Kasey Michaels - High Heels and Holidays

"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 ...