Christie Ridgway (12 page)

“I was persistent.” It had taken time, but he’d won Tracy over. Not Bailey, though. As much as he’d tried, as much as he regretted the failure, he knew he’d never quite cracked that hard shell she’d built after her father left. And it was as if Tracy had retreated behind that very same barrier now too.

He shook his head. “The garbage disposals aren’t going to do it, are they? And not the sticky doors or broken cabinet hinges?”

Brenda looked into his eyes, then away. “I don’t think I’m going to do it for you either, Dan. Not me, or Lynn, or Cherry. At least not now.”

Not ever
, Dan corrected.

He let the truth of that sink deep. It pierced his heart and fell like an anchor into his churning gut.

Moving away couldn’t move his wife out of his mind, his thoughts, his emotions.

His soul.

But no! He couldn’t let that be a certainty. They’d had happy, but not ever after, and he couldn’t,
wouldn’t
let himself be miserable without Tracy for the rest of his life.

Finn went on a long walk that afternoon to relieve his fidgety legs and restless memory. Head down, hands in his pockets, he didn’t realize the path his feet had taken him until he heard a familiar voice hail his name.

He looked up, then down, into the amused eyes of tiny Trin Tran, pushing a stroller so laden with shopping bags and drooling toddler that it had to weigh more than she did.

“Come by to check on your old flame?” she asked, a saucy smile on her lips.

Uh oh.
Finn was standing in front of The Perfect Christmas.

He resisted the urge to duck down in case Bailey was looking out the windows.
U O Me.
He still didn’t know what the hell she wanted from him. He still didn’t want to know.

“How are you, Trin?” Finn said, warding off a Bailey discussion. “And how is your, uh…” The child was dressed in a one-piece thing of nubby brown fabric, complete with an antler-topped hood.

“Raindid,” the kid said, a trail of drool running over its bottom lip. A little plump hand waved overhead.

“Raindid.”

“That’s right, baby. You’re so smart.” Trin, whom he’d always considered a logical, reasonable human being, gazed at the drooler with fanatical pride. Christ, his sister and parents were going to go nuts when his nephew was born. “He’s telling you he’s a reindeer.”

“Yeah? Uh, impressive.” That river of drool was pretty amazing too.

The kid was staring up at Finn now. A finger pointed at his face. “Pie-did.”

“Pie-deer?” Finn guessed. “Is that some new species?” They were just miles from the world-famous San Diego Zoo. Maybe the kid was a zoologist in the making.

Trin’s gaze cut toward him, a frown between her brows. “Something wrong with your hearing? That’s
pirate.
”

“Sorry.” Touching his eye patch, he grimaced. “I’m not real familiar with little kids.”

“Oh,
really
?” Trin fiddled with the collar of her white shirt. There was a piece of “jewelry” pinned to it, a one-by-two-inch LED screen that flashed naughty? nice? at three-second intervals. “We—
I
was wondering if you had any little Finns wandering around the world. We—
I
didn’t know if there was a woman in your life in the recent past, or the now, or the near future.”

“We pie-dids like to keep a little mystery going,” he replied, unwilling to play criminal to her cop.

At the narrowing of Trin’s eyes, he hastened to divert the topic again. “So,” he said, pointing to the bags hanging off the stroller. “Getting started on your Christmas shopping already?”

She made a weird little sound. Something between a hoot and a screech. Frankly, it was frightening.

Even the raindid looked up at his mom, with wide eyes and the Schweitzer Falls roaring over his bottom lip.

“‘Started’?” she repeated slowly. “‘Already’? Have you seen any Go-Go Toaster trains in the stores?

Any Flash It–Paste It–Post It software programs? What about the Demons Behind the Wheel video game?”

“Uh, no?” Seemed a safe answer.

“That’s right. It’s because they’ve not been available since the day after Thanksgiving.”

“Oh.”

She talked right over him. “I bet you’re just like my husband. I bet you don’t believe people are out shopping at five in the morning on the Friday after Turkey Day. But let me assure you they are. This year you could get Howard Stern or Nemo to give you a wake-up call at four a.m.”

Finn didn’t know who Nemo was, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to confess it to Trin.

“And for your information, people shop early on December twenty-sixth too—for the
next
year!”

Good God. With the exception of this Christmas because of the whole nephew-in-the-oven thing, Finn shopped on the twenty-fourth…twenty-third if he was at loose ends. It boggled his mind to imagine a world as Trin described. Lucky for him, it appeared the incensed woman didn’t expect a response as her voice rose in obvious passion.

“So good-bye, pie-did. I have to go home now and see if the elves baked the fifteen plates of cookies for my husband’s office party tomorrow night. And maybe they’ve planned the menus for our holiday get-together, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, and done the three-stop grocery shopping trip too.

Perhaps they’ve been nice enough to wrap all the family presents, the gifts for the babysitter, the gardener, the mail carrier, and my hairdresser, not to mention the hostess thank-yous I picked out for the seven parties we’re invited to between now and New Year’s.” Rushing past him, she ran over his foot.

He yelped. “You’re scaring me, Trin.”

That gave her pause. She turned, shooting him an unreadable look. “And I’m a woman who
likes
Christmas. Think about the kind of mood the elf in there is in.” She jerked her thumb toward the store’s front door, then went on her way.

What elf?

Duh. He knew what elf.

But he wasn’t going in. Except, though he couldn’t swear to it, he thought Trin’s pin had suddenly stuck on naughty naughty naughty. Was that supposed to be a clue to Bailey’s mood?

What red-blooded American man would think that…and think about the feel of her under his hands in the car the other night, then walk away?

So he pushed the door open, wincing at the telltale clatter of jingle bells. His plan was an anonymous little peek at the anti-Christmas elf, just…just because he couldn’t stop himself.

As the door swung shut behind him, the scent inside the store rushed into his lungs, triggering an instant, intense olfactory memory. It was so damn real he could watch it play out on the blank screen of his missing eye. His hand still squeezing the doorknob, he closed his working one so he could see it even better.

Nineteen. Christmas vacation. Gram had baked oatmeal-raisin cookies to welcome him back, and he’d taken a plateful with him when he’d gone to meet Bailey at The Perfect Christmas.

The bells had jingled then too, and he’d breathed in the store’s spicy scent, the cookies in his hands adding a second layer of sweetness. And then more sweetness as Bailey flew into his arms—he hadn’t seen her since Labor Day. She’d looked like a celebration in a tiny red skirt, tight green sweater, black boots that hit just below her knees.

They’d kissed, Finn gripping that plate between them so that he wouldn’t hold her as hard as he wanted to. So hard that she’d melt into his bones.

At closing time they’d shooed everyone else out, then locked the doors and dimmed the lights. She’d tugged him to the farthest corner of the farthest room and they’d made a place for themselves beneath a tree twinkling with multicolored lights. White fake fur circled its base, and she’d lain back on it like a child, gleeful in the snow.

“Come here,” she’d whispered, smiling, but he’d resisted, his blood pumping so hard and hot in his veins that he’d only trusted himself to look at all her angelic prettiness.

“Come here,” she’d insisted, a wayward angel now, who drew one heel toward the other knee, shifting the hem of her little red skirt higher on her bare, opening thighs.

Weakened by the sight, he’d leaned over, propping himself on one elbow to feed her a fragrant cookie.

Crumbs had dusted her green sweater and he’d made a big show of brushing them away, drawing the side of his hand back and forth against her hardening nipples. The nape of his neck had burned and his cock had been ready for more long before he let his tattooed knuckles sneak under her sweater to stroke her bare midriff.

The skin there goose-bumped beneath his fingertips and he’d stared, fascinated by the matching ones that rushed down her inner thighs. Desperate, he’d sucked in air that was sweet, so sweet, a dizzying combination of the smell of the store, the cookie on Bailey’s breath, her perfume.

Pushing her sweater toward her breasts, he’d kissed her navel, close enough now to inhale a creamier scent that he wanted to think was proof that she desired him too. As usual, her face surrendered nothing.

With her lashes brushing her cheeks, he couldn’t see the expression in her eyes. Her baby-doll mouth was plump, but pursed. Silent.

So he could only hope, wish, then finally believe once he touched her thighs, tracing those goose bumps in reverse, and curled his forefinger beneath the elastic of her panties.

As he touched the wetness waiting for him, he didn’t think she breathed.

It paralyzed him.

“What do you want, Finn?” she’d asked, her eyes shut tight.

Everything. Every day.

He wanted her joy in seeing him. To her, he wasn’t the screw-up son, the delinquent teenager, the failure one arrest away from jail.

He wanted her mind. The brains that made her number three in her high school class. The intelligence that could write a paper on
The Sun Also Rises
that not only he could understand, but that also made him want to read the book.

Finn, the fuck-up, wanting to
read
.

As much—more, hell, he’d only been nineteen, for God’s sake—he’d wanted her body. Every lithe line, every feminine curve, every small moan that he could manage to wring from her. He wanted to rub his face against her belly, the small of her back, the hills of her pretty ass.

“Finn?”

She’d faint if he told her the truth—that he wanted to dip a cookie in that sweet, delicious cream between her thighs and then gobble it down.

“
Finn?
”

Her voice had lost its breathiness. It sounded surprised.

Or annoyed.

His eye popped open.

And there she was. Not sweet or tremulous or laid out for him like a Christmas banquet. Instead she looked harried, her elf hat askew, her eyes fatigued. As if she’d spent the day searching for the last Go-Go Toaster train in Southern California. A passel of kids were gathered around her, the littlest ones with her work apron clutched in their fists. A gooey-looking, child-sized candy cane was stuck in the ends of her hair.

He didn’t mean to laugh. But it was funny—the joke on him—that he’d been dreaming of the seventeen-year-old princess who ruled his body and then been rudely awakened by this grown-up, hassled-looking woman who gazed at him like he was a frog instead of a god.

Then the joke really
was
on him, because she glanced down at the kiddie squad. “Hey, everybody, remember how I couldn’t promise we’d have Santa to read you stories tomorrow? Because Santa was probably planning on riding the uh, big surf?”

Disgruntled nods all around.

“I was wrong. I’m certain our AWOL Santa will be here!”

The motley crew cheered. Bailey grinned at their enthusiasm.

Then she looked over at him. Her forefinger aimed at his chest.

U

Her hand curved into a circle.

O

Her thumb jutted backward, her lips formed the word.

Me.

Too late, Finn remembered he hadn’t wanted to know what exactly she meant by that.

Bailey Sullivan’s Vintage Christmas

Facts & Fun Calendar

December 8

In medieval England, people attended church at Christmas wearing Halloween-type masks and costumes. They’d sing rowdy songs and even roll dice on the altar.

“You’re supposed to be nice to Santa,” Finn hissed, the words twitching the silvery beard and mustache strapped to his head beneath the plush red-and-white hat.

“Only if Santa has something in his bag I want,” Bailey retorted in a hushed voice, shoving a storybook into his hand. She looked down at the dozen or so little ones who were cross-legged on the floor in the front room of The Perfect Christmas for story hour. Their moms were either hovering at the edge of their semicircle or—better yet—edging away to look over merchandise and check price tags. “Now stop yapping and get ready to read.”

“I only asked for a glass of water.”

“No time,” she said, for his ears only. “The kiddies are here and we said we’d start at eleven on the dot.

This is a business, Finn, and I don’t have time to hold your hand.”

She wished back the comment the minute she said it. It
was
all business at The Perfect Christmas, no matter that she’d dragged her old flame—a man whose hand she used to love to hold and also a man whom she’d had to admit to herself she was once again out-of-control attracted to—into playing Santa.

But that had been a business decision too!

He’d been standing there yesterday afternoon, just as she’d finished an exhaustive hour doing the Pied Piper thing for a passel of sugar-buzzed, Christmas-crazed, two-legged little rats. The idea of having to read Christmas stories to a similar group the next day had made her want to run, screaming, for the Hollywood Hills.

With the surf up and her sales dude Byron heading beachside, she’d desperately needed a Santa more than she needed distance from Finn. Plus, he owed her, and he seemed to accept that fact.

Now if only his piratical take on St. Nick wouldn’t scare the kiddies or do any lasting psychological damage. It looked as if
Sesame Street
and those weird Wiggles (the store stocked both their Christmas CDs) had actually taught the kids to accept differences, however. Only one munchkin at Finn’s feet had made note of his patch—and then only to ask if he’d been poked in the eye by an antler. Finn had murmured something under his breath about a Red Ryder BB gun, and one of the younger mothers laughed. She was still there, cozying up to the kiddie circle.