Kasey Michaels - High Heels and Holidays

Saint Just dangled the quizzing glass between his fingers for a few moments before sliding the thing into the breast pocket of his sports jacket. Once again, he thought, he'd underestimated the good lieutenant. Or overestimated him. "Indeed. I had been wondering about the man's absence. Silly me, I'd assumed he was fully occupied pursuing dangerous criminals, and too busy to visit us."

"Visit me," Maggie corrected, "and he is busy. We barely had time to talk when he finally returned my call."

"Ah," Saint Just said, getting to his feet. "You phoned him." And he lied to you, he added silently. How wonderful. The man is digging his own grave, and all I did was to innocently hand him the shovel.

Maggie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I phoned him. What of it? And why are you back here anyway? Because if you think I'm feeding you again, you're crazy."

"On the contrary, my dear, it is my intention that Sterling and I should feed you. May I suggest Bellini's?"

"You can, but I don't want to go there," she told him, doing a quite good imitation of Mary, Mary, quite contrary. "I want to go to the Fêtes de Noël. But you don't have to go, I can go alone."

"No, no, quite the contrary, my dear. I'm sure Sterling and I would be delighted to join you. Precisely what do the citizens of this fair city consider a Fêtes de Noël?"

"It's a ... it's a fête. They set it up in Bryant Park—that's on Forty-second Street, behind the library. It's really nifty. Shops. Lots of them. Terrific striped tents everywhere, and a huge Christmas tree. All sorts of good stuff. I can wander in those shops for hours. Hours, Alex. I'm sure we can grab something to eat somewhere on the way to the park. Hot dogs? Yeah, hot dogs would be great. I love hot dogs in the cold, don't you? Oh, right, I forgot—you don't. And, hey, one of those fat pretzels for Sterling? I like the smell of roasting chestnuts, but I don't eat them. The custom is English, I believe—even during Regency times, unlike Christmas trees, which weren't introduced to England until about 1841. Then we'll shop till we drop and you can help me carry it all home. Yeah, it'll be so great to have you guys to carry my packages for me. I'll go tell Sterling. It'll be a hoot."

"A hoot, of course. Sterling would enjoy a hoot, I'm sure. And your enthusiasm seems even to have caught me up in the notion of just such an adventure. Indeed, I can scarcely contain myself."

"Okay, okay, so it isn't Covent Garden at the height of the social season. You're still going, darn it."

"Ready when you are, my dear." Saint Just politely got to his feet, and then watched her as she fairly stomped from the room, leaving the door open to the hallway as she knocked on the door across the hall. He heard her call Sterling's name—cheerful little dickens that she was—and then disappear inside the other condo.

At which time Saint Just lifted the quizzing glass out of his pocket once more and began swinging it back and forth as he cudgeled his brain for a reason behind Maggie's too-chipper-by-half demeanor. She'd certainly gotten the bit between her teeth once she'd begun talking about this fкte, hadn't she? Talking nineteen to the dozen, just as if he might interrupt her to suggest some alternate entertainment. Nifty? A boot? And that business about the history of Christmas trees?

Oh, yes, either she had slipped a gear and begun babbling—which he sincerely doubted—or the woman most definitely was up to something. Or knew something.

Steve Wendell could have spilled the soup. That certainly had to be one consideration.

Except that Maggie didn't know about the rat she'd received, or the note. Having Wendell tell her about the circumstances surrounding Francis Oakes's demise may have upset her, but there was no way she could possibly connect Oakes's death with herself.

Besides, if she did know that he had asked Wendell for information she would not be smiling at him, be acting in the least cheerful, or even coy. She would have greeted him at the door with her Irish up and accusations that would have been, at the bottom of it, rather well justified.

But she hadn't. She'd been determinedly smiling ever since he'd come back from his quick meeting with Wendell, never once asking him why he'd planted himself in her condo, with what had to appear to be no intention of ever vacating it again.

Ergo, Saint Just decided, the woman knew nothing. Well, almost nothing. She knew that he and Sterling were suddenly sticking to her like a mustard plaster. Sterling, bless him, was not known for his powers of discretion or his ability to hold tight to a secret, even if all Sterling knew was that Saint Just wanted Maggie watched.

Which meant, Saint Just concluded, that Maggie was about to punish him and then, being Maggie, find some way to slip from his grasp while they were at this Bryant Park she'd mentioned. Mentioned? No. Thought about. Considered. Decided upon as the best place for both her punishment and her revenge.

The woman was a menace.

How he adored her!

"We're back, and we've got company. She was just coming off the elevator," Maggie said, skipping back into the living room, too cheerful by half. "Did I forget to tell you that Bernie said she'd love to go with us?"

"Wrong, twinkle-toes," Bernice Toland-James corrected, brushing at the sleeve of her full-length sable coat (the one she had two years previously protected from a splash of red paint by pulling out her stun gun and doing a little proactive protesting of her own). "I said that if I have no other alternative, I might as well go, satisfy the inner masochist in me or something. And since the alternative was to have dinner with an overzealous agent and pick up the tab—and do both while sober—I suppose a visit to Bryant Park is doable." She pulled her stun gun from a pocket of the sable. "At least I'm dressed for it."

"Bernie, there are people, very serious people, who object to other people wearing fur," Maggie said. She was one of them, but at the same time she objected to fur, she also objected to destroying private property in order to make one's point.

"I know that, Mags," Bernie said, sliding the stun gun back into her pocket. "But as I tell everyone, it was already dead when I found it."

"Right. Fifth Avenue roadkill sable. Happens all the time."

Sterling appeared in the doorway, already buttoned up to his chin in his brown corduroy jacket, his beanie hat on his head. "Saint Just, your cane," he said, handing over the gold-topped sword cane and accepting his friend's thanks.

"You'll need a topcoat, Alex," Bernie told him. "It's cold as hell out there."

"But, Bernie," Sterling questioned, frowning. "Hell would be hot, correct? Oh, wait, that's one of those things you people say, but don't mean the way you say them, isn't it?"

"He's very literal, Bernie, remember? Don't confuse him," Maggie whispered as she stepped past her friend, slipping her arms into a navy peacoat she'd had for five years and still loved dearly. "Damn," she said, looking down at the front of the jacket as she began to button it.

"Napoleon slept on it again. Look at this—it's covered in hair, and I don't have a single damn idea what I did with my lint brush. Wellington probably ate it."

"Too bad," Bernie told her. "That much white fur could get you your own can of red paint."

"Funny," Maggie groused, pulling off the coat. "Now I have to find something else. I'll be right back."

"That will take a while," Bernie told Saint Just, who was just slipping into the black cashmere topcoat Sterling had fetched for him, along with a pair of black leather gloves and an approximately eight-foot-long, thin white silk scarf Saint Just wrapped twice around his throat. "She only owns one winter coat. I know how much money she makes. I sign the checks. She still thinks it's all going to disappear one day and she'll be back to tomato soup and peanut butter sandwiches. Plus, that old coat is warm and comfortable, or so she tells me—not to mention that she has all the fashion sense of a twelve-year-old. Make the woman buy a new coat, Alex. A grown-up coat. Please!"