Mr. Imperfect

by Karina Bliss

  His gaze stayed on Kezia who was pulling the bed-clothes around her luscious curves. She was angry with him for taking the call but his news would change that. He could admit it now; he wanted to leave her happy.

  And he wanted to leave her. When he’d delivered his ultimatum at eighteen, she hadn’t known how desperate his home situation was because he hadn’t wanted pity to affect her choice. In a world that had been reduced to black and white he had given her a test of loyalty. And she had failed.

  He might have matured into seeing shades of gray but emotionally he couldn’t forgive her. Even if he could feel the siren’s song in her touch, he could resist it. If he left soon.

  “Thanks, Cathy, I’ll be home tomorrow so we can finalize last details then.” He rang off to see Kezia, tight-lipped and furious, pulling on her nightdress under the blanket. “You think you—this—means so little to me that I’d interrupt it for any old business call?” He tried to look wounded but he was feeling too damn elated to carry it off.

  She noticed. Snap went the sheet and she was out of bed and gathering his clothes with short jerky movements. “Get dressed and get out.” Kezia thrust his clothes at him and he caught her against him with a jubilant laugh.

  “Get naked and get grateful. Hell, you can even do this place up properly now.” Picking her up, he whirled her around, forcing her to drop his clothes and grab his shoulders.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re looking at the new owner of the Waterview Hotel.”

  Kezia stared at him, all the color leaving her face, and Christian steered her toward the couch. He grabbed a bedsheet, wrapped himself in it and sat beside her, taking her hands in his. “Muriel’s will specified that none of my money could come near the hotel. So I got my partners to buy the place, then I bought it off them.”

  “It’s the middle of the night!”

  “I know a tax department head who saw a few hours’ overtime as a small price to pay for offloading this white elephant. My lawyer prepared the paperwork and Internet banking did the rest.”

  “But you hate it here. You can’t be thinking of staying?”

  There was hope there, he heard it. Faint, barely articulated, perhaps Kezia wasn’t even aware of it, but like an early warning system, it told him it was time to go.

  “I’m still leaving tomorrow.” She didn’t flinch…maybe he’d imagined it. “And I didn’t buy the hotel for me. It’s for you.”

  She pulled her hands away from his. “For…me?”

  “Tomorrow we’ll sign a deed of transfer. Your troubles are over.” He waited for the realization to sink in, for Kezia to throw her arms around him and hopefully drag him back to bed to express her gratitude. And he waited.

  “And I’m to accept a four-hundred-thousand-dollar gift from you just like that? For what, services rendered?”

  He didn’t like that. “Sex has nothing to do with it. If you recall, I initiated the deal before you came to my room.” At a loss, he resorted to humor. “But, hey, render away.”

  Her slap hit him square on the left cheek.

  With stinging heat radiating from one side of his face Christian sat back. “So much for basking in your gratitude.” His tone belied the anger building steam inside.

  “It must be great to be Christian Kelly,” she raged. “Patron of the poor!”

  Now he couldn’t keep the exasperation out of his voice. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m giving you your inheritance back.”

  “You’re trying to strip me of the last remnant of pride I have left, that’s what you’re trying to do, mister!”

  He threw up his hands in disgust. “Stop being so paranoid. I have no agenda.”

  Kezia regarded him with contempt. “Christian, your agenda would take up two pages. First, you’re a man who pays off ex-girlfriends so he doesn’t have to dirty his conscience, only in this case your recipient is an old lady. Well, live with the guilt like the rest of us. Second, you’re paying back—and I quote— ‘the only woman who ever dumped you,’by putting me in a situation where I’m hopelessly beholden to you. Damn it.” Her hands balled into fists. “You’re trying to have the last word!”

  The echo of his thoughts, only days earlier, infuriated him. “That’s bullshit. I got over you years ago.”

  “I don’t doubt that.” Her voice was bitter. “But have you forgiven me?” He remained silent and she rose to her feet, her eyes flashing sparks. “I haven’t forgiven you, either. You wouldn’t compromise then and I’m not compromising now. I will not start over again owing you for everything I have. I want to be free of you, do you hear me?”

  “Let me get this straight,” said Christian very quietly. “I’ve just spent the past week working my guts out to redecorate this dump, groveling to your ex-boyfriend banker, sleeping in that godawful bed and now—” he sucked a deep breath and stood up “—now, when we can finally do this the easy way, you’re saying no?”

  “Damn right I’m saying no!”

  His temper exploded. “And what the hell am I supposed to do with a hotel I don’t want? I’m going home tomorrow.”

  Kezia tipped her head to one side, considering. “Oops,” she said sweetly, “I nearly forgot. That’s your problem.”

  Christian hadn’t yelled in years but he yelled now. “Either you accept this place or I’ll burn the damn thing down!”

  Under his glare, Kezia stalked over to the dresser beside the bed and took something out of the top drawer. “Here!” She tossed it over and Christian dropped the bedsheet to catch it. It was a box of matches.

  WHEN NIGHT LIGHTENED TO dawn Kezia gave up on sleep. Her fury had long since abated and the regret was so much harder to bear. In her mind’s eye she saw herself, seminaked, tossing Christian money and asking him to…oh, God.

  She scrambled out of bed and turned on the shower, determined to scrub all trace of the previous night away. If only it were that easy. Behind the walls, ancient pipes creaked and groaned, and she experienced a rush of bitter satisfaction—Christian’s problem now.

  The hot water stung a little. Her skin was still tender from the stubble on Christian’s jaw. Even if guilt and revenge hadn’t motivated his offer, accepting it was out of the question. It would strike a killing blow to her self-reliance—a thing she clung to when she lost the people she loved through death. Or abandonment.

  Reaching for the soap, Kezia tried to ground herself. She was tired and overemotional. Her parents’ aid work saved many lives; they’d no choice but to send their sick child home to her unknown grandmother.

  A wonderful, crazy grandmother who, even in death, made people jump through hoops. Dropping the soap, Kezia covered her face with shaky hands. I can’t take his money, Nana, please understand and forgive me. I just can’t.

  Christian seemed to exist to give her impossible choices.

  She turned off the shower and dried herself briskly with a threadbare towel. She fully intended to make his remaining time here a misery and she would smile as she made him suffer. She got dressed in the bedroom, then, catching sight of herself in the gilt mirror—a wreck with tangled hair and dark shadows under her eyes—fumbled for a hairbrush and makeup.

  As she applied the unconcerned face she would present to Christian, Kezia stopped fighting the truth. God help her, she still loved him.

  Her course of action was clear. She had to get him out of her life quickly and for good before he realized how well he’d exacted his revenge. He might take her heart with him when he left, but her soul was not for sale.

  KEZIA’S CHEERFUL WHISTLE PRECEDED her to breakfast. Hunched over his second coffee, Christian put his hands over his ears before his brain exploded. After storming out of her room last night, he’d raided the bar of Johnnie Walker and drank until 4:00 a.m.

  “Cut the act. You can’t have slept any better than I did.”

  She poured herself a cup of coffee from the dregs in the pot and turned to smile pleasantly at him. “Why wouldn’t I? Tha
t phone call saved me from an embarrassing lapse in judgment, and all my responsibilities are now on your shoulders.”

  “Your lapse of judgment was sleeping with me, I take it,” said Christian dryly, “and not the more serious one of rejecting my offer?”

  Her smile vanished. “As it turned, out I rejected both.”

  “I smoked, your honor, but I didn’t inhale.” With grim satisfaction Christian watched her color rise. Don’t pretend with me, Kez, I remember every touch.

  He changed tactics, only because he was too hungover to do what he really wanted to do, which was shake some sense into her, kiss her into submission or both. Okay, and he was desperate to offload the hotel. “Please. Sit down. Let’s talk.”

  Clearly reluctant, she pulled out a chair. She smelled good, some sort of apple-blossom soapy fragrance. Christian forced himself to concentrate, to look past her mouth still swollen from his kisses to the shadows under her eyes that makeup couldn’t hide. So she was conflicted. The sight should have relieved him. Instead he felt protective—and more desperate to leave.

  “This hotel has been in your family for over a hundred years. Don’t let our history override that.” He added astutely, “Don’t make me that important.”

  Kezia said nothing but her hands tightened on the cup.

  Encouraged, Christian went on. “You’re right, there’s some squaring of accounts in my offer. But not with you. Muriel trusted me and I failed. But it’s more than that. I owed her everything and all I gave her was a weekend of my time once a year and the occasional phone call. I wish I’d taken her to Paris or New York…. I wish I’d told her how much she meant to me. I wish I’d known how much I’d miss her.” He stopped. The words had poured out of a reservoir of feeling he kept dammed. “Let this be my way of making it up to her.”

  Tears shimmered in Kezia’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you’ll have to make your peace with her another way.”

  His sympathy evaporated along with his patience. “And you accused me of petty revenge,” he said softly, and she paled. “All that talk about keeping this place open at all costs, protecting jobs was just expedient bullshit. It’s not me who wants the last word, Kez. It’s you. Hell, it must really burn you up that the loser you thought you were rejecting ended up wealthy and successful.”

  She opened her mouth as if to argue, closed it and took a deep breath. “I will not be in your debt,” she said quietly, and pushed up from the table to leave. “I can be packed up and out of here in a week, although if you need someone to oversee things until it’s sold or you find another manager, I’m prepared to stay on.” She raised her chin. “As a gesture of goodwill.”

  Christian lounged back in the chair. In business circles he was referred to as the Juggler for his ability to manage multiple deals. Those bested by him scathingly referred to him as the Jugular. Kezia hadn’t seen that side of his nature. Yet.

  “Very magnanimous, but if you haven’t agreed to take this place by tomorrow, I’m going to board it up and abandon it.” He watched her steps falter and stop.

  Kezia grabbed a chair back. “You wouldn’t.”

  “What’s stopping me? Money?” Christian leaned forward. “This is just loose change. Affection for my hometown? What’s it ever done for me? The sooner it cocks up its toes, the better.”

  “You wouldn’t do that to the people who work here.”

  “You’re right,” he acknowledged. “I wouldn’t.” He waited for her expression of relief. “But it won’t be me doing it, Kez. Turn it down and it will be you.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “You have until after Suzie’s wedding tomorrow to decide.”

  “Bluffing,” she repeated emphatically.

  Christian shrugged. “Today I thought I’d go into Everton, pick out a present for the happy couple. As my date you might like to advise me. How about a nice pair of salad servers?”

  “Bluffing.” Her tone was desperate.

  He smiled. “Salad servers it is, then.”

  “HE’S BLUFFING,” KEZIA TOLD Marion later that morning as they drank coffee on the deck of Marion’s two-bedroom farmhouse rental and watched John Jason try to make his rat jump through a hoop. The rat wasn’t having a bar of it. Good for you, Roland, thought Kezia. A rat must keep his dignity.

  “Of course he’s bluffing.” Marion had spoken in a soothing tone, probably the same one she used when telling John Jason there really was an Easter bunny.

  “He’s bluffing,” Kezia told Don as she’d dropped another box of papers in his cavernous office for storage. She’d figured she might as well start moving at once and show Christian she didn’t take this ultimatum seriously. Like you didn’t the last one. And look what happened then.

  Don had considered her out of hangdog eyes. “Maybe.”

  “A typical lawyer’s remark,” she’d snarled, then insisted on buying him lunch.

  “He’s bluffing,” she told Bernice May as they stood in the cemetery, the hot afternoon breeze lifting the skirt on the old lady’s mauve housedress like a playful ghost.

  “You told me that ten times,” complained Bernice May. She bent her rheumatic knees to place flowers beside Muriel’s headstone. “And doing as bad a job convincing me as you are yourself.”

  Kezia started weeding the grave without another word.

  “Be careful of your grandma, honey,” said Bernice May in a mild tone. “She’s here to rest, remember?”

  Kezia dropped the trowel. “I have to believe he’s bluffing because I can’t bear either of the alternatives.”

  Bernice May shook her head. “Compromise isn’t in Christian’s nature. He didn’t grow up in a compromising world.”

  “Then he was lucky,” said Kezia bitterly. “Compromise was all I knew. There was always someone who needed my parents more so I compromised by being good and useful.” Her laugh was half sob. “So why am I so set on being selfish now, when Nana was the only person who ever really loved me? I should just take the damn hotel for her sake. But it will kill something in me to do it.”

  For a while there was silence but it was a silence of acceptance. “You two need to stop fighting and start talking.”

  Kezia laughed at that. “Show him weakness? You’re kidding!”

  “Come with me,” said Bernice May. She started picking her way through the graves. Puzzled, Kezia followed. The old lady moved slowly and paused often to pat the headstone of various old acquaintances. At last she stopped. “This is his mother’s grave.”

  “Neglected,” observed Kezia. “Why am I not surprised?” But she looked at the gravestone. Deborah Kelly. Beloved. Rest in Peace.

  “I like to tend it for him,” said Bernice May, pulling on a tall paspalum. “Least, I used to before my knees gave out.”

  Taking the hint, Kezia went to work on the low weeds. “Your son should be doing this,” she told the dead woman.

  “Except for the funeral I don’t believe he’s ever visited Deborah.” Bernice May picked paspalum stickies off her dress. “I think he feels too ashamed.”

  “That would be a first,” Kezia replied tartly. She had no intention of allowing Christian further into her heart but her hands were gentle in the earth.

  “I saw how he was,” said Bernice May, more to herself than Kezia. “Poor little boy, all torn up and closed in on himself. ‘Honey,’ I said, ‘I hope you’re going to cry for your mother at her funeral and show her how much you love her.’ Really, I wanted him to let it out, it was unnatural the composure of that child. He just looked at me and said, ‘Not in front of my friends.’

  “I told him straight—‘Honey, if you can’t cry in front of your friends, who can you cry in front of?’ But it didn’t happen. Even then he had an aversion to pity and that was before his father started whaling him.” The weeds fell out of Kezia’s nerveless fingers and she swiveled around to stare at Bernice May.

  “Course I didn’t know that till Don let it slip at Muriel’s funeral. I tried to ge
t more out of him but he closed up like a clam. Don might tell you more if you ask him.”

  Uneasy, Kezia answered, “I will.”

  “It was good to see Christian able to cry for Muriel…ah, you didn’t know that…but then I figure a person can only bottle grief for so long.”

  “He hates me.” Tears brimmed in Kezia’s eyes and streamed down her face. “God help me, I still love him and he hates me. He’s forcing me to accept the hotel for revenge.”

  “I doubt that, honey.”

  “I know he’s your blue-eyed boy, but it’s true.”

  “Then don’t take it,” said Bernice May. “Simple as that.”

  “Simple!” Wearily, Kezia stood. The tears stopped as suddenly as they’d come. “Do you know how many people depend on the hotel? Forty. I counted them last night. Forty people who will have to find work in a rural area already short on jobs.” She wiped away the last tears. “Who am I kidding? If it’s a choice between taking the hotel or seeing it closed down, I’ll take it.” She sent Bernice May a watery smile. “I’m sorry for unloading on you, I don’t know what came over me.”

  “If all Christian Kelly does is make you realize you have friends to turn to, Miss Independence, then some good has come out of it,” said Bernice May stoutly, holding out a handkerchief. “You want to go back and tell him now?”

  Kezia blew her nose, gallows humor restoring the last of her composure. “And spare him another couple of nights in Waterview? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Get rid of him, insisted her brain. Soon, promised her heart.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE HOTEL WAS quiet. Eerily quiet. She pushed through the swinging doors into the bar. Empty and dark, the yeasty smell of beer lingered in the room.

  There should be staff shining glasses and preparing for a busy Friday night. A couple of farmers sitting over a beer before early evening milking and a clutch of lady golfers reviewing their performance over a shandy.

  Her apprehension grew as she started up the stairs. The banister wobbled under her hand, and she saw it was only tacked in place. But a noise distracted her from closer inspection. Glancing up, she saw Christian sitting at the top of the stairs tying his running shoes.