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 glanced up from their fashion magazines. One of the condo complex’s very few male residents opened his eyes, then dismissed him.
At the two-hundred-unit Crown Palms, men were at a premium, he’d found. And so attracted more than their fair share of attention.
“Dan!” As if to prove that last thought, a pretty, thirty-something brunette waved at him from her spot near the shallow end. “Just the person I hoped to see.”
“Is that right?” He settled in the lounge chair beside hers, his ego puffing like a balloon. This morning he’d been with a bright, blue-eyed blond, and it looked as if this afternoon he’d be busy too.
These women needed him. Appreciated him. Even if Tracy didn’t.
He shut his estranged wife out of his mind and turned on his hip to give Brenda-the brunette-his full attention. His smile was for her alone, in gratitude for all the ways she’d distracted since he’d moved and set upon his single life.
Her dimple dug deep into her right cheek. “You’re looking good, Dan. Sleeping better now?”
When he’d first moved to the complex, his biggest complaint-besides the ache in his heart-was insomnia. He’d taken to whiling away the late-night hours in the weight room, and it was there he’d met Brenda. And Lynn. And Cherry.
If he called them his little harem in the privacy of his thoughts, it didn’t offend anyone.
Leaning on his elbow, he propped his head on his fist. “I’m working out in the mornings now. How ’bout you?”
“Not getting into the gym as much as I’d like.” She shrugged, shifting the oiled curves of her breasts in the tiny turquoise triangles trying to contain them.
While he didn’t ogle, Dan let his gaze sweep over the feminine flesh laid out on the other lounge. He thought it was expected of him. Even appreciated. “Whatever you’re doing looks fine from here.”
Brenda gave him another of her smiles. It did seem grateful. “You always know the right thing to say.”
Not to Tracy. One September afternoon it had hit him hard. She didn’t see him. She didn’t hear him. Though they worked together every day and went to bed in the same room every night, he’d become a piece of furniture. No different from a chair. The computer. Not a man. Not her lover.
Panic had sent him to the mirror. It had shocked the hell out of him. In his mind’s eye he’d seen himself as young and fit as his eighteen-year-old son, Harry, but in the impersonal reflection of the mirror there was a middle-aged guy with too much gray, going soft around the middle.