Christie Ridgway: Must Love Mistletoe

Bailey drove directly to Hart’s. It was the same as the first time, sticky floor, loud music, muscled, clean-cut young men and the much-smaller number of decorative females. As the door closed behind her, from somewhere by the pool tables a male voice yelled out “Hooyah!” and three other guys beat their chests in response.

Neither the hooyah-er nor any of the chest beaters was Finn.

“He’s not here,” Tanner said, suddenly appearing by her side, causing an approaching young man with a prominent Adam’s apple and a full bottle of lite beer to veer off.

“You heard…?”

He nodded. “He called this morning. After breakfast, Mrs. Jacobson decided to take her usual rest. When he went to check up on her an hour or so later, she’d died in her sleep. All things considered…”

Bailey swallowed the lump in her throat as she thought of the lady who had been her next-door neighbor all her life. They’d shared French toast the morning before. And a hug. She was glad for that last moment even though she hadn’t know it was good-bye.

She’d always been lousy with those anyway.

Her throat felt thick and she swallowed again. “You said Finn called you?” He hadn’t contacted Bailey. Even if he didn’t know her cell phone number, he could have reached her through the store.

“Yeah.”

“But he hasn’t been by tonight? I tried calling the house and no one answered. I figured he was here.”

“Oh, he wouldn’t come here.” Tanner shook his movie-star hair.

Bailey frowned. “Why not?”

“He knows that I wouldn’t serve him any liquor unless he’d talk first.”

“Well surely that’s good, the talking, I mean,” Bailey said. “He’s got to be feeling-”

“That’s the whole problem, Bailey,” Tanner put in. “That’s Finn’s whole problem. He doesn’t want to be feeling anything at all.”

She didn’t waste any more time in the bar. On the sidewalk outside, she hesitated a moment, thinking through her options. Finding Finn wasn’t the issue-that had to be done. But where to look first?

“You’re Finn’s friend,” a voice from the shadows said.

Bailey jumped, then swung toward the stranger stepping into the light over the bar’s door. The young woman had long, straight dark hair, exotic eyes, and coltish legs in tight, bleached jeans.

She held out her hand and gave a winsome smile. “I’m Desirée.”

Ah. Desirée, sometimes referred to as Desirée al-Maddah, sometimes Desirée Bryant, depending upon whether the press was describing the celebutante as the daughter of her Middle Eastern prince of a father or as the daughter of her famous model mom. Bailey shook her cool hand. “I’m Bailey Sullivan. I recognize you from the, uh, kiss.”

The younger woman grimaced. “Don’t mention it to Tanner, will you? And don’t tell Troy you’ve seen me here, okay?”

Which reminded Bailey she had yet to see Finn and he shouldn’t be alone. “It’s nice meeting you, but I have to go now.”

“You heard about Mrs. Jacobson?”

“Yes.” Bailey hesitated. “By any chance, you wouldn’t happen to know where Finn is, would you?”

“Well, I-”

The bar door swung open. A male voice growled through the night air. “What the hell are you doing here again? Haven’t I already told you to get lost?”

Desirée flinched, then lifted her chin to face the behemoth who stomped outside to confront her. “It’s a free country, Troy.”

“I thought I ordered you to stop hanging around the bar when you showed up here the other day.” He crossed his arms over his chest, looking half genie and mostly scary with his bulging biceps and shaved head.

Bailey frowned. Troy appeared angry and Desirée defiant, but there was something else buzzing beneath the surface of their conversation. Something hot and-

“We don’t want you here,” Troy stated.

Apparently unwelcome.

“ I don’t want you here,” he clarified.

Very unwelcome.

Desirée blinked, swallowed, and despite her mulish expression, Bailey had the distinct feeling she just might cry.

To preserve the younger woman’s dignity, Bailey slid her hand through her elbow. “We’re on our way,” she said, guiding them both toward the parking lot.

Desirée looked back, just as the bar’s door slammed shut. Bailey felt her flinch again. Then she slipped free of Bailey’s arm to wrap her arms around herself in a sad self-hug.

“Thanks,” she said, her winsome smile now turned wry. “I thought it was bad when Tanner was mad at me, but then I met Troy and…I don’t know why I let him get to me. Especially when he doesn’t bother trying to soft-pedal the way he feels.”

Bailey lifted a shoulder. “Sometimes you don’t have any choice.”

“Yeah.” Then she reached out and touched the top of Bailey’s hand. “And speaking of men with chips on their shoulders, I saw Finn’s SUV parked at the north end of the beach.”

Bailey stopped her Passat behind Finn’s big, black car. It was a no-moon night, and with her headlights off the darkness wrapped around her like a blanket. A safe blanket.

She could go home.

No. She couldn’t leave him out here alone.

At Trin’s, she’d changed out of her work clothes, and she realized she should have changed back, because her high-heeled sandals were impractical sand gear. She slipped them off as she reached the beach and let them dangle in one hand, shoving her other inside her jacket pocket to grip her cell phone.

The sand was slippery cold against the soles of her feet. Her toes curled into it as she gazed up and down the beach. The only clear thing she could see was the white froth of the incessant waves.

There! she thought, squinting. There was movement.

A spark pierced the darkness and then kindled into a small fire a quarter mile down the beach. Still gripping her cell phone in case it wasn’t the man she was looking for, she headed for it. As she drew closer, she noticed the pallets and other shadowy pieces of wood piled nearby, enough to keep the darkness at bay all night long.

When she neared, Finn didn’t look away from the fire he’d started in the cement circle. He was sitting beside it, a flask in his hand. As he lifted it to take a drink, the light of the flames flickered yellow and red against its silver surface, a bright contrast to his black eye patch, the dark night, the murky ocean with its ever-changing frothy skirt of white sweeping back and forth, back and forth, across the wet sand.

Bailey’s shoes dropped from her suddenly sweaty hands. She followed them down to the sand, leaving that ring of fire between her and Finn. She filled her chest with a long breath of the cool air, tasting the salt on her tongue and wishing it was words instead.

When she’d thought about finding him, she’d never thought about what she would say once she did.

Comfort, she told herself. She was here to offer sympathy, provide support, be his friend.

Somehow make the loss easier for him.

Flames glinted against the flask again as he brought it to his mouth for another swallow. “Go away.”

She jerked at the sudden sound of his hard voice, and flashed back to poor Desirée and her reaction to Troy’s rejection. But it wasn’t the same at all, she thought. The sexual, romantic part of her relationship with Finn wasn’t unrequited, it was O-V-E-R.

So she dug her butt into the shifting sand and refused to be scared away.

Finn said nothing more. Through the flames she saw him reach out to the pile of fuel and grab another piece. He tossed the length of wood into the blaze. It had twigs and leaves attached, and as they caught, they crackled with the sound of candy wrappers, then smoked like a wizard’s spell.