Must Love Mistletoe

Chapter 12

Propped against the headboard, Trin lay on Bailey’s bed, studying Kurt Cobain’s face on the poster pinned to the opposite wall. “I think Finn used to wear black eyeliner like our grunge-band buddy here. I remember his eyes always seemed to smolder.”

Still smoldered, Bailey thought, as she rummaged through her closet for something to wear on their date. “It’s the thick eyelashes,” she said, glancing over at the other woman. “It’s unfair that I got puny blond ones and his are so dark.”

Trin crossed her ankles. “So what’s the occasion of this dinner of yours?”

“Heck if I know.” Was it only to ensure they could have a private chat without interruption? She wasn’t certain. In his grandmother’s kitchen, Finn had set the night, she’d agreed, and then been ecstatically happy that he’d left it at that and let her leave the house without fulfilling the other part of their bargain: that she’d tell him why she’d run ten years ago.

And that embarrassing, sloppily emotional interlude in the Jacobson kitchen was something she’d been trying to distance herself from too. It had started with watching Finn fall on the dark street. Then only gotten worse at the sight of his torn skin. He’d assured her it was nothing, but it was enough to give her perfect recall of the infamous assassination attempt video. Though his face was never shown, and his name kept secret by the government agency that employed him, now she knew it was he who had taken the second bullet. She knew it was his shattered sunglasses, his puddle of blood.

Finn who could have died.

Once again, the thought gave her that weird, weightless feeling in her stomach and she pressed against it hard. He’s okay, she reminded herself. Just fine.

She knew that for a fact, because that day and the day before he’d shown up at The Perfect Christmas as promised. With little direction on her part, he’d reorganized the back room, replenished stock, donned the Santa suit at the appropriate hour. With the additional, very capable help, she’d been able to relax a little.

A surprised Byron had caught her humming to the store’s background music. And, funny, she’d been recalling old memories of The Perfect Christmas when he’d pointed it out. Not the chaos of the post-Christmas sale or the endless summer shifts she’d spent at the cash register as a restless teen. These memories were of quiet afternoons when she’d stood on a stepladder to help her grandmother rearrange the Christmas villages on the shelves. Of poring over product catalogs with her grandfather, Bailey on his lap, the warmth of his chest at her back. He’d had a special fountain pen that he’d let her use to circle pretty things that caught her eye.

Then her parents had divorced and everything changed, including her feelings toward The Perfect Christmas.

Refocusing on the issue at hand, Bailey slid some hangers along the closet pole. A dress for a dinner date. A dinner date during which it was unlikely she’d be able to duck the question of why she’d run away a decade ago.

Not that she couldn’t answer. It wasn’t such a big deal, was it? But still it felt as if looking back with Finn would let him see other things she didn’t want him to know.

Like how strong she was pulled toward the man he had become.

Like how much she had once loved the young man he had been.

Like how hard it had been to turn her back on him then.

“We were just kids, right?” she said aloud. “Nobody expects those kinds of feelings to last forever.”

“Hmm.” Trin palmed the head of her sleeping son, who was sprawled over his mother’s body in toddler abandon. “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

Flushing at what she’d revealed, Bailey shoved a blouse farther down the pole. “Did I invite you over here?” she muttered. “Because I forget.”

“You walked away from me too, Bay,” Trin said, her voice quiet. “All those years growing up, you were the yin to my yang.”

Bailey swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. “Wouldn’t that be the trang to your trin?”

“See, that cleverness is just one of the many reasons why we got along so well together. You were my best friend since preschool. There have been times over the years I’ve needed you. Times I could have helped you too.”

Bailey’s hand, lingering on a blue sleeve, moved to a black one, her mood sliding toward funereal. After she’d left early for college that summer, she’d never spent another night in her childhood home until now. “I had to make a clean break,” she tried to explain. “As clean as I could, anyway.”

She heard Trin sigh, then listened to the other woman roll off the bed to stand behind her. “Not that dress. You look lousy in black.”

Bailey turned to face her friend. Baby Adam’s head rested on Trin’s shoulder, his body limp. She reached out to stroke the little boy’s back, surprised by its sweet warmth. In breaking from her past, she’d lost out on reunions, weddings, births, all the many ceremonies that connected someone to her community.

In L.A. she had acquaintances, colleagues, fellow condo dwellers. But no one who knew where she used to hide her love letters, how she could sneak out of her house with the help of an open window and a trash bin, why she hated the smell of Chanel No. 5.

At eighteen, she’d been so afraid that one part of her life would blow up in her face, that she’d walked away from the rest of it…and lost so much.

“I’m sorry, Trin.” Tears pricked the corners of Bailey’s eyes and she stroked Adam again. “I’ve missed you.”

Trin sniffed. “Stop it. We both look ugly in tears.”

Bailey smiled at that. “Remember when we hoped we were one of those girls who look pretty when they cry?”

“Yeah. And so we rented the old Romeo and Juliet to check it out.”

“Your nose turns an icky red,” Bailey said.

“You get splotchy. From your forehead to your neck.”

“Oh, Trin.” How had Bailey managed the last ten years without her?

Her friend’s nose was turning crimson. “Don’t be a stranger anymore. Deal?”

“Deal.” Even when Bailey went back to her current life on the twenty-fifth, she had to acknowledge she’d reforged some connections here. Tenuous ones to The Perfect Christmas, oddly enough. Rock-solid ones to Trin, thank God.

But that didn’t mean Bailey was reforging anything with Finn. There was no more future in any sort of relationship between them now than there had been then. Even if Finn had gone straight and become a downright hero who could wreak havoc with her hormones. Because Bailey knew that inside her chest her heart was crooked-if it was in one piece at all.

The fading photograph of a twenty-year-old in a rented tuxedo was no match for a grown man wearing black slacks, a black, open-necked shirt, and a nickel-colored sport coat. Bailey met Finn in her mother’s foyer and tried not to register how handsome he looked in the glow of the lighted dried-fruit-and-fir garland she’d brought home from the store and wound around the stairway handrails in her latest effort to remind her mother of the season and the store waiting for her just a few blocks away.

But there was no denying he looked good. Strong, solid. Over the past couple of days she’d had to back out of the storeroom when she found him working inside. It was too small. The first afternoon, he’d turned when she’d walked in. One glimpse of his five o’clock shadow had surfaced another memory. He’d always had a heavier beard than any boy she knew, and when they were making out on the beach or in a car, he would rub it against her, tickling the bare skin of her neck with his whiskery cheeks.

When they had more privacy and her bra was off, he’d rub his stubbled chin back and forth against her nipples, turning them stiff and rosy-pink. She would sneak a peek at his dark head and her hands would itch to hold him against her, to demand a harder touch, a wet, sucking mouth, a soft tongue, but she’d press fingernail half-moons against her palms instead of the sleek feel of his hair.

She’d been careful never to ask for more than he offered.

From the first, skirting rejection.

But when he’d looked at her across those few feet of floor space in the storeroom yesterday, it wasn’t rejection in his dark stare, in the suddenly heavy, too-warm air, in the arrow of desire that shot between them to trail like a fingertip from her throat to her belly.

The same fingertip she could feel tracing her flesh right now, as Finn stood, his hand gripping the doorjamb. His gaze ran over her, from her dress-a midnight-blue, tight-fitting wrap with elbow-length sleeves, a self-fabric belt, and a skirt that ended above her knees to display a deep flounce of black lace-to her black pumps topped with small organza bows.

But his face remained expressionless even when his gaze traveled back to the evening-amount of cleavage the dress exposed, tickling Bailey’s bare skin with more imaginary touches. Making her knees weak.

Clearing her throat, she picked up her evening bag and tried to appear businesslike instead of nearly breathless. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah.” To her surprise, he did the whole date thing, holding doors for her, helping her into his SUV with a touch to her elbow, shutting the door for her firmly.

In the time that it took him to get around to the driver’s door she worked on assembling a strategy to handle the inevitable. Okay, she told herself. During dinner he was going to insist on knowing why she’d run and she was going to give him her explanation. Now that they were older, he’d understand.

Probably thank her for it.

And then they’d finish their meal and return to their respective beds, the past and then themselves finally put to rest.

Because sweeping clean memory lane would likely sweep away their present physical chemistry as well. That was something to welcome too.

He seated himself, but didn’t start the car right way. His hands squeezed the wheel and she heard him take a deep breath. He didn’t look at her.

She braced for it. The Question. Apparently he wasn’t going to wait until they’d ordered.

“Bailey…” He opened one hand and rubbed it along the leather covering the wheel, his gaze trained out the dark windshield. “I should tell you…” He cleared his throat, started again. “I should tell you…”

His hesitation set off warning bells. “What? Tell me what?”

“We’re not going to be alone for dinner.”

She blinked. “We’re not?” Here she’d been imagining an awkward confrontation, just the two of them, and now that wasn’t going to happen? Well, heck. Forget the humming, she just might start singing. “Who else is going to be there?”

“Another couple.” He went silent again, then turned the key, still without looking at her. “Some people I know through work.”

“Oh.” This was good. She didn’t have any trouble talking to strangers, and people he knew from work-Secret Service people, obviously-had to have some entertaining tidbits to share. With a little relieved bounce, she settled back in her seat. “I’ll bet we’ll have fun.”

Theirs wasn’t the only vehicle heading across the graceful arc of the Coronado Bridge toward downtown San Diego. But it was only a little over two miles in length, and even with traffic, the travel time was hardly long enough to become concerned by the heavy silence on Finn’s side of the SUV.

Maybe he was tired after today’s Santa gig. Maybe the never-ending Christmas hoopla was getting to him as much as it always got to her.

Apparently it was a busy time of year in the Gaslamp Quarter, the revitalized section of the city now devoted to restaurants, bars, and other entertainment. Red brake lights were doing their part to add to the holiday atmosphere as cars crept along the streets. Bailey craned her neck to take in all the new construction. “I heard that downtown was becoming a popular place to live too, but I had no idea.”

“I have a penthouse loft down here myself.” They were the first words he’d said since hitting the bridge.

“Yeah? You rob a bank or is there something about government salaries I’m not aware of?”

A smile ghosted over his mouth. “I’m not sure you know, but my dad’s in investments. When I went straight and then into the Secret Service, I got smart too, and gave him a big chunk of my money every month. I didn’t need much, because I used to spend most of my time traveling. For a few years I was on the presidential detail.”

She stared at him. “Get out!”

“Two words even the president of the United States rarely says to his agents.”

“I’m impressed,” she confessed, as he whipped into a corner parking lot.

He sent her an enigmatic look as he turned off the car. “Hold that thought.”

Then he did the whole date thing again, coming around to her side, helping her out, taking her hand as they started off down the sidewalk. In her heels on the pebbly pavement, she was grateful.

His fingers suddenly squeezed hers. “Bailey…” There was that odd hesitation again. “I should tell you…”

All right, now the warning bells were clanging. “What? What?”

“The other couple is Ayesha Spencer’s parents.”

It took her a minute to put the pieces together. Ayesha Spencer was the Secret Service agent who’d been killed during the assassination attempt eleven months before. The young woman on Finn’s team. “I don’t belong here then,” she said.

“Bailey-” He fell silent, his gaze dropping to their joined hands.

No. No, no, no, no, no. She could have revisited their past. Gone through the awkwardness, the explanations, the possible recriminations. But that was their past. This situation was something that was Finn’s alone. She pulled her fingers free from his. “You’ve got to see that it’s not my place.”

Grieving parents, upset Finn. His body language was telling the whole story. She realized now that beneath that lack of expression and leaden silence she’d noted earlier was a wealth of tension. He was stiff with it.

“I’ll take a cab back home,” she said. A passerby bumped her, and she stumbled closer to Finn. Her palm landed on his shirtfront for balance and she felt the jerky beat of his heart against her hand. Her gaze jumped to his face. “Are you all right?”

“No.” His good eye squeezed shut. “I can’t do it, Bailey.” The words were low, hard. “I don’t think I can do it alone.”

She stared up at him, the bad boy whom she once thought she’d tamed, now the strong man who risked his life protecting others. This morning he’d made breakfast for his recuperating grandmother. This afternoon he’d read The Polar Express to half-a-dozen children. Tonight…tonight a dark pain etched his face.

He didn’t come straight out and ask for help, though. He didn’t touch her again. Still, her pulse synced with his erratic heartbeat and her mouth went dry with sympathetic distress. Despite how reckless she knew it was of her, how unlike her usual keep-your-distance self, she allowed his unspoken need to find its way inside her.

Oh God.

It was so risky to care like this.

But she couldn’t seem to help herself.

“All right,” she heard herself whisper. Her hand reached from his heart to cup his cheek. “I’ll be there with you.”

He turned his face to press a swift kiss on her palm. “I had no right…”

She tried to rub his burning kiss away on her thigh. “Damn straight, you didn’t,” she agreed, doing her best to sound brisk instead of broken-down as she tugged him in the direction they’d been going. “But let’s get it over with.”

He waited until they were hailed by an older couple in the waiting area of a trendy steak-and-seafood place to drop the next bombshell.

His mouth touched her ear.

Goose bumps raced down her neck.

“I meant,” Finn said, his breath hot and smelling faintly of cinnamon. “I had no right to tell them you’re my fiancée.”

Later she would kill him, she decided. Later when she didn’t notice that his entire body had turned to steel and that the grimacelike smile he gave to Ayesha Spencer’s parents looked as if it would crack open his face.

Her mother, a beautiful black woman with skin as supple as a teenager’s, touched the temple beside Finn’s eye patch and blinked away tears. Her father, a tall, spare man with red hair going gray and pale blue eyes, hung onto Finn’s outstretched hand as if it could rescue him from dangerous, deep waters.

Then they turned to Bailey. She was hugged by them both. Exclaimed over as a “beauty” with “such a lovely smile.” Ayesha’s parents were effusively glad to know that Finn had found someone “new.”

That was her first hint.

Throughout the rest of the meal other clues couldn’t be ignored. They shared with her pictures of their daughter, and Bailey realized among the photographs Mrs. Spencer carried in her wallet was one of Finn and Ayesha. It looked to be a picnic setting and they were in swimsuits, his arm around her shoulders, her face turned up to his.

The older couple told Finn in detail about the marble headstone they’d placed on her grave and the memorial scholarship they’d set up at Ayesha’s high school. From his jacket pocket, Mr. Spencer pulled out a folded Orioles baseball cap.

“It was hers,” he said, fondling it as he would a child’s hair. “I thought you might like to have it, but not if…” His gaze moved from Finn’s face to Bailey’s.

Her “fiancé” took the hat, mumbled something, and signaled the waiter for another round.

None of them ate very much. Finn drank.

Three-quarters through the saddest evening of her life, Bailey got desperate enough to redirect the conversation and start talking about The Perfect Christmas. They actually ended up the evening laughing-well, she laughed and so did Ayesha’s parents-when she told them about the surf-crazy sales help, this year’s piratical Santa, her Retired Citizen Service Patrol buddy who met her at the door of the shop when she closed each night and walked her to her car, watching her drive away only after he checked her for parking infractions with his official measuring stick.

It was closing in on midnight when the two couples went through a round of fragile hugs on the sidewalk. Then Bailey and Finn headed off in the opposite direction from the Spencers.

Nothing was said between them. After a few minutes, she took a peek at him, trying to gauge his sobriety. Throughout the evening he’d been drinking steadily, but tonight there was none of the sloppy-drunk St. Nick in the Finn that was keeping pace beside her.

Tension continued to radiate from him. His hands in his pockets, he walked with his head down, apparently oblivious to the other people on the crowded sidewalk. They gave him a wide berth, his dark mood sending out clear warning beacons. A young guy traveling in the opposite direction tapped Bailey’s shoulder as he passed, and Finn snarled at him, shooting out a hand to pull her close to his side.

Her stomach jumped at the viselike grip of his hand on her upper arm. He left it there, keeping her near as he towed her along, his knuckles pressing into the soft side of her breast. She tried pulling away, but he drew her close again, his fingers just that much tighter.

And then, despite every reason why not, her nipples reacted to the firm touch, stiffening against the fabric of her push-up bra. A pulse started beating low in her belly. As goose bumps broke out over her skin, she tried sucking in a calming breath, but that only expanded her chest, pushing her flesh more insistently against his fingers.

They tightened again on her arm, then…pressed back?

No. It had to be an accident. But another round of prickly heat washed over her flesh. Her thin shawl was caught on her elbows and she wished she’d worn something heavier, a sweater, a coat-thick wool to smother all her suddenly leaping nerve endings.

As they continued walking, one of the fingers circling her arm straightened, then stroked against the side of her breast.

Bailey’s breath caught in her lungs.

That wasn’t a mistake. He did it again.

She flicked him a sideways glance. His expression was closed, and she was on his left side so couldn’t read anything in the patch that covered his eye. He caressed her once more.

Her knees melted.

“Okay?”

His tense, low-voiced question shivered down her spine. Okay? She was simmering like soup in a pan and he wanted it that way. He couldn’t pretend not to know what he was wreaking with those secret strokes.

“Bailey? Okay?”

What was she supposed to say? I sat through a dinner that made me want to cry and now I’m walking down the street and needing you and that makes me want to cry too.

Honesty didn’t seem the right way to go, but she had to come up with something. She looked down at her bare hands for inspiration and said the first dumb thing that popped into her dizzy brain. “I’m thinking I don’t have so much as a promise ring, let alone one that proclaims we’re engaged.”

Finn’s step hitched. His jaw hardened.

Bailey felt like an idiot. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” Then she sighed, knowing there was no joke, no laugh, nothing that would make walking down the street with this elephant between them possible Sighing, she stopped short to turn and grip the lapels of his coat.

“I’m confused, Finn.”

“About?”

The dinner we just had? And now your hand teasing my breast? “You and Ayesha,” she said. “The two of you…” Stupid how hard those words were to say. But of course he’d moved on with his life. She cleared her throat. “The two of you were in love, right?”

He was staring down at her fingers on his coat. “What makes you say that?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Spencer couldn’t have made it any clearer without taking out an ad.”

There was a long silence, then he dropped her arm.

“You’re wrong. They’re wrong. Sort of.” His gaze focused over her head, down the dark street. “She had feelings for me. Maybe…” He shrugged. “But we worked together and I didn’t think it was a good idea to take things in that direction.”

“So you didn’t have feelings for her?”

“Damn it!” The barked words caused a passing couple to give them a startled glance, then hurry off. His fingers curled into fists. “Do we have to do this? Do we have to talk now?”

But Bailey wouldn’t back down, ironic as it was that at the start of the evening she’d been dreading a personal conversation. “No. We can go back to Coronado, leaving forever the mystery of why you brought me tonight and why-”

He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her up on her tiptoes so they were face-to-face. “Why I want you so bad I’m walking with a flagpole in my pants? Why your nipples are so hard it looks like you stuffed cherries in your bra?”

She jerked back in his grasp. “Finn-”

Her bad boy kissed her quiet. Fierce, demanding, all hot lips and needy tongue, and the only things swept clean were the sensible objections from her head.

Bailey Sullivan’s Vintage Christmas

Facts & Fun Calendar

December 13

Bell ringing at Christmas is a holdover from pagan times when noisemakers were sounded to frighten away evil spirits during winter solstice festivals.