Saint Just shook his head. "It's early days yet, Maureen. We're merely gathering clues at this time. But we most certainly will be speaking to Miss Petersen, won't we, Maggie?"
"Yeah. You can be charming, and I'll grill her. That should work. And not a word, Reenie, not to anybody. Reenie? Are you listening to me?"
Maureen looked at her sister, her complexion deathly pale. "You're going to look at the husbands? That's what you said, Alex, didn't you? You're going to look at the husbands? Oh, God, what have I done!"
Maggie opened her mouth to say something, but Saint Just touched her arm, shook his head. "Maureen, my dear," he asked gently, "does John know about your indiscretion with Mr. Bodkin? We'd wondered, but we couldn't be sure."
Maureen nodded her head furiously, and then buried her face in her apron. "I ... I wanted him to go to therapy with me. We were all going to go, Mom said, before Mom threw Dad out. If Dad knew, then John should ... you know. Know? I told him a couple of months ago."
"Oh, cripes," Maggie said, grabbing Saint Just's wineglass. "What is it with this family? First Mom, and now you? Confession is good for the soul? Is that what you thought? What a bunch of bunk! Alex, if I tried passing off this plot in a novel, nobody would believe it."
" ' 'Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.' "
"Don't quote Byron at me, Alex. Not now."
"Ah, you recognize the quote, and know the source. And here you insist on saying you write, but you do not retain. You're so self-deprecating at times, my dear. You might want to work on that with Doctor Bob in your therapy sessions."
"Bite me," Maggie growled at him, and then reached over to her walker as she punctuated her suggestion. Oooga-oooga.
Chapter Nineteen
"Alex?"
He made a low, purring sound and continued to stroke her hair as she rested her head against his bare shoulder. Wasn't he sweet? She felt a little like purring, herself.
But they really had to talk.
"You really should get married."
Alex sat up, dislodging Maggie from her comfortable spot. "I beg your pardon? Is this a proposal?"
"No, not exactly, sport. Let me try that one again, okay?" Maggie scooted backward against the headboard, pulling the sheet with her, pushing her hair out of her eyes. "Not to me. Not here. Not yet. In our books, Alex. That's what I'm talking about. You should be married. Think of all the hearts you'd break. One a book. I'm writing book eight now. That's eight broken hearts. That's terrible. And I'm—cripes, I'm your enabler."
"I don't know that this is a problem. The dear ladies all seemed happy enough as I gave them their congé—gifting them with diamonds and the like. Bracketed to one woman, I might be boring. Think of our readership, sweetings. There's nothing more lethal than a boring hero."
"Right. That's why I decided you needed to be sarcastic sometimes. And with a little touch of larceny in your soul. Man, both of those have come back to bite me a time or two, haven't they?"
"So we're finished with this subject?" he asked, settling back against the pillows.
"I don't know. I don't think so. I've thought about this before, you know. A couple of weeks or so ago? That maybe it's time you evolved in our books. You're always talking about evolving here, with me. Growing, changing, all of that stuff? Not that it's worked so far. Maybe, after eight books, it's time Saint Just also grew, evolved. Got married, set up his nursery. If you evolve in the books, it stands to reason you might begin to evolve here, too, yes? Be less inclined maybe to poof one day?"
"One advancement at a time, please. I see no crushing need for a nursery in the near future."
"True. One thing at a time. And it's not like you'd have to get married all at once. I could ... I could introduce a new character. A woman. You could, I don't know, you could strike sparks off each other. Liking each other sometimes, not so crazy about each other at other times. Build the relationship over the course of a few books, and then, bam, you get married."
"And live happily ever after? How boring. Are you planning on abandoning the Saint Just Mysteries?"
Maggie wished this conversation didn't sound so much like she was talking about Alex and herself. Except that she was. Sort of. He had to know it. "Being married doesn't mean their adventures would be over. I can think of a bunch of series where being married worked. The Nick and Nora Charles movies and books, for one. Hart to Hart, on television—that's an oldie, not as much of an oldie as the Nick and Nora Charles things—but they both worked. Oh, and Nora Roberts has a great series going now with a man and his cop wife. You and ... you and your bride could solve the mysteries together. There'd still be plenty of sex," she added, feeling her cheeks going hot, darn it. "The mysteries, the sensual interludes, the perfect hero being a perfect hero to his own woman now as well as in general? I think I like it."
"Maggie. Dearest. Are you by any chance feeling even a tad jealous of my heroines?"
"Don't be ridiculous! They're fiction. Why would I be jealous of your fictional bed partners?"
"I don't know. Perhaps because that particular fictional character is sitting beside you in this bed, talking to you? If moving onto this plane of existence was possible for me, for Sterling, could it one day be possible for one or two of your other characters?"
"Yeah, right. And with my luck, it would be one of the villains."
"An unhappy thought," Alex agreed, slipping his arm around her shoulders. "But never fear, I would dispatch him immediately—and then kiss my lady wife and take her to bed."
"Very funny."
"I doubt that any of this is amusing to you, sweetings," he said quietly. "I do not doubt that much of what we're discussing has to do with your sister and Mr. Bodkin. Am I correct?"
"Well, yeah. Maybe. Sort of ..."
"You're comparing me, the Viscount Saint Just, to Walter Bodkin? I may go into a sad decline."
"There aren't that many differences. Not when it comes to how you treat women. How your character treats women, that is. You know—love 'em and leave 'em?"
"More than merely taking to my bed in despair, I fear. If you'll excuse me now," Alex said, a chuckle in his voice, "I do believe I will locate my sword cane, find a deep woods somewhere, and walk inside, fall on my sword. It's all you've left me, Maggie."
"Oh, shut up! You're not anything like Bodkin, and you know it. But, man, Alex, that ditzy sister of mine? The guy seduces her—and half the county—and they're not mad at him. If Bodkin isn't going to come off as the bad guy, then what does that make my sister, and all those other women? Dopes, that's what it makes them. Willing to be used, discarded. I never looked at the heroines in the Saint Just Mysteries that way before, but that's what they are, too. Everyone knows Saint Just is a—well, not exactly a womanizer ..."
"Thank the good Lord for small favors," Alex grumbled, adjusting the sheets over them. "Next you'll be calling me a cad."
"No, you were—are—a man of your time. Rich, titled, wickedly handsome, faintly bored, on the lookout for adventure. Very appealing to the ladies. Irresistible."
"I can think of one who resists me with unsettling regularity."
"We're not talking about us, Alex."
"Yes, sweetings, I'm very much afraid that we are."
"All right, okay. Yes. We are talking about us. At least a little bit. Do you know how hard it is to write your love scenes, now that you're here? That last manuscript? It was bad, Alex. Toss in the circular file bad, which is where it went. Now I've started again, and this one is going to be terrible, too, I can just feel it. I need to give you a heroine. One heroine. Listening to Maureen tonight proved it to me. What you do now is a fantasy, okay for fiction, but at some point you become a farce, a man out only for his own pleasure. And that's not a perfect hero, Alex, not to today's woman, today's intelligent reader. Saint Just has at least to begin to evolve."