Coming Home For Christmas
TRUE LOVE IN HIS STOCKING?They say you can’t go home again, but Keith O’Connell wasn’t worried about staying. He was just back in town to sell his late mother’s house and try to avoid old emotions. Of course, hiring estate sale specialist Kenzie Bradshaw meant the possibility of creating new memories before he left. Especially once the Matchmaking Mamas hatched a plan.Kenzie Bradshaw was used to the turmoil involved in estate sales, though she’d never had a client like Keith. He wanted everything gone. She knew, however, there were some things–some memories–he shouldn’t lose. Convincing him to spend one last Christmas in his family’s home could melt his hardened heart. But would it bring back the man she used to know and love?
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Dear Diary,
The Matchmaking Mamas have found our latest project! There are lots of lonely hearts to heal this Christmas, but weâve discovered a special two-some that we hope will meet under the mistletoe on December 25.
Keith OâConnell is a handsome lawyer whoâs headed home for the holidays ⦠but not to celebrate with his family. Sadly, he was estranged from his mother, whoâs since passed away. Now heâs back in town to sell his childhood home.
So far, we have seen a few signs of Keith opening up to someone, a woman heâs known for years. Sheâs beautiful and smart, and she seems to be luring him out of his shell, bit by bit, this holiday season.
I know Kenzie Bradshaw had a crush on Keith back in junior high, but theyâre both all grown up now. And sheâs still got a thing for the guy in a buttoned-up suit with a closed-off heart. Keith is one puzzle that Kenzie is determined to unravel, but will they realize how perfect they are together in time for Christmas? I canât wait to watch and find out.
Love,
Maizie
Matchmaking Mama Extraordinaire.
USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.
To
Elliana Melgar, Welcome To The World.
Contents
It felt very odd to be back.
In all honesty, he never thought heâd be back here again. Not back in this city. Certainly not back in this house.
But then, he never thought his mother would become someone heâd be forced to think of in the past tense, either.
Granted, he and his mother hadnât spoken in almost ten years. But despite his criticism the last time wordsâangry, hot wordsâhad been exchanged between them, she had always struck him as being a force of nature. Forces of nature didnât just cease to exist. They continued. Whether or not someone was there to witness the force, it continued.
Somewhere in his unconscious, he had thought his mother would be the same way. She would just continue.
But Dorothy OâConnell didnât continue. Quite abruptly, without any warning, without any lingering diseases, her heart just suddenly gave out and she died. If it hadnât been for the phone call heâd received from her neighbor, he wouldnât even have known this had transpired.
Well, now he knew. Knew when there was nothing further he could do about it. Knew that there would never be an opportunity to mend the rift that had existed between them.
Not that there would have been much chance of that, even if she were still alive and they had another twenty years. The wounds had gone too deep.
And he had lost his mother long before heâd walked out of the house that day.
Keith sighed as he looked around the first-floor family room. You would think, after ten yearsâand knowing that she was goneâhe wouldnât expect to see her come walking into the room. Wouldnât, on some level, strain to hear the sound of her voice as she called out to him, or to Amy.
Or both.
The house had always been filled with her voice and her presence. At least, he amended, for most of the years heâd lived in it. It was only afterâafter the car accidentâafter Amy wasnât around anymoreâthat everything changed.
And somehow, in an odd sort of way, it had stayed the same. Except tenser. So much tenser. He supposed that part of it had been his fault, too.
Keith shrugged even though there was no one there to see him do so. No one there to call him on it.
It didnât matter. All the tension, the things that were said, the things that werenât said, none of it mattered anymore. It was all in the past now.
Just like his mother was in the past.
He was here. Here to tie up all the loose ends, to tend to the arrangements. To shut down that chapter of his life and put it all away in a box.
After all, life went on. Except, of course, when it didnât.
Keith resisted the fleeting temptation to go upstairs and look into rooms he hadnât looked into in ten years. There was no point to that. He wasnât here to thumb a ride down memory lane. He was here for one purpose only: to sell the house and everything in it. The items in the house were of no use to him and hadnât been for a very long time.
Squaring his shoulders, Keith got down to business. The sooner he was finished, the sooner he could get back to the firm up north in San Francisco and to his life.
And forget all about the house on Normandie in Bedford and the woman who had lived in it.
With her trim figure and attractively styled light blond hair, Maizie Sommers looked far younger than the actual years noted on her birth certificate. She liked to tell people that her family and her real estate company kept her vital and young, which was true.
