“I don’t want to go to your apartment—”
David’s perfect teeth flashed in the relative darkness. “Too bad,” he replied.
“A lot of damned good it does to have bodyguards!” Holly spouted, unnerved but tingly at the prospect of being alone with David Goddard. Distinctly tingly.
David only laughed. At the gate, he stopped to show his ID and the guard peered in, taking a long, level look at Holly.
“Do they always make such a big fuss about every little move a person makes?” Holly demanded, looking back as a limo followed them out, the gate slamming shut behind.
“Yes,” David sighed. And he sounded tired and exasperated.
As they drove through the dark, snow-dusted streets of Washington and into an area Holly recognized as Georgetown, she glanced back at their one-car entourage and sighed, “Nobody will ever accuse those guys of being subtle. How do you stand it, David?”
“Stand it? I’ve done it myself a thousand times.”
“Followed people? Who?”
“People who were taking a president’s daughter out on a date, for one example.”
He maneuvered the car into an underground parking area beneath one of the historic, renovated houses Holly had heard and read so much about. To hide her sudden case of jangly nerves, she sat up very straight in the seat and said, “This is quite an expensive car. It’s good to know that civil servants are so well compensated for their work.”
David grinned at her sarcasm, apparently unaffected by it. “Wait until you see my apartment,” he baited her.
Holly was scowling as he parked the car and came around to collect her. As they hurried toward an elevator, she could hear the rhythmic click-click of the agents’ shoes behind them. “They’re not making any effort to be quiet, are they?”
“Why should they? They know that we know they’re there.”
“I thought you said they would sit outside, in the car,” fretted Holly, looking back over one shoulder.
David thrust her into the elevator the moment the doors opened and took obvious delight in the fact that his colleagues were summarily shut out. “They’ll stand outside my door for a while just to make sure we’re not up to anything—” he paused, winking in a way that made Holly flush with quiet outrage “—un-American.”
Holly gave him an arch look. “Why don’t you just tell them that you’ve already checked me out, Agent Goddard?”
The man was impossible. Instead of getting mad, he laughed and said, “I’ve missed you, you tart-tongued little wench.”
Holly bristled. “Tart-tongued little what?”
They had reached David’s floor, the elevator doors whisking open to reveal an expensively carpeted hallway. He avoided answering by catching her hand in his and pulling her up to a door marked 17B.
It turned out to be a place that would raise the hackles of any taxpayer. The carpets were lush, the furniture was sturdy and obviously antique, and the lighted paintings on the walls had not come from the housewares department at K-Mart. One of them, unless Holly was mistaken, looked like a Picasso.
A lulling, bubbling sound came from everywhere and Holly saw that there were no less than four sizable aquariums in the living room, every one of them populated by expensive tropical fish. The effect was quietly exotic.
Holly turned to David, desperately stalling, wondering why she had allowed him to bring her here at all. “You are overpaid, Mr. Goddard,” she accused.
He laughed and touched her nose with a winter-chilled index finger. “Before you lodge an official complaint, may I say in my defense that my grandfather owned a large farm in Nebraska, and furthermore, that when it was sold at his death, I inherited half the money?”
Holly sagged a bit, tired and at a loss, but then rallied with a challenging, “Who got the other half?”
David’s eyes danced and he grinned. “My sister, Chris. Are you disappointed?”
“Why would I be?”
He was easing her coat from her shoulders, and as ordinary as that gesture was, it seemed strangely sensual then. “I think you were hoping to add philandering to my other crimes. Be honest, Holly—for just a moment, you thought I was married, didn’t you?”
The thought had crossed her mind. After all, if David would lie about his occupation and his feelings for her, he might have lied about his marital status, too. “I considered it. Then I realized that no woman in her right mind would ever put up with you.”
Having laid her coat aside, David went to a beautifully carved bar and began rattling bottles and glasses about with a decorum suited to his surroundings. “Would you like something to drink?”
A drink might steady her nerves, Holly thought. Then again, it might lead her to make a fool of herself. “White wine, please,” she said primly, seated now on a plush sofa.
He brought the wine, holding a mixed drink of some sort in his other hand, and sat down, not on the couch beside Holly, but on a matching hassock nearby. Introspectively, David studied the amber depths of his glass.
“What did you think of your Christmas present?” he asked gruffly, still avoiding her eyes.
Reminded, Holly opened her purse and brought out the present in question, settling the small velvet box on the coffee table. “I think you shouldn’t have given it to me,” she replied coolly.
She ached at seeing his strong shoulders stoop just slightly. “My timing was less than perfect, I guess,” he reflected, at length.
“Considerably less,” Holly said softly, hurting because it was obvious that David did. “But Toby liked his robot.”
Indigo eyes searched her face. “Holly, give me one more chance. Just one.”
Holly tightened both hands around her wineglass, as though it could anchor her, enable her to ride out the emotional storm that was coming. “I didn’t come to Washington so I could see you again, David,” she said. And it was only after the words were out of her mouth that Holly realized she was lying.
11
“Are you hungry?” David’s question broke the uncomfortable silence.
Holly had eaten aboard the airplane but that, of course, had been some hours before. “A little.”
David laughed, but it was a ragged sound, humorless and painful to hear. “God knows who you might have rubbed elbows with tonight if you hadn’t come with me. The least I can do is take you to the best restaurant in town.”
“No,” Holly said quickly, glancing apprehensively at the door. “I don’t want those men watching every lift of my fork.” Or following me to and from the restroom, she added to herself.
David stood up to remove his suit coat. Nestled ominously against his broad chest was a holstered pistol. “Sorry,” he said hoarsely, catching Holly’s look of horrified surprise.
She looked away, reminded once again of all the things that stood between them, then heard the brisk click of a drawer and what she thought was the turning of a key.
“I make a mean omelette,” David offered in a low voice.
Holly forced her eyes back to him, and to her abject relief, the gun was gone. She managed a shaky smile. “I hope it’s better than your fruitcake,” she ventured, and this time, David’s responding chuckle was warm and real.
He executed a sweeping bow, reminiscent of a continental waiter. “This way, Madam,” he said.
Against her better judgment, Holly rose from the sofa and followed him through a small, formal dining room and into the kitchen. There was a butcher-block table in the center of the room, and copper kettles hung from a black wrought-iron rack above that. The stove and sink were both within easy reach.
“Pretty nice,” Holly approved, since she knew kitchens if she knew anything at all.
“Don’t be too impressed,” David warned with a half smile as he rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt and then went to the sink to wash his hands. “I wouldn’t know an egg timer from hollandaise sauce. I only bought all this stuff to please my housekeeper.”
“Is there anything I ca
n do to help?” Holly asked, torn between attaching herself to this man like a barnacle and bolting out of the apartment on a dead run. The depths of her feelings for him were truly frightening; she had to remind herself that a relationship between them could never work.
“Yes,” David responded, bringing an armload of ingredients from the fancy refrigerator, which had a sliding, opaque door. “Sit down at the table and relax.”
Instead Holly claimed one of three high stools at the luncheon bar. There were louvered doors beyond them, opening into the dining room. She fixed her attention on the elegant refrigerator and tried to imagine it covered with memos and samples of a little boy’s artwork. She couldn’t, and that saddened her.
David’s hands were busy chopping scallops crisp enough to appear in a Bon Appetit layout, but his eyes scanned Holly’s face with a sort of weary tenderness. “You look as though you might just fall asleep in my culinary triumph,” he observed.
Holly had no intention of falling asleep anywhere but in Mr. Lincoln’s bedroom. “I’m all right,” she said but an involuntary yawn belied her words.
David grinned and shook his head, moving on from the scallops to a mound of mushrooms. “Whatever you say,” he replied.
Holly felt a blush rise in her face; it revived her a little, stinging the way it did. “I’m wide-awake,” she insisted.
He stopped slicing mushrooms, bracing himself against the block table with his hands. “What do you think I’m going to do, Holly? Pounce on you if you so much as close your eyes?”
That made Holly laugh, however reluctantly. That was exactly what she’d thought, she realized. And it was a ridiculous notion. “I’m sorry,” she said.
David went back to the project at hand, grinning mysteriously to himself. Holly would have given her Cordon Bleu diploma to know what he was thinking, but she was wise enough not to ask. Instead she just watched, yawning periodically, as David whisked eggs into a foamy froth, browned the scallops in butter, added the mushrooms and eggs at just the right moment.
They ate in the dining room, by candlelight, saying little. And good as the food was, Holly nearly disgraced herself by nodding off over her plate.
Exactly how it happened, and this was a very momentous “it,” all things considered, was something that would always elude Holly. All her jet lag, all the rigors of the past couple of months, suddenly caught up with her. The room seemed to darken and the candlelight undulated and then David’s arms were beneath her, strong and secure.
Holly yawned and made some senseless remark and David laid her gently down on a bed. “I can’t...this isn’t... Howard and Maggie...”
“Hush,” he said, laying his fingers to her mouth and covering her with a satiny comforter.
“But—”
“Just sleep. As the president’s cousin, you have a big day tomorrow. I’ll make sure you’re at the Capitol Building in plenty of time.”
It was madness, but Holly believed him. And she was simply too tired to rally herself and get up. “It must have been...the wine...”
David chuckled and his lips touched her forehead, just briefly. “That and enough emotional trauma to devastate Jack Bauer. Sleep, sweetheart.”
And Holly slept. She awakened a couple of hours later, confused and disoriented. When she remembered that she was in David Goddard’s apartment, that the two agents assigned to her were probably still outside and coming to all sorts of scandalous conclusions, she sat bolt upright and gasped aloud.
It was a moment before she realized that David was not in the bed with her; when she made the discovery, Holly was both relieved and disappointed. “David?” she whispered, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. She was still completely dressed except for her shoes. “David?”
When there was no answer, she rose, not bothering to turn on a lamp, and groped her way out of the room. The living room beyond was dimly lit, but empty.
“David?” she ventured again. A small, cherrywood grandfather clock chimed three times. Good Lord, how was she going to explain this to the Secret Service, to Howard and Maggie? “David!” she yelled.
He materialized, a man made of shadows, at the end of the hallway. His hair was rumpled, his eyes were glass and his chest was bare. Holly didn’t dare look any lower. “What?” he yawned.
“Take me back to the White House this minute! My God, what those men must be thinking—”
“‘Those men’ were called off hours ago. Go back to bed, Holly.”
Go back to bed? Was the man insane? “May I point out that it is three o’clock in the morning? My reputation is at stake here!”
David yawned again and stretched his arms above his head and the play of the all too masculine muscles in his shoulders and naked torso unsettled Holly all the more. “Right. Three o’clock. Your reputation,” he mumbled.
Holly glared at him for a moment. “The agents really left?”
“Yes.”
“How did you manage that, may I ask?”
“I told them you and I were going to spend the night making love.”
Holly flushed. “You didn’t!”
“Oh, yes I did. And what they don’t know won’t hurt them. You’re not the only one with a reputation to maintain.”
“Very funny! Take me home this instant.”
“I’m going back to bed. I would recommend, Ms. Llewellyn, that you do the same. If you don’t, I may forget my good manners and—”
A jolt went through Holly’s just-awakened system, and it wasn’t an unpleasant one. “And what?”
“Don’t ask.” He turned to leave her, there in the middle of his living room.
“I’ll take a cab!” she threatened in a high-pitched voice. “I mean it, David Goddard...”
Her announcement trailed off when he suddenly whirled on his heels and came toward her, an evil, teasing look in his eyes. “That’s it,” he said. “I warned you.”
Holly trembled as he lifted her effortlessly into his arms. She should struggle. She should walk out. She should go down to the street and hail a cab. But she could do none of those things. She couldn’t even speak.
David carried her back into the room where she had been sleeping only minutes before, stood her on her unsteady feet and began to undress her. “Maybe there is one way, lady, to convince you that I love you.”
He removed the prim blouse and skirt she had changed into to meet him earlier, tossing each garment casually aside. Holly stood speechless before him in her camisole and her tap pants, overcome by the feelings she had been struggling against ever since Craig’s arrest.
Her head fell back as David bared her breasts and caressed them, his thumbs chafing the nipples until they stood out in eager surrender. Simultaneously, she trembled and sighed.
Presently David removed the camisole entirely, as he had her other clothes, flinging it aside. And then her tap pants were sliding down over her quivering hips and thighs and they were gone, too.
“David,” she choked in sweet desperation as he continued to caress her, more freely now, and with a boldness that made Holly ache to submit.
Finally he kissed her and if Holly Llewellyn had not been lost before, she was lost then.
David drew back from her mouth with obvious reluctance and muttered, “I must be the world’s biggest fool—”
“Second biggest,” Holly struggled to say as he placed her upon the bed and joined her there. Then he began doing the most delicious, wicked things to her.
He drew sweet nectar from her breasts, he touched and stroked her, mastering her in ways that exalted, ways that soothed. And he brought her to a soaring preliminary release that left her quivering like a string, unable to see and nearly unable to breathe.
David entered her gently, with a low groan and an urgency as old as the stars. In the ensuing minutes, Holly quite literally lost her mind, groping for it as explosions of shattering joy shook her, finding it in her own cries of release and in David’s.
* * *
Holl
y’s face was hot, but she kept her eyes straight ahead as her personal Secret Service contingent escorted her through the rear part of the White House and right to the door of Mr. Lincoln’s bedroom.
Inside, she rested her back against the heavy, carved wooden panels and struggled to catch her breath and cool her flaming cheeks with hands still icy from the frigid weather outside.
Mr. Lincoln observed her pensively from within his costly frame.
“I couldn’t help it, Abe! I’m crazy about the man!” Holly hissed defensively as she stomped into the bathroom, peeled off yesterday’s clothes and ran herself a deep, hot bath.
By inauguration time, Holly was dressed again, her hair and makeup done to perfection. Nothing of the abandon of the night before showed in her face—she hoped.
Holly rode to the Capitol Building in a limo, as a part of a long motorcade.
“Sure is a cold day for standing outside,” observed the chauffeur.
Holly was grateful for his attempt at conversation, for she needed something else to think about besides the way she had tossed and writhed in David Goddard’s bed the night before. It didn’t help that he’d drawn that damned veil down over his eyes the moment he had deposited her in the waiting hands of her bodyguards. That had been so impersonal, so cold, and Holly’s pride was still stinging. “I’ll be glad when it’s over,” she sighed. “Isn’t that terrible? I mean, this is a historic occasion and everything.”
“It is that, Ma’am,” replied the driver kindly. “A historical day and all that, I mean. But that don’t change the fact that it’s cold as the devil’s heart out there.”
The Secret Service agents sitting on either side of Holly were a different set than she’d had the day before, but they were just as dour and silent. Thank God the driver wasn’t intimidated by their presence.
“No,” said Holly. “It don’t.”
That deliberate slip of grammar brought a look from one of the agents, anyway. Holly thought she saw a grin peer out from behind the rim of his retina, though it disappeared, of course, in less than a moment.
A Proposal for Christmas: State SecretsThe Five Days of Christmas Page 14
