Once Upon Stilettos

I could certainly see that after the kiss, but he’d been that way before he had any reason to be afraid of me. I wished Gemma was right, but I was afraid she was wrong about this one. You’d think that magic would make everything easier—a flick of the wrist and you can have anything you want—but it only seemed to complicate things.



That didn’t stop me from being nearly breathless with anticipation Friday night as I finished getting dressed in my new velvet dress and my now disenchanted red shoes. Gemma helped me pin my hair up. “You look fantastic,” she said. “Even if he wasn’t really crazy about you before, he will be after he gets a good look at you.” As much as I hoped she was right about that, a part of me wished I could have kept some of the enchantment on the red shoes, at least the part that gave me confidence if not the part that would make Owen want to kiss me.



I didn’t want to subject the poor guy to my roommates, so I ran downstairs to meet him after he rang the buzzer instead of making him come up to get me. He had a cab waiting at the curb, and he was impossibly gorgeous in a classic black tuxedo. “Are you up for this?” he asked as he helped me into the cab.



“You’re the one who has the acting job,” I replied. That was supposed to be his cue to say that he didn’t have to pretend to be totally enchanted by me, but this was Owen I was dealing with, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when he didn’t give me the smooth comeback.



Instead, he said, “You’ll have some acting of your own to do.” Then he looked at me, concern in his eyes. “Don’t you?”



I sighed and hoped our cabdriver was one of the many whose English was sketchy at best. “Not that much,” I admitted. “It is coming back, but it’s still iffy. I catch things out of the corner of my eye from time to time, but I’m not a hundred percent yet.”



“That’s going to make tonight extremely interesting.” It was his typical understatement.



“Have you let the boss in on what you have planned tonight?”



“No, it’s probably best if he doesn’t know.”



I turned to stare at him in shock. “I thought you showed him the shoes, for evidence.”



“I documented the spell. There are ways of recording those things. But I believe it’s best if he’s surprised tonight. I didn’t want to risk even the slightest hint of a rumor getting out.”



“I believe I’ve found your flaw. You’re insane.”



“I have everything under control.” He sounded as calm as he usually did, but I recognized the edge under his words and shivered. Owen was usually so mild-mannered that it was easy to forget how very powerful he was—so powerful that, according to Rod, he’d actually been brought up to be shy and unassuming so he wouldn’t become a dangerous megalomaniac. I couldn’t help but wonder how much of Rod’s warning hadn’t been mere jealousy, after all.



The party was being held in the building’s soaring, cathedral-like lobby. I’d thought that was an odd place to hold a company party, but it had been transformed in the few hours since the close of business that afternoon. At any other company, it would have taken a team of decorators a week to carry out a transformation like that. At MSI, it probably took a few people a wave of a hand.



Lush green garlands hung from the balcony railings over the lobby. Tiny lights twinkled among the branches, and I had a feeling there were no cords involved. Star lights like larger versions of the ones that had been put in my office floated beneath the ceiling. The room itself was surrounded by Christmas trees, with the largest reaching almost to the roof, in the middle of the room where the doorman usually sat. Scattered among the trees were tables loaded with food and drink. A string quartet—the instruments playing themselves—sat at the top of the stairs.



“This is fantastic,” I said.



“We do some of the best decoration spells around,” Owen remarked, as he helped me out of my coat. “They’re very popular at this time of year.” He pointed to one of the smaller trees, which had the effect of snow-covered branches sparkling on a moonlit night. “That’s one of mine, something I came up with while I was still in school. Royalties from that one paid for my house, more or less.”



“It’s beautiful. Beats the heck out of the foil icicles we put on our tree back home.”



He handed our coats over to the coat check, then we put our secret Santa gifts under the huge central Christmas tree. I noticed that if I looked at some of the trees out of the corner of my eye, they disappeared or looked bare, and I was grateful that I’d been given at least a brief glimpse of their glory, even if my lack of immunity was a problem. I stood on tiptoe and whispered to Owen, “How much of this is real and how much is illusion?”