Her stomach growling, Bailey forked up a mouthful. “We need to talk about the store, about Dan, about what’s going on.” She retreated toward the room’s windows and the desk that sat beneath them. Leaning her butt against the edge, she swallowed, then pierced some more pieces of macaroni. “Mom-”

“I don’t want to talk about Dan.” Tracy still didn’t meet her eyes.

This wasn’t good. Her mother didn’t sound reasonable and willing to step back up to her responsibilities. “Mom-”

“And now you’re here to take care of the store.”

“Yes, but Mom-” Someone had upped the volume on his speakers, and “Joy to the World” blared its way into the room through the half-open window. Grimacing at the oh-so-inappropriate background music, Bailey clunked the pan onto Harry’s desk. Then she twisted to shove shut the wooden sash.

The houses were so close together, she was peering right into Mrs. Jacobson’s rear garden. There was a man there, a wide-shouldered man. She couldn’t see his face, his back was turned to her, and he was carrying a Christmas tree through the kitchen door.

Her heart thumped. Her stomach clenched.

He could be anyone, her common sense told her. A handyman. Another neighbor. A generic good Samaritan spreading holiday cheer.

But that wasn’t what her intuition said. Her intuition was cringing away from the glass and the soul-freezing knowledge of who was really moving through Mrs. Jacobson’s back door.

She should ignore her silly intuition. She should turn off those goofy internal warning bells and get back to real business. She should face her mother and insist they talk.

But her mouth was suddenly so dry, she couldn’t find her own voice.

December 25 wasn’t going to arrive soon enough, that was certain. Because Bailey had a very bad, very unignorable feeling that Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past had both come home to Coronado for an untimely visit.

Bailey Sullivan’s Vintage Christmas