Mr. Imperfect

by Karina Bliss

  “Still scared of spiders, Muffet?” Christian used Marion’s old nickname with relish.

  She paused. “We’re not talking about it.”

  A smile, unguarded and complicit, flickered between Christian and Kezia. Maybe we can forgive each other, after all, she thought.

  “So—” Marion reached for her coffee “—did you ever settle down, Christian?”

  His grin hardened with cynicism and Kezia looked away, feeling foolish.

  “Marry, beget 2.5 kids and get talked into a pet hamster?” His mouth quirked. “No, I didn’t.”

  “That’s my life you’re describing, so you’d better stop there. Except my son chose a rat.” Marion looked sad again. “Come to think of it, so did I.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that—” Christian stopped, puzzlement on his face. The ancient linen tablecloth that enveloped the trolley billowed like a poltergeist.

  “John Jason, you come out of there,” yelled his mother, pulling up the cloth. “No wonder I couldn’t steer this thing.”

  A miniature Batman clutching a white rat rolled onto the carpet, scattering papers. With a yelp, Kezia lurched forward to save them and succeeded only in splattering coffee down her best white linen suit. Served her right for trying to look coolly austere for Christian’s arrival.

  “You should have left that rat at home, Batman.” Christian grabbed the child’s cape and swung him away from the few remaining stacks. “Hotel inspectors don’t like them. I have to say, I’m not too fond of them myself.”

  “Roland lives here.” John Jason’s tone suggested Christian should know that. Kezia found herself crossing her arms defensively.

  “The rat lives…here?”

  Christian’s shortbread was at just the right height. John Jason leaned forward to take a bite. “With me.”

  “You live here, too?”

  “Me an’ Mum an’—” in a singsong “—Roland an’ Kezia.”

  “Normally he’s in a cage.” Kezia made a futile attempt to sound responsible.

  Christian asked nicely, “What about the rat?”

  “I COULDN’T SAY NO,” argued Kezia.

  “You have no problem saying no to me,” Christian pointed out.

  “They needed a home after the farm sold. I asked Muriel to take them in. It’s temporary.”

  An unwelcome suspicion distracted Christian from the beguiling sway of Kezia’s hips under the soft swish of silk-lined linen as he followed her down the narrow corridor. “Temporary.” He picked a rational figure and doubled it. “So they’ve been here six weeks?”

  “Here’s your room.” She stood aside to let him pass. “It’s the honeymoon suite,” she encouraged, urging him forward.

  “God, we’re talking months, aren’t we?” Through the doorway Christian found just what he’d expected—more shabby gentility perfumed with bees-wax and mothballs. He dropped his bag and hauled the lace curtains back to throw light on the room’s bones. “Quit hedging,” he demanded. “Just how long have the Munsters been in residence?”

  “Three months. The rat—four weeks.”

  Christian’s attention, hijacked by the sight of an ancient iron-framed bed, snapped back to Kezia. “You approved the rat?”

  “I bought him.” Her brown eyes, lit with rueful humor, met his and he resisted an impulse to smile back. There would be no repeat of his weakness at the funeral.

  “Why?” Making a mental note to buy rat poison at the first opportunity, Christian tested the bedsprings. The white linen coverlet was so thin it had the translucence of skimmed milk.

  “John Jason was missing his dad, wetting the bed every night. I thought a pet might help. Except any pet for that boy needs a powerful survival instinct.” Her rueful grin intensified. “Hence Roland.”

  Damn, he smiled before he could stop himself. Amazing that the intervening years hadn’t wearied Kezia’s philanthropy, more so that he still found it a turn-on. “Rats only leave sinking ships so I guess his presence is a good sign under the circumstances,” he conceded, reluctantly discounting the rat poison. “But the rodent stays in the kid’s room.” An experimental bounce on the mattress evoked shrieks from the springs. “How the hell does anyone have sex in this bed?”

  “It’s been a while…” Kezia faltered and he watched the color heighten in her cheeks. So this unwelcome awareness was mutual “…a while since we had honeymooners staying. And the springs have only got worse because…only recently,” she finished vaguely.

  “Just how much rent are your strays paying?” From the financial accounts, Christian already knew the answer but he wanted her to acknowledge some culpability for this mess. It would give him the moral high ground, a position he found useful in business and avoided like the plague in his private life.

  “If you think I’m going to fall on my sword because I helped out a friend, you’re not smart enough to be useful,” she said coolly. “And I can stop fighting the impulse to tell you to go to hell.”

  So the intervening years had put steel in that fragile backbone. Shame she hadn’t had it when they were eighteen.

  “Keep fighting it, I just got smarter.” This time his smile was deliberate, the wattage turned high enough to melt all female resistance. “I won’t underestimate you again, I promise.”

  Kezia snorted. “Christian, please remember that I knew you when you were a sixteen-year-old bagging up chicken shit at Old Man Norton’s poultry farm.”

  “Kelly’s Compost Activator. You know I’ve never bettered that profit margin. Four hundred percent return.”

  “Mostly spent on soap,” Kezia reminded him, and for the first time their unspoken past lay lightly between them.

  He decided to trust her with honesty. “We have to get these rooms back into inventory as quickly as possible. The bank must believe we can generate more income.”

  “So you expect me to evict Marion.”

  “Yes,” he said dryly. “I like nothing better than to toss women and children out onto the street. If only it were snowing.”

  She sat beside him, hands clenched together in her coffee-splattered lap. “Sorry, I don’t usually shoot at the cavalry.”

  “More like the Lone Ranger.” Under her makeup he saw the blank weariness of grief. “We’ll work around Marion until she finds a place. I can subsidize it.” Impatiently he overrode her protest. “At least let my money solve someone’s problem.”

  His frustration that it couldn’t solve this one grew as he toured the upper floor. With his buyer’s eye he could see the red-oak floors stripped of their threadbare carpet, fretwork restored by a craftsman’s careful hand and the rooms dressed in lush fabrics and colors by one of his interior designers.

  Instead, he and Kez would have to give the place yet another cosmetic overhaul with cheap fabrics, cheaper paint and their own inexpert labor. He’d funded himself through college as a builder’s laborer and hated it. Thanks, Muriel.

  “This is Nan—my room.” Kezia opened the door adjacent to Christian’s room. “It might work as a second honeymoon suite.”

  Christian blinked. Ruby-velvet drapes coiled around the mahogany frame of a massive four-poster, the bed made plump with white faux fur cushions. A crystal chandelier winked at its reflection in an ornate gilt mirror and a candy-striped couch with the curves of a languishing woman merged into matching wallpaper. “It’s like a bordello in a spaghetti Western.”

  “Muriel’s tastes were expensive but the results were generally cheap. I don’t think she ever made the connection—” Kezia smiled “—and no one had the nerve to make it for her.”

  “Maybe it’s a good thing she never had the money to redecorate.”

  “Actually she did.” Kezia straightened a cushion that had fallen out of formation. “The bank told me yesterday that upgrading the hotel was the reason she gave them for re-mortgaging five years ago. As far as I can tell, only the foundations were reinforced—and this room decorated.” She hugged herself in an unconscious gesture of comfort. �
�Needless to say, they’re less than thrilled the place is still in disrepair.”

  Christian kept his face blank while he mastered his emotions. “Why didn’t you call me with this last night?”

  “You might not have come.”

  Her accuracy didn’t bother him; the hope implied by her words did. “I’m not a miracle worker, Kez.”

  Her mouth softened into a wry smile. “There’s your first miracle.”

  He raised a brow in enquiry.

  “I just admitted I want your advice.”

  “No, the miracle would be if you took it.” His gaze swept the outrageous room. “We could always add turning tricks to our business plan.” She grew thoughtful enough to startle him. “It was a joke, Kez. You’re not on the streets yet.”

  “Themed rooms would give us a point of difference with the romance market, perhaps tied in with local culture.”

  Now that was funny. “How about one called the Milking Parlor? Cowpat-brown carpet, hay in the mattress, Bovine Breath room freshener and milking cup light fixtures.”

  She gave him a look that reminded him forcibly of her grandmother. “I won’t even dignify that with a reply. Shall we continue the tour?”

  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.”

  She stuck to the facts, her tone brisk. But in her heart, dread grew like a tumor. “It has a huge mortgage so it’s no use as security, but I’ve had an offer to buy. It’s low—Bob Harvey knows I’m desperate for money—but I’d net twenty thousand dollars.”

  “You don’t want to sell.”