Which had pretty much marked the moment when she'd begun to babble like a nervous virgin. Damn him.
"Ummm, perfect," she said now, around her first bite of medium-rare steak. "You really get some good ideas, Alex. So, what did you do this afternoon? Sterling told me you had something important to do."
Alex set down his wineglass. "Not really important. A bit of holiday shopping, my dear."
"Oh, goodie. What did you get me?"
"You'd have much better luck trying to pry that sort of information out of Sterling, which is why I plan to accomplish my shopping unaccompanied. Tell me more about this Santas for Silver, if you please. You did, of course, complete a Web search before allowing Sterling to join them?"
Maggie's fork clinked against the plate as she put it down with some force. So much for the romantic ambiance. "No, I didn't do a Web search. For crying out loud, Alex. They're Santas. They're collecting money on street corners. There are Santas all over Manhattan this time of year. You can't walk ten feet in any direction without bumping into a guy with a red suit and a bell. What's to search?"
"One of my Street Corner Orators and Players is stationed across from Tavern on the Green, if you'll recall. We have cultivated an extremely commendable reputation, and I wouldn't want it sullied by a supposed association with anything that is not entirely aboveboard."
"Oh. Right. Aboveboard. Like sweet little Mary Louise and her merry band of supposedly reformed felons. No, we certainly couldn't have that, could we?" She put her napkin on the table and got up, stomped over to her computer. "By all means, let's run a check on Santa."
Alex got to her before she could sit down at the desk. He took hold of her shoulders and turned her around so that they were just inches apart. "I'm sorry, sweetings. I was struggling for conversation, wasn't I, and succeeded only in putting my foot in it? We've been together for so long. It seems ridiculous to be nervous around each other, and yet I am feeling far from my usually confident self this evening."
"Yeah, join the club," Maggie mumbled, her hands having somehow found their way onto his chest, her palms flat against the soft material of his shirt, the firm muscle beneath. He was standing with his back to the Christmas tree, and the white lights seemed to make a halo around him. He was real, yet almost unreal. And warm to the touch. "That is, me, too." Wow, that was articulate. I are a writer, obviously.
"Something changed for us, between us, while we were in England, didn't it?"
"I don't know ... maybe." She looked up into his remarkable blue eyes beneath his fantastically sculpted brows, expecting to see his usual confidence and finding just a hint of uncertainty in their depths. Wow. He wasn't supposed to be uncertain, that was her job. He was supposed to be her hero, the man who knew everything, could be counted on for everything; brave, even fearless. "Alex ..."
"Yes, sweetings?"
"Don't do that," Maggie said, shutting her eyes. "Don't call me sweetings in that voice of yours—you know what voice I mean. That sexy drawl. And don't look at me like that. Don't try to seduce me." Her eyes shot open as a sudden thought hit her. "You are trying to seduce me, aren't you?"
His smile had her stomach doing a small flip.
"To descend somewhat into the vernacular, I believe I like the way you think, my dear."
Swallowing was becoming a problem. "Well, um, I'd rather you didn't. I think. But you do agree with me? Oh, God, did I just ask that? What a lousy love scene. Bernie would be blue-marking it all over the place."
Alex moved closer, gently insinuated his right thigh between her legs as he rested his hands on her hips. "Perhaps if we borrowed from an expert? 'For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.' "
"That's ... that's John Donne, isn't it? I had you quote him in The Case of the —okay, never mind," Maggie said.
"Shhh, sweetings ... and let me love ..."
Maggie watched, mesmerized, as Alex lowered his head to hers, her eyes closing when he captured her mouth with his own. I'm your huckleberry ...
She tried to protest. Really, she did. Even as she opened her mouth and Alex took sweet advantage of her new vulnerability to deepen their kiss. Even as her hands somehow found their way up and over his shoulders, to hold his head still as she broke the kiss, took a quick, deep breath as she looked deeply into his eyes, and then raised herself up on tiptoe to kiss him back.
Maggie felt his arms go around her, lifting her. "The door. Sterling," she managed to say as he rained kisses down the side of her throat.
"Taken care of," he whispered into her ear before nipping at her earlobe, lightly licking the sensitive skin behind her ear.
She buried her face against his shoulder as he carried her down the hall, toward her bedroom. "You did plan this, didn't you? I wasn't wrong. You planned to seduce me tonight, didn't you?"
They were inside her bedroom now, and Alex set her down on her feet, his arms loosely looped around her waist. "Among other things, yes. I will admit I had hopes."
"Other things? What other things?" Why couldn't she shut up?
He'd moved his hands now, hadn't he? Not a sudden move, but a very smooth and practiced one that ended with his palms lightly brushing the outsides of her breasts. Nothing too overt. Just a gentlemanly hint of what could be, if she were willing. "Do you really want to know, sweetings? Now?"
"Oh, hell, no," Maggie admitted truthfully, unable, as she would say of one of her Regency heroines in this situation, to summon a lie. And that was pretty much the last even remotely coherent thought she had for quite some time ...
Chapter Ten
Maggie awoke slowly, wondering why she was smiling in the darkness.
Oh. Right. Now she remembered.
Still smiling, she turned onto her side and stretched her hand out and over the sheets, expecting to encounter Alex's sleep-warm body. Maybe kind of sort of walk her fingers over his bare hip and ...
... nothing.
She scooted more to the middle of the king-size bed, stretched out her hand again, ran it up and down the surface of the mattress.
Still nothing.
Panic, the kind that freezes the blood in your veins and prickles the hairs on your arms, sliced through her.
He was gone? How could he be gone? Sure, she'd wondered about it, wondered if ... if doing what they'd done would change something somehow. Maybe make him poof back out of her life just as unexpectedly as he'd poofed into it.
But that was ridiculous. He'd been here for months. He wouldn't leave now.
He couldn't leave now.
Oh, God, what had she done?
She'd made love with a figment of her imagination, that's what she'd done!
And now that she had, maybe that would be the end of it; fantasy fulfilled. He'd leave, go away, go back into her head or wherever he'd come from, and she'd never see him again.
Because there had to be rules to this sort of stuff, right? Look, don't touch? Some sort of line they shouldn't have crossed? Like, hey, people can fall in love with imaginary heroes, sure. But they don't actually make love with imaginary heroes.
It was like that old joke about talking to God. When you talk to God, that's called praying. But when you start to think you hear God talking back to you, it's time for a psychiatrist.
Was it time for a psychiatrist?
Hell, she had one of those.
Sure. Like she could tell Dr. Bob any of this. Yeah, that would happen ...
"Oh, jeez, calm down, will you?" she ordered herself, turning onto her back, blinking as her eyes became accustomed to the near darkness. Then she saw the time as it was digitally projected onto her ceiling thanks to the nifty new clock she'd treated herself to last month. After all, if the hero could have a Foreman grill, the heroine—that would be her—could have a nifty gadget of her own.
Seven o'clock.
Well, that wasn't so bad, was it? It was morning, or at least it was on the other side of her room-darkening shades. Alex wouldn't have wanted to upset Sterling, so he was probab
ly just back in his own condo across the hall. He hadn't poofed. He wouldn't dare poof. Would he? He could control that stuff. He'd poofed in, right?
"Right, that's settled then," Maggie told herself sternly as she stumbled toward the shower, dragging fresh clothing with her as she went. "Shower, dress, wait for him to show up again. No panic, no reason for panic, no—ah, hell. How do I even look at him again after last night?"
She got her answer sooner than she'd expected, once she was showered and dressed more carefully than was her custom—which meant she'd actually put on mascara and lipstick. When she walked out into her large living room, it was to see that the dishes and glasses on the table were gone, so that she retreated down the hallway, past her bedroom door and into the kitchen, to see Alex at the sink with his back to her, rinsing a wineglass.
Okay. This was good. This was great. He hadn't poofed. He was still there, and looking good in the clothing she'd come fairly close to ripping off him last night.
Very good. Except for one thing.
What was she going to say to him? What happens now? Where do you go after you've been to bed with each other? Because there's no going back.
"Good morning, Maggie," Alex said without turning around. "I attempted to be quiet until I heard your shower running, but the mess is fairly well cleaned up now. Are you hungry?" he asked, finally turning around to face her, the hint of morning beard on his face kicking off a series of butterfly flutters in her stomach.
"Ah. Yeah. Famished."
"Good. I'll just go attend to my morning ablutions and the three of us will adjourn to Styles Cafe for a hearty breakfast, all right? You look wonderful, by the way," he ended, dropping a kiss on her cheek as he breezed by her, on his way to his own condo.
That was it? Hi, let's have breakfast? A kiss on the cheek? No postmortem? No ... God help her, no encore?
She held up a hand in a "wait a minute, we have to talk" gesture, and then gave it up because they might have to talk, but she'd be damned as to what either of them would say, so she just poured herself a glass of orange juice and retreated to her computer. She knew what she was doing at her computer, or at least she used to, before Alex showed up.
So what was he up to now? She'd made him, she ought to know.
Maggie opened her bottom desk drawer and pulled out the character description sheets she'd written before writing her first Saint Just mystery. She'd added to the description over the years as she'd learned more about her character, but could there be anything in those notes to tell her what to expect from him now?
Age: 35
Physical description ... well, she already knew that one. One could say she now knew that intimately.
She knew about his youth, his relationship with his parents. She knew his hobbies, his likes and dislikes—from the color of his waistcoat to the flavor of jam he liked best on his morning toast—but there was really nothing to tell her how he'd react in a situation like this.
Had there ever been a situation like this?
Giving her investigation up as a dead-end pursuit, Maggie woke her computer and started her search engine, and then typed in santasforsilver.org, just hoping for an easy hit ... and she found one.
The site certainly looked professional, or as professional as a site could look with a line of animated high-kicking Santas doing their Rockettes thing along the top of the page. The site was composed of several pages. One for locations of Santas for Silver both in Manhattan and on Long Island and Staten Island. Another page contained an application to become a Santa for Silver. Another page was loaded with hearty endorsements from people associated with soup kitchens, homeless shelters, youth clubs, all those good things, stating how Santas for Silver was always so generous, etc., etc.
"Nothing here to hurt anybody," she said and closed the page, deciding that a few games of Snood wouldn't turn her back into a Snood addict. She'd kicked nicotine, right? She certainly could play Snood without becoming hooked again. Besides, it was pretty hard to think of anything else when the Snoods were dropping, and she really didn't want to think about anything else. Anyone else ...
"Good morning, Maggie."
Maggie looked up from the screen to see Sterling standing just inside the door, dressed in his Santas for Silver suit, a large brass bell in his gloved hand. He even had a small silver badge pinned to his chest. On it was a carved Santa head and S-4-S —Santas for Silver. Cute. "Oh, don't you look sweet," she said, getting to her feet and giving him a big hug. "Are you going to have time to go to breakfast with us?"
"No, I'm sorry to say, but I must be on duty in an hour, and I still must return to Santa headquarters to retrieve my chimney. Saint Just said you weren't feeling well last night, so he sat up with you until the wee hours, then fell asleep on the couch. He's a true friend, Saint Just is, isn't he? Are you feeling more the thing this morning, Maggie?"
"Sure, Sterling, thank you, it was ... it was just a headache," Maggie said, one question answered. Alex wasn't going to borrow Sterling's bell and go around town ringing it and yelling, "I got some, I got some!" Thank heaven for small favors ...
"All set, Maggie?" Alex asked from behind Sterling who, although he had no hat to tip, graciously shook his huge red stocking cap, the one with the bell on the end, and then headed for the elevator. "Lord bless him, I'd hate to burst his happy bubble."
"You don't have to," Maggie said, grabbing her coat from the hook beside the door. "I looked up Santas for Silver, and they sure look legit. Legal, that is, if you don't know that term. Come on, I'm starving."
And she wasn't kidding. Until she took her first bite of scrambled eggs, she hadn't realized just how hungry she was, but once those eggs hit it was as if her body moaned "And it's about damn time, lady!" and it wasn't until she was munching on her second slice of bacon that it occurred to her that neither she nor Alex had said anything after giving their orders to the waitress.
"Um ... thanks for covering for me," she told him, then quickly took another bite of bacon. "I mean, with Sterling. He ... he might have gotten ideas, and we don't want to hurt him, get his hopes up or anything."
Alex merely nodded. "Have you spoken to your mother, Maggie?"
"Huh?" Talk about changing the subject, jeez. "No, and you know I haven't. I've been ducking her calls, just like the loyal, loving child I am. Why? Oh," she added a moment and one brain synapse later. "Oh, no. You're not going to—no, you wouldn't do that. Would you?"
"Travel to Ocean City with you for Christmas and apply to your father for your hand in marriage because I compromised you last night, you mean?"
Maggie could feel her cheeks going crimson. "Yeah. That. That honorable Regency gentleman happy horse hockey. You wouldn't do that, would you?"
Alex lifted his coffee cup and smiled at her over the rim. "No, I don't think so."
She collapsed against the red leather booth in relief and then just as quickly sat up very straight again. "Hey, wait a minute, buster. What do you mean, I don't think so? What? I'm not good enough for you?"
Alex took a sip of coffee, then returned the cup to the tabletop. "Very well, if you insist."
"No!" Maggie clapped a hand over her mouth and looked around the small cafe, hoping no one had overheard her. "No," she repeated quietly, "I don't want you to do that." Then she told the truth. "But you could have at least pretended, you know."
"I'm sorry. Should we go back and begin again?"
Maggie shook her head and then dropped her paper napkin on her half-eaten breakfast. "Nope. I'm done. We're done. What do you say we go check up on Santa Sterling."
"Father Christmas Sterling," Alex corrected. He smiled at the waitress who had been leaning on the counter, looking at him, and she flew to the table to ask if there was "anything else the gentleman needed."
"Boy, that torks me," Maggie told him after they'd paid the check—she'd paid the check, actually, just to let the waitress know she'd been sucking up to the wrong tipper—and they were out on the street once more. "I co
uld have been a department store dummy you'd propped up across from you, for all the attention I get when I'm with you. But you eat it up, don't you? When you even notice. Not only that, you encourage them."
"I beg your pardon?" Alex asked as he tipped his hat at the female cop at the corner who waved back to him, called him by name. "I encourage what?"
"You know what. Women, fawning over you. You called that waitress by name—"
"Loretta, yes."
"Right. Loretta. She's been waiting on me for years. Years, Alex. I don't know her name."
"You're not a people person, Maggie," he explained. "You live in your work, your books. And, as a beneficiary of that myopia when it comes to the rest of the world, you have my gratitude. Ah, and there's our boy now. He looks so happy."
Maggie shifted her attention from glowering at Alex to grinning at Sterling, who was industriously ringing his bell and ho-ho-hoing each time someone stopped to give some silver to Santa.
"You know, that's kind of cute, in a cheesy, commercial sort of way," she said as she watched a child place a quarter inside what looked to be a large funnel inside the clear fiberglass chimney. The quarter began at the top, going round and round, descending by mere inches with each revolution, until it finally disappeared into the hole at the bottom of the funnel, at which time the chimney flashed red and green for a few moments and the child wailed to his mother, "More! I want to do it again!"
"And four quarters equal one dollar," Alex pointed out as the child dropped another coin and clapped as it did its descending rotations around the funnel. "American ingenuity at work. Quite impressive."
They watched Sterling for some minutes, then crossed the street to hear Vernon, aka Snake, his Byronic good looks and deep voice as enticing as the Hamlet soliloquy he was performing.
" '... a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep—To sleep' —hiya, Alex— 'perchance to dream.' "
"Handsome, even talented, but, unfortunately, dumb as a red brick," Alex said, sighing.
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