Once Upon Stilettos

by Shanna Swendson

  “Oh yeah. Was there anything important on those papers?”

  “It was something I was working on directly related to the Idris situation. Now, of course, I’ll have to go a different direction with it.” He shuddered slightly. “I don’t like the idea of someone going through my desk. Not that I have much to hide in there, but still…”

  “It’s your space.”

  He looked me in the eye. “Exactly.” He held my glance for a while. This time, I was the one who had to duck and look away.

  “You know what’s really sad? When my roommates ask me what happened at work today, I’ll have to say, ‘Nothing interesting.’”

  He laughed. “Can you imagine what they’d do if you told them the truth?”

  “They’d think I was making things up so my work wouldn’t sound too boring. I’m not sure I’d believe it if someone told me these stories.”

  “I suppose I’m lucky not to have any relationships outside this world. I seldom have anything to hide.”

  The part of my heart where the crush resided took a victory lap. I hadn’t heard any rumors about him dating anyone at the company, and if he didn’t have any relationships away from work, that meant he wasn’t seeing anyone. Then my brain reminded my heart that he’d said “world,” not “work.” There were magical people who didn’t work at MSI, and he could very well be dating one of them.

  “Maybe you’ve got the right idea, though,” he added thoughtfully. “You’ve got a sense of perspective. This world is all-consuming, and a taste of something normal must help keep you grounded.”

  I snorted. “If I were any more grounded, they’d have to dig me up.”

  “And that’s what makes you so valuable to us. Are you hungry for dessert?” he continued, totally changing the subject. He had a habit of doing that. “They have the best cheesecake here. It’s not chocolate, but it’s still good.” If he’d learned one thing about me, it was that I had a minor addiction to chocolate. I was flattered that he remembered.

  “I’m stuffed,” I moaned.

  “We could share a slice.”

  “You’re tempting me.”

  He gave me a mischievous grin and leaned forward. “Rich, creamy cheesecake.”

  I put my hands over my ears. “Stop it. I give in. We can split a slice.”

  The waitress came by with her pad handy. Her sixth sense must have been almost as good as Owen’s. “Any dessert for you?” she asked.

  “We’ll split a slice of cheesecake.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Decaf,” I said.

  “Me, too,” Owen added.

  “If my thighs are bigger tomorrow, it’s your fault,” I told him when the waitress left to get our dessert.

  “I hope you’re not fishing for me to tell you I don’t think you’re fat.”

  “Why, do you think I’m fat?”

  “No. But you don’t need to fish for compliments. Trust me.” I wished I knew how to take that.

  The waitress quickly returned with a slice of cheesecake, two forks, and two coffees. After one bite of cheesecake I was glad he’d convinced me to try it. I let him have most of it, though. I wasn’t as worried about calories as I was about popping a button off my clothes. While he ate, I gathered the nerve to ask a personal question. It seemed a shame to finally be with him away from work and spend the whole time talking about work. But what did you ask a guy like this? “Read any good books lately?” The last book he’d read was probably written in something like Ancient Transylvanian.

  “So if your work tends to suck you in and take over your life, what do you do when you’re not working at all? Do you ever really get away from it?”

  He frowned like he was contemplating the bite of cheesecake he’d just taken, then he took a sip of coffee. Finally he said, “I do the kinds of things anyone else does, I guess. I’ll admit to reading work-related material in my spare time, but only because that’s what I enjoy reading. Otherwise, I watch baseball, listen to music, go to movies. Mostly quiet things. I don’t like noise and crowds, but I sometimes go out with Rod on the rare occasion when he doesn’t have a date. Or two.”

  That didn’t give me a lot to go on. He was the most difficult person to get to know that I’d ever met.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “About the same as you, I suppose.” I hadn’t thought about it that way, but my list of outside activities wasn’t all that interesting, either. “I do stuff with my roommates. A lot of the time that involves blind dates. Most of the time, I’d rather stay in if they’d let me. I read a lot when I have the chance—nothing literary or good for me, only fun stuff. I go to movies sometimes, but I prefer old movies, the kind that usually aren’t at the theater. I cook. That’s about it.”

  “When your work is as exciting as ours is, maybe you need your personal time to be quiet.”

  The waitress dropped the check on our table as she walked past, and he grabbed it before I had a chance. “This one’s on me,” he said.

  “No, I can pay my part.”

  He shook his head. “No. I owe you.”

  “For what?”

  “Well, if you don’t count saving my life—which I do—I do owe you for a breakfast.”

  I felt like I should protest more, but I also got the impression I’d never win. I gave a sigh of defeat. “If you insist.”

  “I do.” He grinned. “You should know better than to get in my way.”

  “Oh, like you could do anything against me?”

  “I’m sure I could think of something.”

  I laughed at the mischievous look on his face. There was something familiar about the way I felt at that moment. It wasn’t the crush. It wasn’t even like anything I’d felt with a man before. Then I realized that it reminded me of the times when my brothers and I sparred verbally, all in love and fun. Great. Just what I needed, another big brother.

  As he walked me home, I realized that if this had been an actual date, it would have been the best date I’d had since I’d moved to New York. Maybe even since before that. I couldn’t remember a date where I’d had that much fun, been that at ease with someone.

  It hadn’t been a date, though, even if he had picked up the check. In spite of all the bonding we’d done, he still didn’t come close to touching me—no hand holding or even near-miss brushing of hands as we walked, no arm draped around my shoulders. But did that really matter? I’d had fun. I enjoyed being with him.

  When we stopped in front of my building, I said, “Well, thanks for dinner. I’m glad we did that. Otherwise, it was going to be mac and cheese in front of the TV.”

  “I’m glad you joined me. I think I needed to get out.”

  There was a long pause. I wondered if I should invite him up. I hoped he was wondering if he should kiss me good night. Before I made a decision about what to do, he said, “See you in the morning,” then turned and headed off toward his place. He didn’t even try to hug me or shake my hand.

  With a deep sigh, I climbed to the third floor. The apartment was still empty when I opened the door. Both roommates must have made their own dinner plans. The light on the answering machine was blinking, so I hit the PLAY button as I removed my coat. “Uh, this message is for Katie,” my mother’s voice said. Someday maybe she’d get used to newfangled things like answering machines. “This is your mother. I need you to call me as soon as you can. I have big news for you.”

  My mother will wait to tell you about a death in the extended family so it won’t ruin your day, and she hates answering machines, so the fact that she’d actually left a message and had said she needed me to call as soon as possible could mean only one thing: a death or serious injury in the immediate family. One of my brothers must have accidentally shot another brother while they were out hunting, or something equally dire.

  I wished I’d invited Owen to come up with me so I’d have someone nearby when I got the bad news. My hand shook as I picked up the phone and dialed home. When my mother answered,
I could hear a quaver in my voice as I said, “Mom, it’s me, Katie.”

  “Frank! It’s Katie!” Her voice sounded like she was talking away from the phone. Then she spoke into the phone. “Hi, honey, that was fast. I wasn’t expecting to hear back from you tonight.”

  “You said to call as soon as possible,” I reminded her. The fact that she’d left a message would have made me call back right away. If she just wanted to chat, she’d keep calling over and over again for hours instead of leaving a message. She always said she didn’t want to be a bother or make anyone feel obligated to call her back if it wasn’t important. “What is it, Mom? What happened?” I asked.

  “We have some news for you,” she said. She didn’t sound grief-stricken, so I allowed myself to relax slightly.

  I kicked off my shoes and sat down on the couch. There was no such thing as a short conversation with my mother, so I needed to get comfortable. “What kind of news?” I asked warily. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she told me she’d found an exciting new job for me or the perfect man for me to marry in a nearby town so I could come home from New York right away. My parents weren’t thrilled about me being in New York, to put it mildly.

  “Good news. We’re so excited. Your brother Frank Junior won the Rotary Club raffle at the homecoming game.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. It certainly wasn’t call-everyone-right-away news. They usually raffled off something like a shotgun or a duck blind.

  “It was two round-trip airline tickets to anywhere in the country, and he gave them to your father and me so we could come visit you. Isn’t that exciting?”

  “Wow,” was all I could say—literally. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see my parents. I hadn’t seen them in a little more than a year, and I still suffered the occasional pang of homesickness. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to see them in New York in the middle of everything that was going on.

  My parents in New York was a frightening enough idea. They’d never left Texas in their entire lives, as far as I knew. They found Dallas huge and intimidating. I couldn’t imagine turning them loose in Manhattan. I wouldn’t be able to hand them a subway map and tell them to have fun. I wondered if I could get away with booking them on one of those all-day bus tours that went all over the city—would that look like I was ditching them, or like I was being a dutiful daughter and giving them star treatment? Throw a magical threat into the mix, and things got a little too complicated for me to imagine coping with any degree of sanity.

  “She’s speechless,” my mom said aside to my dad, who usually stood nearby while she talked to me. I didn’t know why they didn’t get a speakerphone. To me, she said, “Now, don’t worry about having to put us up for the week. I know you said your apartment was small. We’ll get a hotel.”

  I knew manners meant I should protest and insist that they stay with us, but with Marcia’s sofa bed in the living room pulled out, nearly every square inch of our apartment was full. We might be able to put someone in the bathtub, but that could get awkward unless that person was an early riser. “I’ll make reservations for you at a place near here that’s not too expensive, but still clean and safe,” I said. “When will you be here?”

  “She’ll find us a hotel,” she said to my father before saying to me, “We were planning to be there for Thanksgiving. We can fly up that Monday, then back the next Monday. You don’t think it’ll be too hard to get a hotel then, do you? I mean, with all the people there for the parade?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll give it a try.” My mind was still buzzing from the idea of my parents coming anywhere near my crazy world. Normal New York would be wild to them. Magical New York would be mind blowing. Not that they’d necessarily see it, but I didn’t want to take that chance.

  “You probably have to line up really early to see that parade, don’t you?”

  “I think so. You’ll see it better on TV.”

  “Then it’ll be just like home. We can make Thanksgiving dinner at your place for you and Marcia and Gemma. Won’t that be fun?”

  It did sound fun, in a way. It also sounded like something that could drive me stark raving crazy. I had exactly one week to prepare. Maybe if I got moving on that investigation, I could nail our spy, save MSI once again, and earn myself a day off while my parents were in town. I imagined myself having a burst of insight the next morning, calling a staff meeting, then outlining the evidence that led to the dramatic revelation of the culprit, just like Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, I seemed to be more Inspector Clouseau than Sherlock Holmes. At best, I was Jessica Fletcher with a slightly better wardrobe and a lower body count among my friends and neighbors.

  “I’ll make reservations for you tomorrow,” I said. “Then let me know your flight details so I can meet you at the airport.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to go to any bother.”

  “It’s no bother, really,” I said. It would be a lot easier to meet them at the airport than to identify them at the morgue or put up MISSING posters about them after they accepted a ride from an unlicensed cabdriver who seemed friendly. I wasn’t sure either of my parents had ever been to an airport before, so they wouldn’t know the drill.

  “I can’t wait to see you again, baby,” she said. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  “I’ve missed you guys, too. I guess I’ll see you next week.”

  I was still sitting on the sofa in shock when Gemma came home. “I hate dinner meetings,” she said as she hung up her coat and scarf. Then she turned and saw me. “What’s wrong?”

  “My parents are coming for Thanksgiving.”

  “Then why do you look like they just told you your dog died?”

  I shook my head to clear it. Of course, I couldn’t explain the full reasoning to Gemma, so she wouldn’t be able to understand my worry. “I’m mostly surprised. They spent so much time telling me how awful it would be here that I can’t believe they’re willing to come here of their own accord. And it’s bad timing. I’ve got a huge project at work, and I can’t take time off to show them around.”

  “I’ve got some time off next week. I can play tour guide at least one day.”

  “Really?” Gemma would make a great tour guide, and in spite of the fact that she was unknowingly dating a guy who’d spent decades under a frog enchantment, her world was a lot more normal than mine was.

  “Sure. It’ll be fun. I love your parents.” She grinned suddenly. “I don’t suppose your mom is planning to make Thanksgiving dinner, is she?”

  “She’s already got it planned. She’ll die when she sees the kitchen, but she wants the big family gathering.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, your Thanksgiving dinner last year was wonderful, but I still remember that year I came home with you from college for Thanksgiving. Your mom is an amazing cook.”

  “And she’ll be delighted to feed you.”

  Marcia then came through the door. The starry look in her eyes hinted that her lateness had little to do with a meeting and everything to do with her boyfriend, Jeff, who also had some frogginess in his past. Only he wasn’t ever really a frog. He just thought he was for a while.

  “Guess who’s going to be here for Thanksgiving?” Gemma asked her before she even had her coat off.

  “Who?”

  “Katie’s parents.”

  Marcia’s eyes lit up. “Is Mrs. Chandler cooking Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “She plans to,” I said. It said something about my mom’s cooking that neither roommate had yet asked where my parents were planning to stay. For some of my mom’s pumpkin pie, I imagined either one of them might volunteer to sleep in the bathtub. Before they had to offer, I said, “I’ll need to make hotel reservations for them. Then I need to see if I can manage any time off. Maybe I can work half days.”

  “It’s a holiday week. Nobody will get any real work done, anyway,” Marcia said. “Do you think she’ll make that sweet potato stuff with the little marshmallows?”

  I was still so preoccupied by t
he impending parental visit that my heart almost forgot to flutter when I saw Owen waiting in front of my building the next morning. He greeted me with a warm smile, then frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong? Oh, it’s nothing. I’ve just been thinking.”

  He kept his usual slight distance as he walked alongside me. “About what?”

  “My parents told me last night that they’re planning to come here for Thanksgiving.”

  “That’s great.” Then he hesitated and added, “Isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. But I’m really busy right now, what with that investigation and all, and I don’t know that I can take any extra time off. According to company policy, I’m not even eligible for vacation time yet. But my folks really shouldn’t be left on their own in this city, trust me. I’m not sure who’d be in more danger, them or the rest of the city.”

  “Your boss probably doesn’t even know we have a vacation policy,” he said with a wry grin. “I’m sure he can be flexible with you. But other than the work issue, you’re glad to see your family, aren’t you?” He sounded almost concerned.

  “Yeah, I’m glad. I’m mostly worried about what they think of the city and my life. They were so worried before I moved here. Part of me is afraid this whole trip is their excuse to drag me back home. It would be a lot easier if I went to visit them.”

  “Or they could see what you see in the city. They might be proud of you for surviving here, and seeing the reality instead of their fears may make them feel better about you living here.”

  “You obviously haven’t met my parents.”

  He laughed. “They can’t be that bad. All parents worry a little, and their worries are usually a lot worse than the reality could possibly be.”

  I turned to stare at him. “You mean they’re worrying about worse things than me being caught up in a magical war between good and evil, in a company that has an enemy spy in it?” Then I thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, from what I know about my mom, she is worried about worse.”

  “And it’s not like she’s going to learn about the magical issues while she’s here.”