Lindsay McKenna - A Proposal for Christmas

“Can you handle him by yourself or do you want a detail? The Bureau has an office in Spokane—”

“You keep the Bureau the hell out of this, Walt! I mean it!” The outburst was too sudden, too emotional. David drew a deep breath and stopped toweling his hair to sigh. “Llewellyn is a former agent,” he reiterated a moment later, when he could speak more moderately. “If he sees a bunch of three-piece suits and crew cuts watching his sister’s house, how do you think he’ll react?”

“He’ll split, just like he did in L.A.”

“Right.” David sighed again, running one hand through his hair. “Let me handle this, will you, Walt? If I need the Bureau, I can always call them in.”

“All right,” Walt agreed in his gruff, wry way. “But you remember why you’re there. It isn’t to make fruitcake, Goddard. Or time.”

David’s headache was infinitely worse. “Yeah,” he agreed after a long, long time. “I’ll remember.”

“Good,” came the brisk reply. “When do you see the broad again?”

Enough was enough. He’d let that word pass once; he couldn’t do it again. “Don’t call her that again, Walt. If you do, your nose will be where your right ear is now. I’ll see to it.”

Zigman swore and rang off.

David held the receiver in his hand for a long time, doing some swearing of his own. Craig Llewellyn was going to show up in Spokane, he could feel it in his bones. It was only a matter of time. Holly was going to be destroyed by the inevitable arrest, by David’s deception.

Why the hell had he accepted the dinner invitation, dammit? Suppose there was a replay of that episode when he’d kissed her, in the kitchen? What then? David had spent most of the night reliving that ill-guided indulgence and imagining all the sweet pleasures that could have come after it.

He shook his head, trying to dislodge the thought, but his body recollected perfectly. Heatedly. He’d had his share of women, of course, but none had ever made him feel quite the way Holly did. She could reach past the hard finish painted over him by his Secret Service training. She could so easily reach past it.

Maybe Walt Zigman was right; maybe he was losing his ability to be objective. Maybe he was getting soft.

David allowed himself one rueful, humorless chuckle. Soft was definitely not the word. Not where Holly Llewellyn was concerned.

* * *

The day was a full and busy one, but it took forever to pass, all the same. Instead of thinking about her newspaper column, as she should have been, every turn of Holly’s mind seemed to lead to David Goddard.

Elaine was gathering together the leaves of the manuscript she had been working on, preparing to leave. “What time is the hunk coming over?” she asked.

Color leaped into Holly’s cheeks and pounded there. “What hunk?” she asked tightly, a little annoyed that Elaine could read her preoccupation so easily.

“Don’t give me that. I’m talking about your date with David Goddard and you know it. What are you serving? What are you wearing? Do you want me to take Toby home with me for the evening?”

“Once your questions start coming, there’s no stopping them, is there?” Holly countered, still flushed. She took the disk containing her pitiful effort at a cooking column from the computer and shut off the machine with an angry flourish.

Elaine was not intimidated, but she did back off just a little. “I could take Toby home,” she offered again. “Roy and I enjoy him so much, and—”

“Toby is staying right here!”

“Why? Do you need him as a buffer, Holly?”

Holly had been halfway out of her chair; now she sagged back into it. “I wouldn’t use Toby that way, Elaine,” she said, but the doubt in her voice bothered her.

“It’s all right, you know, to want time alone with an attractive man. It’s not going to scar Toby’s psyche or anything.”

In spite of herself, Holly chuckled. Elaine did have a way of lightening a situation. “Last night,” she confessed after a few moments of reflection, “David kissed me.”

“So?”

“So it was weird, Elaine. The earth moved. Bells chimed. All the corny stuff you see in movies and read about in books—it all happened.”

Elaine beamed. “That’s great!”

“It is not,” Holly insisted, her face set and serious again. “It’s terrible. That man is dangerous, Elaine.”

“Dangerous? Why?”

Now Holly felt foolish and she couldn’t quite bring herself to meet her friend’s eyes. “He’s not like Skyler. He’s—”

“Thank God for small favors.”

Holly was putting her computer disk into its paper folder, turning off the printer, clearing her desk. Anything to keep from looking directly at Elaine. “You don’t like Skyler, do you? I can understand why Toby doesn’t, but you should.”

“He’s all right,” Elaine conceded with a heavy and somewhat dramatic sigh. “It’s just that he’s so, well, you know, safe. Boring.”

“He’s reliable, that’s what he is,” defended Holly. “I might marry him.”

“If you do, you’re crazy. You don’t love Skyler, Holly.”

“How do you know?” Holly demanded. But she wished with all her heart that she could love Skyler, truly want him. Even need him. It made her mad that she couldn’t.

“If you loved him, ninny-brain, you wouldn’t be all hot and bothered because David Goddard is coming to dinner. You haven’t thought straight all day.”

Holly slumped. “I’m not ‘hot and bothered’!” she lied in a plaintive wail.

Elaine only laughed. “Let me take Toby home with me. Please? I promise to give him the most nutritionally balanced TV dinner in the freezer, and I’ll bring him home after your class lets out.”

Holly hadn’t even thought about the class. Dear Lord, that was one more thing to add to the worries she already had, like what she was going to serve David Goddard for dinner and what she was going to wear. She wanted to look attractive, but not predatory....

It was as though, by their long and friendly association, Elaine had learned to look right inside Holly’s brain and read her every thought. “Wear something sexy. Leopard skin, maybe.”

Holly laughed. “Leopard skin? This is a quiet, casual dinner, not a movie about barbarians! And I have no desire to look ‘sexy.’”

“Pity,” Elaine said, looking entirely serious. “A woman ought to wear something sort of Frederick’s-of-Hollywoodish once in a while.”

Holly only shook her head, amazed. She wanted to ask if Elaine herself ever wore such garments but didn’t quite dare.

“Hey, Tobe!” Elaine yelled, shaking off the look of deep thought, beaming again. “Come on! You’re coming home with me tonight!”

The TV, blaring in the family room, went silent. The next sound, in fact, was a little boy’s whoop of delight. Toby bounded into the room, already struggling into his jacket, his face shining. “Do you think Uncle Roy will play Donkey Kong with me?”

Elaine gave the child a conspiratorial smile. “Yes. But you must promise to let him beat you at least once.”

Toby squared his small shoulders manfully and looked charitably reluctant. “Oh, all right. But just once.”

There was a whoosh of goodbyes, Toby planting a quick, wet kiss on Holly’s cheek, and then a swirl of cold air when the back door was opened. And they were gone.

Holly sighed, and as an aching sense of loneliness grasped her, she took herself firmly in hand. “Frederick’s of Hollywood!” she muttered irritably as she went to the freezer to take out falafel and couscous experiments from last week’s chapter of her new cookbook.

She slammed the foil-wrapped packages down on the countertop, near the sink. If David Goddard didn’t like eating experiments, the heck with him. What did he think this place was, a restaurant? Why, if he said one single word, she would...she would...