Christie Ridgway - Must Love Mistletoe

He turned around to find Bailey at the front counter, organizing the already organized space. “GND-”

“Do me a favor. Call that preschool. Get that boy’s last name. Get his brother’s name. And see if you can charm them into an address.”

He stared at her, silenced.

Her head jerked up. She pinned him with glittering eyes. “What? What are you thinking? Did you suppose I was going to spread my cynicism instead of holiday cheer? Thanks a lot.”

“Bailey-”

“He was just a little boy!”

A little boy with a label Finn knew only too well. He’d noticed the child during the class’s visit to the store, because he’d recognized the kid’s buzz of energy, his too-big movements, the way the teachers rode herd on him before he even had a chance to breathe.

And still he’d broken something.

Finn had broken dozens of things in just that very same way, until he’d stopped caring about the “bad” label they’d given him and started embracing it instead. Then had come Bailey.

Never impressed with his bad-ass attitude. Never put off by it either. He supposed he’d fallen in love with her that very first day when she’d sprayed his sullen, sorry face with a blast of cold hose water.

And, he realized now, his heart slamming to a stop, he was still in love with her today.

Finn hung around The Perfect Christmas the rest of the day but steered clear of Bailey, which was easy enough to do because there were customers all over the store, not to mention the welcome-though surprising-presence of both of the surfing sales kids. He could have gone back to Gram’s, but she was spending the day doing a salon thing with her friend Jeanette. He could have gone back to Gram’s anyway and used the alone time to dissect his reaction to dinner the night before.

The job offer. The very nice money that went along with it. The notion of never being a Secret Service agent again.

Trying to forget about that, he could have gone to Hart’s and hit the booze. A few drinks to take the sting away and smooth out all his rough edges.

But neither peace and quiet nor company and whiskey would help erase the latest screw-up in his life. When he was supposed to be plastering over ten months of uninvited emotions, he’d just added another lethal feeling to the mix.

Love. For Bailey.

Fuck.

His throat felt dry at the thought, and he reconsidered a quick trip to the bar. That first shot would go down quick and the beer chaser would go down easy. But no, there was something that scared him more than the idea that she still had his heart, and it kept him nearby.

He was afraid she was going to run from him again.

Late afternoon, he was outside the back of the store, looking for fresh air and some hope that he wasn’t really once more at the mercy of the woman who’d already eviscerated him. A car stopped in the narrow alley with its “No Parking” signs, and Bailey’s mother, Tracy, slipped out.

Her face registered the same surprise he felt. “Oh,” she said. “Uh, Finn.”

He sketched a wave. “Mrs. Willis.” His gut cramped. Her mother’s return to working at The Perfect Christmas would send Bailey speeding to her other life for sure. She’d be gone-poof-before he figured out how to hack out of himself the part that still belonged to her. “Back at the store?”

“No.” The word was quick. “I’m only dropping off some things.”

Relieved, of course he volunteered to help her with them. So he let her load him up with an armful of boxes.

“For the Grandma’s Attic room she told me about,” Tracy explained, as she held open the door that led to the rear storeroom for him. “I had some things tucked away that came from who-knows-where. She might be able to use them.”

“You like the idea of selling vintage?” he asked.

A smile flitted across Bailey’s mother’s face. “It’s a very Bailey idea. Timely. Smart…”

“Profitable,” they said together. Shared a smile.

He set the boxes on the room’s worktable as Tracy sidled up to the half-open door that led to the downstairs display rooms. He followed her there, watching her watch her daughter at the front register. For all her anti-Christmas rhetoric, Bailey didn’t appear unhappy to ring up yet another sale.

“She fits here,” Tracy murmured. “More than at that cutthroat law firm she runs.”

Finn cocked a brow. “She can be pretty cutthroat herself.” He had the old scars to prove it, and worried like hell he was on his way to only more wounds.

“Sometimes…sometimes people hold the knife, keeping others away to avoid being hurt themselves.”

“But Bailey-” He swallowed his words as Tracy jerked, sucking in a gasp. “What?”

Her gaze trained on the older man striding through the front door, she edged back, her heels just missing Finn’s toes. But he wasn’t giving an inch, not when it was obvious something was up. Not only was Tracy’s body quivering, but so was his sixth sense’s antennae.

Bailey was wearing that weird forced smile again. “Dad!” he heard her say to the newcomer.

The lean man had a headful of wind-tousled gray hair and a careless smile. He beamed it about the room as he turned in a circle. “I haven’t been in here in twenty years.”

“Twenty-three,” Tracy murmured.

“I thought you weren’t picking me up for dinner until six,” Bailey said, her voice sounding thin and anxious. “I can’t leave right now.”

The other man-her dad-turned back to her, his smile no less dim. “Ah, here’s the deal, honey.”

Bailey’s face betrayed no emotion as he gave her a litany of excuses. People he promised to meet for margaritas. A possible business deal in the making. No raincheck because he was on his way first thing in the morning after overnighting at a local state beach campground.

His daughter didn’t seem to notice how flimsy it all sounded, and even gave him that soulless smile again. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.” Her hands lifted. “I guess this is Merry Christmas then.”

“I’m sorry too, honey. I get so busy…But I make the important stuff, right? Like your college graduation.”

In front of him, Tracy’s muscles started humming like a tuning fork. “He didn’t make her college graduation,” she whispered furiously.

It was as if Bailey could hear her. “You, uh, didn’t come to college graduation, Dad. But you were there for high school, though. Remember? I did a reading of Eleanor Roosevelt.”

“That’s right.” Her father slid his hands in his pants pockets. “All those words of wisdom. And I gave you mine too, remember?”

Bailey’s face blanked. Even if that wasn’t enough to make Finn’s antennae go wild, the conversation was triggering memories right and left. He’d spoken with her on the phone the day before her high school graduation. She’d seemed tense, nervous about her role at the ceremony, but had let nothing slip about plans to leave town. To leave him.

A few days later she was gone.

After that visit from her father. His scalp prickled a warning.

“I remember your wisdom real well, Dad,” she said now, her voice low.

“It works, right? In relationships, jobs, hell, marriage. ‘Get out before things get ugly.’ I live by it.”

Bailey nodded. Then she made a big play of looking at her watch. “Hey, Dad. If you’re going to make those margaritas…”

He slapped his hands on his thighs, clapped them together, then turned toward the door. “Smartest daughter I have.”

“Only daughter he has,” Tracy said through her teeth.

Finn swallowed a painful laugh as he watched Bailey usher her father through the front door. Getting him out before things got ugly.

But it was probably too late, Finn thought. For all of them.

Bailey Sullivan’s Vintage Christmas

Facts & Fun Calendar

December 19

Victorian-era gift giving might include a cobweb party. Each family member was assigned a color and then all were taken to a room criss-crossed with cobwebs of multicolored yarn. Persons had to follow their color to find their presents.

Tracy tried everything she could to control her anger. She wrapped herself up in a feather comforter, visualizing it as her buffer of nothingness, and watched five hours of television. When she found herself aiming the remote at the TV like a sword and viciously stabbing the buttons, she took herself to her bedroom and a book.

The letters in the sentences kept rearranging themselves, creating new words. Adultery. Disloyalty. Revenge. Like the feelings boiling up inside of her, they were all too big to write on a piece of paper and fold into something small enough to fit into her mental compartmented cabinet.

At dawn, she backed out of her driveway. The quiet street with its competing Christmas decorations didn’t lighten or appease her spirits. On her way, she passed The Perfect Christmas and saw old Charlie Baer in his Retired Citizen Service Patrol car parked out front, sipping from a cup of coffee. She was going so fast she didn’t think he had time to jot down her license number.

The three red lights she sped through, she took to be good omens.

Red matched her mood.

At her destination, it was beyond easy to find him. There was the car he’d used to drive away from 631 Walnut. It was a 1972 Corvette coupe, a car he’d coveted, and that she’d given to him after saving out of her paycheck for years. He’d probably cheated on her in that car.

She parked behind it and got out, breathing deeply through her nose. The cool air seemed to be swirling around her in a wild wind, and her heart pumped in time to match it. Despite the cold, her body felt too hot, though she was only in a pair of jeans and a thin T-shirt.