High Heels and Holidays Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.”
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œMaggie, 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.”
    â€œAh, 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.”
    â€œI 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 á 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....
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œMaking 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.
    â€œOh yeah, that works,” Maggie breathed, swallowing yet again. “But—”
    â€œMaggie,” 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