“I don’t want to talk about him,” she said firmly.
Nathan nodded approvingly. “Good, because neither do I. Now splash some water in your face, put on some makeup and change your clothes,” he instructed. As he spoke, he opened a cabinet that ordinarily contained hanging files but now held a navy-blue pinstripe skirt and a white short-sleeved oval-neck top.
Whipping them out on their hangers, Nathan held the prizes aloft before her, even as he put one hand to the small of her back. He propelled her toward the bathroom. “We want you looking your best.”
Kennon stopped dead. “We? Exactly what ‘we’ are you referring to?”
“Why, you and me ‘we,’ of course,” he said, trying to sound innocently cheerful. “You always this suspicious this early in the morning?”
She took the clothes from him. “I am when you suddenly start acting like a social directing steamroller.”
“Fine.” Nathan held up his hands in surrender, backing away from her. “Look like an unmade bed and scare away our customers. See if I care. I can always go back to sleeping on my sister’s couch, having those little monsters jump up and down on me in those awful pajamas with the rubber bumps on the bottoms of their hard little feet.”
She capitulated. If she didn’t give up, the drama would only get worse. “I’ll splash water in my face, put on some makeup and change my clothes,” she sighed.
“That’s my girl,” Nathan declared with a grin.
She gave him an unsettled, puzzled look as she slipped into the pearl-blue-tiled bathroom and closed the door.
“By the way,” he addressed the door in a matter-of-fact voice that wouldn’t have fooled a two-year-old, “You’re meeting a client in Newport Beach in an hour.”
An hour? Nothing she hated more than being rushed.
And then she remembered.
“I didn’t make an appointment with a client for this morning,” she informed Nathan through the door.
“I know. I did.”
It wasn’t that Nathan couldn’t make appointments. But whenever he did, he always told her. Bragged was more like it. He took extreme pleasure in being able to say he carried his own weight and drew in clients.
“When?” she asked. “I was here all day yesterday—and last night. I didn’t hear you making an appointment and no one new called the office.”
“It’s a referral,” he told her.
Dressed, Kennon opened the door so she could look at Nathan. She began to apply her makeup.
“Oh? From who?” Kennon flicked a hint of blush across her pale cheeks. She needed to get some sun time.
“What does it matter?” Nathan said with a quick rise and fall of his shoulder. “One happy, satisfied customer is like another. The main thing is the referral.”
She put down her lipstick tube. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark. “From who?” she asked again. Nathan was being incredibly mysterious—even for Nathan.
“Initially, your aunt Maizie,” he said evasively.
“Initially,” Kennon repeated. He didn’t want to tell her. Why? “And the middleman would be …?”
“Of no interest to you,” Nathan assured her.
“Nathan.” There was a dangerous note in her voice. “Who is this ‘mystery’ person and why are you acting like a poor man’s would-be espionage agent?”
Nathan surrendered, knowing he couldn’t win. “The middle ‘man’ is your mother,” he mumbled. “Satisfied?”
“My mother,” Kennon repeated, stunned. “And Aunt Maizie? They talked? They actually talked?”
It didn’t seem possible. Her mother never spoke to her aunt. And she definitely never sought Aunt Maizie out, on that Kennon was willing to stake her life. From what she and Nikki—her cousin and Maizie’s only daughter—could piece together, it had something to do with the fact that Kennon’s aunt had married her mother’s brother, and her mother had not thought that Maizie was good enough for him.
Her mother was the only one who felt Maizie wasn’t good enough. As for Kennon, she adored her aunt and had told Nikki more than once that she envied her cousin’s relationship with such a forward-thinking woman.
“Anytime you want to trade, just let me know,” Nikki had said to her. At the time Nikki was somewhat upset because she claimed that her mother was forever trying to play matchmaker and set her up with someone.
These days, Nikki was no longer complaining, especially since, according to what Kennon had heard, Aunt Maizie was the one who had set Nikki up with the sensitive, handsome hunk she had just recently married.
Kennon supposed that was one thing in her mother’s favor. Ruth Connors Cassidy didn’t play matchmaker, at least not anymore, she thought with a smile. Not since all the eligible sons of her mother’s friends had been taken off the market.
But Aunt Maizie was making matches like gang-busters. What if her mother had gone to Aunt Maizie and asked her to …?
No. She was allowing her imagination to run away with her. Her mother wouldn’t do that. Besides, she was through with men. To hell with all of them—except of course for Nathan, she amended. But then, he was more like a brother than a man anyway.
Kennon frowned into the small oval mirror over the pedestal sink. “Since I look like something that the cat dragged in, why don’t you go in my place?” she suggested.
Nathan shook his head. “A, you no longer look like something that the cat dragged in. And B, the client said he only wanted to deal with the owner. In case your brain is still a little foggy, that would be you.”
“Since you took the referral, what else do you know?” she asked him.
“Only that your aunt sold him the house and the man has no furniture. He wants you to furnish his house.”
There was no point in fighting this, she thought. And maybe this was what she needed, a new project. Decorating a whole house could come to a tidy little commission. “All right, get me the address and I’m on my way.”
“Got it right here,” Nathan told her, taking a folded piece of paper out of his vest pocket. “Printed out a map for you and everything,” he added, opening up the paper and handing it to her with a flourish. “Since I know how GPS-challenged you are.”
“I’m not GPS-challenged,” she corrected him. “I just don’t like a machine telling me where to go.” Kennon looked at him pointedly. “I already get enough of that from you.”
Nathan took no offense. “You know you love it.”
“Keep reminding me,” Kennon instructed wearily.
She was still thinking that long after Nathan’s voice had faded away and she had made the quick seven-mile trip to her destination. Right now, she felt like thirty miles of bad road. The last thing she wanted to do was meet a new client. But the economy being what it was, no job was too small at this point. And Nathan did say the man wanted enough furniture to fill his whole house. Hopefully, the man was not living in a one-bedroom house.
Dear God, Kennon, where’s your optimism? Where’s your hope? How could you have let that creep get to you this way? Nathan’s right. The breakup was a godsend. It saved you from making a stupid mistake. You didn’t love Pete, you loved the idea of him. Now get over it, damn it!
Following Nathan’s map, she made another turn to the right. A few yards from the corner stood a magnificent two-story house.
Getting out of her vehicle, Kennon didn’t bother locking the door.