Christie Ridgway: Must Love Mistletoe

GND. If he wanted to slice her through with anything more than his chilly look and those flat words, then that was it. It was the nickname he’d given her before she’d left him, before they were lovers, before they’d ever even kissed. It reminded her that first he’d been the sulking boy she’d made smile and that once she’d been his pesky Girl Next Door.

The one who had grown older, fallen in love, then run away from him. The one who was perfectly willing to run again, leaving behind the Merlot and the cheese straws, as well as her oldest best friend and her very first boyfriend.

Not to mention any chance she’d get a decent rest that night.

Ten minutes after his favorite bar closed and kicked his reluctant ass out, Finn pulled slowly up to his grandmother’s. Thank God it was legal in California to drive with only one 20/20 eye. Losing his license after losing so much else would have flattened him. Gram had left the icicle lights on for him, and he checked over his surroundings in their silvery glow. It was dark next door, and Bailey’s Passat looked as if it was as long asleep as the rest of the neighborhood.

With grocery bag in hand, he opened his door, climbed out of the SUV to come around the front of his car, then froze. In Finn’s business, the goal was to thwart an assault before it ignited. To that end, the men and women he worked with talked openly about their sixth sense-that combination of instinct and training that made them aware when something was out of sync. Hours of drills coupled with innate self-confidence taught them to rely on their ability to foresee danger in order to take quick preventive action.

While Finn had good reason to doubt the strength of his own sixth sense, he couldn’t deny that it was screaming at him now. He gripped the bag tighter, but kept his back turned.

“What do you want, Bailey?” Every hair on the nape of his neck said she was standing directly behind him.

“Well…I…”

He was going to turn right, he decided, walking past her to head straight into the house. Trading old times with Bailey would be like pulling a thin scab off a new wound. Though the hurt she’d given him was ten years gone, he had recent injuries he was doing his damnedest to heal.

“I’m not-” he started, turning.

It was the glitter that did him in. With it dusted across her cheekbones and sparkling in her hair, she looked like something that had been dipped in the Milky Way before landing on the driveway beside him. That had always been the way of it between them. Finn with his feet in the gutter, Bailey looking as if she hovered above the ground.

With his willpower weakened by two whiskeys and a chaser of beer, how could he walk away?

Still, this was going to be her show. Drawing the liquor bottles in their brown paper wrapping closer to his side, he leaned his hips against the car and said nothing.

She didn’t either, not at first. But he doubted she possessed the deep well of patience he’d developed over the years that he’d stood post.

To prove him right, she cracked in less that sixty seconds. “Hey, look,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For tonight, at the store, of course.”

Well, of course. She wasn’t apologizing for stamping her size sixes all over his heart and soul ten years ago, and he’d be dead before he let her know he cared about that. Before he let her know anything , damn it.

Be cool, Finn. Ice .

“I was naturally curious,” Bailey went on. She’d put on a parka over her sweater and jeans, but the very tip of her nose was pink with the cold.

He lifted his free hand to his eye patch. “Everyone is.”

“Oh.” Her hand reached out, as if she would touch him, but then it dropped. “I’m sorry for that too.”

The glitter in her hair framed her fine-etched features as she continued to study his face. She’d been petite as a child, and though she’d grown taller during adolescence, it hadn’t been much. He’d been endlessly fascinated by all the femininity contained in that small body of hers. “I…lost the original and fake eyes aren’t that comfortable,” he heard himself offer.

Damn. He hadn’t meant to volunteer a scrap.

Though instead of the pity he dreaded, his admission caused her to aim a cheeky little grin his way. It curved up the pink fullness of her baby-doll mouth. “Oh, be honest, Finn Jacobson. Admit you also like the whole Jack Sparrow pirate look-alike thing.”

“I’m taller than Johnny Depp.” And no one had been cheeky with Finn since his injury. Hell, since years before that.

“Oh yeah.” She was still razzing him. “And you have lots more muscles too.”

“What? So you ambushed me to issue compliments?”

Her teasing smile died, as did the sparkle in her eyes. “Finn…”

He wouldn’t regret his refusal to play. “What is it you want, Bailey?”

She gave a shrug. “I’m trying to be sensible, okay? I’m guessing we’re both here for the holidays.”

He nodded.

“My mother said your grandmother’s been sick.”

Finn tightened his grip on the bottles again. “She’s on the road to recovery. I’m here to see to that.”

“My mom and Dan are having some…problems, so I’m working at the store for them until the twenty-fifth. Not a day later, but still I’m sure we’ll be running into each other from time to time.”

He nodded again, but offered nothing more.

Her mouth turned down. “Do you have to make this so hard?”

“What do you mean? I’m not doing anything.”

“You are too!” She stepped closer, so that the toes of her soft suede boots were an inch away from his own scarred black leather.

“How?”

“Oh, please.” Her small hand wrapped his flannel-covered sleeve, and his forearm went steely at the touch. “I know you, Finn Jacobson, and-”

“Do you?” Suddenly it was too much. Her unexpected return home, the glitter on her beautiful face, the way he couldn’t ignore her touch. So much for ice.

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand off his arm, using the movement to yank her closer against him. The sides of her parka parted and the white sweater she wore underneath met the buttons of his shirt. “What the hell is it you think you know about me?”

Her eyes went wide and her pouty lips parted. He silently cursed himself for the loss of control, but he wasn’t letting her loose. Though his sixth sense was screeching at him like a parrot now, because he was trained to prevent attacks, not initiate them, the Princess Next Door didn’t have a clue who he’d become, and he needed to make that clear.

Maybe then she’d avoid him. Maybe then he’d find peace.

“What do you think you know, Bailey?”

She was breathing fast, and he could feel her small breasts rising and falling against him. He pressed his hips against the cold metal of the car so that she wouldn’t know what that small movement was doing to his cock. He hadn’t been this close to a woman who wasn’t a nurse in months, so it wasn’t his damn fault, but he didn’t want her to guess she was getting any more out of him than annoyance.

“What do you expect I do for a living?” he demanded.

She licked her lips, and he tried forgetting what they’d tasted like. “I don’t know. Do you…work on cars? Motorcycles?”

He released a short laugh. “I work around cars and motorcycles, I’d guess you could say.”

“Nice. Good.”

The light glinted off her wet lips, and he couldn’t look away from them. “Yeah. It would fit your expectations if I’m a dirt-under-his-fingernails grease monkey, wouldn’t it? And that years ago I knocked up some chick and had to marry her.”

She blinked. “You’re married? You have a child?”