Must Love Mistletoe

Chapter 11

Dan found the woman of his dreams standing in the afternoon sunlight on a sidewalk corner diagonal from The Perfect Christmas. She looked like his Tracy, in khaki pants that hung low on her hips, a thin white shirt that was rolled to the elbows, bare feet shoved into two-tone loafers. Dark glasses and a baseball cap almost hiding her short blond hair lent her a celebrity-on-the-lam air.

He watched a passing couple give her a second glance. The silver-haired husband half gave her a third. Checking out her ass.

It was enough to make him hurry forward to stake his claim. “Hey.”

The woman turned dark lenses his way. He couldn’t tell what the hell she was thinking.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Same as you, I suppose.” He nodded toward the store across the street. “Making sure it’s still standing.”

Tracy returned her gaze to the two-story Victorian that had been her parents’ livelihood, her livelihood, and then theirs. In silence, they watched the steady stream of traffic going in and out of the white-on-blue front door. Eight out of ten people leaving carried the store’s signature bag-Christmas stripes around a centered watercolor version of the storefront.

“Bailey’s holding her own,” his wife finally said.

It had been Dan’s biggest gamble-walking away from the store as well as the house. He’d thought it would wake up Tracy that much quicker, shock her into seeing him, seeing them, when she tried managing the place on her own. Instead, she’d let the cavalry take over.

He’d considered returning to work at that point, but that would have been caving in. If they were going to make their marriage work, they had to forge something independent of The Perfect Christmas. He had to find a way for her to know him again, as a man outside of father and business partner.

“Bailey’s persuaded Finn to play Santa Claus for Story Hour and Christmas Movie Nights.”

Dan’s gaze jolted toward Tracy again. “What?”

A smile quivered at the corners of her mouth. “Alice has been ill and he’s living with her for a while. Didn’t take long for magnet Bailey and magnet Finn to find each other all over again.”

That sidetracked Dan for a moment. Finn had been a father’s-albeit stepfather’s-worst nightmare from the look of him. Sullen at thirteen, dangerous at sixteen, obviously head-over-motorcycle boots in love with Tracy’s daughter, who looked too perfect for one of the delinquent rebel’s tattooed fingers to touch.

But now he could feel almost sorry for the other man. Dan had spoken with Finn on occasion, and noted that he’d grown up into someone with a different kind of hard edge. Bailey, on the other hand, pretended she didn’t have a soft bone in her body. He could imagine all the sparks that were going to fly if-when-they clashed.

Dan shook his head. “I always thought…”

Tracy had been reading his mind for almost two decades. “…she threw what they had away too easily.”

Like her mother?

“I heard that,” she murmured.

It almost made him grin. “Trace-”

“Harry said he’s getting two Bs and an A. He thinks he can bring up at least one of the Bs with the final exam.”

Dan shrugged. “He’s always been an optimist.”

“Like you used to be.”

“Trace-”

“He also says he has a girlfriend.”

“Shelley. I heard about her.” Dan wanted to make clear that he kept in contact with their son too. “Harry’s a fast worker, wouldn’t you say?”

“Like you?”

An insult? A rebuke? “Trace-”

“I have to go.”

His hand caught hers.

In a blink, his mind flashed back to the scene in their house two days ago. To the incredible, hot sex. His first glimpse of her as he drove up to the house had clawed at his heart. She’d looked so great, so familiar, so his. He’d hated that she’d run from him.

They were both angry once he’d caught up with her, and then that anger transmuted into something else entirely-lust. The bedroom had been smoky with it.

He hadn’t thought about what he was saying or doing. He was compelled to act…taking off his clothes, telling her to take off hers. The only pause…protection! What the hell?! he’d thought. But at that point he hadn’t wanted to go into long explanations or even short recriminations.

He’d wanted Tracy. So he’d dashed for the damn things and then struggled some putting one on-condom coverage was not like riding a bike-and then it had been over and he was over her and they’d had that mind-blowing sex. Fingers entangled, bodies driving, pleasure so good.

It hadn’t fixed anything between them, they’d both known that right away, no words necessary. Then, as now, he could read her mind and she could read his. He hadn’t cared.

He cared now.

He needed to find a way to fix things between them.

Losing, losing Tracy, was no longer an option.

She tugged at his hand and he clutched it harder. Glancing down at her, he could see nothing but his reflection in those sunglass lenses and the expressionless set to her face. She was shut away from him now, he realized. Before, he’d been invisible to her. Now, she looked as if she was trying to keep herself invisible to him.

He swallowed, then gambled again. “So, come here often?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Coronado. I haven’t been here long. I could use a local guide.”

Tracy stilled. “I seem to have heard this before.”

It was close to the first thing he’d said to her at the party where they’d been introduced. Somehow he’d wangled it into an invitation to meet her on the beach the next day. Seven-year-old Bailey as chaperone. Sandcastle building as activity.

If he could get Tracy’s feet on that sand again, she’d open that door she was hiding behind. He was sure of it. Hopeful, anyway.

“C’mon,” he urged, giving her hand another small squeeze and then letting go so as not to spook her. “It’s a beautiful afternoon. We’re still playing hooky. Go for a walk on the beach with me?”

The bill of her cap ducked toward her chest, completely obscuring her face. “I’m not-”

“It’s just a walk, Trace.”

“I’m not interested in it being anything else.” There was that door again, slamming right in his face.

He’d been patient before, though, and he could be patient again. Once she got the feel of the sand between her toes, she’d let go. A little. Please.

They strolled the short blocks toward Central Beach, crossing Ocean Boulevard, which was lined with extravagant homes and mansions to reach more than a mile’s length of a wide swathe of sugary sand. He offered his hand to Tracy to climb over the tumbled boulders and rubbery ice plant that was the last barrier to the beach itself. She ignored it to scramble over them on her own.

They weren’t alone. Though the beach was wide enough-and the water cool enough in December-to prevent it from looking like a remake of an Annette and Frankie Beach Blanket Bingo movie, there were still plenty of people taking advantage of the postcard-come-to-life day.

Little kids braved the winter-chilled water, their white chubby tummies and plastic blow-up rafts screaming “tourist” even louder than a four-door sedan with Enterprise stickers. Local preteens in wetsuits, flippers, and boogie boards showed off their gymnastic skill, SoCal-style. Others with skim boards scattered the pipers and gulls as they threw the thin pieces of wood down on the wet sand and rode the retreating white water.

Young men played football. Girls in bikini bottoms and sweatshirts wiggled their toes to the beat of their iPods. Young moms toted toddlers on one hip and mesh bags of sand toys on the other. Retired couples in L. L. Bean windbreakers lifted binoculars, training them toward the Pacific’s commuter lanes, where migrating whales could be spotted heading to Mexico for the winter.

Something odd struck him. He looked over at Tracy. “There’s no one our age.”

“What?”

“Out here.” He gestured toward the clean sweep of sand around them. “Our age group is missing.”

“No…” But Tracy’s voice trailed off as she scanned the beach. Then she shrugged. “All at work, I guess.”

“Busy putting kids through college, I suppose.”

“Or busy making money for those cutesy new wives and the new families they plan to make with them.” There was a hot, bitter snap to her words. She shoved her hands in her front pockets. “Now the old wives, they’re off looking for their decimated pride and shattered expectations while scrambling to figure out how they’re going to support themselves and their children on a single income.”

He blinked, startled into stopping. “Tracy-”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice cooled as quick as it had snapped. “That was uncalled for.”

She drew her hands from her pockets and crossed her arms over her chest, closing up again like a sea anemone touched by a painful finger. Pivoting south, she started trudging down the beach in the direction of the red-peaked roofs of the Hotel del Coronado, the wind blowing the tails of her shirt around her hips.

Dan hurried to catch up. “Is that-”

“By the way, I was thinking about Christmas gifts. Bailey’s taken care of and I’ve ordered a few for Harry off the Internet. A college sweatshirt, some gift cards, but if you-”

“I don’t want to talk about Harry.”

“I found this funny battery-operated fly-zapper shaped like a tennis racket for Bailey. I’m going to put it in her stocking, though I have a feeling the first annoyance she’ll use it on is Finn.”

The old wives, they’re off looking for their decimated pride and shattered expectations while scrambling to figure out how they’re going to support themselves and their children on a single income.

Dan couldn’t get the words out of his head as he trailed behind her. The wind changed direction, flattening her shirt to her back, her shoulder blades looking suddenly so fragile. When they’d met, she’d been working at the store full-time, but he knew she’d upped her part-time hours after her first husband left.

Because it was a family business, because she’d been almost fully running it with minimal help from her parents when they’d met, Dan had assumed it wasn’t a career she’d “scrambled” to put together, but a perfect opportunity for a newly single mother.

“Did you not want to work at The Perfect Christmas?” he asked. “Was there something else you wanted to do with your life?”

Continuing to churn through the sand, she glanced over at him. “What about you? You’re the one who left a big-shot stockbroker job to join me at the store.”

But that had been easy for him. When it came to choosing between a stress-full or a Tracy-full life, taking on comanagement of The Perfect Christmas after her parents’ death had been an obvious decision. “I get more satisfaction out of the store’s customers than any of those whose portfolios I used to fatten.”

He didn’t comment on his use of the present tense. Before she might have, a Frisbee landed at her feet.

Tracy stopped, stooped, and peeled the plastic disc off the sand. Without a word, she handed it over to him.

Without a word, he took it. She couldn’t throw a beanbag, and they both knew it. He swallowed a bittersweet smile as he took aim at the shirtless young man standing downwind. What would kill him was to lose moments just like this, when two people’s shared domestic intelligence made an everyday occurrence a ritual that strengthened the relationship’s bonds.

Except for all that domestic inside dope, he didn’t know everything he should about his wife. “Is there something you’d rather have been doing all these years?”

She’d turned to study the surf. Two more waves rushed in before she spoke. “Sometimes I think about the places where we get the items for the store. Remember those cranberry candles we had last year, the ones shaped like old-fashioned Santas? They were from Michigan. Sometimes I think about Michigan and its lakes that have waves like our ocean.”

For their honeymoon, they’d spent a week in San Francisco. But between the demands of the store and the kids, the fact that he’d moved like crazy growing up, and finally that they lived in a premier vacation destination, travel had never occurred to him. “Anyplace else?”

“Those little sugary-looking cottage ornaments are imported from Switzerland,” Tracy said. “I think about going there. And I can smell the history and the burning sun on the clay piñatas that we import from Mexico City.”

Dan shook his head. She had places she wanted to see that she’d never shared with him. Feelings too? Decimated pride and shattered expectations.

Digging into her first marriage and subsequent divorce had never been on his agenda. He’d thought she felt fairly neutral toward the other man. He’d told himself she was entitled to her privacy. Now he wondered if he’d been ducking her pain.

Was there some good way to bring it up?

He couldn’t think of one. “Tracy, about Kevin…” Though he watched closely, she didn’t even flinch.

“Why would you mention him?”

“He’s Bailey’s father.” Lame, but the best he could do. “When she was living at home, he would show up at the house on occasion-”

“On the occasion he felt bored,” she said, the words spitting like ice cubes onto the sand, “or some pang of guilt managed to bore its way through his unfeeling hide.”

Oh-kay. Not neutral. Definitely not neutral. Dan took a breath and plunged on. “It was obvious that Bailey was, uh, conflicted when it came to him, but how about you?”

Tracy turned her face toward him. A strand of windblown hair stuck to the corner of her mouth, and she drew it away with a finger. “How about me, what?”

“How…how did the divorce affect you?”

In the ensuing silence, his gut churned in nervous anticipation.

“You know those carved jewelry boxes we have at the store? The ones that require opening a dozen latched and hidden doors to get to the prize inside?”

Dan nodded, wondering for a moment what country they came from and if that was another of Tracy’s dream destinations. “You have to know the secret to get to the center.”

“Right. Well, after the divorce was at last final, that’s where I put my feelings about it. Locked and hidden away behind a dozen secret doors.”

With a password that she would never share with him, he realized in dismay.

For some reason, he remembered again her trembling hand on Harry’s college comforter. Their son had already been making jokes with his roommate, helping set up the other boy’s computer as his mother blurred around the edges in front of their eyes.

Had that been Dan’s mistake too? Had he been laughing, joking, hooking up computer wires when the connection he should have been making at that moment was with his wife?

Shit. He wanted to shout, to scream, to shake her. Because while he’d definitely found out more about this woman, this love of his life, he felt as if she was farther away than ever before.

Bailey Sullivan’s Vintage Christmas

Facts & Fun Calendar

December 12

In 1955, a newspaper misprint directed children who wanted to call Santa Claus to the Continental Air Defense Command instead. Realizing the error, the Director of Operations had his staff check the radar data in order to provide children with updates on Santa’s position in the skies throughout Christmas Eve.