A Proposal for Christmas

4

David bent and tapped the side of the glass fishbowl with an impatient index finger. The two goldfish floated, one above the other, just staring at him, their shimmering fan-shaped tails barely moving.

“You guys are really boring, you know that?” he complained in an undertone. “I bought you to give this place some color and flash and what do you do? You just sit there, watching the world go by. Swim, dammit!”

The fish regarded him implacably, still hovering midway between the surface of the water and the bottom, with its blue rocks and shifting plastic fern and dime-store diver.

“No class,” David grumbled, turning away and wrenching the damp sweatband from his forehead in one irritated movement.

Still breathing hard from his customary morning run, he stumbled into the bathroom and took a quick shower. Later, as he dried himself and dressed—in the living room, for God’s sake—he wondered how the hell he was ever going to impress Holly Llewellyn with a place like this.

Draping a towel over his shoulders because his hair was still dripping wet, he took in the goldfish, the unmade sofa bed, the spots on the carpet. No class. Like those seventy-nine-cent goldfish, the place had no class.

The telephone rang and David, who had been indulging in a fanciful nostalgia for his real apartment in faraway Georgetown, was startled. He put images of good art, the hot tub in his bathroom and the ivory fireplace out of his mind as he lunged for the instrument.

“Goddard,” he answered, and the long-distance buzz coming over the wire told him that he’d been right. This was his call from Washington.

“Zigman here,” Walt replied. “The Bureau staked out the address in L.A., Goddard, but they must have muffed it somehow, because Llewellyn didn’t bite.”

David had a headache. He had hoped the FBI would be able to collar Llewellyn immediately; like a child about to have a sliver pulled, he’d wanted the whole thing to be over with. “He was an agent himself once. He probably knows the signs.”

“Yeah.”

“Does this mean I can drop the case and come back to Washington?” Part of David hoped it did, while another part wanted to watch Holly Llewellyn forever.

“Hell, no. The little lady sent him a letter, didn’t she? You saw it with your own eyes, Goddard. That means she’s in fairly regular contact with our boy, doesn’t it?”

David resented the “little lady” reference. Holly was so much more and the phrase seemed to demean her. “Holly is a woman, Walt. With a brain.”

Zigman’s laugh traveled three thousand miles to annoy David as instantly as if he’d been in the same room. “Goddard, you are going soft. Don’t get to liking this broad too much. She’s in line for an indictment herself, you know.”

“For what?” David snapped.

“Christ,” Zigman swore impatiently. “For aiding and abetting a fugitive. Are you going to wake the hell up, Goddard, or do I have to send somebody else out there to handle this thing?”

David bit back all the fury that surged like bile into his throat. He’d never been pulled from a detail in all the time he’d worked for the service, and he wasn’t about to start now. Besides, he couldn’t be sure how another agent would manage the situation. And it was delicate. Holly’s emotional state was delicate. “I can handle it,” he said.

“Wouldn’t have sent you if I didn’t think you could,” Walt replied in smug tones. His cigar stub was probably bobbing up and down in his mouth, and David wished he could be there to squash it into the man’s teeth. “Keep a sharp eye out, Goddard. Llewellyn could turn up there. If he does, I want him busted. On the spot.”

The thought made David half-sick, and he closed his eyes. His wet hair was dripping cold trails down his neck and he began drying it with one end of the towel. He could imagine the look on Holly’s face if he casually wrestled Llewellyn to the floor in her living room. “Yeah.”

“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...

Holly sighed. Who was she kidding? She put the foil packages back into the freezer and took out the special beef stroganoff she’d been saving in case Skyler’s parents decided to come to Spokane on one of their infrequent visits.

After straightening the kitchen and throwing together a green salad, she raced upstairs to take a shower and exchange her jeans and madras shirt for something more—more what? Sexy?

Still dripping from her shower, wrapped only in a bright pink bath sheet, Holly shoved the white cashmere suit back into the closet. It was too clingy, that was all. Entirely too clingy.

She brought out a flowing blue dress, interwoven with tiny silver threads, that she’d picked up in Iran only the month before. Even then she’d had no idea where she would wear such a thing, but she hadn’t been able to resist the gown’s quiet elegance.

She returned that garment to the closet, too. After all, it had that deep neckline and it was too formal. Whatever she chose would have to do for the cooking class she had to teach after dinner, she reminded herself.

Finally, Holly settled for tailored black slacks and a soft mulberry sweater. Not exactly suited to making Belgian fruitcake, she thought, but at least she would look halfway decent when David arrived and she could always push up the sleeves later, when it was time to conduct her class.

Hurriedly, she brushed her hair, applied her makeup and brushed her hair again. She allowed herself one cool misting of the expensive perfume she’d once bought on a dash through the Paris airport.

When the rites of womanhood had all been performed, she stood back from the mirror to look at herself. Her lipstick was crooked, and she wiped it off and reapplied it, this time using a lip liner. “Color inside the lines, now,” she mocked herself.

David arrived promptly at seven o’clock, just as they’d agreed. Not a moment before and not a moment after. Something about this small precision bothered Holly, but she pushed the feeling aside.

There was a fire crackling in the living room fireplace and the table in the rarely used dining room had been set with pretty china and her grandmother’s silver. David looked impossibly handsome in his gray slacks, creamy white sweater, and navy blue jacket. No indeed, this was no time for silly doubts.

“Come in,” she said, stepping back.

David smiled, but the look in his eyes was weary. Perhaps he’d had a hard day at law school. He extended a bottle of wine and then took off his coat. “Where’s Toby?” he asked, and the expression in his indigo-blue eyes was suddenly expectant.

Holly was a bit embarrassed. Now she was going to have to say that Toby was spending the evening at Elaine and Roy’s, and it would look as though she’d been setting the scene for a steamy seduction. Why, oh, why had she lighted the fire and set the table so carefully? “He had a previous engagement,” she said.

“Good,” David replied smoothly.

“Good?” Holly echoed, confused.

David laughed. “A man’s got to have a social life,” he answered, and Holly remained off-balance because she didn’t know whether he meant that Toby needed a social life or he did.

They ate in the dining room, with the candles lit—Holly had been too shy to light them, so David had done it—with the wine and the good china and the glint of the aged silver flatware. Holly hadn’t entertained a man in this particular way in as long as she could remember, and she was uncomfortable and distracted, not knowing what to do or how to act. The fact that she silently flogged herself for being silly didn’t help; she still felt like a fifteen-year-old about to go to her first prom.

“Do we have time to sit by the fire for a while,” David asked easily, setting his wineglass aside, “or are we off to tackle the mysteries of Belgian rum sauce?”

Holly laughed, even though the thought of sitting in front of a romantic winter fire with a man—with this man—patently made her nervous. “We have a few minutes.”

He stood up, but instead of coming around to pull back Holly’s chair, as Skyler would have done, he started gathering up dirty dishes. Holly was disappointed for a moment, but then she decided that one act was as considerate as the other and began to help.

Holly waited, every nerve screaming, for him to kiss her. He didn’t do it while they were clearing the table, of course, and in the kitchen he kept the dishwasher door between them as they put the china and silverware inside. Was he shy or something?

Holly’s cheeks stung with color. Elaine was right, she castigated herself angrily, you’re hot and bothered!

Once the dishwasher was churning away, David caught Holly’s hand casually in his and led her back to the living room as though it were his house. As though they had all the time in the world.

“Maybe we shouldn’t—” she sputtered, lifting his hand so that she could peer at the watch on her own wrist. “It’s getting late—”

David sat down on one of the soft Indian pillows facing the fireplace and pulled Holly after him. She tumbled against him, and her heart lurched into her throat at even that small contact, driving the breath out of her lungs and causing a curious ringing sound in her ears.

She settled herself primly on the other pillow, careful not to look at him. She knew that she would see the familiar, quiet amusement shining in his navy blue eyes.

“Holly.”

She swallowed, knotting her hands together in her lap. “What?”

“Look at me.”

She looked at him because doing otherwise would have been foolish and petulant. Even infantile. “So, I’m looking already,” she said.

He laughed and that was at variance with the look in his eyes which, instead of humor, betrayed a reluctance of some kind. A hurtful reluctance.

Holly was stung. David wanted to resist her as badly as she wanted to resist him! Wasn’t she attractive? Did he find her— David bent his head and kissed her, and an almost inaudible groan rumbled up through his chest and brushed against her lips. He was only nibbling at her mouth, tasting it as though it were a delicacy to be savored. He muttered something, and to a dazed Holly, it sounded as though he’d said, “Why?”

She couldn’t think of that now. She couldn’t think of anything except the havoc that reluctant kiss was causing inside her. She shivered and placed her hands on his strong shoulders, where they moved of their own accord to caress his neck.

He kissed her in earnest then, his tongue exploring the sweet depths of her mouth, enlisting her own to respond in quick, fevered parries. His hand moving gently up and down the length of her thigh caused the flesh hidden beneath to quiver.

Holly wanted to die and she wanted to live forever. She wanted to stop and she drew him nearer, allowing him to shift her body and his own so that they were both prone before the crackling fire.

His hand left her thigh to move up over her hip, underneath her soft mulberry sweater, over the flesh at her waist, over her rib cage. He freed her from his sorcerer’s kiss to nibble gently, provocatively, at her earlobe and her neck.

“I want you, Holly,” he said in that forthright way of his, his voice a gruff caress against the base of her neck.

Holly shivered, even though there was a heat pulsing inside her that made her long to fling off her clothes. “David, I...we...”

“I know,” he chuckled, and his hand had found the catch at the front of her bra. There was a feeling of sweet, wanton freedom as her breasts were released, and then his fingers were soothing her, searching out a nipple that already awaited them at strictest attention. “Tell me to stop.”

If Holly hadn’t been so bedazzled, she would have slapped him. “I can’t...” she admitted, her words falling away to a groan as he found that arching nipple and rolled it gently between his fingers.

He drew her sweater slowly upward, his hand cupping the captured breast, shaping it for conquering. When he bent his head to lave the throbbing peak softly with his tongue, Holly gasped with pleasure and arched her back in reflexive surrender.

“We...can’t do this...” he managed to say as his mouth blazed a path from the conquered breast to the one that awaited sweet defeat. “We can’t...”

“I know,” Holly agreed. But when his tongue touched the untended nipple, she knotted her hands in David’s rich, mink-soft hair and held him close.

Holly Llewellyn was to wonder many times, sometimes with regret and sometimes with relief, what would have happened if the telephone hadn’t rung when it did. Its cold, jarring jangle made David thrust himself away from her as if in fury.

Stung and shaken and still needing, Holly hastily fixed her bra and stumbled off at a half jog to answer.

“Hello!” she gasped, winded and embarrassed. She could see David from where she stood and he was just staring into the fire, his broad back rigid.

“Sis?”

Holly wanted to cry. Not now, she thought frantically. Oh, God, not now! She lowered her voice. “Hello, Craig.”

“‘Hello, Craig’? Is that all you’ve got to say?”

Holly stiffened, very conscious of the man sitting before the fireplace. Her breasts were still heavy and warm with passion, their peaks moist. She tried to breathe properly. “What should I say, Craig?” she asked petulantly, forgetting this time to keep her tone at whisper level.

“I tried to pick up the money,” Craig rushed on angrily, frantically. “Guess what? There were crew cuts all around Cindy’s place!”

Holly trembled, then drew a deep breath. “Crew cuts?” she repeated, confused. David’s back stiffened almost imperceptibly, or was that a trick of the firelight? He didn’t appear to be making the slightest effort to hear what was being said, but appearances could be deceiving.

“FBI agents. Holly, they were everywhere! Did you turn me in?”

“Of course I didn’t!” At this outburst, David turned his head, assessing Holly with a look she could read all too well: it was full of stark, angry pity.

“Just listen,” Craig rasped. God in heaven, how desperate, how hunted, he sounded. “I’m going to need money, Holly, and if I have to come there and get it, I will!”

“You can’t do that! Toby would be—”

“Toby. Always Toby. Don’t you ever think about anybody besides that kid, Holly? What about me? I’m your brother, remember?” Craig stopped to draw a harsh breath and then began to cough. It was a frightening sound.

“You’re sick!” Holly exclaimed, watching David. He had turned his eyes from her again and was now gazing into the fire, one knee drawn up under his chin. “Craig, please—turn yourself in. They won’t hurt you, I swear it!”

“I’ll call again tomorrow!” Craig roared impatiently, and then he slammed the receiver down so hard that Holly flinched. She was on the verge of tears when she placed her own receiver in its cradle.

The silence in the living room was complete, except for the snapping merriment of the fire. David looked at Holly but did not rise from his seat near the hearth. Holly closed her eyes momentarily, in a vain effort to shut out the reality of Craig and his problems, then drew a deep breath to steady herself.