Free High Heels and Holidays by Kasey Michaels

and walked over to stand beside Maggie as the two of them looked the tree up and down.
    Maggie reached out after a few moments and bent one of the smaller branches on the artificial tree so that the tassel on one of the ornaments could hang straight. “That’s better.”
    â€œIt all looks very nice, even if it isn’t real,” Sterling agreed. “You really do like Christmas, don’t you, Maggie? And all the fol-da-ral.”
    â€œFol-da-ral? Wow, Sterling, that’s a good one. But, yes, I do like it. I adore Christmas.”
    â€œEven when you get it wrong,” Sterling said, and then quickly clapped his hands to his mouth.
    â€œExcuse me?” Maggie rather glowered at Sterling as he backed away from her. “And why does that sound like you opened your mouth, Sterling, but Alex’s voice came out?”
    â€œOh, no. No, certainly not. Surely not.”
    Maggie made come-to-me-speak-to-me gestures with her hands, and Sterling backed up another step. “What did he say? He had to have said something. God knows he’s always got to say something.”
    â€œWell,” Sterling said, forced to stand still now that he’d inadvertently cornered himself between Maggie and the back of the nearest couch, “you just made a simple mistake, that’s all. Nothing important, really. Oh, you know what, Maggie? I think I forgot to feed Henry. Poor thing, running on that wheel of his all day. He must be famished. I really must be going now, and surely Saint Just will be back at any time. It’s already past three, isn’t it? So that’s all right.”
    â€œRight, it’s past three. And we’ll get to that next, Sterling—why it’s all right, whatever it is, because Alex will be home soon. But for the moment, let’s get back to me getting it wrong. Getting what wrong, Sterling? Where? How?”
    â€œIt’s . . . um . . . not that it wasn’t an honest mistake. . . and you were much less experienced at the time and . . . why, anyone could make the mistake . . .”
    Maggie reached into her pocket, took out a fresh nicotine cartridge, and held both it and the nicotine inhaler up in front of Sterling. She opened the empty inhaler and dangled the cartridge over it, just as if she was going to drop a bullet into a gun. “I’ve been good. I’ve been sucking air, Sterling, for three days. Don’t make me use this.”
    â€œYou had a Christmas tree in a book years before Christmas trees ever came to England,” Sterling told her quickly, then took a quick breath. “There, I’ve said it. Now put that away, Maggie.”
    Maggie slipped the two plastic pieces and the cartridge back into her jeans pockets. “I what? No, that’s impossible. I research everything. Sure, I make a few mistakes, who doesn’t? But Christmas trees? Everybody has Christmas trees.”
    â€œWe didn’t,” Sterling told her, obviously feeling more confident now that Maggie had holstered her nicotine inhaler. “Yule logs. Holly berries. Crape myrtle. But not trees. Yet you mention one, in some detail, actually, in one of your Alicia Tate Evans books. Saint Just pointed it out to me.”
    â€œI did? Oh, wait. Yeah, I remember now,” Maggie said, nodding. “Alex read my Alicia Tate Evans books?”
    â€œNo, I don’t believe so. At least not for several years.”
    Several years? Maggie felt a shiver ice-skate down her spine as she fumbled in her pocket for all the pieces of her addiction. Alex hadn’t even been here several years ago. As of about seven years ago, he hadn’t even been invented, the Saint Just mysteries hadn’t been invented. “Run that one by me again, please, Sterling.”
    Sterling looked as comfortable as a balloon in a room full of pin cushions. There was nowhere to go where he wouldn’t end up in trouble. “Um, he hasn’t read them at