Though the two of them had never met, a bleached smile broke across the man’s tanned face, as if he were genuinely thrilled to see Keegan, his old friend. Keegan couldn’t remember the man’s name, but he had heard stories about him. Over the years, his mother had kept him abreast of this man’s excesses: the boozy soirées, the midnight skinny-dips, the string of leggy ‘nieces’ who stayed with him while his long-suffering wife shopped her way across Europe. The man’s exploits seemed to shock Keegan’s devoutly Catholic mother, but she never tired of describing them, each time Keegan paid her a visit, in a wide-eyed, scandalized whisper.

The actor held out his hand for Keegan to shake. “Nigel Ormsby,” he said, more loudly than seemed necessary among the birdsongs and slight breeze. That name meant nothing to Keegan, but his voice—a reedy baritone—felt as familiar and soothing as warm Ovaltine.

Keegan shook the man’s hand. “Jim Keegan,” he said. The handshake left a floral-scented residue on Keegan’s fingers, which he subtly wiped on his trouser leg.

“I was so sorry to hear about your mother,” Ormsby said. Again, he spoke thunderously, from the diaphragm, as if projecting to the back row of the house. “She was a fine woman. Heartbreaking.”

If Keegan were a gambling man—and he was when he could afford to be—he’d have bet a lobster dinner at Dal Rae that Ormsby had never actually spoken to his mother in all the years they’d shared this hilltop.

Ormsby glanced over at the cottage. “Will you be moving in?” he wanted to know. “Or are you planning to sell the place?”

Keegan flexed his jaw. The family cottage, and the rocky acre of hollyhock and poison oak outside the garden fence, was now prime real estate, and this actor clearly had designs on it. His mother’s grave did not yet have a tombstone, but here Ormsby was, already picturing a guesthouse or stable or solarium where her cottage stood.

“I’m sorting things at this point,” Keegan said coolly. “No firm plans as yet.”

Ormsby looked down at his own hillside mansion and the sprawling city beyond. “It’s a beautiful spot,” he conceded. “But much too far from town to be practical.”

It might have been Keegan’s hangover, but the man’s unctuous smile and booming voice grated on him in a way he couldn’t account for. He worked his jaw from side to side and tried to tamp down his rising anger. Better to bite his tongue. He might, after all, want to sell the place once he’d sorted things out.