A Proposal for Christmas: State SecretsThe Five Days of Christmas

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Yes,” Holly managed to say, taking the gift, box, wrapping paper and all, to the mantelpiece, where she tucked it behind a picture of her grandmother. Out of sight, out of mind, she told herself without much conviction.

  All through that hectic day, all through the hurried breakfast, all through the drive to Elaine and Roy’s apartment, all through Christmas dinner and the rousing trivia game that followed, Holly’s mind and heart kept straying back to that ring and all it meant.

  Of course, she couldn’t marry David Goddard, as intriguing as the possibility was—not after what he had done. But she would take a certain pleasure in throwing that diamond in his face when she went to Washington next month to attend Howard’s inauguration.

  10

  Elaine was fairly dancing with excitement, her eyes bright and wide. She hugged Holly unreservedly, as other passengers pressed past them to board the airplane, and enjoined, “You have the best time anybody has ever had at an inauguration, Holly Llewellyn!”

  Holly felt rueful and wary—perhaps it was a mistake to go to Washington after all—but she did return Elaine’s hug. “Take care of Toby,” she said.

  “You know I will,” Elaine scolded good-naturedly.

  Holly wished she could back out at this late date but resigned herself to the fact that she couldn’t. She squared her shoulders, drew a deep breath and entered the covered passageway leading to the airplane. She looked back once, wavering, but Elaine made a little shooing motion with her hands and winked encouragingly.

  The flight was uneventful. Holly had a brief stopover in Denver, and then it was on to Washington, where a car and driver were waiting to take her to the White House—was this really happening to her? As a relative of Howard’s—good heavens, she barely remembered him—Holly was to be accommodated in style at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Escorted by a grim-looking Secret Service agent who would obviously rather not have been bothered, Holly was quickly shuffled into a limo with tinted windows and driven to the most august address in the United States.

  On the way, she tried to make conversation with the agent who sat in the back with her. A little chitchat, she thought, might ease her nervousness about what was to come. “Jimmy Carter came to Spokane once,” she ventured, “to speak at Riverfront Park. He rode past in a car like this one, with darkened windows, and I think he smiled at me because I saw a flash of teeth.”

  The chauffeur chuckled to himself, though his eyes were fixed on the crazy Washington traffic. But the Secret Service man only reacted with a look that questioned her sanity. She supposed that Jimmy Carter and his teeth were old news to this guy, but he could have been a little friendlier all the same. Holly resisted an urge to tap on his forehead with her knuckles and ask if there was anybody in there.

  They entered the White House grounds through a back gate, snow crunching beneath the limo’s tires as it came to a stop at a rear door. Holly drew in her breath and let it out as a long, Toby-like, “Wow.”

  The Secret Service agent cleared his throat, got out of the car and extended a hand to Holly. Reluctantly, she accepted it. This character had no personality at all, it seemed. He was certainly nothing like David.

  Holly left the limo with as much dignity as she could summon. Perhaps David would behave in just this manner when he was on duty; for better or worse, she was about to find out.

  In a small anteroom—Holly had no way of knowing what part of this fabled mansion they were in—another agent appeared. Like the first one, he wore a trim three-piece suit, a no-nonsense expression and a very small earphone that probably connected him to all sorts of small in-house intrigues.

  Holly was more nervous than ever, and that made her chatter again. “George Washington actually slept here,” she muttered, wide-eyed.

  The agents exchanged a long-suffering look, probably thinking how unfortunate it was that the president-to-be had to have such a bumpkin for a cousin. “This way, Madam,” one of them said, and Holly found herself being propelled through a series of rooms and up a rear staircase.

  “Do you know David Goddard?” Holly tried again. Maybe these guys were at least semi-human.

  The agents traded another look. Apparently the answer to that question was a state secret, for neither of them bothered to respond.

  They were now on the floor where the first family resided. Holly decided charitably that that accounted for the reticence of the two men escorting her. She was deposited in a lovely room decorated all in blue. To her amazement, her baggage had already been brought up, and a small, plump woman in a maid’s uniform was busy taking Holly’s new evening gowns from the garment bag and hanging them carefully in the closet.

  Here, perhaps, was a human being, though after the Secret Service agents, Holly didn’t want to make any rash judgment.

  “Hello,” she ventured.

  The maid, an elderly woman with a look of long service about her, smiled warmly. “Hello, Ms. Llewellyn. And welcome to Washington.”

  “Thank you,” Holly said with a sigh of relief.

  “I’m Mrs. Tallington, and I’ll be helping you while you’re with us. The first lady asked me to tell you that she will be in to greet you shortly.”

  So, Holly thought, Howard’s Maggie is already referred to by that lofty title, even though the swearing-in isn’t until tomorrow. “Have you worked here for a long time?” she asked as Mrs. Tallington examined Holly’s blue chiffon, made a cluck-clucking sound and shook her gray head.

  “Since JFK and Jackie,” came the brisk answer. “They come and they go. Some are happier to leave than to arrive, I might add. This gown will need pressing.”

  Holly chuckled and relaxed enough to set her purse on a mahogany dresser and remove her winter coat. “I was afraid everyone here would be like those men who brought me upstairs.”

  A mischievous light twinkled in Mrs. Tallington’s bright blue eyes. Her snow-white hair made a little knot on the top of her head, just visible through the gauzy fabric of her cap. “Don’t speak ill of those who are probably standing right outside your door,” she warned good-naturedly.

  Drawing in a quick breath, Holly went to the door, opened it a crack and peered out. The two agents looked back at her impassively, and she closed the door again with a resolute click.

  Mrs. Tallington was chuckling. “A little unnerving, isn’t it? But they’re there to guard you; they mean you no harm. Just make yourself comfortable and pretend they’re not around.”

  Holly had never been “guarded” before, and she was nonplussed. Once again she had misgivings about the wisdom of coming here, to this place where she didn’t belong, where everything was so formal and intimidating.

  “I’d like to see the room where Mr. Lincoln slept,” she said to distract herself.

  Mrs. Tallington nodded, her eyes twinkling again, toward a huge painting of the Great Emancipator himself. “You’re in it,” she replied matter-of-factly. “Some say they’ve seen Abe sitting on the edge of that very bed, taking off his shoes.”

  Holly shuddered despite her pleasant surprise at finding herself in a room once occupied by one of the greatest men in history. She certainly hoped that Mr. Lincoln would not deign to sit upon the side of the bed while she was in it—that would be most disconcerting.

  There was a slight ballyhoo outside and then a knock at the door. Before Holly could issue any sort of invitation, Maggie swept into the room, all campaign-trail smiles, her glistening blond hair artfully coiffed, her dress a designer original.

  “Holly, dear! How marvelous to see you!”

  Holly stiffened, then worked up a smile. After all, this was Lincoln’s bedroom and this was the first lady of the land. Such things had to be accorded due respect. “Hello, Maggie,” she said.

  Maggie bypassed Holly’s cheek with a distant-cousin-by-marriage kiss. “Howard and I are so pleased that you could come!”

  Mrs. Tallington, the wrinkled blue chiffon evening gown draped over one capable arm, ducked out of the room
without a word. Holly watched her go, using the time to overcome her secret ire over what Howard and his suspicions had put her through.

  The first lady drew back her guest’s attention with a trilling, musical laugh. “Howard will apologize himself, of course,” she said, “but I did want to tell you that we’re both very sorry over what happened to poor Craig.”

  Holly was momentarily annoyed. They were very sorry. Did they think their third cousin from Spokane had come down in the last snowstorm? They had believed, actually believed, that Holly could turn on her own country. “Thank you,” she forced herself to say.

  Maggie dragged discerning eyes over Holly’s rumpled woolen suit. “You’ll want to change before meeting with the president, of course.”

  Which president? Holly wanted to ask, but she bit the perverse inclination back. The outgoing administration was probably out-gone anyway. “Of course,” she answered.

  Maggie smiled her blinding, trust-my-husband smile. “Wonderful. When you’re ready, just tap at the door and the men stationed outside will see you to the Oval Office.”

  The Oval Office. Holly’s knees weakened and she hoped she didn’t sway visibly. Me? she thought. In the Oval Office?

  Maggie noted with a glossy smile that her guest was properly overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all. With a cheery word of farewell, she swept out.

  Holly wobbled her way into the bathroom that must have been added on sometime after Mr. Lincoln’s demise, undressed and ran a hot bath. Half an hour later, she was presentable again, her hair neatly brushed, her makeup fresh. Wearing an expensive suit of beige and emerald, she drew a deep breath and tapped at the door, as instructed.

  It opened to give Holly Llewellyn the shock of her life. David Goddard was smiling down into her face. “That outfit makes you look like a Midwestern schoolmarm,” he muttered out of one side of his mouth.

  Holly grappled inwardly for composure, then lifted her chin and retorted, “If it was good enough for The Today Show, buddy, it’s good enough for Howard.”

  For a moment, before the intangible veil of officialdom fell over his eyes, making them expressionless, David allowed them to transmit a welcome that made Holly pinken slightly.

  She was led to the Oval Office itself. There were Marines guarding the double doors, and beyond that point, there was a spacious outer office, populated by secretaries and advisors of various stations. One of them pressed a button on an intercom and said, “Mr. President, Ms. Llewellyn has arrived.”

  It was unsettling, the way everyone around there seemed to know Holly’s name without her telling them. Did they know how much she owed on her charge cards and what kind of hairspray she used and whether or not her library books were overdue, too?

  She flung one scathing, sidelong look at David, remembering just how personal a presidentially ordered investigation could get. “Rat,” she whispered, and one side of David’s firm mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.

  “Send her in, send her in!” boomed Howard’s jovial voice over the intercom.

  Holly was escorted right to the doors—what did they think she was going to do? Bolt and run? Make a stirring speech in favor of Osama bin Laden?

  “Let go of me!” she hissed.

  Both agents immediately released their hold on her elbows. Though his face was completely expressionless, David’s mouth twitched again and something danced in the blue depths of his eyes. “Give ’em hell, Llewellyn,” he said, to the other agent’s obvious distress.

  And then Holly was inside that office of offices, alone except for Howard, and she couldn’t hide her reaction to it all. After all, this was a place where dramatic decisions had been made. John F. Kennedy had discussed the Cuban missile crisis with Bobby. FDR had planned the New Deal. Abe Lincoln had listened to the ominous beat of Confederate drums from just across the Potomac....

  “Wow,” she said.

  Howard, a genteel-looking, gray-haired man with a powerful build and a winning smile, stood up in gentlemanly deference. “My sentiments exactly,” he said. “Actually, I’m just getting the feel of the place myself. This isn’t my office yet.”

  Holly liked Howard for saying that. “Your predecessor—?”

  “He’s around somewhere,” Howard said. “We both want the transition to go as smoothly as possible and the president has been decent about this whole thing.”

  Howard gestured toward a long, comfortable-looking sofa, only one of several in the massive, overwhelmingly significant room, and Holly sat down gratefully with a smile.

  But her smile faded as she considered the tremendous burdens that were about to be placed on this man’s sturdy shoulders.

  Howard had apparently guessed what she was thinking. “I’ll do my best,” he promised quietly and with conviction.

  Holly’s respect for the man deepened. “Waking up every morning, being responsible for much of the free world—I don’t think I could do that.”

  The future president chuckled. “I can’t make a decent wonton, so I guess we’re even.” He paused and cleared his throat in an I’m-about-to-say-something-momentous way. “Holly, Maggie and I are both very sorry about that investigation and the trouble it must have caused you.”

  Maggie’s apology had been somewhat varnished and breezy, in Holly’s opinion, but Howard’s came across as the real thing. “You certainly had reason to doubt Craig,” she admitted with dignity, “and I suppose you had no way of knowing that I would never take part in such a thing.”

  Howard watched her with kindly, rather tired eyes. “Thank you, Holly.”

  Holly bolted to her feet, conscious of the drains on this man’s time and energy. She didn’t want to be one of them; he had important things to do. “I’d better go and let you get back to your work. Do you think I could look around a bit?” She paused and chuckled nervously. “It isn’t every day that a cookbook author from Spokane finds herself in the White House, you know.”

  “Nor a lawyer from Oregon,” quipped Howard, referring, of course, to himself.

  Holly cocked her head toward the sturdy double doors and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Do those two goons have to be on my heels the whole time?” It felt good to refer to David Goddard as a “goon,” unsuitable as the word might be for such a smooth operator.

  Howard laughed his loud, ingenuous laugh. “I’m afraid so, Holly. They go with the territory.”

  “You mean, the whole time I’m in Washington—”

  “The whole time you’re in Washington,” confirmed Howard with resignation.

  Holly shook her head in irritated wonder and laid her hand on a knob touched by some of the greatest—but she wasn’t going to ride that mental train again. Presidents, as had just been brought home to her, were as human as anybody else. Still, it was exhilarating to venture among such illustrious ghosts.

  David was waiting, sans his partner, just beyond the doors. “I’d like a tour, please,” she said, delighting in the brief flicker of irritation that moved in his eyes and tightened his splendid jawline a little.

  They spent the rest of the morning visiting various parts of the White House, some accessible to tourists, some private. David might have been a stranger, so clipped were his explanations of this painting and that chair, and Holly told herself that it was just as well. After what he had done to her, who wanted intimate conversation?

  She did. But she did a commendable job of hiding her disappointment at David’s formal, distant manner.

  It wasn’t until he brought her back to Mr. Lincoln’s bedroom that he said anything unagentlike, and even that was brief because the two men assigned to stand outside Holly’s door and look intimidating were already zeroing in.

  “I’m off duty at seven,” he intoned. “Meet me outside the tourists’ entrance.”

  “I will not—”

  David was turning away. Damn, but he looked magnificent in his navy blue, don’t-mess-with-me-I-guard-presidents suit. “Be there,” he tossed back in parting.

/>   Holly dodged inside her room and closed the door, impotently furious. The thing that made her maddest of all was knowing that even if it meant missing dinner with Maggie and Howard, she would be at the tourists’ entrance at seven sharp.

  * * *

  David was pacing. He stopped occasionally to glare at his watch. Holly so enjoyed his discomfiture that had it not been for the two suits walking within lunging distance of each of her elbows, she would have hidden behind a statue and watched for a while.

  “You’re relieved,” he said bluntly, his eyes darting from one impassive Secret Service face to the other.

  “You got clearance for this, Goddard?” dared the taller one.

  “Call upstairs and ask if you don’t believe me,” was David’s response to the challenge.

  If this was a bluff, the “goons” were calling it. One of them muttered something into the little device in his sleeve, his eyes never leaving David’s face. Good heavens, Holly reflected, they don’t even trust each other!

  There was a buzzing sound, the response being discernible only if you happened to be wearing one of those communication contraptions, which, of course, Holly wasn’t.

  “You’re clear, Goddard.”

  David’s jawline tensed, then relaxed again. Was it possible that he found all this cloak-and-dagger stuff just as tiresome as Holly did? “Gee, thanks, Ranford,” he bit out. And then as he pulled Holly into the protective curve of one arm, he added, “Don’t wait up for us.”

  Holly found herself being ushered outside into the icy, snow-laced Washington wind and across a slippery parking lot. “Will they?” she asked, glancing back over one shoulder.

  David opened the passenger door of a small green sports car and hustled her into the seat. “Will they what?”

  Holly waited until he was behind the wheel before replying impatiently, “Will they wait up for us?”

  David laughed. “No. They’ll follow us. They’ll sit across the street from my apartment building until we come out and then they’ll tail us back to Pennsylvania Avenue. At which time they will collect you at the rear entrance and muscle you upstairs to your room. Neither of them will draw a calm breath until you’re tucked in, safe and sound.”