A Proposal for Christmas: State SecretsThe Five Days of Christmas Read online

  Toby flung David a beleaguered look. “I’m not allowed to eat much sugar,” he complained.

  David chuckled and rumpled Toby’s corn-silk hair. “You’re so abused. Tell me your sad story in the car, will you?”

  And after David had kissed Holly soundly but briefly, they were off.

  Holly sat alone in the living room with the lamps turned off, admiring the lights of the Christmas tree. “When it comes to glow, Tree,” she said aloud, “you’ve got nothing on me.”

  * * *

  David liked being with Toby, and he had certainly enjoyed the day. Still, Craig Llewellyn was much in his thoughts as he navigated the snow-slicked roads in the Camaro he had rented after returning the brown sedan.

  The little boy, fastened firmly into the seat belt on the passenger side, chattered on and on about the Christmas tree, the day they’d flown model airplanes in the park and the trip to Skyler Hollis’s family’s farm. David listened patiently, though in actuality he was going over the facts Walt Zigman had given him during their last telephone conversation.

  Craig Llewellyn had managed to elude the FBI in that little Oregon town, just as he had in L.A. He was smart, Llewellyn was, and slippery. But he wasn’t smart enough.

  David knew that he would appear in Spokane very soon. And he was worried about Llewellyn’s threat, overheard the day Toby had impulsively turned on Holly’s answering machine and replayed her conversation with her brother. She obviously didn’t know that David had heard the recording; maybe she didn’t even realize that the machine had been on when she’d picked up the telephone.

  He glanced at Craig’s son and wondered how cocaine could have been bigger than such a treasure of a child. God, if this boy were his own...

  David stopped himself. Once this thing with Craig actually broke, there would probably be little left of what he and Holly shared. She would hate him and so would the boy. It was a grim irony that he’d chosen her of all people, to fall in love with.

  * * *

  David seemed subdued when he and Toby returned with the take-out chicken. His eyes dodged Holly’s and his contributions to the conversation were few and far between.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, when a grumbling Toby had been settled at the trestle table to do his homework, and they were alone again beside the Christmas tree.

  “I guess I’m tired,” he said.

  Holly was on the verge of tears. Was he going to spoil the day, after all they’d shared? Was he going to start talking “mistake” again?

  “I guess you’re shutting me out,” Holly argued evenly. “And I don’t understand it, David. Not after today. You can’t make love to me and then treat me as though I’m some bad habit you wish you could break.”

  The word “habit” hung between them, or so it seemed to Holly. But David couldn’t know about Craig’s confessions to her concerning cocaine; there was no way he could know that.

  “I can’t do this problem!” Toby wailed from the kitchen. “Somebody help me!”

  “I’ll do it,” David volunteered, his eyes still averted. And a moment later, he was turning his back on Holly and striding off toward the kitchen. He remained there until Toby’s homework was done and it was bedtime.

  While Holly appreciated the help David gave Toby—math was her secret nemesis—she felt a bit put out, too. How had things changed so completely, just in the time it took David to go and buy the take-out chicken?

  When she came downstairs, having tucked Toby into bed and heard his prayers, David was sitting in front of the living room fire, staring ponderously into the flames as though some drama were being played out there.

  Holly needed a moment to think, to collect herself; where this man was concerned, she had a way of plunging over emotional precipices, of saying and doing all the wrong things. Turning into the kitchen, she suddenly halted, stunned.

  Craig was standing there, leaning casually against the counter, a cup of hot coffee in his hand. He looked so ragged and thin, with a fevered light in his eyes that made Holly despair.

  “Craig,” she whispered.

  He toasted her sardonically with a lift of his coffee cup. “You didn’t send the money,” he said.

  Holly could barely breathe, so great was her shock at seeing this wasted parody of the man who had been her brother. His filthy army fatigue jacket seemed two sizes too large and his eyes were sunken and haunted. “Craig, I couldn’t,” she said, keeping her voice low for fear that David would hear. “I didn’t have a chance. You only called on Saturday...”

  Craig’s eyes swept the room, as though he might be assessing the value of things he saw there. “That guy helping Toby with his homework. Who is he?”

  “Keep your voice down! He’s still here!”

  Craig’s thin shoulders lifted in an impertinent shrug. “What’s his name and where did you meet him?”

  Holly sighed, half-sick with surprise and confusion, afraid that David would hear Craig and, conversely, afraid that he wouldn’t. “His name is David Goddard and I met him in a class I’m teaching.”

  “I thought so. I remember him from the good old days.”

  “You—you what?”

  “I remember him. He’s a Secret Service agent, Holly. Or didn’t he tell you that? I’ll bet he asks a lot of questions about your misguided big brother, doesn’t he?”

  The room swayed around Holly, rising and falling, tilting at stomach-clenching angles.

  “You mean you didn’t even suspect?” Craig taunted in leisurely tones. “He must be pretty good.”

  Holly had suspected; she had. So why was it such a brutal surprise? She groped for the trestle table’s sturdy edge, collapsing onto the bench. “Oh, my God. My God.”

  “The Secret Service doesn’t usually handle this sort of thing,” Craig speculated idly. “Must be connected to our dear cousin Howard, the never and future king.”

  It happened then; David came through the doorway. Holly heard him, felt him there, but could not look at him. Or at Craig.

  “Llewellyn,” he said, and Holly supposed it was an offhand greeting, though David had given the name no tone at all.

  “Goddard,” Craig replied calmly.

  Holly looked up then, afraid. Suppose Craig had a gun? Suppose—

  “Would you leave us alone, please?” Craig asked her companionably. “We’re old friends.”

  Holly hadn’t the strength to rise from that bench at the trestle table, and even if she had, she still would have stayed.

  She darted a look from one expressionless man to the other, praying that there would be no violence, praying that Toby wouldn’t stumble in.

  David didn’t so much as glance in her direction, and when he spoke again, he addressed Craig. “This can be easy, Llewellyn, or it can be difficult. The choice is yours.”

  Craig laughed and then horrified his stunned sister by pulling a pistol from beneath his tattered army coat and laying it on the table. “I’ll take it easy,” he said. “Besides, the bushes outside are probably crawling with crew cuts by now. I’m not so far gone that I don’t know you guys have been watching this place.”

  David took up the pistol deftly and unloaded the chamber, slipping the bullets into his pocket. His gaze slid to Holly just for a moment, and there was nothing in it to indicate that they had ever laughed together, ever been lovers.

  When he went to the door to admit the inevitable agents, Holly sagged against the table’s edge and covered her face with both hands.

  8

  By morning, the news of Craig Llewellyn’s “dramatic” capture was all over the newspapers. It was on television; it was on the radio. And it was in Elaine’s face when she returned to work, largely recovered from her flu and wide-eyed with concern.

  Holly sat blindly at the trestle table, a newspaper spread out before her.

  Elaine took off her coat and sat down on the bench across from Holly. Being a true friend, she didn’t ask why she had never heard anything about Craig before. “Are
you going to let Toby go to school today?”

  Holly sighed. “I don’t know. Oh, Elaine, I don’t know anything.”

  “It must have been awful.”

  Images of FBI agents surging into her kitchen throbbed in Holly’s mind. Images of David, so cold, so quiet, so determined. “At least Toby slept through it all,” she managed to say.

  Elaine’s hand came across the table to squeeze Holly’s. “David Goddard—”

  “Don’t mention that man’s name in this house, Elaine! Not ever again!” Holly flared, her eyes filling with tears of betrayal and fury.

  “You were in love with him,” Elaine said flatly. “I thought so.”

  “He wasn’t in love with me!” Holly wailed. “Oh, Elaine, it was all an act from the first! I should have known—I did know but I wouldn’t listen to my own instincts.”

  “That’s very hard to do sometimes,” Elaine comforted quietly. “Did David tell you that he cared for you?”

  “Yes! But he lied—he only wanted to find Craig!”

  “Maybe he didn’t lie, Holly. Maybe he meant what he said.”

  “He lied. He wanted my brother.” Holly was calmer now, though her heart was still thick with despair and raw sobs lurked beneath her carefully modulated words. “He lied.”

  “Well,” Elaine said, “one thing is for certain—we’re not going to get any work done today. And I don’t think Toby should go to school until things quiet down a bit, do you?”

  Holly shook her head. Eventually, the little boy was going to have to face the things his father had done, but she wanted him to hear the truth directly from her, and not on the school grounds. “C-could you take him home with you, just for the day? I’m afraid there will be reporters...”

  “You know I’ll do anything I can to help. What about your class tonight, Holly? Are you going to go ahead with that, or shall I call everyone and tell them the course has been canceled?”

  Again Holly shook her head. “I’ll go crazy if I don’t keep on working.”

  “What if David comes to class?” Elaine asked softly.

  “I don’t think even he would have that kind of gall. But if he does show up, I have a few things I want to say to him, you can bet on that!”

  “It might be better to listen to what he has to say, Holly. I can’t believe he—”

  “Believe it. I was just something above and beyond the call of duty to him, Elaine. A means to an end.”

  Elaine looked as though she might want to say more, but she held her tongue. The telephone began to ring and she leaped up to answer it, her voice crisp and in charge.

  “Do you want to talk to the press, Holly?” she asked after a few words with the caller, her hand over the mouthpiece.

  “No!” Holly cried.

  “I’m sorry,” Elaine said into the receiver, “Ms. Llewellyn has no comment.” With that, she hung up and turned on the answering machine to record a similar message for any future callers, setting it to pick up automatically.

  And it was then, of all times, that Holly remembered what it was that had eluded her before, concerning the answering machine. After leaving those two vanished messages, Craig had called her again and the machine had been on. It would have recorded both sides of the conversation between her and her brother.

  David Goddard had listened to that conversation, and he had erased it from the machine! He would have heard Craig mention the town in Oregon, the cocaine habit. And when the FBI had failed to find her brother there, he had no doubt deduced that Craig was desperate enough to come to Holly.

  Which explained, of course, why he had spent the day there. Putting up the Christmas tree. Making love to Holly, going out for fast food so she wouldn’t have to cook. And, finally, helping Toby with his homework. All very neat and professional.

  In that moment of realization, if David had been standing before her, Holly was certain she could have killed him without hesitation.

  Elaine had gone upstairs to fetch Toby, and the back door burst open and snapped closed again so forcibly that Holly was startled out of her grisly reflections.

  Madge Elkins, the housekeeper, was turning the lock and getting out of her coat at the same time. “Good Lord, there must be a hundred reporters and TV people out there, Holly. They chased me up the driveway!”

  Like an automaton, Holly got up from the bench and went to the window over the sink. Sure enough, the backyard was full of paparazzi. So, probably, was the sidewalk out front.

  If they step on my tulips, Holly thought ferociously, stomping through the house. And there they were, dozens of them, with cameras of every sort in their hands and avid looks on their faces.

  Holly flung open a window in the living room and yelled, “Get out of my flower beds!” Before so much as one question could be asked, she slammed the window shut again, so that their sudden burst of words only bounced off the glass, a dull, babbling sound.

  In the kitchen, Elaine and Toby were getting ready to make a break for it. Holly knelt in front of her nephew and held his small shoulders in her hands, hurting for the confusion and fear in his face.

  “Tobe, everything is going to be okay,” she said in a voice that didn’t sound the least bit like her own. “It really is.”

  “Why are all those people out there? What did we do?”

  “We didn’t do anything. Toby, your dad was arrested last night and they want to ask us about him. You don’t have to say anything at all to them—just stay close to Elaine.”

  Toby’s eyes were wide and frightened. “Dad was arrested? Why?”

  There was no choice but to be honest. Now, at this late date, Holly wished she had told Toby about Craig to prepare him for this inevitable disaster. “Your dad has a lot of problems, Tobe. Remember that day in the park, when I told you that he does bad things sometimes?”

  “They put bad people in jail!” Toby protested, his lower lip jutting out.

  “The police are not our enemies, Toby. It might not seem so right now, but being arrested was the best thing that could have happened to your dad. Now he’ll get the help he needs.”

  Toby was clearly still confused, but he was calmer. Madge, on the other hand, was fidgety, standing at the kitchen window and peering out.

  “I don’t know if you should try to get past them, Elaine,” she fretted. “It might be better to stay here.”

  This particular dilemma had been gnawing at Holly, too. She kissed Toby’s forehead and stood up again, wondering what to do. It was then that David appeared at the back door, his breath a white fog in the winter air, his face set and determined. Holly would certainly not have admitted him, but Elaine did just that, before she could protest.

  He barely glanced in Holly’s direction, speaking instead to Elaine as he distractedly ruffled Toby’s hair and then drew the child against him. Not knowing of David’s part in this debacle, the little boy held on to the man as if for dear life. “What’s the plan?”

  Holly simmered, too furious to speak, but Elaine answered David’s question as though he had every right to be there, every right to ask such a thing.

  “I want to take Toby over to my place, but we’re not sure about shuffling him through that crowd.”

  David, still not sparing so much as a look for Holly, nodded crisply and reached down with one arm, lifting Toby to ride on his hip. He smiled, actually smiled, into the child’s trusting face. “Tell you what, slugger. I’ll take you to Elaine’s car. You just pretend those people aren’t even there, okay?”

  “Do they want to hurt me?” Toby asked in a tone that twisted Holly’s heart.

  “No way,” David said confidently. “They want to ask you questions, just like your teachers do at school. But we don’t have time to talk, do we?”

  “No,” grinned Toby, wrapping his arms around David’s neck. “We don’t want to talk.”

  David’s eyes shifted to Holly’s then, meeting her gaze squarely. And the expression in those fathomless indigo depths said that he was not apologizi
ng for Craig’s capture.

  Holly would not have expected him to do that. Craig was a sick man and his arrest, as she had told Toby in other words, was, though painful, the end of a long nightmare. No, it was the way David had used her that hurt. The way he had insinuated himself into her life, caused her to care for him and lied again and again, both by word and by action, about his own feelings.

  Now, though he hadn’t said a word, he was asking her permission before plunging into the crowd of TV and newspaper people. Seeing the trust in Toby’s face, knowing it would be better if he spent the day away from the house, she was forced to give that permission. She nodded, letting her eyes tell David Goddard that despite this concession, the distance between them could never be bridged.

  With Elaine at his heels and Toby perched on his hip, David opened the kitchen door and went out. Madge fretted and fussed at the window; she was braver than Holly, who could not bear to look.

  “They made it!” the housekeeper crowed after a few seconds of terrible suspense.

  “D-David isn’t on his way back in here, is he?” Holly ventured to ask, wringing her hands.

  “No,” Madge replied, apparently innocent of the intrigue that had just taken place between her employer and the man in question. “His car must be out front, because he went the other way. Maybe he’s going to follow Elaine and Toby to make sure they aren’t bothered en route.”

  The possibility that some of the reporters might trail after Elaine had not occurred to Holly until then, and she was jarred by it. “You don’t suppose they will, do you? You don’t suppose these...these people will bother Elaine and Toby?”

  “They’ll stay here,” Madge said confidently, her face still pressed to the window. One of her hands waved in an annoyed gesture. “Get out of there!” she shouted to someone outside. “You’ll crush the lilac bush! You! Yes, you! Leave that birdbath alone!”

  Despite everything, Holly had to laugh at the ludicrous comedy of it all. She poured herself a cup of coffee and went to her desk in the corner of the room, as though this were any ordinary day. The way the answering machine kept picking up on phone calls proved, of course, that it wasn’t, as did the horde Madge had ordered away from the birdbath and the lilac bushes. Until Elaine called to say that they had arrived at Roy’s mother’s house out in the Spokane Valley, she left the machine’s volume up so that she could hear each caller.