High Heels and Holidays

Epilogue

Dear Fred,

Okay, Fred, here's the scoop—I can't write to you anymore. It was a good idea at the time, it really was, but now things are getting just a little personal between Alex and me, you know? Well, of course you don't know, because I didn't tell you, did I? Trust me—we got personal. Three times so far.

All right, so maybe I'll tell you something. Sex, after thinking you might be dead at any moment, is interesting. Very. All that reaffirming life stuff, I guess, something like that. In any case, it's really none of posterity's business, right?

And Alex and I have come to a few conclusions in the last week or so. Conclusions and maybe even compromises. For one, I'm going to allow him to protect me. I used to see that as him interfering with my life, but a couple of hard jolts that knock the wind out of you, a Glock stuck in your ribs—stuff like that?—can really change a woman's perceptions, you know? In other words, if Alex wants to believe he's a hero, I guess I'm just going to have to let him believe that. So we're good there.

What I'm having trouble with is this new idea he has that he has something to say about the development of his character as he appears in my books—operative words here, Fred, my books. He's talking about getting married and setting up his nursery, continuing the family name. Can you believe that, Fred? I can't do that. Once he stops being the greatest lover in England, the series is over.

Nobody wants to read about the Viscount Saint Just in love. Not unless ... hmm. Not unless he gets married and she's really a Cartwright bride. You know what a Cartwright bride is, Fred? I'll tell you. There was this television show a long time ago—Bonanza. There were three sons, regulars on the show. Once in a while the writers would give one of them a love interest, because otherwise they'd be worried they had the sixties version of Brokeback Mountain, I guess (and as they said on Seinfeld: not that there's anything wrong with that), and because female viewers like some romance in their Westerns.

Anyway, the writers were also smart enough to know that none of these guys could live happily ever after or the show would go down the tubes—ergo the curse of the Cartwright bride. Ah, Hoss fell in love. Ah, Hoss is going to get hitched. Ah, Hoss's fiancée just got run over by a stagecoach—splat! Those Cartwright brides never lasted more than three episodes, tops.

It was kind of like being the only guy in a Star Trek episode wearing a different colored shirt than everyone else.

So I can't do it, Fred. A Cartwright bride would be a cop-out. Saint Just has to be who he is, and the heck with this evolving stuff Alex keeps talking about.

Which is all a roundabout way of saying that Alex and I are fine, we're actually doing pretty well ... but I don't think we're going to be evolving too much any time soon. To tell you the truth—since I'm going to delete this the moment I'm done here—I don't know if I'd be as attracted to a domesticated Alex. How's that for honesty?

Which takes me to what I am going to be doing.

A funny thing happened on the way to Christmas at my parents, Fred—they got separated. Oh yes. One is living in the house, and one is batching it in an apartment on the other side of town. I am now the product of a broken home. I'm also—along with Alex and Sterling—due in Ocean City in two weeks, to celebrate the holidays. Yeah, Fred—ho, ho, hoo-boy!

Yeah, well, I don't want to think about that right now, or the fact that all three of the sibs will be there, choosing sides, making everything worse.

So maybe I'll think some more about what Alex wants?

I could give him a loveless marriage, right? You know, a marriage of convenience, only because it is time he set up his nursery—Alex is right about that one. It would be historically accurate.

Okay.

So I give him this independent woman, see. They battle—right off the bat. Two strong personalities, going at it ... but slowly, against their will, they're drawn to each other. Big-time. Physically. They keep dancing around each other; advancing, retreating, keeping the readers happy. And all the while she helps him solve crimes. It could work.

Maybe it could work.

I don't know if it could work for Alex and me—I mean, Saint Just and the female character. I did mean that, Fred. That was not a Freudian slip!

Tell you what, Fred. I'm going to put this in a folder with the first time I wrote to you, just in case I need to talk to you again. You don't mind being Untitled Folder, do you, Fred? Just in case Alex goes snooping on my Mac again?

And you are cheaper than Dr. Bob.

That's a joke, Fred—a joke!

See you after Christmas!

Maggie Kelly