Christie Ridgway (2 page)

Make that things that moved too. A cat skipped past, wearing a collar studded with red and green Christmas bulbs.

And music. Piped out of windows and doors and from the mouths of plastic carolers, cardboard snowmen, and poster-painted plywood angels. “Hark the Herald” clashed with “Silent Night” clashed with “O Tannenbaum.”

“Oh, ton of crud,” Bailey cursed. They’d turned her block into Christmas Central. Giant-sized presents were stacked on porches. Overstuffed Santa butts were heading down chimneys. Reindeer pawed at patches of grass.

And there, in the middle of the block, stood her childhood home. The solitary oasis of darkness. She headed for the simple porch light like it was a homing beacon. As she braked her car in the driveway, she glanced over at the neighboring drive, just a tire’s width away. A sleek SUV sat at rest, and the dark gleam of it sent another spooky little chill down her spine. It didn’t look like the kind of car their eighty-something neighbor Alice Jacobson would drive. And there was a tasteful, lacy edging of icicle lights hanging from her eaves. In the old days, Christmas lights at Mrs. Jacobson’s meant only one thing.

Finn was back.

Her driver’s door jerked open.

Bailey gasped, her heart jumping, just as it used to when she saw those Christmas lights. When she saw Finn for the first time on his biannual vacation visits.

But of course it wasn’t Finn. Thank God. “Mr. Lantz.” Recognizing her mother’s across-the-street neighbor, she held her hand against her chest to calm her heart. “Good to see you.”

So much better than Finn, whom she never expected to see again.

“Bailey-girl, it’s good to see you too.” He was beaming at her, the lights from the holiday ostentation reflecting off his bald head. “Your mother’s thrilled you’re coming home. Heck, we’re all thrilled.”

“Oh. Well. Nice.”

He was nodding. “Worried about the store, you know. It’s an institution.”

The albatross tugged hard on her neck. “A landmark.”

“Exactly.” He patted her shoulder as she slipped out of the car. “But you’ll take care of everything, sharp girl like you.”

Surrounded by overdone dazzle, nearly deafened by the dueling carols, Bailey thought longingly of the quiet and order of her anonymous Los Angeles condo building. The housing association there posted rules and regulations that prohibited just such displays as those that were right now smothering her.

It was why she’d chosen the place.

Mr. Lantz didn’t seem to notice her disquiet. He beamed at her again. “I know you’ll fix things. Save the store, save the season.”

Bailey sighed, wondering what he’d think if he knew she hated the holiday. If he knew that from the day she’d left home she’d never once celebrated on December 25—except for the fact that she didn’t have to celebrate it at all. What he’d think if he realized that the “sharp girl” assigned to save The Perfect Christmas was in fact a certified, holiday-hating Scrooge.

Bailey speed-rolled her suitcase along the path to her mother’s front porch, eager to escape the cacophony of merry tunes tumbling down the narrow street. But with the solid brick steps leading to the front door beneath her feet, she paused.

Just as The Perfect Christmas had been her maternal grandparents’ store, this had been her maternal grandparents’ house. The most stable thing in her life. The idea gave a little lift to her spirits, and the weight of the albatross eased some too.

Maybe she’d overreacted to the phone calls. Maybe she only needed a face-to-face with her mother to straighten out all their lives.
Mom, here’s the deal. Dad left, and now Dan. Get over it, get back in
the store, and I’ll get on my way
.

It could work.

On the strength of that thought, she pushed open the front door, wearing an almost-smile. “Mom?” she called out. “It’s me. I’m here.”

Silence was the only reply, but there was the scent of food in the air, and her mother had said she’d be home all evening. Bailey left her suitcase in the entry hall and wandered past the living room in the direction of the kitchen. “Mom?”

A light glowed over the stovetop, but there wasn’t a plate on the counter or any dishes in the sink. Ghost fingers feathered over Bailey’s skin as she hurried to the staircase. The walls were lined with photos, and she couldn’t help but slow to look at them. Baby Bailey with two teeth and a pink-bowed topknot. Her brother, Harry, in footed pajamas. Stiff school photos, group shots of gymnastic teams, Little League, soccer.

Prom photo of Harry and some tall bombshell whose pinkie—and svelte figure—he’d been wrapped around until graduation last June. Then, oh…

Prom photo of Bailey and Finn. She tried forcing her gaze away—God, what had she been thinking when she bought that silver dress?—but then it snagged on Finn. Finn, two years older, eons more fascinating than any boy she’d ever known.

She’d chosen silver to match the thick steel hoops he wore in his ears. Of course the color washed out her blond looks, but who wouldn’t look washed out compared to Finn, with his bad-boy bleached-on-black hair and his brooding brown eyes? He’d worn motorcycle boots with his dark-as-night tuxedo, and by the time they’d arrived at the dance, he’d already yanked free from his neck the bow tie his grandmother had been so careful to tie for him.

He’d never been careful with anything but Bailey.

It had only made him more dangerous, more imperative to run away from. She’d done it ten years ago.

Move feet, move
. She could do it again now.

Forcing him out of her mind, she climbed the last of the steps. “Mom?”

A scuffle down the hall sent her toward Harry’s room. In the doorway, she halted, relieved to finally find her quarry sitting on Harry’s bed, her back half turned. Surely with a little forthright conversation she could convince her mother to swallow her pride or her heartbreak or whatever was keeping her out of the store. Bailey could jump back in her car and drive away from Christmas and from Coronado. Maybe tonight!

“Mom, I’ve been calling you.”

Tracy Willis swiveled to face her. “Oh, I didn’t hear you, honey.”

Bailey swallowed. The last time she’d seen her mother had been at Harry’s high school graduation. But the older woman looked as if years had passed instead of months. Her face and neck were thin, her blunt-cut hair straggled toward her shoulders. It looked gray instead of its usual blond. She wore a pair of muddy green sweat pants and shearling slippers. A football jersey.

Another unwelcome memory bubbled up from the La Brea tar at the back of Bailey’s mind. Her mother, lying in an empty bathtub in Bailey’s father’s flannel robe, sobbing, unaware that her kindergarten daughter was peering through the cracked door. Her kindergarten daughter who was wondering why her daddy had left and made her mother so miserable. It could have been yesterday, an hour ago, ten minutes before. There’d been a bumpy mosquito bite on Bailey’s calf and she’d stood there, silent, scratching it until it bled like red tears into her thin white sock.

A shudder jolted her back to the present, and she shoved the recollection down and cleared her throat.

Old memories, just another reason to get away from here ASAP. Trying to sound normal, she asked, “Is that the top half of Harry’s high school uniform you’re wearing?”

Her mother absently plucked at the slippery fabric, the hem nearly reaching her knees. “It’s comfortable.”

“So’s a shower curtain, Mom, but it’s not a good look. What are you doing in here?”

“I…” Her mother shrugged, then made a vague gesture behind her. “Just, just…”

Bailey stepped inside the room to peer around her mother’s newly skinny body. “You’re eating in here?”

A small saucepan, more than half full of mac and cheese, was on the bedspread behind her mother, a fork jammed in the middle. “You’re eating out of the
pan
?”

Okay, Bailey ate out of pans often enough. Weren’t Lean Cuisine microwave trays pans, after all? But her mother didn’t eat out of them. And her mother didn’t let people eat in bedrooms.

Bailey snatched up the food and tried catching her mother’s eye. “Mom, we need to talk.”

“Are you hungry?” Tracy asked, her own gaze wandering off. “It’s not from a box. It’s my recipe.”

Her stomach growling, Bailey forked up a mouthful. “We need to talk about the store, about Dan, about what’s going on.” She retreated toward the room’s windows and the desk that sat beneath them. Leaning her butt against the edge, she swallowed, then pierced some more pieces of macaroni. “Mom—”

“I don’t want to talk about Dan.” Tracy still didn’t meet her eyes.

This wasn’t good. Her mother didn’t sound reasonable and willing to step back up to her responsibilities.

“Mom—”

“And now you’re here to take care of the store.”

“Yes, but Mom—” Someone had upped the volume on his speakers, and “Joy to the World” blared its way into the room through the half-open window. Grimacing at the oh-so-inappropriate background music, Bailey clunked the pan onto Harry’s desk. Then she twisted to shove shut the wooden sash.

The houses were so close together, she was peering right into Mrs. Jacobson’s rear garden. There was a man there, a wide-shouldered man. She couldn’t see his face, his back was turned to her, and he was carrying a Christmas tree through the kitchen door.

Her heart thumped. Her stomach clenched.

He could be anyone, her common sense told her. A handyman. Another neighbor. A generic good Samaritan spreading holiday cheer.

But that wasn’t what her intuition said. Her intuition was cringing away from the glass and the soul-freezing knowledge of who was really moving through Mrs. Jacobson’s back door.

She should ignore her silly intuition. She should turn off those goofy internal warning bells and get back to real business. She should face her mother and insist they talk.

But her mouth was suddenly so dry, she couldn’t find her own voice.

December 25 wasn’t going to arrive soon enough, that was certain. Because Bailey had a very bad, very unignorable feeling that Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past had both come home to Coronado for an untimely visit.

Bailey Sullivan’s Vintage Christmas

Facts & Fun Calendar

December 2

The word
Yule
comes from the Scandinavian word
Jol
which means festival. Though the festival often lasted twelve days, it was then not associated with the twelve days of Christmas.

With the door shut behind that mysterious figure next door, Bailey had managed to put him from her mind to concentrate on talking with her mother about her recent separation and The Perfect Christmas. The effort hadn’t gotten her anywhere, however. So she’d followed Tracy to an early bedtime and woke up early as well, to now find dark-rimmed eyes staring into hers.

Bailey jumped, pressing back against the pan-cake-flat pillow of her childhood, then relaxed again as she realized she was gazing at one of her old band posters and into Kurt Cobain’s compelling—likely drug-addled—gaze. Even still, she felt a tug of attraction.

Once you jonesed for a bad boy, you always jonesed for bad boys.

But she wasn’t going to think about bad boys, or mysterious strangers, or even the possibility that the mysterious stranger next door was Finn.

Even if it
was
Finn—
itwasn’tFinn itwasn’tFinn itwasn’tFinn
—this unlucky intersection of their lives didn’t make it necessary for her to see or talk to him. Not that she couldn’t! But surely it was natural to feel discomfort around an old—first—flame, wasn’t it?

Especially as they hadn’t parted on ideal terms. As a matter of fact, they were un-ideal enough to make her even more certain she should continue avoiding Finn just as she’d done for the past ten years.

With a last glance at that gorgeous, doomed Kurt, Bailey climbed out of bed and headed straight for the attached bathroom. The sooner she stopped thinking about old times and old flames, the sooner she could get on with her day. The sooner she got on with her day, the sooner she could tackle the chaos at the store and the renewed disorder in her mother’s emotional life.

The sooner she could escape from all of it.

Despite her time in the shower, the whirr of the blow dryer, and then the rattle she made in the kitchen getting coffee and toast, neither mother nor even sound emerged from the master bedroom. Once dressed, complete with Christmas apron and striped stocking cap, Bailey let herself out the front door, resigned to the next resort of spending yet another day in sole charge of the store.

Her feet stuttered to a halt. The next resort would have to wait until she first made contact with the nitwit who’d left a refrigerator-sized wooden carton on the street, directly behind her Passat.

The folded invoice inside the plastic sleeve stapled to the pine slats confirmed her
un
luck was holding…the address was that of Mrs. Jacobson. If Bailey was going to do all that getting on and tackling she had planned, she first would have to knock on the one door she particularly didn’t want to open.

Her feet dragged as she headed down the sidewalk and up the front walk of the other house. She might have excused herself that it was too early in the morning to disturb any occupants, but the unmistakable mingled scent of coffee and bacon had made its way to the front porch. Someone was up and cooking breakfast at the Jacobsons’.

Taking a breath, Bailey rapped on the wood. It didn’t take long to hear the approach of footsteps on the other side. The door swung open.

Itwon’tbeFinn itwon’tbeFinn itwon’tbeFinn
.

It…wasn’t?

The T-shirt was the same, the broken-down blue jeans, the battered motorcycle boots. But this wasn’t a teenage juvenile delinquent. This looked more like an
adult
delinquent, someone who spent time on a chain gang, or bounced other bad guys out of rowdy bars, or ran security for Hell’s Angels events.

He was certainly no boy and no angel himself, not with those wide, I-work-out shoulders, mussed black hair—sans the bleach overlay—and dark stubble. This man didn’t wear her first lover’s steel earrings, but instead a black eye patch covered one of his brown eyes.