Christie Ridgway (26 page)

When she didn’t answer, he touched her right arm.

She gasped again, in pain this time, and rocketed back.

“What’s happened?” His gaze traveled down to her hand. “And why the hell are you carting around a crowbar?”

Her fingers tightened on the heavy metal. Why was she carrying it? Why had she brought it with her? She

’d walked past the Volvo without that burning compulsion she’d felt to damage her Kevin’s Corvette.

But surely she didn’t have it to hurt Dan, though thinking of him riding the rails with that…that bitch by the door made her want to do something violent.

“Trace?” Dan stepped closer. His fingertips brushed her cheek in a gesture so tender that tears stung her eyes. “What’s going on? What’s with the crowbar? You can tell me.”

She
could
tell him, she realized, as the emotion that had broken free of her locked heart at the campground rose from her leaden feet and heavy legs to fill her chest. He
had
been fixing that woman’s shower drain. It was the kind of thing Dan would do. Cheating on her was not.

“Trace?” His voice sounded bewildered and just the tiniest bit scared.

As she’d been when he’d left her. Or the shell that had been she. When Harry had gone to college she’d felt as empty as his bedroom, with only that stony nut of her heart rattling around inside her bones for company. That’s how small and hard it had become, over all the years of protecting herself from getting hurt again.

But instead of opening up to Dan she’d closed further in, and lost him in her blindness to his hopes, dreams, and dissatisfactions.

She held the crowbar out to him. “It’s evidence,” she said. Did he understand it was all who she was?

The best, the worst, the pain, the joy, the criminal, the saint? “It’s evidence that I have a heart after all.

That there’s life still in me. That I want to spend the rest of it with you.”

That she could bounce.

Bailey Sullivan’s Vintage Christmas

Facts & Fun Calendar

December 20

The first outdoor electrically lighted Christmas tree on the West Coast was at the Hotel del Coronado in December 1904.

Finn’s cell phone rang at four in the morning. He fumbled to find it on his bedside table, then flipped it open. The GND.

“Is something the matter?” His voice was surly, but damn,
he
was surly. Not only had he been sleeping when thirty minutes ago he’d thought it was impossible, waking up only reminded him of the hell of a mess the Girl Next Door had gotten him into. At that absolute worst time of his life, he realized he was still in love with her. “What do you want?”

“I’m being very naughty. Want to come join me?”

“What?” He held the phone away from his ear to stare at it. There was a slap-happy—not sultry—note to her voice that told him the kind of naughty she meant wasn’t the kind of naughty he wouldn’t be able to resist. “No.”

“Don’t be such a stick in the mud.”

“I’m not.” But the accusation jabbed a sore spot. Among his other worries, he’d been wondering about his stubborn reluctance to consider altering his career path since losing his eye. Was refusing to resign from the Secret Service a stick-in-the-mud move? The job could never be what it once was for him.

“Come on, Finn.” Her voice beguiled. “Look out your window.”

Gritting his teeth at his own weakness, he swung his legs off the bed. Striding to the glass overlooking the street, he slipped on his eye patch. Outside, the block was dark, all the residents and the long lines of visitors to the many Christmas displays snugly tucked in their beds with their sugarplum dreams. Where he should be.

“I don’t see anything,” he said.

“I’ll wave. See me now?”

There she was, dressed in pants and a parka, on the lawn across the street. He squinted. “What the hell are you doing?” It looked as if she was replacing the reindeer in a sleigh display with plastic elves from a different decorative setup a few doors away. With the elves at the end of the reins it was a weird, somewhat kinky, effect, until he saw she’d replaced Santa with Rudolph as well.

Or maybe that made it even kinkier.

“GND—”

“You once called me little Miss Perfect and I have to prove to you I’m not.”

He sighed, even as he pulled on a pair of jeans and slipped his feet into running shoes. “You’re proving you’re nuts.”

“Christmas does that to me.”

When he peered out the window again, he couldn’t see her. “Where are you now?”

“Do you know that the Smiths at the end of the block have a life-sized Elvis dressed like Santa on their front porch? Now that’s wrong. Just plain wrong.”

He let himself out of Gram’s house without making any noise. Yesterday he’d thought the best way to deal with his renewed addiction to Bailey was to go cold turkey, yet already he was succumbing to temptation. Another man might have let her gallivant around in the dark, breaking laws of man and nature and holiday, but not Finn, even though he figured he’d regret it.

At the Smiths’, he found her on the sidewalk, dragging a buxom Mrs. Claus toward the trashy Elvis.

“He looks lonely,” she whispered, and he could feel hyped-up energy radiating off her. “And it turns out she’s a fan. She thinks he’s much hotter than Mr. C.”

Without a word, he wrestled the life-sized Mrs. C away from Bailey, the dummy’s sensible red shoes and orthopedic hose bumping his shins. “Christmas really
has
made you nuts.”

She gave up Madam Claus with a pout, and trailed him as he returned the figure to her rocking chair beside a faux fire. “I never denied it.”

“Yeah, but why? I get that your family runs a Christmas business, but it seems that might make some people more sentimental about the holiday.”

“I’m sentimental about
nothing.
” She said it with an almost-feral smile, her whole body still humming with that inexplicable force.

Finn picked up the meowing cat twining his ankles and placed it on the soft lap of Santa’s wife. “All right.

But to what do we owe this manic mood?”

“Celebrating some good news.” Her hand waved a dismissal of further explanation as she gazed about the neighborhood, obviously trying to determine what havoc to wreak next. When she headed off again, he followed closely behind, then in stoic silence put to rights the results of each of her little pranks: restoring wooden soldiers moved into I-surrender positions back at parade rest, removing penguins that were piled into a red toy bag and replacing them with the original wrapped gifts, rescuing an innocent ice skater figurine from the clutches of a fake woolly polar bear.

“You’re worrying me, GND,” he said, yanking an oversized Styrofoam candy cane out of her hand. He didn’t like the way she was eyeing it. “What’s going on with you?”

“I just have to get this out of my system.”

But get
what
out of her system? Shaking his head, he told himself he should leave her to it. Why not go back to bed and recharge his batteries? He was going to need all the energy
he
could get to get over her.

With his warm sheets and his good sense beckoning, he started to cross the street on his way to Gram’s.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Bailey approach a family of peacefully grazing animals that would glow with white lights when the power was on. As he watched, she grabbed one of the unsuspecting beasts and started to—

“
Bailey,
for God’s sake!” he whispered, as loud as he dared.

Frowning at him, she whispered back. “Sheesh. Loosen your tie a little. I think that Secret Service gig has been a bad influence on you.”

The insult turned his feet back around. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you used to be more fun.”

This from the woman who was doing something obscene with two of the lighted reindeer. She had repositioned one so that it appeared to be scr—uh, climbing the back of the other.

Dismayed, Finn froze. God,
had
he become a stick in the mud? He was censoring his own thoughts.

Still, he crossed his arms over his chest. “Someone’s going to catch you doing this, GND. It’s time to stop.” And furthermore, it wasn’t in character, and neither was the odd, frantic mood she was in.

“What’s wrong with you?” Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you take chances anymore?”

“Well, if we’re going to indulge in character criticism,” he said, shouldering her away to reset the reindeers back to their previous G-rated positions, “can I say that you’ve turned as brittle as a stick?”

He didn’t have time to regret the words. Just then, at the corner, headlights turned into the street. Acting on instinct, he spun around to yank Bailey by the arm and then behind an igloo located to the right of the reindeer. She bumped into it and the damn thing belched with a hollow sound.

“Shhh!”

“That’s not me, it’s the milk jugs.”

His eye on the approaching car, he reached out to inspect their hiding place. She was right. Someone had constructed a bigger-than-life-sized Eskimo domicile out of empty plastic milk containers. All right, maybe she
wasn’t
the only one whom Christmas made a little crazy.

The car cruised toward them at a slow speed. “Cop,” he said, noting the profile of the vehicle, including the strobe on top and the cowcatcher on the front grille. He pulled Bailey closer to his body and tucked her head against his neck. The scent of her rose around him, and he couldn’t stop himself from sucking it in.

“Hey, Finn, if the nasty ol’ police person pulls over maybe you can scare him off with your big flashlight.”

She wiggled her butt against it.

He thought about strangling her. “That’s just plain mean to mention,” he ground out. “I can’t control that.”

“Mean is better than a brittle stick.”

“Oh hell. So I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.” The car was passing them by. “Now be quiet.”

Of course she wouldn’t shut up. “I’m sorry too,” she whispered. “I don’t want to fight with you, Finn.

Not now. Not…tonight.”

He was about to ask about that little hesitation, when the police cruiser braked in the middle of the road.

“Oh, it’s only Mr. Baer,” she said, relaxing against him. “The Retired Service Patrol guy. You know.”

The car was pulling into a driveway across the street as they watched.

“That’s some late patrolling he does.”

“And early too, my mother says. I think he’s out at all hours. After his wife died—”

She gasped as the car suddenly leaped toward the closed garage door. Finn tensed, spinning Bailey away to give him a clear sprint toward it. His muscles bunched—

Brakes shrieked. The car halted inches from the metal door, its body rocking on the chassis.

“God! Is he all right?” Now Bailey moved, but Finn held her back.

“Look, look, he’s moving. He’s okay. Just mistook the gas for the brake, I’d bet.”

“Maybe we should check on him.” She craned her head around the igloo.

“No. Leave him with his dignity. Plus we don’t want him to know we’re out here, remember?”

“You already put everything back the way it was,” she grumbled. “And you called me a wet blanket.”

He tousled her hair. “Let’s not call each other anything.”

She stepped close enough to rub her chin against his chest. “Does that mean we’re kissing and making up?”

Now
her voice had that sultry note he didn’t want to resist. But he should, damn it.

His hands circled her waist. “Only if you’ll tell me why you felt the sudden need to—”

“Be naughty?” she whispered.

He couldn’t look away from her mouth. “Bailey…”

“I’m in a good mood.”

“Yeah? Why is that?”

She rose on tiptoe to breathe into his ear. “Remember what you said? About wanting to get naked with me in my shower? Let’s do it. Let’s do it right now.”

His spine jerked straight at the thought. He cleared his throat. “Your mother—”

“Isn’t at the house. It’s empty. Unless you and I—”

“Fill it up.” He slid his hands under her butt and boosted her high. She put her legs around his waist.

What man could keep cold turkey on his mind when he had the chance at warm water and slippery soap?

And Bailey. “I’m going to fill
you
up,” he promised.

He’d never been allowed in her bedroom, though he’d probably frittered away more than half his teenage years imagining it, imagining
her
, pulling down the shades, pulling down her pants, pulling him to her with just one wanton look as she toyed with the clasp of her bra.

Of course Bailey had never been wanton.

Before.

Now, now the skin along his spine prickled as she shut the bedroom door behind them both. Then she turned, her soft, tender mouth curving as she toed out of her shoes and shimmied out of her jeans. She’d dumped her short parka at the bottom of the stairs, so now she stood before him in nothing more than a thin T-shirt and a teeny pair of panties.

“The bathroom’s this way,” she said, pointing to another doorway at the end of the room. Then she padded off in that direction.

He stayed where he was, frozen. The ruffles, the rumpled sheets, the confident sway of her hips shooting the needle high on his personal Lust-o-Meter. She paused in the bathroom doorway and looked at him over her shoulder.

Smiled like a witch.

Crossing her hands in front of her, she drew the T-shirt off, then let it fall to the floor. Naked shoulders.

The tiny back vee of satin panties. The peach curves of her ass. No bra.

Then another graceful move.

Now no underwear at all. Just Bailey, tousled blond hair to bare bottom to bare heels. Pink and white and that ripe peach, right in the center.

Her eyes gleamed like blue jewels as she gave him another look over her shoulder and decamped.

The disappearance got him moving. He couldn’t lose her so soon.

The tiled bathroom was already turning steamy once he made it inside. For a few minutes he stood, transfixed by the sight of Bailey under the spray, her body blurred by the bubble glass of the shower door.