Must Love Mistletoe

Chapter 8

“You’re supposed to be nice to Santa,” Finn hissed, the words twitching the silvery beard and mustache strapped to his head beneath the plush red-and-white hat.

“Only if Santa has something in his bag I want,” Bailey retorted in a hushed voice, shoving a storybook into his hand. She looked down at the dozen or so little ones who were cross-legged on the floor in the front room of The Perfect Christmas for story hour. Their moms were either hovering at the edge of their semicircle or-better yet-edging away to look over merchandise and check price tags. “Now stop yapping and get ready to read.”

“I only asked for a glass of water.”

“No time,” she said, for his ears only. “The kiddies are here and we said we’d start at eleven on the dot. This is a business, Finn, and I don’t have time to hold your hand.”

She wished back the comment the minute she said it. It was all business at The Perfect Christmas, no matter that she’d dragged her old flame-a man whose hand she used to love to hold and also a man whom she’d had to admit to herself she was once again out-of-control attracted to-into playing Santa. But that had been a business decision too!

He’d been standing there yesterday afternoon, just as she’d finished an exhaustive hour doing the Pied Piper thing for a passel of sugar-buzzed, Christmas-crazed, two-legged little rats. The idea of having to read Christmas stories to a similar group the next day had made her want to run, screaming, for the Hollywood Hills.

With the surf up and her sales dude Byron heading beachside, she’d desperately needed a Santa more than she needed distance from Finn. Plus, he owed her, and he seemed to accept that fact.

Now if only his piratical take on St. Nick wouldn’t scare the kiddies or do any lasting psychological damage. It looked as if Sesame Street and those weird Wiggles (the store stocked both their Christmas CDs) had actually taught the kids to accept differences, however. Only one munchkin at Finn’s feet had made note of his patch-and then only to ask if he’d been poked in the eye by an antler. Finn had murmured something under his breath about a Red Ryder BB gun, and one of the younger mothers laughed. She was still there, cozying up to the kiddie circle.

Bailey checked the clock. “Go,” she said.

He glanced up at her.

A sharp pang pierced her, somewhere between her stomach and her throat. A bullet had wounded Finn, she thought, and not for the first time. It had taken one of his eyes.

He could have died.

Somehow she was suddenly holding his hand after all.

Frowning, he squeezed her fingers. “Bailey…”

She whipped her hand away. Business! “The book,” she said. “Start reading.”

With a little shrug, he turned away from her and opened the storybook in his hands.

With a lot of relief, she moved away from him and toward the cash register on the other side of the room. For several minutes her hands occupied themselves with organizing the pen cup and tidying the checks in the drawer even as her ears took in Finn’s low voice. She stole a look at him. It was kind of cute, really, to see the baddest boy she knew dressed up like the nicest man in the world, telling children a story.

Made you think about him as a dad some day-

No. It did not make Bailey think of him as a dad. No damn way. God, the sentimental glop The Perfect Christmas sold by way of merchandise and atmosphere was trying to wear off on her.

Turning her back on the storytime tableau, she thought about her real office, where people dressed in suits the colors of stone and dirt and ash. Her real work, where the kind of business conducted was just right for a hard-hearted, hard-headed realist like herself.

A place where people bled money, not red.

She found her gaze on Finn again, and she wrenched it away as the front door opened. Through it came the general-no, Captain Reed, the president of the chamber of commerce. With him was a woman with the battleship bustline and helmet hair of her elementary school principal. Bailey narrowed her eyes. It was her elementary school principal.

Both newcomers paused to watch Santa and his little buddies for several minutes, then made their way over to Bailey at the register.

The captain beamed. “I knew you would take care of things,” he said. Then he gestured to his buxom companion. “Do you remember Peggy Mohn?”

“Of course I do.” She nodded. “Principal Mohn.”

The older woman shot out her hand and squeezed Bailey’s fingers like she used to squeeze the upper arms of little kids who couldn’t stand still in the lunch line. “Bailey. Good to see you back home. I’ve left education and I’m now in medical equipment sales.”

Education was better off for the defection, Bailey thought, but she pitied the bedpans.

“Peggy’s also the VP of the chamber,” the captain added. “She’s an idea person, I’ll tell you. It was she who coordinated all these Christmas events among the local businesses.”

“Oh…nice.” Though thanks to the old battle-ax Bailey was within spitting distance of the first male she’d ever shared spit with-and whom she wanted to share spit with again.

“It’s been a great success,” Peggy put in. “Though I had a few bad moments when I heard The Perfect Christmas wouldn’t stand by its obligations.”

Her disapproving tone set Bailey’s neck hairs on fire. Not only had the old biddy tried to squelch every childish joy at Crown Elementary-she’d had the swings removed and there’d been a no-running rule on the playground-but Bailey didn’t like her intimations about shirking responsibility. While she might assert that her mother would have to wake up soon and smell the single-woman java, it wasn’t up to Peggy Mohn to stand in judgment. The older woman didn’t understand the hell her mother had gone through during her divorce from Bailey’s father. She did. The memory of the misery and the tears could still scratch like fingernails against the chalkboard of her mind.

Bailey’s voice sounded stiff. “Look…”

“But now you’ve taken over,” Peggy went on. Even she was beaming now. “I remember your attendance awards, citizenship medals, the recess and lunch peacekeeper program you started in sixth grade.”

“Pretty easy to keep the peace when there were rules against play,” she murmured under her breath.

“So I know we can count on you,” Peggy finished.

Bailey felt a cold chill put out that still-burning fire on the back of her neck. “Count on me for what, exactly?”

“The Valentine’s Weekend celebrations we have in mind.” The older woman was ticking them off on her fingers. “The coordinated events we’re planning for St. Patrick’s Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving.”

“I’m not…I won’t…” Bailey fumbled for words, as she felt heavy chains draping over her, cold links twisting around her waist, her wrists, locking her to the store, to Coronado, to-

“Bailey, I’m having some trouble here.”

Finn, it was Finn, plucking at the patent leather belt around his waist. She realized that storytime was over. The children had joined their mothers and were crowded around the display of books she’d conveniently set up behind the Santa chair.

“Let me help you with that,” she offered, coming around the register. “Excuse me,” she told the chamber of commerce people, “but I have to get back to work.”

They both were smiling again. “That’s just what I like to hear,” Peggy said.

Bailey ignored her and dragged Finn in the direction of the stock room in the back, signaling Brontë toward the front register. “Don’t take the costume off while you’re in sight of the kids,” she scolded Santa in a fierce whisper, half because Peggy pissed her off and half because even a pirate-especially a pirate-should realize he was playing a role here.

With the door shut to screen them from the rest of the store, while he removed his hat and luxurious facial hair, she went after his belt. The mechanism was stiff and stubborn, and she grunted in exasperation.

Finn’s voice sounded amused. “Never in a million years did I think I’d have you working so hard to open my pants again.”

“It’s your jacket, as if you didn’t know.” In any case, her face prickled with embarrassed heat. She gave the belt’s leather tongue an impatient yank, which sent him stumbling back. A tall stack of boxes tumbled.

“Damn. Now look what you’ve done.” She pushed him aside to reright the packages.

“You’re so very welcome,” Finn said, sarcasm dripping from the polite words, as he stripped off the Santa suit so that he stood once again in a white T-shirt and seen-better-days jeans. “I was glad to extend my services.”

She flushed. “This is new stock that I haven’t put out yet. I don’t want any of it damaged.”

He picked up one of the boxes, stacked it, stacked another. “You’re getting this stuff from all over the country. And lots of the addresses are handwritten.”

Bailey bit her bottom lip, then cast a glance at the closed door. “Here’s the thing. Due to the upheaval caused by my folks’ separation, there’s a bit of a…a hole in the stock. So I’ve bought a few things-okay, more than a few things-off eBay and some other sites. Older pieces. I’m going to turn the smallest room upstairs into something called Grandma’s Attic.” She believed the idea was brilliant herself, but she wasn’t sure what anyone else would think.

So it was good to talk about it out loud. To talk about it with Finn, for some odd reason. “To be honest, I hope to make a killing on vintage decorations.”

Finn placed the last carton on top of the stack. “Markup?”

She could hardly hide her smile. Then she gave up trying. “In a tourist setting like this? With vacation dollars burning holes in their Bermuda pockets? Grandiose.”

Finn laughed. “Now there’s the creative little business wonk I know. Remember that lemonade stand you ran one summer? Way before Starbucks opened its doors, you were the first fast-food service person I knew to keep a tip jar by the cash box.” For some reason she couldn’t imagine, he linked his arms around her waist. It was a friendly gesture, she supposed, wondering if that was how he saw her now.

She stared at the pulse beating in his throat and realized hers was pounding much, much faster. It wasn’t exactly “friendly” feelings on this side of the aisle, damn it.

His voice lowered. His head did too. “You know what, GND?”

She could smell him again. That scent that wasn’t Irish Spring, but that was Secret Service Finn. Man Finn. Still sexy Finn. “What?”

“I have a sneaking suspicion you’re happy in this place.”

Bailey couldn’t deny it fast enough. “It’s just business.”

His long fingers caressed the small of her back, and a little shiver ran up her spine. She remembered his lips on hers in the T-bird. His teeth scraping against the skin of her shoulder. The wet suction of his mouth on her nipple. God, that had been so good.

He smiled as if he was reading her mind. “The Perfect Christmas is a business you just happen to love.”

The words paralyzed her. “You’re wrong. None of this is what I want,” she said, her voice hoarse.

He ran a soothing hand along her back. “Bailey-”

Jolting back, she jerked free of his touch. “None of it.”

His arms fell to his side. His expression hardened. “That’s right. It’s only business. All business. That’s why you rushed home when you heard the store was in trouble. That’s why you coerced me into playing Santa. I’m sure you’ll say that’s why I had your tongue in my mouth and why I had my mouth on your breasts the other night too.”

Digging her nails into her palms, she turned away from him. What was she supposed to say? “Do you have a better reason?”

“No.” He laughed again, without amusement. “Fuck no. I wouldn’t be that stupid, now that I’m a college-educated man and all.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that either. So she stuck to practicalities. “We’ll have to sneak you out the back door so none of the kids see you. I think they’d recognize the eye patch and we don’t want to blow your Santa cover.”

“Yeah. Fine. Whatever.”

With her hand on the door, though, he halted her, his fingers over hers. “Tell the tall brunette at the front of the store where to find me, will you? The one with the twins? We’re going out for coffee.”

She stared at him over her shoulder. “You made a date with a mother while you were wearing a Santa suit?”

He smiled, that ol’ bad-boy smile she was so familiar with. “What can I say, sweetheart? I’m good. And for your information, she’s a nanny. She’s off at noon and doesn’t have to watch the rug-rats again until tomorrow morning.”

Just another good reason to keep her mind off him and on business.

Fifteen minutes later, Bailey realized she’d been doing such a good job at that-all her attention on the customers lined up at the cash register-that she’d forgotten to tell the beanpole brunette nanny where she could find Finn. Oh darn.

Thirty minutes after that, from her perch on a stepladder in a small room on the second floor, she caught sight of the couple strolling down the Coronado street. The beanpole carried an iced latte with two straws. Bailey dropped the vintage heart-shaped glass ornament she was in the process of hanging. It broke into five sharp pieces.

Figured. There went $32.50. See, self? Finn was bad for business.

Tracy sat perched on the bed in Harry’s dark room, trying to figure out her future and what to do about Dan. Instead, though, her gaze kept returning to her son’s empty chair and the open space on the desk where his laptop used to sit. In her mind’s eye she could see his wide but bony shoulders, his shaggy hair, the arpeggio of his fingers flying over the keys. She and Dan used to shake their heads, Tracy wondering if their straight-A son was really plotting to take over the world from that computer since he would always switch the screen to something else when they walked by the open door.

Dan would elbow her and whisper “Porn,” the rat, because that would set her to worrying. She’d pause about fifteen times in the making of sloppy joes, or tacos, or tuna-noodle casserole-all favorites of the starving teenager-slash-global dictator upstairs-to look at Dan and say, “Do you think?”

And he’d laugh and say, “Of course I think,” and she’d throw a dishtowel at him and he’d duck, then grab her around the waist and whisper they’d be looking at naked bodies together later too. When the starving teenager-slash-global dictator-slash-possible deviant came downstairs for dinner, the three of them would sit around the table and she’d have to avoid Dan’s eyes so that she wouldn’t laugh or blush or both.

After dinner, Tracy would have to run out to a meeting or type up some meeting minutes, or be making phone calls regarding some upcoming meeting and then it would be late. She would be tired and Harry would still be up, fingers tap-tap-tapping on that keyboard, so that when Dan turned off his computer or CSI: Akron or Tucson or whatever the latest iteration was and turned to her in their bedroom for that naked-body viewing-her naked body and his-she would be too tired and feel too constrained by the idea of their son awake and alert across the hall. “Not tonight,” she would say.

And Dan would turn away and she would turn away and somewhere between then and the teeth whitening her husband was gone.

“Mom!” Downstairs, the front door slammed and Bailey stomped into the house. “Just answer me this,” she yelled out. “Whose nifty idea was it to subsidize the electric company this season?”

Tracy’s knees creaked as she pushed off Harry’s bed and moved to the top of the stairs to look down at her daughter. “What are you talking about?”

Bailey’s annoyed expression was a duplicate of the one she’d worn as a child, when she couldn’t get her little brother or her best friend, Trin, to listen to “reason”-Bailey’s version, that is. “The corner house has a helicopter hovering with an inflatable Santa inside holding an American flag. I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.”

“We live in a military town? It’s Christmas?”

Bailey shook her head, then her eyes narrowed. “You know what’s wrong?”

“I’ve no doubt you’re going to tell me.”

“We both look pasty,” her daughter declared. “We need roses in our cheeks and highlights in our hair.”

“What?”

“We’re not making the most out of our natural coloring. Brunettes won’t stand a chance against us after a little foil and peroxide.”

“Didn’t you mention ‘natural’?”

Bailey waved an impatient hand. “Don’t get technical on me. Let’s go.”

Tracy didn’t want to go anywhere, but her daughter had been stubborn since babyhood. After making a research phone call to Trin, Bailey dragged Tracy through the front door.

She glanced over her shoulder as she was pulled toward Bailey’s car. “Is that a wreath on the front door?” It was fresh, with a pretty gold ribbon threaded through it and a tiny glass hummingbird sitting right on top.

“Mmm,” Bailey said, pushing her into the passenger seat. Once she was behind the wheel, she handed over a pair of sunglasses, even though it was full dark. “Sorry, but I don’t have earplugs.”

The decorations on the block were outrageous. Bailey shielded her eyes with her hand and muttered in complaint as they crawled behind other cars cruising the scene.

Tracy smiled, not only at her daughter’s typical Christmas-curmudgeon-ness, but because the ostentation lifted her heart a little. There were so many sad times, so many tragedies in a year and in a life, why shouldn’t people feel free to go over the top on occasion? There should be no shame or sin in lighting up their lives with every bright bauble that the season offered, not because there weren’t dark times, but because there were.

It was the spirit with which The Perfect Christmas was built.

A pang of longing took aim at Tracy’s heart. For a moment she wanted to be back in the store-dusting the Victorian villages, adjusting the positions of the Santa figurines in the front window, straightening the pinafores of the angelic Christmas dolls. Then she thought of Dan and the longing dried to dust.

She’d told Bailey she couldn’t go into The Perfect Christmas because she didn’t want to see her husband there. But the fact was, worse than facing him within the confines of the store would be facing the truth that he wasn’t in the store at all.

If Dan wasn’t busy in the back room making coffee, if he wasn’t inspecting the track of the North Pole Express that ran along the ceiling of the bottom floor, if he wasn’t greeting the children who came into the store with wondering eyes as big as lollipops, then the place would only feel lonely and bitter.

Oh no, that was she.

Tracy and Bailey finally made it to the hair salon that Trin had recommended. The windows were painted with a colorful winter theme. A surfing snowman in red and green boardshorts held a sign that proclaimed they stayed open late and welcomed walk-ins. When Tracy demurred as they entered, concerned about submitting to an unknown stylist, Bailey just issued orders.

“Sit.”

“Stay.”

To the first available hairdresser. “Dump my mom’s gray. Brighten the blond.”

Half an hour later, they were in side-by-side chairs, their hair in leaflike layers of tinfoil. It created a sort of silvery, sci-fi Afro effect.

“Do you do this often?” Tracy asked. Frankly, she thought the look more than a little scary. “If men saw women like this, maybe they wouldn’t cause us so much trouble.”

Bailey made a snorting sound that communicated something between “Fat chance” and “Men are dogs.”

Oh no, that was Tracy’s thought.

She tried distancing herself from it. “So, uh, how did it go at the store today?” she asked.

Bailey’s eyes were closed. “Byron was off on another of his searches for endless summer. Finn played Santa.”

“Finn?”

Bailey tensed but didn’t open her eyes. “I told you he was living next door for the holidays. I told you that I’d run into him.”

You didn’t tell me you were letting him get close to you again. Interesting.

Bailey’s eyes popped open. Scowling, she skewered Tracy with her gaze. “You knew what kind of boy he was, Mom. You couldn’t miss that crazy hair, the earrings, those tattoos all over his hands. Why the heck did you let me start dating him?”

Tracy stared at her beautiful daughter. She’d made many mistakes with her, particularly during the ugly divorce. Some of that experience, she supposed, was responsible for creating the determined, you-won’t-knock-me-down attitude of her older child. But there were other parts of Bailey she’d been born with.

Things she’d been born to. From the moment that dangerous, sullen-looking teenage boy had shown up next door, her stubborn perfectionist was determined to bring him to heel. Perhaps, though, all the moves between Bailey and Finn had yet to be played out.

“Mom?” Bailey looked impatient for her answer.

Tracy thought about trying to explain it to her. But then she shrugged. Sometimes it was better to just get out of the way.

Her firstborn, naturally, wasn’t going to let it go. “Mom? Come on. Why did you let me date him?”

“Oh, sweetie.” Tracy sighed. “I didn’t think I had a choice.”

Bailey stayed silent for a moment. Then she closed her eyes again. “Funny, I said something like that to Finn.”

Definitely some moves left between them, Tracy decided. But then another thought congealed like a cold lump in her stomach. Maybe, maybe when it came to her and Dan, the moves were over.

The game all played out.

Bailey Sullivan’s Vintage Christmas

Facts & Fun Calendar

December 9

In 1939, Robert L. May created Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for a storybook given away by the Montgomery Ward department store. As a boy, May had been teased about his small size, so he developed a character with a physical quirk. May’s boss was concerned the shiny red nose might be associated with drunkenness, but after seeing sketches of the reindeer, the company was won over.