High Heels and Holidays

Chapter Two

Maggie stood in the middle of her living room, wondering why she'd thought it was such a good idea to start this when she was probably still suffering from jet lag. It looked as if Christmas had just burped all over the room.

"What's this?" Sterling Balder asked, sitting cross-legged in the middle of a multitude of open boxes, and holding up yet another, to him, unfamiliar ornament. He looked so cute and cuddly, with a string of golden garland around his neck, and a Santa Claus hat on his nearly bald head.

Sterling was the child Maggie had always tried to believe she could be, the adult she would have grown up to be if her childhood had been different. Sweet. Kind. Loving. Trusting. When she'd conjured him up, she'd thought it had been, as they said during the Regency Era, "out of whole cloth," that he was a total figment of her imagination. But that hadn't been true, as she'd discovered to her amazement and slight embarrassment once Sterling had shown up in the flesh. Sterling was her good self. Which, of course, left Saint Just to be her not so good self, although she tried not to think about that too much.

"Plastic mistletoe, Sterling," she said, taking it from him. "And it goes in the garbage because it's really ugly. I wanted to buy real mistletoe, but the berries or the leaves are poisonous, someone said, and I couldn't take the chance that Napoleon or Wellington wouldn't take a bite."

As if on cue, Napoleon, one of the pair of Persian cats Maggie had figured writers should have, appeared out of nowhere to launch itself at the ball of plastic leaves and white berries. Maggie raised it out of the cat's reach, and Napoleon landed in the middle of a string of fairy lights that became instantly tangled—after Maggie had spent the last half hour untangling them.

"Napper, knock it off," she ordered, and the cat gave her a look that probably should not be translated from Cat to Human if said cat still wants a nightly pinch of catnip from said human, and walked off in a huff, dignity intact except for the loop of lights caught on its tail.

The tree was already assembled and decorated, thanks to Sterling's assistance, but there was still so much ... so much stuff to be spread out through the condo. The bad part was that Maggie was rapidly running out of enthusiasm, and gas, considering the fact that less than twenty-four hours ago she had been bimbo diving in a rain-swollen lake for a murder suspect. "Sterling? You want some of this for your place?"

"Oh, could I? We have nothing, you understand, and I'm afraid everything will look quite naked after this. Well, not precisely naked. I shouldn't have said that. Do you suppose Saint Just will allow a tree?"

"Allow, Sterling? It's your condo, too, you know."

Sterling's smile was indulgent. "Now, Maggie, we both know that's not true. Saint Just labors long and hard posing for Fragrances By Pierre to earn the funds required in order to keep us in such marvelous style, and all of that. I am only in residence thanks to his generous spirit."

Maggie snorted. "Yeah, right. Alex would be lost without you, Sterling. And you know what? He wouldn't want to hear you say you're there on sufferance. You're his best friend."

Sterling shook his head. "No, Maggie. You are his best friend. I am in the way of a boon companion. Indeed, there are times when I believe Saint Just sees me as a somewhat dim child he must protect, and all of that. But I am as you made me, Maggie, and I'm perfectly happy with that. Although I do sometimes wish you hadn't chosen to make me so sadly lacking in hair. Especially now, as it is sometimes so very cold outside."

"I'm sorry, Sterling, sweetie," Maggie said, unwrapping one of the three Wise Men and placing him in the nativity arrangement that she always set up on the credenza beside the front door. "But, as Rogaine wasn't invented back in the eighteen-hundreds, I'm afraid you're stuck with wearing a hat. We'll get you a nice knit cap when we're out shopping, okay? Maybe one that comes with earflaps? You'd look terrific in earflaps. Oh, damn, there goes the phone. No, don't get it, Sterling. We'll let the machine pick up."

As if in suspended animation, Sterling sat and Maggie stood, both of them unmoving, staring at the phone as it rang five times before the click of the answering machine could be heard.

"Margaret? Margaret, are you there?"

Maggie went down on her haunches, wincing, as if physically hiding herself from her mother's voice.

"Margaret, I just saw the newspaper, and read about your latest embarrassment. I can scarcely believe it! It wasn't enough to make a spectacle of yourself in New York? Now you have to go international with your ridiculousness? And with that sweet little girl who is the spokesperson for Boffo Transmissions? Why, there must be at least a dozen outlets in our area of New Jersey alone. What? Oh, wait, your father is bellowing something from the kitchen. What now, Evan?"

Maggie and Sterling exchanged glances, Maggie rolling her eyes almost in apology.

"Margaret? Your father says there are fifteen Boffo Transmissions in southern New Jersey alone—as if the man had nothing better to do than count them, which he doesn't. But that's not the point. You have no consideration for us, do you? You write those filthy books, and now you're on the news every other time I turn around, consorting with lowlifes and murderers. I have to go to the supermarket at five o'clock, when no one else is there, I'm so embarrassed."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, nothing new there. Shame, shame on Margaret. Get to the point," Maggie grumbled, wondering how many sessions with Dr. Bob it would take before she could do more than hide and grumble.

"But to get to the point of this call ..."

Maggie's eyes popped open wide. "Wow. That's almost spooky," she said as Sterling giggled.

"I know I said you and your strange friends could stay here at Christmas, but that was before your brother decided to bring some of his friends with him. I'm sure if you call now you'll be able to get rooms somewhere in town. The prices will be outrageous, but you're such a big-shot author now, I'm sure that's no problem for you. And your brother did buy us this house—I thank God every day for Tate, I swear it. You can see why he has to come first."

"Yeah. Why should this year be any different," Maggie told Sterling, who was looking at her in that sad, sympathetic way, as if she was a puppy who had just showed up on his doorstep, hungry, and wet to the bone from a cold rain. "Shouldn't the computer chip have filled up by now? I've got to get a cheaper machine."

Alicia Kelly's voice dropped to a near whisper. "I'm in the other room now, away from him. One more thing, Margaret. I wouldn't discuss this with Tate, of course—he's much too sensitive for such news. Erin is never available, and Maureen is already sneaking way too many of those little pink pills she thinks I don't see her taking. Girl goes around grinning like a loon most days, over nothing. But at least you aren't sensitive. You're like a duck—water rolls right off your back. You get that from your father's side. So I'm telling you, mostly because I have to tell someone, and because things may be more than a bit strained while you're here and I need someone to shield Tate from any unpleasantness. Margaret, your father is having an affair. There, I've said it. Now, since you're the only one he seems to tolerate, I also expect you to have a firm talking-to with him when you get here. Her name is Carol and she works at the best jewelry shop here in town. He's been seen with her twice in the last week, right out in the open, and I will—"

The answering machine clicked off, its memory full.

"Maggie?" Sterling reached over to touch her arm. "Maggie—your mouth is open, Maggie. Are you all right? You're not going to swoon or anything, are you, as I don't think we have any feathers we can burn under your nose."

Maggie blinked several times, and then shook her head as if that might help clear it. "My father. My father is having an affair? That's impossible. Mom'd kill him." She looked at Sterling without really seeing him. "She sounded upset though, didn't she? Almost cowed, and Mom's never cowed. And she wants me to talk to him? A firm talking-to with him? What the hell am I supposed to say to him? Attaboy probably won't really do it, huh? Man. My father. Having an affair. I didn't think he had it in him. What was the woman's name?"

"Um, Carol. Do you want me to fetch Saint Just, Maggie?"

"No, why would I want that?" Maggie asked, wishing she didn't want Sterling to do just that. "I'm fine. Honestly. My father is having an affair, that's all." She bent her head and pressed her hands to her ears. "Ohhhh, why did she have to tell me? How am I going to look at him? Look at either of them? And she can tell me because I'm not sensitive? How can somebody give birth to somebody and then not understand that somebody at all?"

"I'll just go get Saint Just," Sterling said nervously, getting to his feet and escaping from the condo to his own, directly across the hall.

Maggie was placing the Baby Jesus in the manger with exaggerated care just as Alex entered the condo without knocking, one eyebrow raised slightly as he looked at her from the doorway. "Are you all right? Sterling seems to think you might be on the verge of a small come apart, or at least that's how he phrased the thing."

"I'm fine, Alex," she told him tightly. "I told Sterling I was fine, and I am. My father's having an affair. Good for him, huh? And I'm fine with it. I've been wondering for years why the two of them never got a divorce. I mean, it would take a saint to live with my mother, and Daddy just proved he's no saint, not if he's having an affair. Maybe it's not the first affair? Maybe he's just been pretending to be a milquetoast all these years, all ground down under Mom's heel, but he's had this secret life nobody knew about, and he's had a string of Carols. Dozens of them. Little chippies, my mom would call them. But I'm fine with it. Really. Just fine with it. What's not to be fine, anyway? Their kids are all grown and gone. It wouldn't be as if they were breaking up some happy family—we've never been the Cleavers in the first place. So—so what? No skin off my nose, right? Oh, damn it!" she ended just before the third Wise Man hit the far wall with a bang and fell to the floor in three pieces.

"Yes, you're obviously fine," Alex said, pulling her into his arms.

She slid her own arms around his waist and buried her head in his shoulder, giving in to the need to hold on, to be held. But she didn't cry. There was no point in it, was there? Did that make her insensitive, or just practical?

"My father goes bowling three nights a week, Alex," she whined into his shirtfront. "He doesn't slink around to sleazy motel rooms with little chippies. Oh, how am I going to go there for Christmas and act as if nothing's wrong? You know—hi, Dad, anyone new? I can't do that."

Alex kissed the top of her head. "Then it's settled. We won't go."

Maggie pushed herself slightly away from him, realizing that she was getting entirely too comfortable in his arms. "We have to go, Alex. It's Christmas. It wouldn't be the holidays if I didn't have to lug a bunch of wrapped presents to Ocean City and then have everyone ask me for the receipts so they can take it all back because it doesn't fit or it's the wrong color or they already have one. Last year I bought Tate a star. A star, Alex—you know, up in space? And he said he already had one. Christmas is my yearly dose of crap so that I don't have to see any of them the rest of the year—I mean, it's the only time they're all in one place, especially after Erin didn't show up for Thanksgiving. If I don't see them now, I'll have to show up a bunch of times, to see all of them. Mom keeps score."

"You Americans are the strangest people," Alex said, lightly stroking her back. "Very well. As long as I'm there to protect you."

Maggie winced. "You do not protect me, Alex. I'm a big girl, I protect myself. But I do want you there, I won't say I don't. Even if it's just to keep me away from sharp objects. I told Tate off over Thanksgiving, but you know that isn't going to last. He'll be his same condescending neocon self when I see him. Oh, and we have to stay at a hotel. That's the only good news I got today."

"Maggie, you do know that you are your own person, that your family is just that, your family, and not your responsibility?"

She nodded, tears finally beginning to sting behind her eyes. "I know. It's not their fault I'm the square peg in the round hole, and it's not mine, either. So I'm okay. You can let me go now. Alex? I said, you can let me go now."

"Ah, my dear Maggie, what if I don't want to?" he asked, and her stomach did that funny little thing it did whenever Alex talked to her like that, in that particular tone. God, he was good.

And she was feeling all too vulnerable. "Alex, how many times do we have to have this conversation? You're not real."

"I don't feel real?" he asked against her neck. Breathed against her neck. "I'm not really holding you?"

Maggie swallowed down hard, dipping her head to avoid the intense look in Alex's Paul Newman blue eyes. She'd likewise ignore the young Sean Connery as James Bond voice, the thick black windswept hair a la that great pen and ink drawing of Beau Brummell, the sexy slashes in his cheeks and the equally sexy crinkles around the eyes that were so Clint Eastwood in those ancient spaghetti westerns. The long, lean, hard young Clint body ... Peter O'Toole's perfect aristocratic nose. The sensuous pout of Val Kilmer's mouth. I'm your huckleberry. Dangerous and seductive at the same time. Everything had come together in one damn delicious whole. Freaking amazing, that's what it was, what Alex was. Man, she did good work ...

"You know what I mean, Alex. I ... I just can't afford to go where you seem to think we might be going. You weren't here four months ago. How do I know where you'll be four months from now? And don't give me that evolving thing again, okay? I know you're adapting well ... very well, to being here."

"Making myself more real, just as I said, and thus more permanent," Alex said, trailing the side of his finger down her cheek, using its tip to raise her chin so that she had no choice but to look at him.

"Oh yeah, that works," Maggie breathed, swallowing yet again. "But—"

"Maggie," he interrupted almost kindly. "Let's consider this, all right? If I, as you say with depressing regularity, were to poof back out of your life—"

"How I hate that word," she said, watching his mouth.

"And I agree. But if I were to poof, would you rather be left with memories—or regrets?"

She shifted her gaze to his eyes. "You're such an arrogant bastard."

"Yes, I know. The perfect Regency Era hero."

"Living in the twenty-first century on the Upper West Side of Manhattan," Maggie pointed out over the buzzing in her ears. "Alex, I don't know if I can take that chance."

"But you want to," he said, his smile gone now. "You want to be daring. You want to not think, but to make that last great leap of faith into the unknown. You long to know, just as I do, if our two halves make a whole. If what we need to be complete, both of us, is at this very moment literally within our grasp."

"The ... the thought has occurred," Maggie admitted, sliding her hands up the front of his sweater. Cashmere. He liked the feel of cashmere. He liked the feel of fine things. He was a sensual man. Would he like the feel of her?

"Saint Just? Is Maggie all—oh, a thousand pardons, Saint Just. I didn't realize you were romantizing," Sterling said from the door.

"Some people's kids," Maggie mumbled in an attempt at humor as she stepped completely away from Alex. From temptation. "I'm much better now," she told Sterling. "But you know what? I'm also starving. What do you say we leave this mess and go out for something to eat? Alex?"

"Certainly, my dear," he said smoothly, just as if they both didn't know what had been about to happen if Sterling hadn't showed up. "I must admit that I, too, am famished."

Maggie shot him a quick look, trying to decide if what he'd said had some sort of double entendre in there somewhere, then decided she was overreacting. "Famished, huh?"

"Exactly," Alex said, leaning down to whisper in her ear. "I believe I could happily nibble on you all night."

"Oh, okay, so I wasn't wrong, and shame on at least one of us. And that's a lousy line, by the way."

"I know. It was the best I could conjure up at the moment, however, as I admit to being under some considerable stress. You will forgive me, and allow me to try again some time?"

"Bite me," Maggie said, just before she winced. She was so used to saying that when she ran out of comebacks, but this time? This time it was a very bad choice. "Pretend I didn't say that."

"Never," Alex said, then, gentleman that he was, he went off to retrieve her coat.