State Secrets (3 page)

“Like the proverbial log,” Madge answered, gathering a stack of envelopes, all addressed and stamped, into a stack. “You had a couple of phone calls—one from Skyler and one from a man who wouldn’t leave his name.”

Again Holly felt uneasy. “What did he say? The man who wouldn’t give you his name, I mean?”

Madge shrugged, fussing with her contest paraphernalia. “Just that he’d call back. Skyler wants you to call him.”

Holly was suddenly testy. If Skyler wanted to talk to her, he could darned well call back. She saw Madge to the door and then headed off toward the kitchen, planning to take one of her experiments out of the freezer and zap it in the microwave. She’d been running late before cooking class and hadn’t had a chance to eat dinner.

Just as the bell on the microwave chimed, so did the telephone. Muttering, Holly dived for the receiver, afraid that the ringing of the upstairs extension would awaken Toby.

“Hello?” she demanded impatiently.

The voice on the other end of the line was haunted, shaky. “Sis?”

Holly’s knees gave out and she sank into the chair at the desk. “Craig! Where are you? What—”

Her brother laughed nervously and the sound was broken and humorless, painful to hear. “Never mind where I am. You know I can’t tell you that. Your phone might be bugged or something.”

“Craig, don’t be paranoid. Where are you?”

“Let’s just say that this call isn’t long-distance from Kabul. How’s Toby?”

Holly deliberately calmed herself, measuring her tones. She was desperate not to panic Craig and cause him to hang up. “Toby is fine, Craig. How about you?”

“I’m all right. A little tired. More than a little broke.”

Holly closed her eyes. So that was the reason for his call. Money. Why was she always surprised by that? “And you need a few bucks.”

“You can spare it, can’t you?” Craig sounded petulant, far younger than his thirty-six years. “You’re a rich lady, sis. Didn’t I see you on
Ellen
a few months ago?”

“Craig, come home. Please?”

He made a bitter, contemptuous sound. “And do what? Turn myself in, Holly? Give me a break—I’ll be in prison for the rest of my life!”

“Maybe not. Craig, you’re not well. You need help. And I promise that I’ll stand by you.”

“If you want to stand by me, little sister, just send a cashier’s check to the usual place. And do it tomorrow if you don’t want me to lose weight.”

“Craig, listen to me—”

“Just send the money,” he barked, and then the line went dead. Holly sat for five minutes, letting her ka-bob get cold in the microwave, holding the telephone receiver in her hand and just staring into space.

Finally she hung up, forced herself out of the chair, and took the ka-bob from the microwave. Although she ate, she tasted nothing at all. The ka-bobs she had taken such pride in making might as well have been filled with sawdust.

David Goddard locked the two Webkinz into the trunk of his rented car, shaking his head as he remembered the way he’d had to scramble for them. He sighed, then grinned. The kids would like them, so it had been worth a few scars.

On his way back to the parking garage’s lonely elevator, he passed the place where Holly’s Toyota had been. Instantly, his mind and all his senses brimmed with the scent and image of her.

He reached the elevator and punched the button with an annoyed motion of his right hand. Walt Zigman was full
of sheep-dip if he thought that woman was capable of espionage. Holly Llewellyn was harried and she was haunted, but she was nobody’s flunky.

The elevator ground to a stop; the doors swished open. David stepped inside and punched another button. He smiled to himself, thinking of the first fruitcake he’d ever put together in his life. It was a good thing no one had bothered to taste it; his cover would have been blown then and there. He’d been too lost in Holly Llewellyn’s aquamarine eyes to concentrate on baking.

Baking. He rolled his eyes. For this I went to law school, he thought. For this I walked the first lady’s dog.

He reached the first floor of the parking garage, where there was a wine shop and an old-fashioned ice-cream parlor. Ice cream, in this weather? David shivered and lifted his collar before stepping back outside, onto the street.

At the corner, he paused. Gung ho Christmas shoppers surged past him when the light changed, carrying him along. He went back into the department store where Holly had taught her class and again braved the toy department. This time he bought an airplane, a model that would fly by means of a small hand-control unit. Manito Park, she’d said.

Half an hour later David entered his apartment, acquired only two days before, with mingled relief and reluctance. It was a small place, furnished in tacky plaids. The carpet was thin and the last tenant had owned a dog, judging by the oval stains by the door and in front of the foldout sofa bed. At least he had a telephone. David went to it and, with perverse pleasure, punched out Walt Zigman’s home number.

It was after one in the morning on the East Coast and Walt’s voice was a groggy rumble. “Who the—”

“Goddard,” David said crisply, grinning. “I said I’d report Monday. This is my report.”

Zigman swore fiercely. “Goddard, did anybody ever tell you that you’re a son of a—”

“I met her.”

“Holly Llewellyn?” Walt’s interest was immediate. Clearly, he was now wide-awake. “How did you manage that so fast?”

“Simple. I bought yesterday’s paper and read the food section. There was a write-up about her new class.”

“Her new class in what?”

David closed his eyes. There was no way out of this one. “Fruitcake,” he answered reluctantly.

Zigman laughed. “Fitting,” came his rapid-fire reply, just as David had expected.

“You’re getting corny in your old age, Walt.”

“Did you find out anything?”

David unzipped his jacket and flung it down on the couch. It covered the toys and the model airplane in its colorful box—he’d be up half the night assembling that sucker. “Sure,” he snapped. “She fed me grapes and poured out the whole sordid story of her life in the underworld.”

“Don’t be a smart—”

“I met her. That’s all. But I can tell you this much, Walt—she’s no traitor. I’m wasting my time here.”

“You’re getting paid for it. Keep your eye on the ball, Goddard. When it’s time for you to come back to D.C. and follow the new first lady around, I’ll let you know.”

This time it was David who swore. “Tell me, Walt,” he began dryly, “does she have a dog?”

“Three of them,” said Walt with obnoxious satisfaction. “By the time the new first family takes up residence, you’ll be back on good old Pennsylvania Avenue, passing out poochie treats.”

“You’re funny as hell, you know that? In fact, why don’t you take your goddamned job and—”

“Goddard, Goddard,” Walt reprimanded in his favorite fatherly tone. “Calm down, I was just kidding you, that’s all. You’re a damned good agent.”

Agent. If he hadn’t felt like screaming swearwords, David would have laughed. “I didn’t work my way through law school so that I could walk dogs, Walt.”

“You really are unhappy, aren’t you?”

“In a word, yes.”

“We’ve been through this before.”

“Yeah. Good night, Walt.”

“Goddard!”

David hung up.

After a few minutes he hoisted himself up off the foldout couch, dug the stuffed animals out from under his coat and set them on the scarred counter that separated his living room–bedroom from the cubicle the landlady called a kitchen.

Thinking of his nieces and how they were going to enjoy the Webkinz, he began to feel better.

Presently, David took a TV dinner out of the tiny freezer above his refrigerator and shoved it into the doll-sized oven. While it was cooking, he stripped off his clothes, went into the bathroom and wedged himself into a shower
designed for a midget. After drying off with one of the three scratchy towels the landlady had seen fit to lend him, he went back to the living room and dug his robe out of a suitcase. Someday, he promised himself, he was going to write a book about the glamorous life of a Secret Service agent.

After consuming the TV dinner, he set about putting the model airplane together. It was after midnight when he finally gave up, washed the glue from his fingers, folded out the sofa bed and collapsed, falling into an instant sleep.

I
t was very bad luck that, after a quick visit to her bank that bleak Tuesday morning, Holly encountered David in the neighborhood branch of the post office. Or was it luck?

Holly looked at the carefully wrapped parcel in his arms and decided he was only mailing the Webkinz he’d bought the night before to his nieces. No doubt he lived nearby and it made sense that he would be here.

“Don’t you have classes today?” she asked as they waited in line, stiff pleasantries already exchanged.

David smiled wanly. “One o’clock,” he answered. He hadn’t looked at the address on the envelope Holly carried, as far as she could tell, but she held it against her coat all the same.

Soon enough, it was Holly’s turn at the window; she laid the envelope addressed to Craig’s go-between girlfriend on the counter and asked that it be registered. While she filled out the form and paid the small fee, David had ample opportunity to study the address, but there was no helping that. She couldn’t very well turn around and say, “Please don’t look at this envelope. I’m sending money
to my brother, who is a fugitive, you see, and there is a chance that you might be a reporter or even an FBI agent.” So she said nothing.

“See you tonight?” David asked in a deep quiet voice as she turned away from the window to leave.

Holly hadn’t even thought about the classes; she’d been too intent on getting that cashier’s check sent off to Craig. “Tonight,” she confirmed, but her mind was on the letter she had just mailed. It would reach its destination, Los Angeles, within a day or so. Had she done the wrong thing by making it easier for Craig to keep on running? She knew she had.

She would have left then, but David caught her arm in one hand and stayed her. “Are you all right?” he asked, ignoring the impatient post-office clerk, who was waiting to weigh and stamp the package he still held.

Holly nodded quickly and then fled. In her car, she let her forehead rest against the steering wheel for a moment before starting the engine and driving away. As she pulled into a supermarket parking lot a few minutes later, she was still trembling. She loved Craig; he was her brother. But she almost wished the FBI would catch him. That way there wouldn’t be any more lying, any more hiding, any more guilt.

She got out of the car, locking it behind her, and went into the supermarket. Think about the couscous you’ve got to test today, she told herself. Think about the spices you’ll need. Don’t think about Craig and especially don’t think about David Goddard. It was a coincidence that he was in the post office just when you were. It was a coincidence!

That seemed unlikely, but by the time she had chosen a
cart and gotten out her shopping list, Holly had convinced herself that she was being fanciful again. Paranoid, like Craig.

He was wearing a navy blue football jersey with white numbers, jeans and polished leather boots. Holly, exhausted from a day of making couscous over and over again, gave herself a mental shake. What did she care what David Goddard wore, for heaven’s sake?

Her beautiful aquamarine eyes looked hollow and smudges of fatigue and worry darkened the flawless skin beneath. David ached for her. Things were going to get worse, maybe a lot worse, for Holly Llewellyn before they got better.

If they ever got better.

Again he lingered, quietly helping her with the mess left behind by thirteen people struggling with a complicated German recipe. I’ll have to go through this eight more times, Holly thought dismally. All the rest of this week. All of next week.

“Coffee?” David asked, drying his hands on one of the pristine towels provided by the store.

Holly found the idea oddly appealing, considering that, on at least one level, she was afraid of David Goddard. “I don’t know, I…”

“Please?”

She felt the pull of his blatant masculinity and tried to field it with words. “You didn’t take your fruitcake home last night,” she said. “The janitor must have thrown it away.”

David folded his arms and arched one eyebrow. He
saw through what she was doing; she just knew it. “I threw it away myself,” he replied, watching her. “I was afraid you might taste it and flunk me on the spot. Now, are we going for coffee or not?”

Holly couldn’t help the nervous, weary chuckle that escaped her. “I’ll make you a cup at my place.” Now what made her say that? She never brought men to her house; only Skyler came there and he usually invited himself.

“Great,” agreed the alarming David Goddard before she could take back the offer. “I’ll follow you in my car.”

Holly put on her coat, thinking that the kitchen table at home was still littered with reference books and parts of the manuscript Elaine had been indexing all day. The remains of that day’s couscous experiments probably covered the counters, since Madge wasn’t supposed to clean until the next morning; tonight she was only baby-sitting.

Reaching the parking garage, Holly was jarred to find that David’s car was next to her own. Not for the first time, she had the unsettling feeling that he always knew where she was and what she was doing. But that was silly. He was a gentleman, that was all. A rare enough animal these days.

“You wanted to make sure I didn’t get mugged,” she guessed distractedly as he unlocked the door of a small, ordinary brown sedan.

David executed a teasing salute, but Holly was looking at his other hand. The car keys he held were affixed to a chain bearing the insignia of a nationally known rental agency. He rented his car? That seemed odd, just as the vehicle itself was odd, unsuited to him in a myriad of vague ways.

Puzzled, Holly got into her own car, started the ignition and, doubts notwithstanding, led the way to her sizable “cottage” on Spokane’s quietly elegant South Hill.

“You rent your car,” she said the moment they were in her living room. Not “welcome to my house,” not “take off your coat,” but “you rent your car.” Holly felt stupid.

“Yes,” David confessed readily. “Mine is in the shop.”

Of course, Holly thought, but she was still bothered on a subliminal, barely discernible level. She drew a deep breath and forced herself to smile. “About that coffee I offered. This way to the kitchen.”

David followed her across the shadowy living room, lit only by the dying fire in the hearth, and even though he was walking behind her, she was aware that he was taking in a tremendous amount of information just by looking around.

“Be prepared for a mess,” she chimed, to cover her uneasiness. “My assistant and I spent the day making couscous.”

They entered the kitchen and Holly stopped so swiftly that David nearly collided with her from behind; she felt the hard wall of his body touch her and glance quickly away.

Madge was at the sink, just finishing an impromptu cleaning detail, but her presence wasn’t what caught Holly so off guard. Skyler was sitting at the table, sipping coffee. Why hadn’t she noticed his car outside?

He looked up and there was a challenge in his brown eyes as they assessed David Goddard. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said coldly, rising from the bench at Holly’s table to glare at David.

Skyler was acting like a jealous husband and it infuriated Holly, but before she could say anything at all David crossed the room and extended his hand to Skyler.

“David Goddard,” he said in crisp introduction.

Madge took in the scene with bright, interested eyes, but did not say anything. Neither did Holly, who was too taken aback by the intangible storm that was suddenly raging in her quiet, cozy kitchen.

“Skyler Hollis,” came the grudging reponse.

David took in Skyler’s sleek blond hair, elegant green sweater and custom-made slacks in one swift, indigo sweep. “Did you ever appear in
GQ
magazine?” he asked.

Madge made a chortling sound and turned back to the sink. Holly rolled her eyes heavenward and then stomped over to the counter, where the coffeemaker waited.

“I own a stereo store,” Skyler announced, either missing the reference to his wholesome good looks or choosing to ignore it. “What do you do, Goddard?”

David, Holly saw in a quick glance over one shoulder, gave a slow smile. “I’m learning to make fruitcake.”

“Fruitcake,” Skyler huffed, scowling. “I meant, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a door-to-door salesman,” was the icy and totally false reply. “I sell air fresheners. You know, those little bowls with the flowers in them—”

“Here’s your coffee,” Holly broke in archly, setting David’s cup down on the just-cleared trestle table with a resounding thump. “Skyler, do you need a refill?”

Skyler shot her a look and carried his cup to the sink, where he thrust it into the hands of a sedately amused Madge Elkins. “No!” he barked.

“Am I breaking up a meaningful relationship?” David asked, lifting his cup in an unsuccessful attempt to hide a grin.

Skyler’s look darkened; he leaned back against the counter and stubbornly folded his arms.

Holly was embarrassed and exasperated. “Skyler Hollis, will you just sit down, please? David is—”

“I know what David is,” Skyler snapped before he stomped out of the kitchen. Seconds later, the front door slammed.

“I’m sorry,” David said.

“I could swear I saw smoke coming out of that man’s ears,” Madge put in, receiving a swift look from Holly for her trouble.

The housekeeper smiled and shrugged, then took her leave without waiting for an introduction to David Goddard.

They were alone. Holly sighed heavily and fixed her gaze on her own cup of coffee.

“Are you in love with Skyler—what’s his name? Hollis?”

The directness of the question brought Holly’s gaze shooting up from the dark brew in her cup to David’s face. “In love with him?” she echoed stupidly.

“You do realize, I hope, that if you marry that guy your name will be Holly Hollis?”

Holly burst out laughing. “You know, I never thought of that. I guess I’d just have to go on calling myself Llewellyn.”

David’s impossibly blue eyes were filled with gentle humor. “I really am sorry if I caused any trouble, Holly. If you want me to apologize to Hollis, I will.”

“No,” Holly said quickly. Perhaps too quickly. “Skyler had no right to act that way,” she added moments later, in more carefully measured tones. “He has no claim on me and if I want to bring a friend home for coffee…”

“Is that what I am, Holly? Your friend?”

Holly clasped her hands together in her lap. She was twenty-seven years old, an adult, but she suddenly felt like a fifteen-year-old on her first date. “I hope so,” she said softly.

Graciously, David changed the subject. The muscles in his forearms worked as he reached for the sugar bowl and added a spoonful to his coffee. “You aren’t even thirty yet, unless I miss my guess,” he said. “How did you happen to accomplish so much by such a tender age?”

Holly was comfortable with the subject of her career, at least. She pushed aside the strange suspicions she had about this man who sat across the table from her and allowed herself to forget, for a little while, her worries about Craig and her impossible relationship with Skyler Hollis. “I was lucky. My grandmother wrote cookbooks, you know, and she taught me a lot. And I worked hard.”

“You must have spent a lot of time with your grandmother,” David remarked, watching her.

“My brother and I lived with her, along with our mother. Our father was killed in an accident when I was seven,” Holly blurted out in a rush. There, she thought. If he asks about Craig, I’ll know something is wrong.

She held her breath.

“Your mother and grandmother are both gone now?” David asked gently.

Holly was unaccountably relieved, though her throat
tightened when she answered. “Grandmother passed away, yes. Mother married a missionary doctor and we don’t see her very often.”

David’s rugged face seemed to grow taut for a moment. “You’ve never been married?”

Holly shook her head. “I almost was, once.” Strange. She could think of Ben now, without hurting. “What about you?”

David laughed, but there was no amusement in the sound or in the ink-blue flash of his eyes. Holly knew before he spoke that he’d once been hurt, and very badly. “I got married during my second year of law school,” he said. “Marleen was a graduate student in Animal Sciences.”

There was anger as well as pain in his voice. Holly deduced that Marleen had not died, as Ben had. “And?” she prompted.

“And she’s now in Borneo studying chimps. She finds them endlessly fascinating and far less demanding, I would imagine, than a husband.”

The bitterness in his tone stung Holly profoundly. David still loved Marleen despite his anger; she was sure of it. And for some reason, that hurt. “I’m sorry,” she said, getting up hastily to go to the coffeemaker and bring the decanter back to the table, where she refilled her own cup and then David’s.

“Don’t be,” David replied succinctly. “Marleen is happy.”

But what about you? Holly wanted to ask, though, of course, she didn’t dare. She put sugar into her coffee—something she never did—and kept her eyes averted.

“You said you were almost married once. What happened, Holly?”

Holly’s throat constricted again. “My fiancé was killed,” she managed to say. “He was working on a construction project in Alaska and…and he fell.”

“You loved him a lot, didn’t you?”

Holly nodded. “I wanted to die, too, at the time. And I was so angry.”

There was a short, companionable silence. The coffeemaker made gurgling sounds and the fire crackled on the kitchen hearth. David’s hand came, strong and warm, across the tabletop, to shelter Holly’s hand.

It was then that Toby shuffled into the kitchen, looking sleepy and rumpled in his cherished Spider-Man pajamas. “Is it time to go to school, Mom?” he asked, befuddled.

Holly’s eyes darted involuntarily to David’s face, then shifted to her nephew. “No, sweetheart, it’s still night. Go back to bed.”

Toby gave David a curious look. “Who’s that?” he demanded.

“This is Mr. Goddard, Toby. He’s a friend of mine, a student in my cooking class.”

Toby assessed David again. “You cook?” he wanted to know.