“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.
* * *
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, h
e’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.
Must Love Mistletoe Page 14