State Secrets (12 page)

Safe in her room again some twenty minutes later, after declining an offhand, rushed invitation from Maggie to attend a state luncheon, Holly collapsed onto her bed with a pulsing headache.

Presently, Mrs. Tallington appeared with a tray and
a look of sympathy. “Do you need a doctor, Madam?” she inquired.

Holly closed her eyes. She had taken two aspirin before lying down and she hoped they would be sufficient. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’ll be fine if I just rest a while.”

“Eating a little something might help,” imparted the veteran, and then she was gone.

When Holly could sit up without feeling queasy, she inspected the contents of her tray. Beneath aged, mellow silver covers were generous servings of creamed crab, mixed vegetables and warm, crusty bread.

Knowing the wisdom of what Mrs. Tallington had said, she forced herself to eat, though most of the portions were larger than she could have handled even if she’d felt her best.

She slept—her dreams were damnably erotic replays of the night before—and when she awakened there were lengthy shadows in the room and the tray had been taken away. Her blue chiffon, pressed to meet Mrs. Tallington’s impeccable standards, hung from a peg on the closet door.

Holly wished she had the nerve to thrust that gown and all her other clothes into her suitcases and make a dash for the airport. That would be so much easier than facing David again!

But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The biggest of all the inaugural balls was to be held that evening, and Holly was enough of an adventuress to really want to attend. After all, she would probably never have a chance to do anything like that again.

Holly took another long, leisurely, scented bath, washed and dried her hair, carefully painted her nails. She
was wearing only a towel when the telephone at her bedside jangled, startling her so much that she jumped and had to clasp the towel in place again.

“Hello?”

“Holly, this is Howard. The staff tells me that you’re a little under the weather.”

Holly sighed, feeling troublesome and out of place. “I’m fine, Mr. President. Honestly. I think I was just a little tired.”

“‘Mr. President’, is it?” Howard chuckled. “Well now, Holly, I like the sound of that, but I’m still just Howard to you.”

Still just Howard. Grinning, Holly shook her head in wonder but said nothing, waiting for her illustrious caller to go on.

“I’ve arranged for you to meet with Craig first thing tomorrow morning, Holly. He’s ready to talk with you now.”

Holly’s knees went weak and she sank to the edge of the bed. “C-Craig? He’s here?”

“He’s at Walter Reed for the time being. Do you want to see him, Holly?”

Her throat tightened, memories of another Craig swirling in her mind: a laughing, responsible, healthy Craig. A devoted big brother. “Oh, yes,” she said softly. “Yes, I want to see him.”

“Good. We’ll send you over there in a car, bright and early. In the meantime, young lady, you put on your dancing shoes and prepare to have yourself a good time at the shindig tonight.”

Holly chuckled, though there were tears swimming in
her eyes. “Being in the White House, going to an inaugural ball—I think I should wear glass slippers instead of dancing shoes.”

“Can’t dance in glass slippers,” Howard retorted immediately. “You save a waltz for your old third cousin from Oregon, now.”

“I will,” Holly promised, and Howard rang off in his politely abrupt way.

Slowly, she set the receiver back in its cradle, drew a deep breath and went to the closet to find the special, strappy shoes she bought to wear with the blue chiffon. Turning one in her hand, Holly reminded herself that she was not Cinderella and that Howard was certainly not Prince Charming.

No, if Prince Charming attended the ball at all, he would be wearing an earpiece and a look fit to freeze-dry coffee beans.

The ballroom glittered with crystal chandeliers and silver punch bowls and guests one couldn’t hope to encounter even on
The Today Show
. Holly spotted David almost immediately and spent the next fifteen minutes trying to ignore him.

The orchestra played and Holly danced with a pudgy, wheezing man a head shorter than she was. An emissary from some country Holly had never heard of, he spoke immaculate English.

Following that, she was waltzed around the enormous room by a man wearing a bright gold cummerbund and a dazzling array of medals. He was an ambassador from one of the Slavic countries.

When Howard and Maggie deigned to make their appearance, there was a hush and all eyes were upon them. Maggie looked every inch the first lady, and despite the unspoken strain between them, Holly was proud of her.

The president and first lady danced together then, the crowd moving back for them, the Secret Service agents looking on as alertly and unemotionally as ever, ready to pounce upon anyone foolish enough to make a wrong move.

Looking at David, Holly despaired. This was not the man who had loved her with such sweet ferocity the night before. This was a stranger, an automaton.

Some minutes later, Holly had her dance with the president of the United States, his last before retiring with Maggie from the festivities. “No glass slippers, I see,” he teased as they waltzed, flashbulbs bursting all around.

Holly laughed. “No. I ordered a pair from Saks, but they didn’t have my size.”

Howard responded with a laugh of his own, but he looked tired. Holly thought of how the next four years would age him and felt sad.

“When you see your brother tomorrow morning, Holly, you tell him I’ll do all I can to see he gets the help he needs.”

“Thank you,” Holly replied softly. “For both of us.”

Howard nodded somberly. “I’m just sorry it had to come to this,” he said. “You’ll be with us a few more days, won’t you?” he added a moment later, deliberately changing the subject.

Holly shook her head. “I’ve got to get home to my nephew and my work, I’m afraid. If I possibly can, I want to leave tomorrow, after I see Craig.”

Howard responded politely, then the dance was over. A few minutes later he left the ballroom with Maggie and their Secret Service entourage, David included. Holly remained at the party for another half hour and then departed, leaving no glass slipper behind.

It was late and David was exhausted. Like several of the other agents assigned directly to the president, he had worn a tuxedo, and he was eager to hurl the thing into the depths of his closet and forget it existed.

Walt Zigman sat at his desk, as always, oblivious to the late hour. A widower, his children grown and gone, he had nothing better to do, David guessed. He hoped to God his own life would never come down to that.

He laid his identification card and the earpiece down on the desk.

“You told me you’d stay until inauguration week was over!” Walt blustered, his jowls quivering, his cigar bobbing between his teeth.

“I lied. I’m out, Zigman. Gone.”

Zigman swore. “I knew it. I damned knew it.”

David sighed and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “I suppose Ranford gave you a full report on last night,” he said, his eyes linked with Walt’s.

“We didn’t get it on tape, if that’s what you’re talking about, Goddard. Tell me something, though. What is it about this Lewellyn woman that makes her different from all the others?”

David had a headache; he rubbed his temples with a thumb and forefinger. “If I knew that, Walt, I might be able to put two sane thoughts together.”

“She feel the same way you do?” Walt was apparently in a fatherly mood. His eyes were averted, though, and he was cleaning his fingernails with an unbent paperclip.

David had been struggling with that question all day. It had distracted him, making it hard as hell to keep his mind on the president and the endless crowds at the swearing-in and at the ball he’d just left. Holly had certainly responded in bed the night before, but come the rueful morning, her aquamarine eyes had been full of doubts. Misgivings. And a grudge that just might last a lifetime.

“It will be a long time before she trusts me completely, if she ever does.”

There was a short, reflective silence.

“I’m sorry about this whole thing, Goddard, for what it’s worth. I should have sent someone else.”

“You didn’t know I was going to fall in love with Holly,” David said, his jaw growing taut of its own accord and then relaxing again. “I didn’t either.”

Walt reached out and collected the earpiece and the identification badge. “You keep in touch, Goddard. If things don’t work out out there in Podunk, Washington, you come back here.”

David had no answer for that. If things didn’t work out in Spokane, he didn’t know where he would go or what he would do. The only thing he could be certain of was that he was never going to come back to this job.

Leaving Walt’s office, he squared his shoulders. Things would work out with Holly, dammit. He was going to
make
them work out.

H
olly was delivered to Walter Reed Hospital first thing the next morning, as promised. She was, of course, flanked by the usual Secret Service set of two, but at least they stayed outside of Craig’s room, exchanging toneless rhetoric with the FBI man who guarded the door.

Craig sat alone in the room, wearing a striped bathrobe that was too big for him, his gaze fixed on the panoramic view offered by a huge window.

Holly lifted her chin and gave herself a silent order not to cry. Her brother looked so broken, so small and in so much trouble. “Craig?”

He turned, his eyes sunken and circled. His face, stubbled with a new beard, looked gaunt; he might have been a hundred instead of just thirty-six. “Hello, Holly,” he said, and his voice was as hollow as his eyes.

“Are they treating you well?” she asked, and the words sounded stiff, stilted. Talking to this wasted remnant of a man was not the same as talking to her brother.

Craig shuddered and executed a rueful parody of a smile. “They’re not shining lights in my face and telling me they have ways of making me talk, if that’s what you mean.”

Holly had no plans to ask about the cocaine habit that had brought him to this pass; the ravages of his withdrawal, which would probably go on for some time, were clearly visible in his face.

She forced herself to go to him, to lay one hand on his thin shoulder. Touching him seemed to work some magic—he became Craig again. Tears stung in her eyes and ached in her throat as she bent to kiss the top of his head.

“Oh, Craig, how did this happen?”

His shoulder stiffened beneath her hand. “The way it always happens, Holly,” he said brokenly. “You try cocaine and you’re on top of the world. You can do no wrong. You’re Superman, you’re James Bond. And then one day you find out that you’ve gotta have the stuff and there aren’t any choices anymore.”

Holly swallowed hard and reached up with one hand to surreptitiously wipe away her tears. Her falling apart was not going to do Craig any good; she had to be strong now. “Is there anything I can do?” she whispered. “Special doctors, anything like that?”

Craig shook his head. “Forget I was ever born,” he said hoarsely, looking at the view again. “That’s the best thing you can do for yourself and for Toby.”

There was nothing to say to that. If and when Craig overcame his cocaine problem, he might still be faced with a long prison term.

“You’re still all tangled up with Goddard, aren’t you?” Craig’s question was so direct and so unexpected that Holly gaped at him for a moment, unable to answer. “He’s bad news, Holly. For your own sake, walk away.”

“That’s going to hurt,” she managed to say, at length.

Craig gave a humorless chuckle. “Lots of things hurt in this life, Holly. Too many things hurt. But Goddard used you and I don’t want you to forget that. He’d use his own mother, if the Service asked him to. Believe me, I know.”

Holly wound a finger in one of Craig’s lank curls—once they had been so springy that she had teased him about them—and waited for him to go on.

“Find yourself a flesh-and-blood man, Holly,” he complied after some time. “Goddard is a robot, like me. Like all the rest of them. He’s nothing more than a hit man on the right side of the law.”

Holly shivered. David wasn’t a hit man! He wasn’t!

“Lift your hand or a camera or a comb in the same room with the president or his lady sometime, Holly, if you don’t believe me. You’ll find yourself facedown on the floor with your hands cuffed before you catch your breath.”

“There is a reason for that, Craig!”

He looked up at her. “Yes. But can you live with it, Holly? Can you live with guns and subterfuge and international intrigues that would curl your fingernails? Believe me, he knows things that he can’t share with you, but they’ll make him hell to live with all the same.”

I love David, screamed some forlorn part of Holly’s heart, I love him! “You needn’t worry,” she said aloud. “Anything that David and I might have had was over the moment I found out that it was you he wanted, not me.”

They were silent again for a while, lost in their own thoughts, their own griefs and regrets.

“I’d better go,” Holly said finally. “I’ve got a plane to catch.”

“Right.”

She came around to look into his face. “Is there anything I can send you, Craig? Books? Magazines? Anything?”

“Books,” he said, and for a moment there was a hint of the old Craig, an inveterate reader, in his eyes. He even chuckled. “Nothing about spies, though, okay?”

Near tears again, Holly bent to kiss his forehead. “No spies,” she promised, and then she hurried out lest she break down in front of him.

It was a relief to board the airplane, to leave the White House and the Secret Service and everything else behind. Everything except David.

Holly buckled her seat belt and pretended to listen as a flight attendant explained the mysteries of oxygen masks and No Smoking signs. She wondered if she should have called David and said goodbye. Said
something
.

Vigorously, she shook her head in answer to her own questions. It was better this way, better to make a clean break and forget all about Agent Goddard and his novel investigating techniques.

The plane was barreling down the runway; Holly closed her eyes and braced herself for the lurching leap it would take when it left the ground. She hated that part of flying, along with the full reverse thrust of the engines upon landing; it always made her feel as though the craft would go tumbling end over end.

A hand closed over her fingers, which were clutching the armrest with painful force. She opened her eyes just as the plane lunged into the air and the landing gear ground into place.

David. David was sitting in the seat beside hers, big as life.

Holly blinked her eyes, certain that she was hallucinating, but he was still there when she looked again. Wearing tan corduroy slacks, a brown cashmere turtleneck and a cocoa-colored leather jacket.

“It’s me, all right,” he said calmly.

“What are you doing here?”

He peeled her fingers from the armrest and soothed them between his own, lifting her hand and inspecting her nail polish with a slight frown, as though he didn’t quite approve of the shade. “Take a wild guess,” he said.

Holly finally gathered the presence of mind to wrench her hand free. “Just go and sit in some other part of the plane. Or better yet, why don’t you jump out over Kansas?”

David chuckled and settled into the seat with a comfortable sigh. “I’ve never liked Kansas. Besides, we won’t be there for a while yet. We’re probably over Maryland.”

“Maryland would do just as well, I’m sure,” Holly snapped, turning her head and looking out over the wing and a floor of cumulus clouds trimmed in pink and gold.

“Give me until Kansas to win you over.” There was a wry, injured sort of humor in David’s tone.

She swung her eyes around, giving him a look that sliced deep. “Watch my lips,” she said coldly. “We could fly to Hong Kong. We could fly to the moon. We could fly to
hell
, Mr. Goddard, and you couldn’t win me over!”

The captain gave some garbled message over the speakers and the No Smoking and Fasten Seat Belt signs blinked out, making chiming sounds. The flight
attendants reappeared with their smiles and their rattling service cart.

“You weren’t even going to say goodbye?” David asked, and this time there was no hint of humor in his tone. He sounded hurt and more than a little bewildered.

For just a moment, Holly’s impractical heart clogged her throat. She knew there were tears glistening in her eyes when she looked at him, but she couldn’t help either the tears or the looking. “I didn’t see any point,” she managed to say.

His jaw tightened and he paled a little beneath his winter tan. Probably, Holly thought, it was a health-club tan, as artificial as the feelings he had claimed to have for her.

“I’m getting tired of playing the heavy. The investigation and Craig’s arrest are both in the past—can’t we go on from here?”

How Holly wished they could, but that would be asking too much. She might love this man—she
did
love this man with all her heart and all her soul—but what good was that without trust? And she was never, ever going to trust him.

“Maybe they’re in the past for you,” she said stiffly, shaking her head when a flight attendant stopped to offer liquid refreshments. After David had ordered and paid for a scotch and water, and the attendant had moved on, she finished, “I’m always going to remember, David. I’m going to remember your lies. I’m going to remember watching you handcuff my only brother in my kitchen.”

“How about the way we made love, Holly? Are you going to remember that? Are you going to remember the
things we said and did when our passion was so great that we couldn’t bear it?”

Holly closed her eyes tight. “Don’t!”

“Someone has to, Holly. What we had—what we have—is too rare and too precious to let go of without a fight. I’ve accepted that fact even if you haven’t.”

Holly snatched away his drink and took a gulp of it before handing it back, and David laughed.

“Face it, baby,” he teased in an Edward G. Robinson voice, “you’re stuck with a G-man!”

“I’ve already had to deal with all the ‘G-men’ I care to in this lifetime, thank you very much.”

“We must be nearing Kansas. Do you still want me to jump?”

“More than anything,” Holly sighed, unable to look at him now. If she did, she would tumble witlessly into those indigo eyes and the fall would be much deadlier than the one to Kansas. “What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you have to guard Howard or some visiting potentate?”

He hesitated and Holly sensed that he was hiding something—a possibility that infuriated her. “I’ve got some time off,” he finally answered.

“I hope you’re not going to Spokane,” she replied in all honesty.

“I’m going wherever you go.”

Holly sighed, sinking back into her seat. But when a flight attendant came by, she sat up straight again and announced in a clear voice, “Miss, this man is bothering me.”

David laughed and the flight attendant looked him over in appreciative confusion, obviously wondering how a
man like that could “bother” any woman in the unpleasant sense of the word.

“Is…is this true, sir?” asked the pretty attendant, not certain what to do.

“Oh, it’s true all right,” David confessed benevolently, rising from his seat and stepping into the aisle. He handed what remained of his drink to the stewardess and braced his hands against the back of the seat and the one just ahead. “And I’ll go right on bothering you, Holly Llewellyn, because I love you. Because I need you.”

Holly flushed with furious frustration and a need that rivaled the one he professed to feel. “You go to hell, Mr. Goddard,” she replied, and then she fixed her eyes on the back of the seat in front of her and stared at the grubby tweed until it began to shift and undulate. When she dared to look, David was gone.

Holly felt a bereft sort of triumph. He meant to haunt her, he’d as much as said that straight out. He meant to follow her and pursue her until she gave in to him. And Holly was afraid she might do just that.

The airplane landed in Denver, where Holly was to catch her connecting flight to Spokane. Even before she looked back to confirm her suspicions, she knew that David was following her, she could feel him there, like a spectre.

She visited the rest room and the gift shop, trying to kill the hour layover, becoming more and more tense with every passing moment. Finally Holly whirled on David and hissed, “This is harassment! Leave me alone!”

He stepped closer, oblivious to the stream of people flowing around them on all sides, his eyes gentle. “Tell me
you don’t love me, Holly,” he said quietly. “If you can truthfully say that, I’ll go away.”

Holly swallowed. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Four little words, only four. I don’t love you. She tried to say them and they would not pass her throat.

David waited patiently.

Holly tried again, failed again and turned away with a stifled sob, one hand to her face. David took her elbow in a firm grasp and escorted her into the nearest lounge. There, he settled her at a shadowy corner table, holding both her hands in his. At his request, a waitress in jeans and a Western shirt brought two cups of coffee.

Holly freed one hand to lift her cup to her lips; some of the steaming brew inside sloshed over to burn her hand and stain the tablecloth. David deftly removed the cup and set it aside to cool.

“I want one chance with you, Holly. Just one chance. Can you give me that?”

“Wh-what if I say no?”

“Then I’ll get on the next plane to Washington.”

“What about that speech you made on the airplane? What about the way you’ve been following me ever since we landed?”

David sighed raggedly and looked away for a moment. “I’m sorry. The last thing you need is pressure, I know that. But I was desperate.”

“Why?” Holly whispered, and the word sounded pained.

“Because I love you—as, I believe, I have already mentioned on several occasions.”

Holly was weary, her head full of dizzying, unrelented
images—herself, dancing with the president; Craig, looking so lost and broken; David, carrying her to his bed, making love to her in a way that could still heat her blood. “I’m so confused,” she muttered.

He squeezed her hand. “I know,” he said softly. “Let me prove to you that I really do care, Holly. That’s all I’m asking.”

“How do you propose to do that, David?” Holly asked with a desperation that was more revealing than she could ever have guessed. “You’ll always be the man who arrested Craig, the man who lied—”

“I’ll always be the man who loves you,” he reminded her.

And the man who carried Toby through a frightening crowd of reporters the day after Craig was arrested, Holly thought with disjointed hope. The man who set up the Christmas tree, the man who went out for chicken, the man who was hopelessly inept at flying model airplanes….

She gave herself a mental shake. “I don’t think—”

“We’ll date, that’s all. We’ll talk, get to know each other. And this time, it will all be on the level, Holly.”