Christie Ridgway (21 page)

She reached out to lift the plastic top, then froze as she caught sight of her neighbor, Alice Jacobson, on the other side of the hedge. Her heart gave a painful squeeze. Finn’s grandmother looked two sizes smaller than she had a month ago and she was walking with short, cautious steps. The elderly woman had a stack of newspapers under her arm and was heading for her own matching blue can.

“Alice! How nice to see you,” Tracy said, hoping her smile hid her dismay. “How are you?”

The older woman’s answering smile was still bright. “I’m feeling all right. How are you this beautiful morning?”

Tracy glanced around, for the first time aware that the morning
was
lovely. There’d been fog during her first cup of coffee, but the sun had burned it away, leaving blue skies and twittering birds.

She inhaled a breath of the clean air. “I hear congratulations are in order. A great-grandson?”

“Ten pounds, three ounces.”

Tracy winced. “Mom’s okay?”

“Hale and hearty. So is Miguel Finn Jacobson-Vasquez.”

“Oh, named after his uncle Finn. Cute. A big baby like that needs a big name.” Tracy shook her head.

“Harry was not quite nine pounds and I thought
he
was a monster.”

Alice lifted the top of her bin. “How is our Harry?”

“Taking to college like a duck to water. I’m so happy for him.” As with all her friends’ living-away children, the cell phone kept them in amusing and constant contact. He’d called twice the day before.

Once to ask if he could bake chocolate chip cookies in a microwave oven. The second time had been to relate in detail the storyline of a
Family Guy
episode he was certain she’d like. She hadn’t understood a thing about the TV show, but she’d laughed anyway. And later awarded herself a virtual medal for not nagging him about studying instead of watching TV.

“How about happy for you?” Alice asked, dropping her papers and shutting the bin. She rested her hands on top of the heavy plastic.

“Happy?” Tracy echoed. “Me?” She’d been working so hard on not feeling
anything
.

“I remember my daughter-in-law had a tough time when her youngest, Janet, went away to school. She said the house was too quiet.”

Tracy’s gaze shifted to the older woman’s hands. How frail they looked, the skin papery and the nails bluish. There were bruises on her forearms too. Tracy remembered how fragile her mother’s skin had become as she aged, the slightest bump causing a wound or discoloration.

She dropped the papers she carried on top of her bin to make a quick once-over of her own flesh. It was a little dry, maybe, but still unblemished. All the bruises were on the inside.

“It looks like you’re planning a trip.” Alice nodded at the colorful pamphlets spread out on the top of the bin. They covered the gamut from Las Vegas to Lichtenstein.

Tracy flushed and gathered them up again. “Dan picked them up at an agency.”

“Travel would be a lovely treat for you.” Alice beamed.

“I don’t think I’m much in the mood for a treat,” Tracy admitted. Then she thought of Bailey, whom she’

d dragged back home as her second marriage deteriorated. And worse, whom she’d likely traumatized during the demise of her first. “And probably not deserving of one either.”

“Nonsense,” Alice said. “It’s time for you to celebrate Harry’s launch.”

Tracy shrugged. “Winter isn’t a good time to travel.” She didn’t want to admit that any trip she’d take, she’d be taking solo. Though it was probably all over town that Dan had dumped her, Alice was ill and maybe unaware of what was really going on next door.

“There are other seasons, Tracy.”

“Sure.” She tried to smile. “Spring, summer, fall.”

“Other seasons of your
life
. Maybe you’re grieving for the end of one, but soon you’ll walk out of that grief and into the next phase.”

“I’m not sad.” She wasn’t anything. She was carefully collecting all her hurt and sending it to that locked-away place she’d told Dan about. Safely hiding it behind secret doors. In her head she pictured herself writing in the center of a piece of paper “divorce,” “Dan,” “empty nest,” and then folding it into an origami figure—a protective lion, or maybe a bird that could fly it away. Better yet, an ant, the painful thoughts minimized to bug size.

“Then what are you, dear?” Alice asked.

Tracy whispered the first thing that popped into her head. “I’m not anything.” Her gaze jerked up to the older woman’s, expecting to have shocked her. Tracy was shocked herself that she’d spoken the words aloud. But it was the truth. And more shocking, perhaps, was that she was beginning to like the buffer of immunity that nothingness provided.

Alice only smiled. “I’ve known you since you were born, Tracy. I have great faith in your capacity to bounce.”

Her eyebrows drew together. Bounce? “Huh?”

Alice was already turning back toward her house. “Go in and make yourself a cup of tea.” She waved.

“You’ll see I’m right.”

Shaking her head, Tracy turned too. A cup of tea didn’t sound bad. As she approached the back door, she could hear the phone ringing.

Harry, probably ready to wheedle her into putting more money on his Starbucks card,
again,
or maybe he needed to know what else he shouldn’t try in a microwave. As she reached for the receiver, she realized she was still holding the travel brochures close to her heart.

Rolling her eyes with disgust, she dumped them on the kitchen table, then picked up the ringing phone.

Harry didn’t know how to manage a coin-operated laundry. As she started walking him through the details, a disturbing thought came to mind. He’d been gone how many weeks?

To calm herself, she started paging through the glossy pictures, and found herself thanking Dan instead of cursing him. A week on Corfu provided a worthy distraction to mental visuals of three-month-dirty sweat socks.

Bailey Sullivan’s Vintage Christmas

Facts & Fun Calendar

December 15

The custom of the Christmas bonus was brought about in 1899 by department store owner F. W.

Woolworth, who wanted to ensure his employees worked hard during the busy season. Five dollars was given for every year of service, not to exceed twenty-five dollars. It was considered a nice sum at the time.

Movie night. In The Perfect Christmas’s back room, Bailey cursed idea person, ex-principal Peggy Mohn as she cocked an ear to the dialogue of the 1947 version of
Miracle on 34th Street
and stuffed tissue paper in the man-sized Santa boots. She had her head down and her hair was covering her face when she heard the door open, shut.

“Trin. Thank God. Give me an update on where we are in the movie. The courtroom scene? Have they dragged in the big bags of letters? Oh, never mind,” she said, before the other woman could reply. “If the audience has to wait a few minutes for me—I mean, Santa, to show up and pass the cookies, so be it.

But if one more person calls this albatross of a store an institution—”

“Landmark.”

Bailey jerked up, steadying herself on the small worktable beside her. “What?”

Dressed in jeans and a red pullover, sleeves pushed to his elbows, Finn stood with his shoulders against the door, one foot crossed over the other. “Landmark. On my way in, I overheard a grandmother telling her granddaughter this place is a landmark.”

She could only stare at him in reply. The night—early morning, rather—that he’d dropped her off after their…interlude in his loft had been the last time she’d seen him. A flush blossomed over her skin and crawled up her neck. It was one thing to look on the man who’d been her first lover and suffer a nostalgic little shiver. It was quite another to recall in immediate,
intimate
detail what he’d felt like pushing inside her, his hot length invading, the cool leather at her back. How she’d felt when he’d caressed her between her legs, what the sound of their harsh breathing and the scent of Finn’s shampoo and sex had been like in the emotion-charged air of his loft.

Which were exactly the wrong kind of memories to be reliving in the workplace. There was a passel of customers in the next room and everyone knew she was all-business Bailey. She had to get him out of here.

The tissue shoved in the toes of the Santa boots crinkled as she took a cautious half step back. “I don’t have time to talk. There’s forty-something Whos from Whoville out there, Whos who’ll be clamoring for the promised refreshments as soon as the movie’s over.”

“You’re missing the Grinch-green face paint, but you’ve got the outfit. Nice.” He nodded at her.

She glanced down by instinct, then wished she hadn’t. Without a better Santa substitute, she’d had to settle for herself. So far she had on the boots and the big red pants, held up at her shoulders by suspenders. But of course it was all too big, so red fleece bunched at her boot tops and gaped at her hips. On top she wore a skinny-ribbed tank top, because she’d yet to don the pillow she’d brought from home and the red jacket that would go over all of it.

“What do you want, Finn?”

“I thought we could talk.”

“I told you. I don’t have the time.” Stacked on the worktable was the tissue she’d been using, along with a jumble of other items. As she reached for another sheet, her gaze snagged on the pieces of the vintage heart ornament she’d dropped the week before. With a big ocean swell coming in from the south, no one had gotten around to trying to repair it. By the twenty-sixth, though, it wouldn’t be the only battered and broken thing in The Perfect Christmas.
Nothing flocked can stay.

She looked back up at Finn. “Go away. I’m busy.”

“I’ve come to the conclusion we can’t unring the bell.”

Her fingers slid off the sleek white paper. “What do you mean by that?”

“We had sex. I can’t just forget about it.”

Who was forgetting? Finn’s body had changed in a decade. What had been bony and boyish had become muscular and manly. There’d been dark hair on his chest that had once been smooth and she’d wanted to touch it, run her fingers through it. His thighs were different now too, heavy with muscle. The thick length of his erection had been longer, felt smoother, hotter without a condom. More flames rose along her neck and she looked down at the stack of tissue, ruffling it with her fingers as she tried to play it cool.

“I was thinking…” Finn drew the word out until she looked at him again. “How about a replay or two?”

She stared. Was he insane? This was a man she’d known for only about, what, oh, seventeen years?

Okay, he wasn’t anywhere near a stranger, but still…It wasn’t going to happen.

“Just because we rang the bell once, Finn, doesn’t mean we have to go all merry and jingle it again.”

“Don’t you think it would be…fun?”

Bailey wiped her damp palms against the dumb red pants. “I’m only here until the twenty-fifth.”

“Brief fun, then. Even better.”

Oh, but she didn’t want brief! She wanted hours with him. Long hours to explore him in all the ways she’

d never dared when she was seventeen and so afraid of how he made her respond. What would the curve of his biceps feel like under her tongue? Would his nipples harden beneath her fingers as hers did at his touch? Even thinking about his touch.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Can’t we chalk it up to a one-night stand?” There was the practical solution.

“A one-night stand?”

“Come on. That’s all it was. You needed someone that night, and I happened to be there. That’s why we ended up together.”

He frowned. “Are you telling me it was a pity fuck? Thanks a lot.”

Through the door, she could hear swelling music. Santa needed to get of here. Bailey too. “Look, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

He pushed off from the door and stalked closer, appeared anything but wounded. Instead, he looked…predatory.

Bailey took another step back and then another, until her shoulders hit the far wall.

“I know how you can make it up to me,” he said softly.

Her palms pressed against the cold surface behind her. “Finn…I thought we agreed there was no such thing as magic.”

He smiled and reached out to slide his forefinger under one suspender. “I’m not talking about magic, sweet thing.” His finger rode the elastic until his knuckle bumped into the hard nub of her nipple. “I’m talking about all the ways I didn’t get to touch you. Taste you.”

“No fair.” Those were
her
daydreams.

His finger slid back up to toy at her breast. “Aren’t you just the tiniest bit…tempted?”

There wasn’t enough air in the room. And the air that there was smelled like Finn, the spicy scent she’d inhaled the first day she’d seen him again and realized he’d grown up—but maybe she hadn’t grown out of her overwhelming attraction to him.

However, surrendering to attraction and temptation was what she should be fighting against. Yes, it was self-protective, but it was also smart. When she was eighteen she’d decided it was safer not to bother committing to anyone too much. Then she would never have to feel the soul-destroying hurt that she’d witnessed at the end of her mother and father’s marriage. That she was witnessing now with the demise of her mother’s relationship with Dan.

She cleared her throat. “Don’t you think this is a little weird? Admit it, two days ago you still resented me for the way I left you.”

His wandering finger halted. “I’m a man. I compartmentalize. And the compartment that’s getting all my attention right now is the one that has me in it, with you, naked.”

While unfortunately that was quite an intriguing one to her as well, something suddenly wasn’t jiving in Bailey’s mind. There was a hard look on Finn’s face that you
could
take for pure lust, but the hair on the back of her neck was now rising in a completely unsexual way.

Her hands pressed harder against the paint, her eyes narrowing. “So, um, what have you been up to since last we met?”

“Downloading photos of my new nephew. Downloading more photos of my new nephew. Driving Gram to a couple of doctor’s appointments.” His finger traveled from her breast to her chin, so he could tilt her mouth toward his. His voice lowered to a raspy whisper. “Thinking about you.”