Must Love Mistletoe

by Christie Ridgway

  “Morning, Gram,” Finn said, wrapping his fingers around the half-and-half instead. Then he poured her a cup of coffee and added a dollop of the cream, just as she liked it. Still, his actions were jerky, and he knew his brusque tone would only make her worry. “Wrong side of the bed.”

  From the corner of his one eye, he made sure she settled safely into her chair, then placed her cup in front of her. She smiled at him. “You spoil me.”

  “That’s why I’m here.” After she’d been released from the hospital last week, he’d packed up enough from his downtown San Diego loft to stay through Christmas. The field office had been ecstatic over short-tempered Finn using some of his pile of vacation hours—hell, they’d been this close to ordering him out anyway, even though it hadn’t been long since his return from medical leave. His parents had been relieved to give over his grandmother’s care to him. They were already at his sister’s awaiting the birth of the first grandchild—a son.

  Though Gram insisted she didn’t need a keeper, the fact was, when he was a teenager he had needed one, and it was Gram who had volunteered for the job. He owed her—and maybe one other—for all that he’d become.

  So he also owed it to her to plaster over that eleven-month-old crack in his soul and the simmering emotions it laid bare. Without finding a way to control his feelings, he’d end up killing himself by either drinking too much or driving too fast. Even if he managed to survive his sins, he owed his colleagues too. He couldn’t return to his job unless he could return to his former professional, cool self.

  “Did I hear someone at the door?”

  “Mmm.” He didn’t want to rehash the visit with himself, let alone with his grandmother, so he ignored the question and tried de-growling his voice. “Mom called this morning. She reports she bought the prodigy-yet-to-be-born some sort of infant computer and educational software yesterday. Dad purchased a football, baseball mitt, and, his concession to the Midwest, an ice hockey stick.”

  His grandmother sipped at her coffee. “No drum set?”

  God, she knew how to get to him. He almost found himself smiling. “Now how did you know that was what I sent for my nephew’s first Christmas?”

  “Your parents will be amused.”

  “You think?” Finn doubted it. They’d likely shudder at the bad memories the gift would evoke. The fact was, he’d caused his family buckets of anxiety as an adolescent hellion. At thirteen he’d started smoking cigarettes and hanging out with a new neighbor who had a band, a van, and a fake ID. Finn had been big for his age and the other guy had probably thought him nearer his grade than he actually was—or maybe the guy just appreciated Finn’s talent with drums. He’d actually sucked…but then they all did, all of them who made up Corpses in Heaven.

  At their wits’ end that summer vacation, his parents had sent him from home in Northern California to his grandmother’s to get him away from his older friend and Finn’s first brushes with the law. One dose hadn’t cured him. By fifteen, along with the local cops, he’d considered himself a regular Bad Ass and his folks starting sending him to his grandmother’s every summer and Christmas. They’d realized that even a Bad Ass had a soft spot, and Finn’s was his gram. He was named for her husband, his Grandpa Finn, and though he barely remembered the man, Finn and Gram formed a two-member mutual admiration society.

  His long bleached hair, his steel earrings, the skulls and other symbols he’d self-tattooed on his knuckles—she’d seemed amused by them. She was tolerant of him in every way except the cancer sticks. And because he hated upsetting her, during the weeks he spent at her house he would not only stop smoking but also try shedding his urban street image and begin fitting in with the Coronado sorta-suburban, sorta-surf-dude society—as well as anyone could, anyway, who had that scruffy hair, those steel earrings, the tattooed knuckles.

  Then once Bailey Sullivan accepted him, the rest of the kids did too.

  The name must have floated from his mind into Gram’s. “I thought I heard Bailey’s voice,” she said. “It was like old times.”

  “It was her,” he admitted, turning his back to reach for his own coffee cup when a beer still sounded so much better. Or whiskey. “I guess she’s home for a visit too.”

  “Imagine that.”

  Yeah, imagine. He hadn’t even bothered to consider it when he’d moved in at Walnut Street a few days ago. Just as he’d never imagined on that first visit at Bad Ass thirteen that he’d get tangled up with super-insider, super-perfect, Coronado’s super It Girl Bailey Sullivan.

  Teen tease. Ice princess. Girl next door. His first lover. His first love.

  She been all these to him at one time or another.

  Oh, yeah, and the first and only one to break his heart. But hell, what’s youth for, anyway?

  He should have let go of it by now, don’t you think?

  He’d never let go of it.

  But that wasn’t true. He’d done a damn fine job of letting go of Bailey and all the immature dreams he’d had at twenty years old when he’d come to Coronado that last time, only to find her gone. He’d moved forward with his life and surprised the hell out of his parents by becoming a son they boasted about.

  Until eleven months ago.

  He supposed they still boasted about him, but he didn’t feel the same about himself. Certainly he’d never be the same.

  He adjusted the strap of his eye patch, and the sharp ache in his facial bones sank all the way to his gut.

  Closing his one working eye, he sucked in a deep breath. For a second, over the coffee and the pain, he smelled Bailey again. He’d never pinpointed the name of her personal perfume, but it hadn’t changed in a decade. Light, citrusy, with a layer of some flowery note on top. Then all wrapped up in bow of sex appeal.

  One sniff this morning and, damn it all to hell, he’d been going hard and horny again.

  Because that delicate blond prettiness of hers was still the same too. That sleek golden hair and gymnast figure that had made him feel both macho and clumsy when he was sixteen. That now just made him feel mean because despite himself it still pulled at him.

  But who could blame him for reacting to all the memories between them? Innocent kisses. Not-so-innocent kisses. Her small breasts in his palms. The first time he’d touched the wetness between her thighs and how she’d buried her face against his neck in embarrassment.

  The burn of her skin when he’d tasted that delicious wetness on his tongue.

  As he said, who could blame him?

  But hell, it only twisted the uncontrollable tension inside of him tighter. He was the Bad Ass again, feeling all edgy and penned-up and rebellious. Like then, just a razor’s edge away from fucking up.

  Oh, wait. He’d already done that eleven months ago.

  But he was supposed to be getting past that. He was supposed to be icing over all the anger, the guilt, the sense of loss. During this “vacation” with Gram he was supposed to be unwinding eleven months of coiled emotions that had made him harder and meaner than ever before. And he couldn’t—wouldn’t—let the unwelcome return of Bailey Sullivan impede his objective.

  * * *

  Bailey Sullivan’s Vintage Christmas

  Facts & Fun Calendar

  December 3

  Helen Keller said, “The only real blind person at Christmas time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.”

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  It was after midnight when Bailey left the shop and headed toward Walnut Street and the sleep she so desperately needed. At the store’s closing time, she’d been in no hurry to return to Christmas Central with its cacophony of holiday sound and emotional caterwauling of ancient memories, so she’d busied herself by restocking. The day’s stream of customers had left gaping holes on the shelves and tables and under and on the half-dozen decorated trees inside The Perfect Christmas.

  The last box she’d unpacked had contained St. Nicholas figurines from Germany. Dressed in old-fashioned robes of green, r
ed, and white, they’d been frosted with a superfine glitter that she hadn’t been able to completely wash off her hands. As she adjusted the Passat’s rearview mirror, in the streetlight she could see the stuff dusted across her nose and cheeks and clinging to the strands of hair surrounding her face. She rubbed at it with the back of her hand and tried finger-combing it out of her hair, but then gave up.

  Glitter girl was going straight to bed, so what did it matter?

  Except one block from 631 Walnut, she had second thoughts about sleep. As in, she didn’t think she was going to get any right away. Maybe a teensy glass of Merlot and some crispy cheese straws would pull her overactive mind off its fixation with the past. And not just the past as in ten years ago, but also the past of sixteen hours ago. All day she’d been wondering what Finn had been doing with his life. She knew he hadn’t been living with his grandmother all this time, though she didn’t know anything else. For example, what was that eye patch all about?

  And why did it give her the uneasy impression that he saw her clearer than ever? When he was a teenager, she’d catch him looking at her, sometimes with amusement, sometimes with bemusement, sometimes with a kind of heat that made her heart fall to her belly and throb there, low and hard. Though she’d tried to pretend that she managed all the dark, wild power in his bad-boy body, deep inside she’d known that he only let her feel that way.

  A panther who tolerated the pretty girl riding him with ribbon reins.

  Now he looked like a man who didn’t have any patience for pretending.

  The thought would be hard to fall asleep with.

  So she turned left and headed for the grocery store a quarter mile away, gratified to see that it was open 24/7 as she’d expected. Grocery stores restocked in the off-hours too, and there was no sense not making a sale or two if they had to have employees in the store overnight anyway.

  Though as she pulled into the lot, the number of cars surprised her. Late-night sales must be brisk because apparently she wasn’t the only insomniac in town. Inside, the place was bustling with stockers and shoppers. Even with Bing warbling about snow and her wine and snacks quickly in hand, Bailey continued to wander around, in no hurry to return home to where the proximity of Finn was sure to plague her.

  Here, at least, she could find some peace.

  “Bailey? Bailey Sullivan?” said a female voice.

  She swung around to find no one behind her, then adjusted her level gaze three inches lower to latch on to the gamine face of her oldest childhood friend. The only person who had ever made her feel tall. “Trin Tran?”

  They let out identical squeals and rushed into each other’s arms, bumping and tangling plastic shopping carriers in the process. Laughing, they pulled back and went about disconnecting their baskets. Inside Trin’s, Bailey glimpsed Cheerios, a box of pediatric cold medicine, and small jars of something the color of melted purple crayons.

  She looked into her friend’s almond eyes. “You’re a mother?”

  Trin nodded. “To Adam-sleeping-at-the-moment-but-with-a-cold-that-makes-him-cranky. He’s not quite two years old. I’ve been married for three. My husband’s Andrew Truehouse. Remember him from high school?”

  “Of course I remember him from high school.” A few years older than the two of them, he’d been student body president, as well as captain of the water polo and volleyball teams. Andrew Truehouse had been nicknamed “Drew So True.” Bailey started to laugh. “Oh my God, that makes you Trin Tran True!”

  The other woman scowled. “It was almost a deal-breaker, I’m telling you. But then we agreed I’d keep my maiden name and the wedding went forward. I would have sent you an invitation if you’d ever bothered to make contact during the last decade.”

  Regret and guilt gave Bailey dual hefty pinches. “I’ve made my visits home infrequent and extremely brief. Running from retail, you know?”

  One of Trin’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, I’m perfectly aware of who you were running from.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “And I just saw him on aisle three.”

  Bailey swallowed, trying to calm her suddenly rocking stomach. “Who…?” Then she gave up all pretext and clutched Trin’s forearm as if they were both still sixteen. “You saw Finn in here?”

  “Mmm-hmm. He’ll see you your bottle of wine and raise you a quart of whiskey.”

  Bailey searched the area around her, but there wasn’t any sign of him. “Are you certain it was Finn?”

  “Muscles? Eye patch? Big-boobied redhead hanging all over his wide manly chest?”

  A redhead? A woman? But of course Finn had a woman. Did Bailey expect he’d mooned around for ten years, remembering some starry-eyed first love and finding nothing near as dazzling? “Well, um…”

  Trin wasn’t listening to her. “C’mon,” she said, dragging Bailey around a corner. “Let’s spy on him. It’ll be like old times.”

  Of course Bailey would have never considered this on her own. She was too mature, too…uncaring about Finn and his probably fat redhead—the likely one with the equally plump wallet who had gifted him with that outrageous bake sale of a Nativity scene. But Trin, at barely five feet and maybe ninety-five pounds when wearing soaking wet winter clothes, was as strong as a freight train. She tugged Bailey behind a tall display of candy canes, red- and green-wrapped chocolate Kisses, and boxes of instant hot chocolate.

  “There he is,” Trin stage-whispered.

  Bailey worked hard not to look his way. “Really, Trin. I’m not the least bit interested in…” But then she heard his deep laugh and it compelled her to take a peek.

  The redhead did have big boobies. But despite her tiny waist, her hips were definitely fat. Hah. At thirty, Finn had developed a taste for tall fat women with hair the improbable color of a tequila sunrise. That was the problem with men—they never once considered that no real female had breasts that big or hair that red.

  Or maybe the actual problem was that they didn’t care.

  Pigs.

  The fake redhead had a loud voice too. “I know you must be a seal,” she declared.

  Fat, stupid woman. Pig, not seal.

  “A one-eyed special ops?” Finn countered. “Guess again.”

  Oh. Navy SEAL. Since they trained at the nearby base, Bailey now could see where that guess came from. As if Finn would be in the military, though. She knew his rebel’s soul better than that.

  Bailey bent to Trin’s ear. “What does he do, do you know?” At the other woman’s measuring glance, she hastened to add, “Not that I care or anything.”

  But before her friend could reply, from the corner of her eye she saw that Finn had dis-octupied himself from Tequila Sunrise and was moving away from her. Moving in their direction. Bailey muffled a squeak of alarm and scurried away, this time with Trin in tow.

  She took refuge in the feminine hygiene aisle, where the only masculine thing in sight was a display of condoms. A sudden memory seared her brain. Sitting in a car in a drugstore parking lot, trying to melt into the passenger seat as Finn went inside for the necessities. He’d come out, reached into the brown bag, and tossed an item into her lap, right there in front of God and everybody. She’d nearly cried in embarrassment.

  Then looked down at the big bag of Reese’s minis he’d purchased as well. “Never say I don’t do foreplay,” he’d said with a grin, settling beside her.

  But his foreplay had been better than chocolate and peanut butter. Of course, they’d had years of foreplay before they’d actually had sex. First kiss to hours of kissing, to caresses over clothes, to caresses under clothes. Hours of that, too. Then all clothes off. He’d come to her more experienced in the kissing and touching department—certainly less shy about bodily responses to such—but she presumed they’d discovered the actual act together.

  That first time had been on a blanket in her back garden, with the warm summer darkness draping over them. She’d been afraid and eager and then uncaring about whether it was right or wrong or the
right or wrong time for them to become lovers. He’d already made himself familiar with that mysterious territory between her thighs, a frequent traveler of all the hills and valleys and every little bump in between. Before, he had always touched her there with his lean fingers, his eyes on her face, watching for her reaction.

  And she, being a dumb girl, had thought it was important to show no reaction at all. Good girls—even good girls who played on the wild side with their bad-boy boyfriend—wouldn’t gasp or cry out or show the pleasure that was shooting from his stroking fingers to run in rippling trails of tingling heat up her spine and down the backs of her legs. She wanted to arch into his hand, but wouldn’t that look slutty? So she would close her eyes and bite her bottom lip, tensing her body against the tremors of bliss.

  That night, he’d done more. He’d bent his head to touch her with his mouth. In half agony, half excitement, she’d screwed her eyes shut tighter. How could he? Why would he? It felt so incredible. So good! Don’t let him know!

  And so she’d yanked him up by the shoulders. The unexpected movement had caused him to collapse on top of her, his erection pressing against that wonderful wet place that he’d set to pulsing. He’d groaned—no concern about sluttishness from him, weren’t boys so lucky?—and she’d loved the sound of it, and she’d so loved him, and she was so afraid of letting him know that she wanted his mouth back right there, that she’d whispered, “Oh, Finn,” and shifted the tiny bit that took him to the entrance to her body.

  And bad-boy Finn had surprised the heck out of her by practically leaping into the air. “Condom,” he’d gasped and dived for his pants. That’s when she’d figured out that like Boy Scouts, even bad boys were always prepared.

  She was still pulsing, still loving, still battling her body and its responses so that when he’d come back to her, latex-protected, and uttered a breathy “Are you sure?”—that she was. In part to hide from Finn all that he could do to her with a simple touch.