A Proposal for Christmas: State SecretsThe Five Days of Christmas

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Do we have time to sit by the fire for a while,” David asked easily, setting his wineglass aside, “or are we off to tackle the mysteries of Belgian rum sauce?”

  Holly laughed, even though the thought of sitting in front of a romantic winter fire with a man—with this man—patently made her nervous. “We have a few minutes.”

  He stood up, but instead of coming around to pull back Holly’s chair, as Skyler would have done, he started gathering up dirty dishes. Holly was disappointed for a moment, but then she decided that one act was as considerate as the other and began to help.

  Holly waited, every nerve screaming, for him to kiss her. He didn’t do it while they were clearing the table, of course, and in the kitchen he kept the dishwasher door between them as they put the china and silverware inside. Was he shy or something?

  Holly’s cheeks stung with color. Elaine was right, she castigated herself angrily, you’re hot and bothered!

  Once the dishwasher was churning away, David caught Holly’s hand casually in his and led her back to the living room as though it were his house. As though they had all the time in the world.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t—” she sputtered, lifting his hand so that she could peer at the watch on her own wrist. “It’s getting late—”

  David sat down on one of the soft Indian pillows facing the fireplace and pulled Holly after him. She tumbled against him, and her heart lurched into her throat at even that small contact, driving the breath out of her lungs and causing a curious ringing sound in her ears.

  She settled herself primly on the other pillow, careful not to look at him. She knew that she would see the familiar, quiet amusement shining in his navy blue eyes.

  “Holly.”

  She swallowed, knotting her hands together in her lap. “What?”

  “Look at me.”

  She looked at him because doing otherwise would have been foolish and petulant. Even infantile. “So, I’m looking already,” she said.

  He laughed and that was at variance with the look in his eyes which, instead of humor, betrayed a reluctance of some kind. A hurtful reluctance.

  Holly was stung. David wanted to resist her as badly as she wanted to resist him! Wasn’t she attractive? Did he find her— David bent his head and kissed her, and an almost inaudible groan rumbled up through his chest and brushed against her lips. He was only nibbling at her mouth, tasting it as though it were a delicacy to be savored. He muttered something, and to a dazed Holly, it sounded as though he’d said, “Why?”

  She couldn’t think of that now. She couldn’t think of anything except the havoc that reluctant kiss was causing inside her. She shivered and placed her hands on his strong shoulders, where they moved of their own accord to caress his neck.

  He kissed her in earnest then, his tongue exploring the sweet depths of her mouth, enlisting her own to respond in quick, fevered parries. His hand moving gently up and down the length of her thigh caused the flesh hidden beneath to quiver.

  Holly wanted to die and she wanted to live forever. She wanted to stop and she drew him nearer, allowing him to shift her body and his own so that they were both prone before the crackling fire.

  His hand left her thigh to move up over her hip, underneath her soft mulberry sweater, over the flesh at her waist, over her rib cage. He freed her from his sorcerer’s kiss to nibble gently, provocatively, at her earlobe and her neck.

  “I want you, Holly,” he said in that forthright way of his, his voice a gruff caress against the base of her neck.

  Holly shivered, even though there was a heat pulsing inside her that made her long to fling off her clothes. “David, I...we...”

  “I know,” he chuckled, and his hand had found the catch at the front of her bra. There was a feeling of sweet, wanton freedom as her breasts were released, and then his fingers were soothing her, searching out a nipple that already awaited them at strictest attention. “Tell me to stop.”

  If Holly hadn’t been so bedazzled, she would have slapped him. “I can’t...” she admitted, her words falling away to a groan as he found that arching nipple and rolled it gently between his fingers.

  He drew her sweater slowly upward, his hand cupping the captured breast, shaping it for conquering. When he bent his head to lave the throbbing peak softly with his tongue, Holly gasped with pleasure and arched her back in reflexive surrender.

  “We...can’t do this...” he managed to say as his mouth blazed a path from the conquered breast to the one that awaited sweet defeat. “We can’t...”

  “I know,” Holly agreed. But when his tongue touched the untended nipple, she knotted her hands in David’s rich, mink-soft hair and held him close.

  Holly Llewellyn was to wonder many times, sometimes with regret and sometimes with relief, what would have happened if the telephone hadn’t rung when it did. Its cold, jarring jangle made David thrust himself away from her as if in fury.

  Stung and shaken and still needing, Holly hastily fixed her bra and stumbled off at a half jog to answer.

  “Hello!” she gasped, winded and embarrassed. She could see David from where she stood and he was just staring into the fire, his broad back rigid.

  “Sis?”

  Holly wanted to cry. Not now, she thought frantically. Oh, God, not now! She lowered her voice. “Hello, Craig.”

  “‘Hello, Craig’? Is that all you’ve got to say?”

  Holly stiffened, very conscious of the man sitting before the fireplace. Her breasts were still heavy and warm with passion, their peaks moist. She tried to breathe properly. “What should I say, Craig?” she asked petulantly, forgetting this time to keep her tone at whisper level.

  “I tried to pick up the money,” Craig rushed on angrily, frantically. “Guess what? There were crew cuts all around Cindy’s place!”

  Holly trembled, then drew a deep breath. “Crew cuts?” she repeated, confused. David’s back stiffened almost imperceptibly, or was that a trick of the firelight? He didn’t appear to be making the slightest effort to hear what was being said, but appearances could be deceiving.

  “FBI agents. Holly, they were everywhere! Did you turn me in?”

  “Of course I didn’t!” At this outburst, David turned his head, assessing Holly with a look she could read all too well: it was full of stark, angry pity.

  “Just listen,” Craig rasped. God in heaven, how desperate, how hunted, he sounded. “I’m going to need money, Holly, and if I have to come there and get it, I will!”

  “You can’t do that! Toby would be—”

  “Toby. Always Toby. Don’t you ever think about anybody besides that kid, Holly? What about me? I’m your brother, remember?” Craig stopped to draw a harsh breath and then began to cough. It was a frightening sound.

  “You’re sick!” Holly exclaimed, watching David. He had turned his eyes from her again and was now gazing into the fire, one knee drawn up under his chin. “Craig, please—turn yourself in. They won’t hurt you, I swear it!”

  “I’ll call again tomorrow!” Craig roared impatiently, and then he slammed the receiver down so hard that Holly flinched. She was on the verge of tears when she placed her own receiver in its cradle.

  The silence in the living room was complete, except for the snapping merriment of the fire. David looked at Holly but did not rise from his seat near the hearth. Holly closed her eyes momentarily, in a vain effort to shut out the reality of Craig and his problems, then drew a deep breath to steady herself.

  “Y-you’re a lawyer,” she began, speaking as casually as she could. “If someone is wanted by the law, and another person...a person close to them...knows where they are and sometimes gives them money...”

  David rose slowly to his feet with the grace of a predatory animal, but he kept his distance. And it was more than a physical distance. “Then that person is guilty of aiding and abetting a fugitive,” he said evenly. “They could, under some circumstances, be imprisoned.”

  Holly trembled and bit her lower lip. When
she closed her eyes against the possibility, her already precarious balance was affected and she swayed. David was instantly clasping her shoulders, holding her upright. And while there was a gentleness in his touch, there was little sympathy.

  “I can help you, Holly,” he said hoarsely. “If you’ll just allow yourself to trust me, I swear I can help you.”

  Holly longed to pour out the whole ugly story, to tell him how scared and confused Craig was, to explain that he hadn’t meant to do all those awful things. But she didn’t dare. The fact that she had almost given herself to David moments before, making a joyous offering of something she held dear, changed nothing.

  David Goddard was still a stranger.

  5

  The rest of that week was dismal for Holly. She couldn’t concentrate on her work and she was short not only with Elaine but with Toby. When Skyler called, offering an innocent-sounding invitation to lunch, she all but bit his head off.

  In the evenings, of course, she taught her cooking class, and David was always there, always attentive—and never friendly. He might have been a total stranger, answering what casual questions Holly could contrive to ask with flat, clipped banalities. Not once did he stay to help with the cleanup, as he had those first two nights, and he certainly made no effort to contact her outside of class.

  Holly was devastated and she was scared, too. Craig had nearly been caught in Los Angeles. How could the FBI have known where he would be if not for David’s seeing the address on that letter she’d mailed? And that night, that shattering night when they had almost made love, David had said, “I can help you, Holly. If you’ll just allow yourself to trust me. I swear I can help you.”

  He knew; she was sure he knew. And as far as Holly was concerned, that was reason enough not to see him again. Ever.

  Except that she needed him, wanted him. Perhaps, though she couldn’t often bring herself to examine the possibility rationally, she was even beginning to love David Goddard.

  On Friday night, Skyler called to ask her out for dinner and a movie. Holly refused, pleading a headache, and went to bed early, setting the answering machine because Skyler had a tendency to be persistent. The telephone rang twice during the night, and a sleepless Holly timed the calls at eleven thirty-five and twelve-ten.

  The next morning was one of those springlike days that sometimes creep into winter. Though there were still ragged patches of snow on the ground, the sun was bright and the sky was a painfully keen shade of blue.

  The weather did much to bring Holly out of her doldrums, and to make up for some of the stresses of the past week, she suggested to a rather wan and distraught Toby that they take his airplane to Manito Park and fly it.

  “I’m going to the Ice Capades this afternoon,” Toby reminded his aunt, running his spoon glumly through the dish of oatmeal before him. “My whole class is going.”

  “I remember,” Holly said softly. It hurt, this restraint between herself and Toby. It was a sad, pulsing ache. “You’ll be back in plenty of time, I promise.”

  Toby brightened. “Okay,” he chirped. “Let’s hurry up with breakfast and go!”

  His ebullience made Holly laugh, easing the bereft feeling inside her. “Let’s do that. Be sure to wear your mittens because it’s cold.”

  Toby nodded. As he passed Holly’s desk, his oatmeal gleefully abandoned on the trestle table, he stopped. “Mom, there’s messages on the machine. The light is flashing.”

  Holly glanced uneasily toward the telephone. Between Craig and Skyler, it was getting so that she didn’t like to answer the thing at all. It wasn’t likely that David had left those messages, she told herself, and she was in no mood to hear a lecture from Skyler or a lot of pathos from Craig. “I’ll listen later. Right now, I’m in the mood to fly your Cessna.”

  “Me, too!” Toby agreed, and he was off again, in search of the warmer clothes he would need for a morning in the park.

  Perhaps too conscientious for her own good, Holly went to the answering machine and frowned down at the little red light blinking so industriously, her finger poised over the “play” button. What if the calls had been from Craig and he was in terrible trouble? What if—

  She stopped herself, sighed and drew back her hand. It could wait. Whatever it was, it could just wait. Any kind of hassle at this moment would be too much.

  The park was sunny, and in places patches of green-brown grass dappled the grubby snow. There were lots of children around, their laughter ringing in the ice-cold air, and a goodly number of parents, too.

  “I wish I’d brought my sled,” Toby said wistfully, watching as some of the children pushed and pulled each other on Flyers and plastic saucers.

  Something twisted inside Holly as she watched her nephew; despite all his friends at school, he was a lonely child, often feeling separate from the others. Alone. While Holly’s own childhood had been far from ideal, she had had Craig. Toby had no one near his own age.

  The little boy squinted up at her, a grin forming on his face, and the toy Cessna seemed huge in his small hands. “You thinkin’ about my dad?” he asked directly.

  Holly was stunned. Lately it seemed as though she went around with all her thoughts written on her forehead, so clearly did people read them. “How did you know that?”

  Small shoulders, hidden beneath the weight of a down-filled snowsuit, moved in a shrug. “You get a sad look on your face when you think about Dad.”

  “We were very close once,” Holly admitted distractedly, having to look away for a moment because of the tears that stung her eyes.

  “Dad’s a bad man, isn’t he?” Toby probed seriously, his mittened hands working awkwardly with the airplane.

  Holly shook her head so suddenly and so hard that her neck ached—as did her heart. “No, Toby. Your dad isn’t really a bad man, though he has done some bad things. He’s sick, Toby, and pretty confused.”

  “He doesn’t want me.”

  Holly knelt in the snow, which crackled beneath the worn knees of her oldest jeans, and clasped Toby by the shoulders. “It isn’t that way at all, Toby. Your dad loves you. But when people have the kind of troubles he does, they just don’t seem to have room in their lives for other things and other people.”

  Toby’s face was scrunched up in the battle against unmanly emotion. “I liked Mr. Goddard a lot. How come he didn’t come back? Does he have problems, too, like Dad?”

  Holly closed her eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath. “No, Toby. I don’t think he has the kind of problems that your dad has. As for why he didn’t come back—”

  “He was a fool,” put in a deep, masculine voice.

  Holly and Toby looked up simultaneously, squinting against the dazzling winter sun, to see David standing over them. He wore a dark blue ski jacket and jeans, a contrite expression on his face and held his own model airplane in his hands.

  “Hi!” Toby whooped, overjoyed.

  While Holly was glad enough to see David herself, glad enough to shout, in fact, she was a little injured by Toby’s enthusiasm toward the man. It was as though a hopeless day had just been saved at the last, cliff-hanging second. And there were all her misgivings, too...

  “Truce,” he said gruffly, extending one hand to Holly, the plane tucked under his opposite elbow now. “Please?”

  Holly swallowed. It was sheer, foolhardy madness to get further involved with this man and she knew it, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to refuse what she knew he was offering. “Truce,” she croaked out, after what seemed like a long time.

  Eyes of an impossibly dark blue swept over her so swiftly that she could almost believe it hadn’t happened, and then they shifted to Toby. “Hi, slugger. Ready to fly?”

  Toby was literally beaming. Again Holly found his obvious fondness for David Goddard unsettling. What would happen when David went away? What if he did something that would hurt Craig and thus Toby, too?

  “I’m ready!” came the exuberant answer.

  David proved to
be a lousy pilot, always dropping his hand controls or sending his somewhat odd-looking model airplane plunging into bushes, but Holly was too amused to chalk this up as another reason to be suspicious of him. After all, he’d only said he owned a model plane, not that he was proficient at flying one.

  In any case, David’s ineptitude only seemed to endear him further to Toby, who patiently demonstrated again and again how to handle the craft properly. Holly stood back and watched, full of mingled dread and tender inclinations. She was glad, even relieved, when Toby offered her a turn with his airplane, for that gave her something to think about besides David Goddard and all the wonderful, terrible things that could come of allowing him into her life.

  As the small airplane glided and dipped and roared overhead in a perfect circle, following the commands Holly gave it with her handset, Toby and David both applauded. Privately, she was surprised that she hadn’t sent the thing crashing into a tree; her fingers wouldn’t stop shaking.

  Finally the morning ended; it was time to take Toby home, give him lunch and let him have a few quiet minutes before driving him to the Coliseum, where he would join his classmates for the afternoon performance of the Ice Capades.

  Leading Toby toward her car, she glanced uncertainly at David. What would happen now? Did he want to talk? Would he just leave, or would there be a renewal of the dangerous attraction that seemed to be sweeping them together?

  Holly felt stiff, almost formal. Walk away and don’t look back! screamed her mind. This man is dangerous! But her heart said something entirely different. “We enjoyed seeing you again,” she ventured aloud.

  David’s lips curved into a half grin, one that said he understood her feelings because they so closely paralleled his own, but his blue eyes were sad. “Toby will be busy this afternoon?” he asked evenly.

  “I’m going to the Ice Capades!” the little boy crowed before Holly could assemble a polite answer.