A Proposal for Christmas: State SecretsThe Five Days of Christmas Page 12

  Two college girls were living there now, and they couldn’t tell Holly anything about David Goddard except that he must have had a dog because there were these “grungy” stains on the rug. Holly had turned away and gone blindly back to her car, sitting there in the parking lot for a full fifteen minutes with her forehead resting despondently against the steering wheel. She had already known that David had returned to his old life in Washington, D.C., so why was it such a crushing blow to find that strangers were living in his apartment? What would she have said to him if he had been there?

  Holly hadn’t known the answer to either question and now, kneeling on the floor of her own living room, struggling to wrap a last-minute gift for Toby, she still hadn’t worked it all out.

  The doorbell rang, and Holly sniffled and dashed a stray tear from her cheek. Who could that be? After all, it was Christmas Eve, and nearly eleven o’clock at that.

  She opened the door to find Skyler Hollis standing on the porch, looking uneasy and snow-dappled and rather earnest. For the space of a second, Holly had allowed herself the fantasy that David would be there in the glow of the porch light, and she hoped her disappointment didn’t show.

  “Sky,” she said. “Come in.”

  “I hope you don’t mind my coming by, Holly. I know it’s late—”

  Cautious because Skyler could be damnably persistent at times and because she didn’t want to give him the wrong idea, Holly stepped back to admit him without saying anything.

  He was carrying two beautifully wrapped packages in his arms. “I did my Christmas shopping last July,” he explained. “I couldn’t very well give Toby’s to Mary Ann, so—”

  Holly smiled because it was just like Skyler to do his Christmas shopping in July. He had probably addressed his cards then, too, though she hadn’t received one. “Come in, Sky, and sit down. I think there might be some eggnog left.”

  He entered the living room ahead of her, put the two packages beneath the tree, then went to the hearth, ostensibly to examine Toby’s as-yet-unfilled stocking, and confessed, “I’ve been worried about you, Holly, since that thing with your brother broke.” He let the stocking fall back into place and turned to face her with the eyes of a concerned friend. “Are you all right?”

  Holly shrugged and averted her gaze so that he wouldn’t see the tears that had gathered there. “I’m all right,” she lied.

  “Toby?”

  Toby was resilient. In fact, he was rather enjoying the notoriety of having a “spy” for a father. “Toby is okay, too, Sky. How have you been?”

  A smile broke across his face, warm and, to Holly, very reassuring. “I’m dating Mary Ann,” he said.

  Holly was pleased and she hugged Skyler impulsively. “That’s wonderful.”

  Skyler was still grinning. “I’m opening another store, too—up in Colville. I’ve been wanting to spend more time there.”

  Colville was a good-sized town and very near the farm. Holly smiled, starting to ladle out a cup of eggnog from the crystal bowl in the middle of the coffee table. Earlier, Roy and Elaine and Madge had all been by, and Holly had done her best to present them with some sort of celebration. “Your parents must be happy about that.”

  “Oh, none of that for me,” Skyler said quickly, referring to the eggnog. “That stuff is fattening, you know.”

  Holly chuckled and took a sip from the cup herself. Lord knew, she spent so much time running on the mini-trampoline that she didn’t have to worry about calories.

  “You really ought to get away from Spokane for a while,” Skyler said, watching her with a sort of gentle disapproval that implied she wasn’t her usual self. “Hawaii, maybe, or—”

  Holly laughed. “I can’t go away, Skyler, much as I would like to. Toby is in school.”

  “All the same—”

  She went to him, standing on tiptoe to plant a sisterly kiss on his cool, clean-shaven cheek. “Don’t worry about me, Skyler. Please. I’m going to be just fine. You just concentrate on Mary Ann.”

  He returned her kiss, though her forehead was the target. “That guy is gone, isn’t he?”

  Holly’s throat felt thick and sore again; she could only nod.

  “He’s a real fool,” Skyler said. There was a long silence and then he started toward the door again, still wearing his coat. “I guess I’d better go,” he said gruffly, his hand on the knob. “I’ve got a long drive to make.”

  “Be careful,” Holly managed to say.

  Skyler cleared his throat and nodded. When he met Holly’s eyes, his gaze was full of something she had been getting too much of lately—sympathy. “I will. Merry Christmas, Holly.”

  Holly swallowed hard. “Merry Christmas, Skyler.”

  When he was gone, Holly walked back to the living room. The fire was burning low, the lights on the tree were glimmering and a Christmas carol was coming softly from the stereo. Holly swallowed again, squared her shoulders and methodically filled Toby’s stocking until it bulged. For the first time in her entire life, she cried on Christmas Eve.

  * * *

  It seemed to Chris that her brother’s smile was a little sad as he filled the girls’ Christmas stockings and returned them to the hooks on the mantelpiece. He was looking at the two stockings that remained: his own and Chris’s.

  “I didn’t know you still had these,” he said gruffly.

  Chris ached for him; though he hadn’t said much about the disaster in Spokane, she knew David well enough to guess that he’d fallen for someone out there—probably Holly Llewellyn herself—and lost her. Her own painful divorce was two years in the past, but enough of the hurt lingered for her to sympathize.

  “Holidays are the worst, aren’t they?” she prompted softly, perching on the arm of the sofa and watching her brother.

  David was tracing the letters of his name, awkwardly written in glitter across the top of the old red corduroy stocking. “Remember the year Mom made these, Chris? She was so proud of them.”

  Chris closed her eyes momentarily, scrounging up a smile. “You were Joseph in the church play,” she recalled aloud. “Mom made your robe from an old sheet with Batman all over it.”

  David laughed gruffly. “Yeah. You were an angel that year. Talk about miscasting.” He fell silent, then turned to face his sister, his dark blue eyes full of pain. “Do you miss Dennis?”

  The truth was that Chris rarely thought of her ex-husband. She was too busy with her girls, the house, the cover designs she painted for romance novels. “At Christmas I get a little sentimental. Most of the time, I revel in how much he and Mona deserve each other.”

  David laughed again, and the pain in his eyes faded a little. “I think the same thing about Marleen and her monkeys,” he confessed.

  “Something is hurting you,” Chris prompted gently, folding her arms.

  “Being a two-time loser, I guess,” came the hoarse admission.

  “Holly Llewellyn?”

  David lowered his handsome head. “Not much gets by you, does it, Chris? You ought to be an FBI agent or something.”

  “Walt’s daughter tells me you’re resigning.”

  David cursed, but with less spirit than Chris would have liked. “Zigman has a big mouth.”

  Boldly, Chris went to her desk, picked up the telephone in both hands and thrust it toward her brother. “Call Holly and wish her Merry Christmas,” she said.

  “It’s too late—”

  Chris glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “It’s only eleven out there. I’ll bet she’s still up.”

  David considered the telephone for a moment, as though it were some complicated equation, then turned resolutely away. “Shall I bring the girls’ presents in from the garage?”

  Chris sighed. From long experience she knew how stubborn her brother could be. She set the phone back in its place. “Let me check and see if they’re asleep yet. Sometimes they pretend.”

  “How do you know if they’re pretending?” David asked, so guilelessly that Chris
had to laugh.

  “Men! You tickle them, of course. If they giggle, they’re playing possum.”

  David shook his head, grinning. Because his eyes had strayed to the telephone, Chris turned quickly and hurried up the stairs and into her daughters’ room. She remained there, in the darkness, long after discovering that they were both asleep.

  * * *

  The telephone was ringing. Holly stared at it over her shoulder, parts of the Lego village she was trying to assemble still in her hands. She dropped a plastic palm tree and lunged for the receiver, telling herself that she mustn’t let Toby be awakened by the noise.

  “Hello?” she whispered, breathless with the foolish hope she couldn’t seem to let go of.

  Long-distance. The special ring had betrayed the call as long-distance. Holly’s weary heart leaped within her.

  “Hello?” she said again, because her caller seemed stumped for words.

  “This is David,” came the gruff, belated greeting.

  Holly sagged onto the couch, dizzy with relief and with pain. “Oh,” she said woodenly.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “N-no—I was putting out the Santa Claus things for Toby,” Holly answered. Damn you, you should be here helping me, she added in her mind. For the moment, the fact that she had sent David away herself escaped her.

  “How is Toby?”

  God, the man was a conversational genius. Maybe that came from standing silent guard over presidents, ever-alert for any sort of danger. “He’s doing okay,” Holly replied. “He still has the fish.”

  “I hope their personalities have improved. They were definitely lackluster company when I had them.”

  Tears were streaming down Holly’s face now, but they weren’t audible, she hoped, in her voice. “What do you want from two goldfish? The old soft-shoe?”

  David laughed. It was good to hear that sound, even if it was distant. “A medley of Elton John’s greatest hits would have been nice.”

  “I’ll buy them a little piano.”

  David’s chuckle seemed to reach across the three thousand miles that separated them and caress Holly. “Have you forgiven me yet?”

  “Quite honestly, no.” It was sad to feel the anger again, the hurt. “Why concern yourself, David? You got your man and all that.”

  “It’s my woman I’m concerned with.”

  Holly thrust out her chin, determined not to let him touch her with his voice. But she reddened to remember being his woman on that very couch and her body responded with a keen, embarrassing ache in her middle and a warm swelling in her breasts. “There are two college girls living in your old apartment,” she said, and then hated herself for revealing that she’d gone there.

  David must have sensed her discomfort, for he mercifully allowed the faux pas to pass. “Did they get the stains out of the rug?” he quipped.

  Despite herself Holly laughed. “No. As a matter of fact, they didn’t. They asked me if you had a dog.”

  There was a short, uncomfortable silence. “Holly,” David finally ventured, “are you coming to Washington for the inauguration?”

  Holly was winding and unwinding the phone cord around her finger. “I hadn’t thought about it,” she lied. The truth was that she had thought of little else; she’d been wondering if David would be at any one of the round of parties that were scheduled.

  “Think about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Dammit, you know why! Because I’ll be in the president’s hip pocket the whole time and I want to see you, that’s why.”

  “Some Secret Service agent you are,” challenged Holly hotly, flustered because he’d touched a nerve. “Do you always flirt with women while you’re supposed to be protecting the chief executive?”

  David sighed and it was a sound heavy with exasperation and strained patience. “I’ll make time for you, don’t worry.”

  “You’re not going to make any kind of time, mister, so don’t you worry!”

  “Damn it all to hell, Holly, will you pull in your righteous indignation for one minute and listen to me?”

  “No!” hissed Holly, remembering the lies, the pretense, the humiliation of finding out that she had been used. “You treated me like a...like a bimbo!”

  He laughed. He actually had the gall, the temerity, to laugh!

  “Merry Christmas!” Holly shouted and then she slammed the receiver back into its cradle.

  After a few minutes spent wailing into a sofa pillow, Holly got hold of herself. She dried her tears and then stood up and went back to the Lego village, putting it together carefully. When it was done, she made sure that the red wagon was at just the right angle beneath the tree and that the football was displayed to proper advantage.

  Then she burrowed on her hands and knees through the scratchy, fragrant branches, to unplug the tree lights and plunge a conscientious finger into the base of the stand to make sure there was enough water.

  Later, upstairs, she put on a nightgown, brushed her teeth, washed her face and stumbled off to bed. Regrettably, no sugarplums danced in her head—only memories of David trying to fly his funny-looking model airplane in the park, David mixing fruitcake batter in the department-store class, David ushering Elaine and Toby through a pressing crowd of reporters and cameramen. David making love to her.

  “Nerd!” she whispered, pounding one fist into the pillow. “Get out of my mind!”

  David remained in Holly’s mind until she slept; then he haunted her dreams. It seemed she had barely closed her eyes before Toby was bouncing gleefully on her bed, his tightly filled Christmas stocking in hand.

  “Look, Mom!” he crowed, holding up the evidence. “Santa Claus came!”

  Holly widened her eyes in feigned wonder; it was a game they played every Christmas morning. In truth, Toby had already added Santa to his list of fictional characters, along with the Hardy Boys, Superman and the Tooth Fairy. He was still undecided about the Easter Bunny.

  Toby upended the stocking and the booty spilled out over the quilt—an orange, a bottle of bubbles, a deck of trick cards, a candy cane and at least a dozen other things. His delight uplifted Holly as nothing else could have.

  “Can we go downstairs and open the presents?” the child demanded once the stocking goodies had all been inspected and mentally categorized in order of usefulness.

  Holly pretended to be surprised. “I think we should eat breakfast first,” she said.

  Toby caught her hand in his and literally dragged her out of bed, giving her only a second to scramble for her robe and slippers before proceeding out into the hall and down the stairs.

  The next half hour was happily absorbed in ripping away paper and ribbons. Toby received a model car and a Scrabble game from Elaine and Roy, along with gifts from Holly herself, from Madge, from some of his friends at school. Skyler had given him a radio with—he was a true friend, that Skyler—earphones.

  “Aren’t you going to open any of your stuff?” he asked, surrounded by loot of every type. The eagerness in his eyes made her choose the package he and Elaine had wrapped in secret and put under the tree with a converse sort of ceremony.

  “This one has been driving me crazy,” she confessed, taking sidelong notes of the little boy’s quick, delighted grin. She opened the parcel to find a book she had been longing to read tucked inside. And her pleasure was real.

  After that, Holly uncovered a frying pan from Skyler—that made her smile—and a bottle of her favorite cologne from Elaine and Roy. There were other things, too, sent by her mother and faraway friends, but nothing, she assured the little boy, was quite as wonderful as the book he had chosen for her.

  Toby was frowning, peering into the depths of the tree. “What’s those things?” he asked.

  “What things?” Holly asked, honestly puzzled.

  “In there. There’s two presents in there, in the branches!”

  Holly smiled, thinking that Elaine must have hidden away an extra surprise or two for Toby. She liked t
o do things like that. “Guess you’d better investigate,” she said.

  Toby drew out a sizable box—Holly couldn’t imagine how she had missed seeing it—and then a smaller one. Both were wrapped in gold foil.

  “The big one’s mine!” Toby crowed after reading the tag. He was already tearing at the wrapping as he extended the other present to a confused Holly.

  She looked down at the tag on her own gift and her heart stopped, then started again with an aching lurch. “Love, David,” was written upon it in a typically firm hand.

  Trembling just a little, Holly did not open her gift but, instead, watched Toby rip away a second layer of paper to reveal a plain box. Inside was a small robot, complete with hand controls and a set of batteries.

  Toby lifted round, shining eyes to Holly’s face. “Who’s this from?” he whispered, awed. It was obvious that he was considering shifting Santa Claus from the fiction list to the one peopled by Holly and his teachers and everyone else he could see and touch.

  “From David, I think,” Holly said, and thank heaven, Toby was too enthralled with the gift to notice the tremor in his aunt’s voice.

  “Wow,” he said, dragging the word out for that emphasis peculiar to seven-year-old boys.

  Holly’s eyes were stinging a bit, and she averted her face for a moment before opening her own present with numb, awkward fingers. Inside was a small, elegant velvet box, and inside that was the most beautiful diamond engagement ring she had ever seen. Still trembling, Holly opened the note that had been rolled up and slipped through the ring itself. “Marry me or I’ll jump off the Washington Monument. Subtly, David.”

  Holly couldn’t help it. She laughed. She bit her lower lip to stop herself and that didn’t help so she laughed again. Tears were streaking down her cheeks and Toby was looking at her in total confusion.

  “What’s-a-matter, Mom?” he asked, flushed with concern.

  Holly closed the ring box firmly. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing is the matter.”

  “Was it a joke present?” Toby wanted to know, and his manner said that he wouldn’t consider that untoward.