Must Love Mistletoe

Brenda looked into his eyes, then away. “I don’t think I’m going to do it for you either, Dan. Not me, or Lynn, or Cherry. At least not now.”

Not ever, Dan corrected.

He let the truth of that sink deep. It pierced his heart and fell like an anchor into his churning gut.

Moving away couldn’t move his wife out of his mind, his thoughts, his emotions.

His soul.

But no! He couldn’t let that be a certainty. They’d had happy, but not ever after, and he couldn’t, wouldn’t let himself be miserable without Tracy for the rest of his life.

Finn went on a long walk that afternoon to relieve his fidgety legs and restless memory. Head down, hands in his pockets, he didn’t realize the path his feet had taken him until he heard a familiar voice hail his name.

He looked up, then down, into the amused eyes of tiny Trin Tran, pushing a stroller so laden with shopping bags and drooling toddler that it had to weigh more than she did.

“Come by to check on your old flame?” she asked, a saucy smile on her lips.

Uh oh. Finn was standing in front of The Perfect Christmas.

He resisted the urge to duck down in case Bailey was looking out the windows. U O Me. He still didn’t know what the hell she wanted from him. He still didn’t want to know.

“How are you, Trin?” Finn said, warding off a Bailey discussion. “And how is your, uh…” The child was dressed in a one-piece thing of nubby brown fabric, complete with an antler-topped hood.

“Raindid,” the kid said, a trail of drool running over its bottom lip. A little plump hand waved overhead. “Raindid.”

“That’s right, baby. You’re so smart.” Trin, whom he’d always considered a logical, reasonable human being, gazed at the drooler with fanatical pride. Christ, his sister and parents were going to go nuts when his nephew was born. “He’s telling you he’s a reindeer.”

“Yeah? Uh, impressive.” That river of drool was pretty amazing too.

The kid was staring up at Finn now. A finger pointed at his face. “Pie-did.”

“Pie-deer?” Finn guessed. “Is that some new species?” They were just miles from the world-famous San Diego Zoo. Maybe the kid was a zoologist in the making.

Trin’s gaze cut toward him, a frown between her brows. “Something wrong with your hearing? That’s pirate.”

“Sorry.” Touching his eye patch, he grimaced. “I’m not real familiar with little kids.”

“Oh, really?” Trin fiddled with the collar of her white shirt. There was a piece of “jewelry” pinned to it, a one-by-two-inch LED screen that flashed naughty? nice? at three-second intervals. “We- I was wondering if you had any little Finns wandering around the world. We- I didn’t know if there was a woman in your life in the recent past, or the now, or the near future.”

“We pie-dids like to keep a little mystery going,” he replied, unwilling to play criminal to her cop.

At the narrowing of Trin’s eyes, he hastened to divert the topic again. “So,” he said, pointing to the bags hanging off the stroller. “Getting started on your Christmas shopping already?”

She made a weird little sound. Something between a hoot and a screech. Frankly, it was frightening. Even the raindid looked up at his mom, with wide eyes and the Schweitzer Falls roaring over his bottom lip.

“‘Started’?” she repeated slowly. “‘Already’? Have you seen any Go-Go Toaster trains in the stores? Any Flash It-Paste It-Post It software programs? What about the Demons Behind the Wheel video game?”

“Uh, no?” Seemed a safe answer.

“That’s right. It’s because they’ve not been available since the day after Thanksgiving.”

“Oh.”

She talked right over him. “I bet you’re just like my husband. I bet you don’t believe people are out shopping at five in the morning on the Friday after Turkey Day. But let me assure you they are. This year you could get Howard Stern or Nemo to give you a wake-up call at four a.m.”

Finn didn’t know who Nemo was, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to confess it to Trin.

“And for your information, people shop early on December twenty-sixth too-for the next year!”

Good God. With the exception of this Christmas because of the whole nephew-in-the-oven thing, Finn shopped on the twenty-fourth…twenty-third if he was at loose ends. It boggled his mind to imagine a world as Trin described. Lucky for him, it appeared the incensed woman didn’t expect a response as her voice rose in obvious passion.

“So good-bye, pie-did. I have to go home now and see if the elves baked the fifteen plates of cookies for my husband’s office party tomorrow night. And maybe they’ve planned the menus for our holiday get-together, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, and done the three-stop grocery shopping trip too. Perhaps they’ve been nice enough to wrap all the family presents, the gifts for the babysitter, the gardener, the mail carrier, and my hairdresser, not to mention the hostess thank-yous I picked out for the seven parties we’re invited to between now and New Year’s.” Rushing past him, she ran over his foot.

He yelped. “You’re scaring me, Trin.”

That gave her pause. She turned, shooting him an unreadable look. “And I’m a woman who likes Christmas. Think about the kind of mood the elf in there is in.” She jerked her thumb toward the store’s front door, then went on her way.

What elf?

Duh. He knew what elf.

But he wasn’t going in. Except, though he couldn’t swear to it, he thought Trin’s pin had suddenly stuck on naughty naughty naughty. Was that supposed to be a clue to Bailey’s mood?

What red-blooded American man would think that…and think about the feel of her under his hands in the car the other night, then walk away?

So he pushed the door open, wincing at the telltale clatter of jingle bells. His plan was an anonymous little peek at the anti-Christmas elf, just…just because he couldn’t stop himself.

As the door swung shut behind him, the scent inside the store rushed into his lungs, triggering an instant, intense olfactory memory. It was so damn real he could watch it play out on the blank screen of his missing eye. His hand still squeezing the doorknob, he closed his working one so he could see it even better.

Nineteen. Christmas vacation. Gram had baked oatmeal-raisin cookies to welcome him back, and he’d taken a plateful with him when he’d gone to meet Bailey at The Perfect Christmas.

The bells had jingled then too, and he’d breathed in the store’s spicy scent, the cookies in his hands adding a second layer of sweetness. And then more sweetness as Bailey flew into his arms-he hadn’t seen her since Labor Day. She’d looked like a celebration in a tiny red skirt, tight green sweater, black boots that hit just below her knees.

They’d kissed, Finn gripping that plate between them so that he wouldn’t hold her as hard as he wanted to. So hard that she’d melt into his bones.

At closing time they’d shooed everyone else out, then locked the doors and dimmed the lights. She’d tugged him to the farthest corner of the farthest room and they’d made a place for themselves beneath a tree twinkling with multicolored lights. White fake fur circled its base, and she’d lain back on it like a child, gleeful in the snow.

“Come here,” she’d whispered, smiling, but he’d resisted, his blood pumping so hard and hot in his veins that he’d only trusted himself to look at all her angelic prettiness.

“Come here,” she’d insisted, a wayward angel now, who drew one heel toward the other knee, shifting the hem of her little red skirt higher on her bare, opening thighs.

Weakened by the sight, he’d leaned over, propping himself on one elbow to feed her a fragrant cookie.

Crumbs had dusted her green sweater and he’d made a big show of brushing them away, drawing the side of his hand back and forth against her hardening nipples. The nape of his neck had burned and his cock had been ready for more long before he let his tattooed knuckles sneak under her sweater to stroke her bare midriff.

The skin there goose-bumped beneath his fingertips and he’d stared, fascinated by the matching ones that rushed down her inner thighs. Desperate, he’d sucked in air that was sweet, so sweet, a dizzying combination of the smell of the store, the cookie on Bailey’s breath, her perfume.