Must Love Mistletoe

She landed with unnecessary force. He oomphed.

Bailey smiled with satisfaction. “I don’t know, Santa,” she said, pitching her voice to bad-girl sultry. “I thought you had a list.”

Finn’s head came up. He looked stunned.

Good.

She waited for embarrassment or remorse or shame to overtake his surprised expression.

Instead, he smiled. Slow. Sexy. His arm tightened around her as his gaze dropped to her breasts. “Oh, sweetheart, Santa has a list all right, and you’re at the very top.”

She was going to kill him! Of course, she should have known he wouldn’t cooperate and feel the least bit of guilt for…for…

Well, of course she didn’t care if he kissed a hundred other women in front of her. It was none of her business.

Digging her stiletto heels into the linoleum floor, she jerked off his knee. “Your grandmother was worried about you. But obviously you’re in fine form. Tanner will take you home, though you look like your usual capable self to me. Good-bye, Finn.” She started off.

“Whoa. Wait.” He stood to make a grab for her. His arm swung wild, and his body followed it, half turning him so that he stumbled into the chair he’d been sitting on. It toppled with a crash. The women who’d been in line behind her scattered.

Finn spun a full circle, his momentum taking him forward and into Bailey. She grabbed his arms to steady him.

“You are drunk.”

He grinned at her. Still unrepentant. Still sexy as all get-out. “Not so you’d know.”

Rolling her eyes, she pulled him toward the main room with a plan to deposit him in Tanner’s care. “Just keep telling yourself that, handsome.”

But neither Tanner nor his brother Troy was in immediate sight. And Finn wouldn’t stay under her control. With her hands still trying to hold him back, he lurched to the bar. “Gimme another,” he told the guy on the other side. He yanked the Santa hat off his head, stuffed its puffy top into his front pocket, then hitched one hip onto an empty stool. “And white wine for the GND.”

“Finn…”

He handed over the wine with exaggerated care. “Now don’t be like that.” His fingers, damp from the sweating glass, trailed down her cheek. “Not when you’re looking so pretty. So pretty and so hot.”

Despite herself, a pleased flush prickled up her neck. He’d only seen her in bulky sweaters and her store apron before this, and she had actually grown a cup size since leaving home at eighteen.

He smiled again, then palmed her hips to pull her between his legs. Studying her face, he downed the shot of liquor he’d been served in one quick swallow. Then he shook his head, that smile still glinting in his one eye.

“Bailey Sullivan, still slaying me.”

She smelled the liquor on his breath, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Nor was the heat of his hands seeping through her black jeans. The Christmas following her and Finn’s first summer kiss, Trin had given Bailey an old-fashioned muff made out of fake mink and matching ear warmers.

She’d worn them on an under-cover-of-darkness walk to the beach with Finn. He’d laughed at the warmers, but after he’d built a bonfire of pallets and newspapers in one of the cement rings set in the sand, he’d pocketed his lighter and pulled out a flask in its place.

He’d put it to his mouth, and in the light of the flames she’d watched him grimace as he swallowed it down. Her bad boy. Then he’d sat toe-to-toe with her, their legs bent. Reaching around her knees, he’d shoved his cold hands and the cold flask in the warm nest of the muff. His fingers had slid between hers, and just like that her inner thigh muscles had pulled tight. The place between them had started to pulse.

At the tangy smell of tequila in the air between her and Finn, the same thing happened now.

And as then, it spooked the hell out of her.

It shouldn’t be this fast!

Perhaps he was reliving the past too, because in the dim light he shook his head again. “Bailey. Whatever made you put up with a guy like me?”

“Did I have a choice?” she replied, surprising herself by being honest with them both. “It never felt that way.”

His fingers tightened on her hips for an instant. “Not for me either.” He looked away. “But I could have corrupted you…hell, I did.”

Because of the sex? But she couldn’t ask that out loud. It had never felt like corruption, not even close.

And sex had never again felt like what it had with Finn.

But of course it wouldn’t, she assured herself, before the thought could begin to worry her. Because everything was a first with Finn.

“I was riding the edge, GND,” he went on. “When I was home, I’d think to myself how I wouldn’t be able to see you if they locked me up in juvie.”

“So you’d avoid crime?” The notion pleased her. “Because of me?”

A corner of his mouth kicked up. “Nah, I just got better at not getting caught at it.”

“Oh.” Instead of laughing, she whacked his chest with her free hand.

Even drunk, his reflexes-or his luck-made him able to catch it, and he flattened her fingers over his heart.

“I was riding the edge,” he muttered again.

As he was now too, she could tell, and she wondered why. With that niggle of curiosity in her head and his hard bone and the beat of his blood beneath her hand, Bailey realized she was riding a dangerous edge as well.

She’d come to rescue Finn, but if she didn’t get out of here, that life-of-its-own sexual attraction might overcome her again. There wasn’t one good reason for her to indulge a second time.

She drew her fingers away. “I have to go.”

“Bailey-”

His protest didn’t stop her from resorting to her usual MO. She ran out on him.

This time though, he caught her. He wouldn’t have, but she was fumbling with an unfamiliar set of keys in the dark parking lot.

He grabbed the bristling ring out of her hand. “You’re driving Gram’s T-bird?”

“She insisted.” It was a 1969, silver-blue with a white landau top, not-quite-classic Thunderbird. Bailey snatched back the keys. “Because I was doing her a favor by rescuing you.”

This time she managed to get the door open, but before she could get herself safely ensconced within the three bazillion tons of steel and whitewall tires, Finn stepped around her and ducked inside to slide along the bench seat.

His grin was wide and toothy in the overhead light. Drunk. Reckless. Sexy. “Okay. Rescue away.”

Not now! Not now when he was so damn attractive and she was so easily lured back to memories of the past. When she was an adult, yet still so stupidly tempted into wanting to make those memories new.

“’Fraidy cat?” he said softly.

And as if she was eleven and he was thirteen all over again, she responded to the taunt and flounced into the driver’s seat. Then hedged her bets by not looking at him as she started the car and drove toward safety.

Not fast enough. Because Finn reached out and drew a fingertip down her bare arm. “Aren’t you cold?”

“No.”

“Because I can keep you warm.” He started to slide closer, but she held him off with her hand.

“All I want for Christmas is for you to keep your distance.”

She heard the smile in his voice. “That’s right, Santa didn’t get to hear your confession.”

You’re too close. Too attractive. You’re making it too easy for me to-

– forget all those other women lining up to have a taste of you.

That thought cleared her head and put the spotlight on her good intentions, but it was still a relief when she pulled into the Jacobson driveway. “Here we are,” she sang out.

He put his hand on her forearm as she made to open her door. “Just a sec,” he said. “I’m a little dizzy.”

He’d gone so quiet on the short ride, she’d almost forgotten he’d been drinking. With a sympathetic pang, she remembered that woozy wine cooler incident. The tender way he’d cared for her. “Finn, you shouldn’t have had so