Must Love Mistletoe

family farm on it.

That made her grimace as she put the car keys in the Jacobson mailbox, but she didn’t take a last look at the Thunderbird and the one-eyed idiot inside, sleeping it off.

His gift giver could worry about him. Whoever was delivering those outrageous presents could rescue the Secret Service agent next time.

But as Bailey slipped between her cool sheets, they abraded her still hypersensitive skin and she couldn’t help but worry. When it came to Finn, she hoped she didn’t need something or someone to rescue her.

Bailey Sullivan’s Vintage Christmas

Facts & Fun Calendar

December 7

Charles Dickens wrote, “Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!”

Chapter 7

“Finn, you know I love you, but watching you pace is like watching Wimbledon,” Gram said, sitting at the kitchen table with coffee, the newspaper, and her plastic, compartmentalized pill container. “I’m getting neck strain.”

He forced himself to halt, and swiped his own mug off the counter to take a swallow. “Sorry. Just restless, I guess.”

“You should be at work then, not babysitting me.”

He didn’t want to tell her the agent in charge had practically locked him out of the office. It wasn’t a secret to the Secret Service that to be half the agent he’d been in the past, Finn needed to get his head together.

And speaking of heads…The aspirin bottle sat beside the sink and he reached for it. Twenty-four hours and his hangover was still pinned into his brain by what felt like two ice picks. He’d woken up the morning before in Gram’s T-bird with a tongue the size and consistency of a dried kitchen sponge, a piercing headache, and a sheet of paper pinned on his shirt.

Sliding his hand in his pocket, he touched it. U O Me. Bailey’s handwriting was quite clear.

But what exactly he owed her, he wasn’t sure. A thank-you for bringing him back from Troy’s? More days of avoiding her like yesterday? A follow-through on what they’d started in the dark confines of the car?

That wasn’t a wise move. Getting mixed up with the GND wasn’t on his holiday agenda.

However, a hazy recollection-or was it wishful thinking?-continued to tickle the outer edges of his memory as it had since he’d woken up with the ancestor of all hangovers. After Bailey took the safe and sane path and climbed off his lap, had she turned back to him? Had she really said, “Finn…let’s…” implying she’d changed her mind?

If it was true, he’d been too drunk to swim free of his tequila stupor and take her up on the offer. If she’d made it at all.

But there was no mistaking she’d told him he owed her, and he still couldn’t decide what to do about that.

Stifling a groan, he promised himself for the dozenth time since being released from the hospital that he wasn’t going to drink like that ever again. Each time, he meant it. God, the queasy stomach, the sponge tongue, and the rotisseried brain made it a hell of an easy vow to make.

But then something would set him off. A talk with Gram’s doctor. A phone call.

“Ayesha Spencer’s parents called,” he said, staring down at the bottle of aspirin in his hand. It was nearly full, but there weren’t enough tablets in the world to ease this pain. “They’ll be in San Diego next week and want to have dinner with me.”

Gram’s voice was quiet. “It might make you feel better.”

Ah, but feel was the important word. He couldn’t afford to feel, damn it. Every agent knew that. Every agent knew it was death to sleep, maybe even sanity, if he started letting the worry and the stress of the near misses, and in his case, the real tragedy, take root inside him.

Except he couldn’t forget Ayesha’s crumpled body and the responsibility he bore for it.

Finn’s hands started to tremble, and the aspirins danced inside their plastic. He dropped the bottle back to the counter to halt the telltale rattle.

“Finn?”

“Hmm?” He white-knuckled the edge of the countertop and worked at pasting something he hoped was a smile on his face.

“Are you all right?”

He chanced a look at his grandmother, for the first time noting the new shadows under her eyes and then her pale hands fumbling with her pill container. With a silent curse for his distracted self, he strode to the table.

“We should be talking about you and how you feel,” he told her. Impatient with himself, he used unnecessary force to pop the top marked Th for Thursday. Medications tumbled to the tabletop, and he had to corral them with his palms before they hit the floor.

This time he didn’t keep the curses silent as he scooped the pills in front of Gram. Then he spun toward the sink. “I’ll get you water,” he said, his voice tight.

Calm down, he reminded himself. Cool it. Ice over all the emotion.

He managed to fill a glass and set it in front of her without a spill. Calming down. Cooling it.

His grandmother touched his wrist. “You can’t stop the seasons,” she said. “There’s death and there’s birth. There’s a reason we celebrate Christmas at the darkest time of the year, Finn. To remind us that hope and light will always arrive.”

Finn closed his eyes. He loved the messenger but the message wasn’t something he wanted to hear. So he let his mind skip from seasons and Christmas to The Perfect Christmas and Bailey. His hand slid into his pocket again. Touched Bailey’s note.

U O Me.

What the hell had she meant by that? But his sixth sense was clamoring again, warning him against any investigation.

December, and there were bikinis poolside. Even though Dan Willis had been a Coronado resident for the last twenty years, the juxtaposition of Santa decorations and suntan lotion still startled him. But it was one of those postcard days, near eighty, that fueled the jealousy of New Yorkers and Chicagoans. He’d been each himself at one time, so he knew.

All that “land of fruits and nuts” and “Hollywood elite” trash talk was just an outlet for envy. So you couldn’t get a real bagel or a true, bone-jittering wind in SoCal-he’d settle for Baja fish tacos and kids in shorts on skateboards any day. Though Dan wasn’t a native Californian, he admitted to embracing their inner smugness. It had taken him a few years to detect it, but there came a point when he realized that every time someone denigrated the Golden State, the natives clammed up. No defensiveness. No pleas for understanding.

Just a hidden smile and the inner fervent hope that the naysayer would stay in his own-sunless and/or sea- less-part of the world. Sure there was enough sunshine to go around, but Californians didn’t mind soaking it all up themselves.

Twenty years and Dan didn’t see himself leaving the place, even though he’d changed addresses from his comfortable suburbanesque single-family home to the caffeinated lifestyle of a modern condominium complex. He let the wrought-iron gate that surrounded the aquamarine pool and pebbled deck clang shut behind him. Women