Christie Ridgway (18 page)

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, he’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.

“Yeah? You rob a bank or is there something about government salaries I’m not aware of?”

A smile ghosted over his mouth. “I’m not sure you know, but my dad’s in investments. When I went straight and then into the Secret Service, I got smart too, and gave him a big chunk of my money every month. I didn’t need much, because I used to spend most of my time traveling. For a few years I was on the presidential detail.”

She stared at him. “Get out!”

“Two words even the president of the United States rarely says to his agents.”

“I’m impressed,” she confessed, as he whipped into a corner parking lot.

He sent her an enigmatic look as he turned off the car. “Hold that thought.”

Then he did the whole date thing again, coming around to her side, helping her out, taking her hand as they started off down the sidewalk. In her heels on the pebbly pavement, she was grateful.

His fingers suddenly squeezed hers. “Bailey…” There was that odd hesitation again. “I should tell you…”

All right, now the warning bells were clanging. “What?
What?
”

“The other couple is Ayesha Spencer’s parents.”

It took her a minute to put the pieces together. Ayesha Spencer was the Secret Service agent who’d been killed during the assassination attempt eleven months before. The young woman on Finn’s team. “I don’t belong here then,” she said.

“Bailey—” He fell silent, his gaze dropping to their joined hands.

No. No, no, no, no, no. She could have revisited their past. Gone through the awkwardness, the explanations, the possible recriminations. But that was
their
past. This situation was something that was Finn’s alone. She pulled her fingers free from his. “You’ve got to see that it’s not my place.”

Grieving parents, upset Finn. His body language was telling the whole story. She realized now that beneath that lack of expression and leaden silence she’d noted earlier was a wealth of tension. He was stiff with it.

“I’ll take a cab back home,” she said. A passerby bumped her, and she stumbled closer to Finn. Her palm landed on his shirtfront for balance and she felt the jerky beat of his heart against her hand. Her gaze jumped to his face. “Are you all right?”

“No.” His good eye squeezed shut. “I can’t do it, Bailey.” The words were low, hard. “I don’t think I can do it alone.”

She stared up at him, the bad boy whom she once thought she’d tamed, now the strong man who risked his life protecting others. This morning he’d made breakfast for his recuperating grandmother. This afternoon he’d read
The Polar Express
to half-a-dozen children. Tonight…tonight a dark pain etched his face.

He didn’t come straight out and ask for help, though. He didn’t touch her again. Still, her pulse synced with his erratic heartbeat and her mouth went dry with sympathetic distress. Despite how reckless she knew it was of her, how unlike her usual keep-your-distance self, she allowed his unspoken need to find its way inside her.

Oh God.

It was so risky to care like this.

But she couldn’t seem to help herself.

“All right,” she heard herself whisper. Her hand reached from his heart to cup his cheek. “I’ll be there with you.”