A Proposal for Christmas: State Secrets / The Five Days Of Christmas

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.

David’s indigo gaze touched the child with real affection, then sliced back to Holly’s face. “I need to talk with you, Holly,” he said quietly. “To be with you. Will you have lunch with me?”

“Sure she will!” Toby announced with loud confidence, scrambling into the back seat of Holly’s car, setting his airplane and handset on the seat and buckling himself into the seat belt.

David laughed, but that quiet ache was still visible in his eyes. “Please,” he said.

Holly swallowed hard and nodded. “Shall I meet you somewhere?”

“I’ll pick you up at your place in an hour or so, if that’s all right.”

Holly nodded again and got into her car, busying herself with the fastening of her seat belt and the turning of the ignition key. Anything so that she didn’t have to look back and see David getting into that rented car of his, that car that didn’t suit him. She couldn’t bear the strain of wondering about him anymore, of weighing his motives all the time. No, just for this one day she was going to enjoy what she felt, without letting doubt spoil it.

While Toby consumed soup and a sandwich, his appetite made sharp by a morning of fresh air and exercise, Holly exchanged her Saturday jeans for a pair of fitted gray slacks, her T-shirt and poncho for a classic navy blue blouse with a tie at the throat and a charcoal velvet blazer. She brushed her hair carefully and put on makeup, too, telling herself all the while that she wasn’t trying to be attractive for David, not at all. It was just that as something of a local celebrity, she had an image to maintain.

Why she hadn’t been concerned with that image earlier in the day, when she’d gone to a public park in her oldest clothes, wearing no makeup, was a question she didn’t bother to examine.

When she returned from dropping Toby off at the Coliseum, David was waiting in front of her house. And he was driving a different car.

Holly parked her own Toyota in the driveway, locked it and went toward him, taking in the sleek lines of the red Camaro sitting at the curb. David got out, looking devastatingly handsome in jeans and a cream-colored bulky-knit sweater, and came around to open the car door for her.

“What happened to the rented one?” she asked. “The brown sedan?”

David shook his head, but he went back around the car and got in on his own side before answering. “I told you my car was being fixed, Holly. This is it.”

Again, Holly was unsettled. This car looked and smelled so new, how could anything have been wrong with it?

“Don’t weigh everything I say, Holly,” David said watching her. “I’m a man, not a mystery to solve.”

Holly said nothing. She couldn’t deny that he was a man, but the part about his not being a mystery was certainly open to debate.

Lunch, eaten in a plant-filled restaurant overlooking Riverfront Park, the site of a world’s fair and Spokane’s coveted antique carousel, was a stilted affair.

Holly was as annoyed as she was self-conscious. Hadn’t David said he wanted to talk to her? No, in fact, he’d said he needed to talk to her. So why didn’t he?

His glass of white wine seemed to fascinate him; he turned it in one strong, sun-browned hand, watching the ebb and flow. The silence lengthened.

“I thought you said we were going to talk!” Holly blurted out impatiently. What was it about this man that undid her so? She felt sure that it was more than her rising attraction to him, more even than her doubts about his motives for spending time with her.

He chuckled and the sound was hollow and humorless. “You’re in a lot of trouble, aren’t you, Holly? Or, I should say, someone very close to you is. Why won’t you let me help you?”

Holly bit her lower lip. She wasn’t about to make any admissions about Craig and her involvement in his many troubles, but she wanted to. She wanted to let everything pour out. “I don’t need any help and I’m not in trouble,” she said stubbornly when David’s indigo eyes impaled her with an unspoken challenge. “What gave you that idea?”

He made an exasperated sound. “I’m not an idiot, Holly. I was there when this person called, whoever they are.”

If Holly felt alarm, she also felt a paradoxical sort of comfort. Could it be that, for all her imaginings, David really didn’t know that her caller was Craig? “I think we should leave,” she said stiffly.

“Fine,” David replied, setting his wineglass down with a jarring thump and rising from his chair to draw back Holly’s.

The flesh on the back of her neck tingled as it was brushed briefly by the hard wall of his midsection. Even that small contact stirred the melting warmth deep in Holly’s middle and made her heart beat at a faster pace.

She was still shivering when they reached his car.

“Take me home, please,” she said, struggling not to fling herself into his arms like some helpless bit of fluff and sob out all the things that were tormenting her.

“Don’t worry,” he replied in a terse whisper.

But, at the house, he lingered. Against her better judgment, Holly invited him inside for coffee. Just passing through the living room, where they had so nearly made love the night Craig called and ruined everything, made Holly’s face burn.

She was grateful to reach the cookbook-cluttered, sensible kitchen. What could happen here?

Too late, Holly remembered the first soul-jarring kiss. That was what could happen here.

She busied herself with the coffeemaker, filling the decanter with cold water, putting a new filter and fresh grounds into the basket. She was so very much on guard that her shoulders ached.

“Holly.”

She stiffened as she felt David approach, but could not bring herself to turn around and face him. His hands closed over her shoulders and began gently working the taut muscles there.

“Scary, isn’t it?” he asked in a low voice, his breath brushing Holly’s ear and part of her cheek.

“Wh-what?” Holly hedged. She knew she should break out of David’s hold, but she didn’t have the spirit to do that. Besides, the massage he was giving her felt so good.

“The way we need each other.”

Holly lifted her chin, barely able to keep from letting her head roll as the muscles in her shoulders were forced to relax. “I don’t want to need anybody,” she managed to say.

“Neither do I,” came the prompt, gruff reply. “But there it is.”

He was close, the length of his body comfortingly hard and strong against Holly. Suddenly his hands stopped working her shoulders to cup her breasts with a bold gentleness that caused her to draw in a swift, audible breath.

“D-David—”

His thumbs were stroking her nipples through the thin fabric of her blouse and the gossamer bra beneath. “Let me make love to you, Holly,” he said hoarsely, his lips now touching the outer rim of her ear and making every part of her leap with a stinging desire. “If we don’t, I’m going to go crazy.”

Holly trembled, her head falling backward to press into David’s broad shoulder, her eyes closed. “At least you’re still sane,” she admitted, breathless. “I’m already over the edge. I must be, to do this...”

The delicious torment of her breasts stopped; he turned her swiftly to face him. And new torments, even sweeter than those that had gone before, took over as he kissed her. Holly’s knees quivered, threatening to give out, and David supported her by pressing closer, fairly pinning her to the counter’s edge.

When he drew back, he searched her face with that same broken, needing look in his eyes. “Holly?”

Flushed, Holly nodded, and that was answer enough for David. He lifted her up into his arms and, at her direction, mumbled into his neck, carried her upstairs and into the bedroom. There, he dropped her summarily onto the rumpled covers, and she had cause to be embarrassed again because she had forgotten to make the bed.

To hide that, she tried to make a joke. “You boldly go where no man has gone before, I’ll say that for you.”

The indigo gaze impaled her. “Are you saying that you’ve never...”

Hastily, coloring again, Holly shook her head. “No. My...my fiancé—”

He sat down on the bed beside her, his fingers woven together, hands dangling between his knees. “It’s all right, Holly. Just tell me one thing: is this really what you want? If it isn’t, I’ll leave right now and we’ll pretend that none of it ever happened.”

Holly did not want David to go. She wanted him to hold her, kiss her, love her. But she couldn’t say any of those things because her throat was constricted.

David must have read her need in her eyes and in the flush on her cheekbones, for he kicked off his polished boots and stretched out on the bed beside Holly, wrapping one arm around her, holding her close. She loved the clean scent of his hair and skin, the tender threat of his powerful body.

Eventually he kissed her again, tentatively at first, as though he expected her to push him away. When she didn’t, the kiss deepened and with his free hand he began to caress her, cupping his other hand at the back of her head. After a very long time, she felt crooned in sleepy surrender, arching her back just slightly in acquiescence.

When the blouse had been opened completely and laid aside, David unfastened her bra. Her breasts moved with voluptuous freedom, the peaks tightening in response to the fate that awaited them and the coolness of the air.

David continued to caress her, brushing the wanton nipples with his fingertips, charting the rows of her ribs, circling her naval. And all the while, he kissed her, seeking every depth and secret, consuming even as he cherished.

After a time, he kissed the line of her jaw, sampled her earlobe, traced a path of fire down the white length of her neck. When he found her breast and took the nipple full in his mouth to suckle, Holly arched her back again, electrified, and gasped out a senseless cry of welcome.

Meanwhile, his hand undid the tricky buckle on her belt, the button of her slacks and the zipper. Holly felt the fabric of both the slacks and her panties sliding downward and gloried in the sensation.

David left the sensuous warmth of her breasts to brush his lips down the length of her rib cage, first on one side and then on the other. He drew her slacks and panties down and away and kissed the hollows of her hips, making lazy, white-hot circles with the tip of his tongue.

Holly moaned with her need of him, so dazed she could barely see. When he shifted away from her and off the bed, she was stricken, until she realized that David was only removing his own clothing, that he would come back to her.

“Are you sure, Holly?” he asked softly as he stretched out beside her again, part of his lean, powerful body covering and making promises to hers.

“Yes,” she managed to say.

He kissed her again, deeply and desperately, and their tongues engaged in a savage, fevered battle. His knee prodded her legs gently apart and then he was poised above her, bracing himself with his hands.

“God in heaven, Holly,” he muttered hoarsely, “how I’ve wanted you...from the first...”

Holly’s hands were moving up and down the sleek, rippled expanse of his back. She wanted to say something poetic, something memorable, but her arousal was such that she could do no more than gasp his name.

David groaned and entered the sweet sanctum of her body, carefully and with a tenderness that deepened the love Holly already felt for him. He moved slowly at first, rhythmically, sheathing and unsheathing, reacquainting her with the long-forgotten feel of a man’s possession.

Holly’s few experiences with her fiancé long ago had done nothing, nothing whatsoever, to prepare her for this. This was a glorious, blinding joy, one that centered all of her heart and all of her soul on the singular joining of this man’s body with her own. She moved in time with him, making a soft, unselfconscious sound in her throat, a crooning, needing sound.

David’s lips were everywhere, brushing her eyelids, tracing the line of her jaw, tasting her mouth. His tongue circled her lips in a way that was somehow territorial and fiercely arousing, and the pace he had set for her body increased by degrees until they both seemed to be hurling themselves at each other, frantic for a oneness that would consume them both.

When that moment came, David growled, his eyes closed, and shuddered upon Holly while she cried out and thrust her hips upward to enclose him as completely as she could.

They both sank into a sleeplike state for a time, their breathing ragged, eyes closed. David’s fingers, tangled in Holly’s hair, moved soothingly against her scalp. Then, suddenly and with devastating determination, he thrust himself free of her, cursing under his breath as he wrenched on his clothes.

Holly, shameless only moments before, now felt tawdry. She clasped the edge of the quilt covering her bed and pulled it over herself.

“David, what is it?” she finally dared to ask, watching wide-eyed as he completed the angry rite by jerking his boots back onto his feet.

He might have stormed out without saying anything at all if Holly hadn’t spoken when she did, but then he froze, his back turned to her, rigid and impassive. “It was a mistake,” he muttered at length.

“It was your idea!” Holly cried, wounded.

David lowered his head but did not turn around to face her. “Yes. It was my idea,” he conceded raggedly.

“You feel guilty, don’t you, David?”

Now he turned and met her eyes. “I’m sorry, Holly. I wanted you so badly I lost my head.”

“You lost your head?” Holly was suddenly energized, electrified. But this time it was fury, not passion, that surged through her. Heedless of her nakedness, she flung back the quilt and bounded off the bed. “I beg your pardon?” she screamed.

David silenced her by laying three fingers gently, ever so gently, over her mouth. His eyes were dark with some pain that Holly couldn’t understand and couldn’t share. But whatever it was, she would gladly have traded her own confused, hurt feelings for it.