State Secrets (16 page)

H
olly Goddard glared at her computer screen, muttering. This book had started out as a mystery, and her agent had liked what she had seen of it, but now it seemed to be taking an unexpected direction.

“It’s Saturday,” Holly grumbled to herself. “In some religions, Saturday is a day of rest.”

“Did you say something?” David asked from the doorway of the study they shared. He was wearing blue jeans, a maroon sweatshirt, a denim jacket—and a baby girl in the carrier on his back.

Born in late September, Miss Autumn Goddard was already spending most Saturdays in the park with David and Toby. Her cheeks were pink and her round, indigo eyes sleepy as they peered out of the tiny snowsuit she wore.

Holly was filled with such tenderness that she ached. She forgot the problems she was having with her novel and went to plant a kiss on Autumn’s plump cheek before lifting her out of the carrier to cuddle her for a moment.

“Where’s Toby?” she asked.

David grinned, sliding back the hood of Autumn’s snowsuit, revealing a head of curly, Holly-gold hair. He
kissed the baby’s forehead briefly before answering, “Downstairs, doing his homework with Marcus.”

Marcus was Toby’s newest and “bestest” friend; since he and Holly had moved into David’s condo, the very day of the wedding, the two little boys had been a package deal. If you wanted one, you had to accept the other.

“Don’t you have any homework to do, counselor?” Holly teased as she carried Autumn into the bedroom that adjoined her own and David’s. “You have a big case coming up this week, if I remember correctly.”

David dodged the question by disappearing into the kitchen, but he was back soon enough, Autumn’s nap-time bottle in hand.

Holly had already undressed their daughter, changed her diaper and bundled her into a cuddly pink sleeper. Autumn extended her tiny hands at the sight of the offered bottle and was asleep after a few gurgling swallows.

“About your case,” Holly prodded, in the living room. Dammit, if she had to work on Saturday, then David was going to be right there in the study with her, plugging away at
Snider vs McCulley
.

Showing not the slightest sign of industry, David sat down on the raised hearth of the fireplace and stared indolently down at his right sneaker, his chin resting on one knee. “I’ve got that case down pat and you know it.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” David replied flatly, his eyes sparkling as they met hers. “You have to work so you want me to suffer right along beside you—misery loves company and all that.”

“I’ll be misery and you be company,” Holly grumbled, assessing the situation. Toby was downstairs, visiting
Marcus. Autumn was asleep. She blushed at the course her thoughts were taking.

David grinned. “And you’ll love me?” he leered.

“Anytime I get the chance,” Holly admitted.

He assumed his best attorney manner, frowning pensively, standing up to pace back and forth along the hearth as though it were a jury box. “What about your book, Mrs. Goddard?” he demanded soberly. “How do you intend to meet your deadline if you don’t write?”

Holly shrugged, her legs curled beneath her on the navy blue sofa. “I made up the deadline myself. There’s no reason to be picky, here.”

“Picky?” David boomed, looking suitably shocked, even horrified. He shook his head as he continued to pace, his hands locked behind his back. “Have you no dedication, Mrs. Goddard? No ambition? No—”

Holly giggled at the picture he made. “Don’t tease me, David,” she wailed. “My plot is so hopelessly snarled that I’ll never get it undone and my characters won’t do anything I tell them to!”

David stopped, bending slightly to peer into Holly’s face. “Exactly what kind of scene are you trying to write, anyway?” he demanded in that same ponderous, lawyerlike tone.

Holly gave him a once-over from beneath coyly lowered eyelashes. “A love scene, of course,” she purred.

“Aha!” he cried, pointing one index finger into the air. “In that case, Madam, we are able to ascertain the exact nature of your problem!”

Holly pretended to peer around him. “We?” she echoed.

“Speaking as the prosecution, of course,” he admitted.

“Of course. And what, pray tell, is the ‘exact nature of my problem,’ counselor?”

“Research, of course. A pitiable, contemptible lack of research.”

“I see,” Holly said, assuming a look of deep chagrin.

“No, Madam,” David went on sternly, “I don’t think you do see. This is a matter of the gravest importance.”

Holly giggled again. “You don’t really say things like that in the courtroom, do you?”

“No,” David confessed. “I saw it in an old Henry Fonda movie. Now, exactly how do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?”

Holly deliberately batted her eyelashes. “Of what am I accused, sir?”

He sank to his knees before her with a comical thump, his eyes gleaming. “Neglecting your research,” he replied.

Thinking of the weeks after Autumn’s birth when there had been no lovemaking at all, and the hesitant quality in David’s touch even now, Holly’s playful mood was dampened. “Or perhaps of neglecting my husband?” she prompted softly.

He bent forward and kissed her. “Never that,” he whispered.

“I know it was hard for you—”

David laid an index finger to her lips. “Having a baby was no piece of cake, either, I’ll wager. Still, Autumn is almost two months old. Time is passing us by. Maybe we should start another baby right away.”

Holly laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I love you, you maniac.”

“And I love you. But, as a writer, that doesn’t excuse
you from doing proper research.” He stood up, drawing Holly with him, pulling her against the appealing, granite-like length of him. His face was serious, though, despite his earlier teasing. “Tell me the truth. Does it…does it hurt when I make love to you?”

She stood up on tiptoe to kiss his chin. “No. It feels glorious.”

“Really?”

“Would I lie about something as important as research?” She slid her arms around his waist and felt him tremble as their bodies touched, her soft curves a temptation to his hard lines and angles.

“I certainly hope not,” he gasped, gazing deep into her eyes, finding things she might have hidden once but was willing to share now. His hands came tentatively to burrow into her silky hair. “Oh, Holly,” he breathed. “Holly. Every day, I wake up and I think I can’t possibly love you any more than I already do. And every day, you prove me wrong.”

Holly’s eyes misted with happy tears. “Do you love me enough to help me with my research?” she whispered.

David laughed and swatted her firm, round bottom with both hands. “Oh, at least that much. I’m in the mood to be magnanimous here.”

Holly gave him a long look. “Then what’s holding you back? Carry me off to your bed and slake your savage passion at my heaving breasts.”

David grinned and feigned a beleaguered look. “God, I hope that isn’t a direct quote from your manuscript, woman,” he teased. “If it is, you’d better go back to writing about crumpets and tacos.”

Holly wriggled against him in reply, and he groaned, lifting her into his arms. “If we’re going to research savage passion, I guess we’d better get started.”

Their passion was not savage, but tender, mounting with every kiss, every caress, every surrender of a garment. Though they had made love several times since Autumn’s birth, David was still afraid of hurting her.

As Holly lay beneath him, her blouse and bra gone, her breasts proudly bared to him, David bent his head and kissed each impudent peak. “Allow me, Madam,” he taunted in a rumbling voice, “to slake my savage something or other.”

The kisses felt so good that Holly stretched, crooning and thrusting herself upward for more. “Please, do,” she said and she whimpered with pleasure as he began to lose his restraint and enjoy her freely, now nibbling, now suckling with the fierce hunger Holly craved.

Finally, leaving breasts moistened and tuned to passion by his lips and his tongue, David traced a path of kisses over her collarbone and up her neck to the sensitive hollows beneath her ears.

“Are you taking notes?” he demanded, working his way back down to a breast, attending to it briefly, and then moving on to the heaving ridges of her rib cage.

“C-copious notes,” Holly choked as he circled her navel with a leisure that was positively torturous. She moaned with sweet despondency as his kisses continued. “Th-that isn’t at all p-pertinent to my wo-work, sir.”

He chuckled, the sound far away and yet so near as to be a part of Holly. “Want to bet?” he asked, his hand stroking her inner thigh, pressing her legs to part.

Research was the furthest thing from Holly’s mind then—moments later, she didn’t even have a mind, for she had been driven out of it. Only later, after a series of shattering releases, after David had finally given in to her pleading and entered her, his body at once taming and exalting hers, was she free to grope her way back toward sanity.

He lay beside her afterward, his head pillowed on her breasts, his legs still entangled with hers. Smiling to herself, Holly wound a lock of his hair around her finger and speculated, “I think I’ve got it. I know what I was doing wrong now.”

“Believe me,” David rasped, still too weak, apparently, to rise from her breast, “you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Holly laughed. “I was talking about my book, silly.”

David growled with pretended outrage and rolled onto his back, hauling Holly up to sit astride him. It was so good, this easiness between them, this lack of restraint or caution. Tears of sheer joy blurred Holly’s vision.

David frowned and caught them on his thumbs when they fell. “What is it, love?”

Holly was anxious to reassure him, and she gave a sniffling laugh. “I’m afraid I’ve used you shamelessly,” she confessed.

“How so?”

“I’m not writing a romance; I’m writing a mystery. The love scene I was talking about consists of one kiss, nothing more.”

David glared at her, pretending outraged honor. “Wench,” he said in gravelly tones, “you’ll have to pay for that.”

“I will?” Holly questioned, the picture of innocence. “How?”

He shifted slightly and then entered her with an authority that made her gasp with pleasure. His hands rose with brazen idleness to cup her breasts. And that was answer enough.

Holly began to move upon him, slowly, sweetly, a creature of fire and instinct. “You are completely—oh, God—without conscience—”

David matched her pace and then began to set one of his own. “Completely,” he agreed, pressing his head back into the pillows and closing his eyes. Several glorious, heated minutes passed, and then they were both crying out for each other, even though they were already joined, seeking each other with desperate hands and hoarse, tender words.

The finding was sweet indeed.

Turkeys. David’s fancy refrigerator, with its sliding opaque door, was covered with construction-paper turkeys. Holding a fussy Autumn against her hip with one arm, Holly opened the appliance’s door with the other and reached inside for milk.

The draperies had not been drawn, and as Holly sat at the table, rocking her hungry daughter in her arms while the bottle heated, she looked out over the sparkling lights of the city, thinking.

Impatient for her midnight feeding, Autumn flung back her gossamer-tufted head and wailed.

“Shhh,” Holly whispered against a tiny neck scented of talcum powder and baby lotion. “You’ll wake up Daddy and Toby.”

Autumn was unimpressed with that possibility. Her wail intensified to a series of piercing shrieks. Chuckling softly, Holly took the bottle from its warmer and did the gyrations required to hold a furious baby and test the heat of the milk at the same time.

“This looks like a job for Super-lawyer,” yawned David, clad in a velour bathrobe, as he took both baby and bottle from Holly and plopped down in a chair. A moment later, Autumn was imbibing greedily.

“Fine thing,” Holly scoffed with mock indignation. “I do all the work and you get the credit.”

David only grinned, watching his daughter with such adoration in his eyes that Holly wasn’t sure she could bear it. Or the feelings inspired in her.

“There was a letter from Craig today,” she said quietly, leaning back against the counter, her arms folded. She felt like a housewifely bundle of chenille and love.

David’s eyes darted to her face, wary. “Oh? How is he?”

“He’s getting better,” Holly answered gently. “They haven’t decided yet exactly what to try him for. It might be a long time before they do.”

There was a silence; obviously David didn’t know what to say. And Holly didn’t want Craig or anyone else to stand between them.

She went to David and made a place for herself on his knee, unsettling the ravenous Autumn only slightly. Wrapping one arm around David’s neck, Holly intoned, “Kiss me, you fool!”

He laughed and responded accordingly.

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State Secrets

Copyright © 1985 by Linda Lael Miller All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

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