightly and she asked in as kind a tone as she could, “Did your mother die at home, by any chance?”
    Because if the woman had, that put an impedance on the idea of a quick sale. Legally, at-home deaths had to be stated as such, and there were a great many people who wouldn’t dream of buying a home that supposedly came with its very own ghost to haunt its hallways.
    Keith blinked. “What? No. Why?” The single-word sentences were fired out at her like bullets, shot one at a time.
    Maizie’s tone continued to be kind as she answered him. “I thought that might explain why you seem so...tense,” she finally said for lack of a better word.
    She didn’t want to offend the young man, but she did want to get to the heart of what might be troubling him, because he
was
troubled. Anyone could see that.
    â€œJet lag,” Keith told her dismissively, as if that explained everything.
    â€œSan Francisco is in the same time zone,” she pointed out gently. There was no reason for him to be experiencing any sort of jet lag.
    â€œOf course it’s in the same time zone. I’m not an idiot,” Keith protested. “Sorry,” he murmured, doing his best to bank down his temper. Over the years, he’d schooled himself to be emotionally reserved. But what he’d learned was escaping him right now. “I was in New York on business when I got the call that—” Abruptly he changed the course of his response, correcting his last words. “My firm took a call from my mother’s neighbor saying that my mother had passed away. My assistant called me. So I caught the next plane back,” he told her.
    And then he stopped cold.
    Keith wasn’t accustomed to explaining himself. He hadn’t done that in a very long time. This had all caught him completely by surprise, and he was revealing more than he’d intended.
    â€œThat doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” he informed her