State Secrets (6 page)

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.

“Believe me when I tell you, Holly, that I’ve never wanted or needed a woman the way I needed you just now. Never. But it was a mistake. We can’t let it happen again.”

It would have hurt less, Holly was certain, if he’d slapped her. “What do you mean, it was a mistake? It was…it was…”

David kissed her forehead, wiped away the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes with practiced thumbs, then turned to walk away. He closed the door quietly behind him, but Holly waited until she was sure he was out of the house before flinging herself facedown on the bed to cry.

T
he telephone rang. Sitting up on the bed, brushing her tangled hair back from her face, Holly reached out for the receiver, overriding the answering machine downstairs. Please, God, she prayed, let it be David.

“I left you two messages last night!” Craig blurted out the moment she said hello. “Don’t you return your calls anymore, or is it something I said?”

Craig. Holly settled back on the pillows, which still bore the scent of David, and sighed. “I’m sorry, Craig. I was busy and—”

“You were
busy?
Good God, Holly! Remember me? I’m your brother, the man who is in trouble?”

Holly’s throat was thick with despair, and her head ached. “We all have problems, Craig,” she reminded him quietly, thinking of David Goddard.

“Sure, Holl. I know you’re probably all torn up about whether to pay your Keogh Plan before the end of the year and what color to paint your toenails.”

The sarcasm, following the scene with David as it did, was too much. “Listen, Craig. I care about you and you know it. I do everything I can to help you. But you’re the
one who got yourself into this mess—kindly remember that!”

He subsided. “I know. Holly, I’m so scared.”

Tears smarted in Holly’s eyes, sudden and hot. It was a surprise because she had been certain that there were none left to cry. Images of another Craig, bright and fit and funny, rose in her mind. Dear God, what had happened to change him this way? During the troubled years after their father’s death, when their mother had been so confused and distracted, he had been Holly’s strength, her lifeline.

“I know, Craig, I know. I beg of you, give yourself up.”

“I can’t, Holly. I just can’t. You don’t know how these guys treat a fink—”

“Craig, they’re not going to hurt you. I’ll have a lawyer present. You’re still a citizen and you still have rights.”

“Not anymore, I don’t,” he muttered. “I’ve had dealings with al-Qaeda, Holly, and they know it.”

“Why, Craig? Why did you turn to…to those people? Why did you do it?”

He made a strange sound and Holly was shattered to realize that he was crying. “I have a habit, Holly,” he finally said.

Dread electrified Holly, and she bolted upright. “What kind of habit?” she whispered, her eyes wide and burning. “Dammit, Craig,
what kind of habit?
”

“Cocaine,” he said.

“Oh, God,” Holly groaned.

“Listen, I need money. Cindy managed to bring me what you sent, but that’s gone now.”

“No.”

“What did you say?” Craig sniffled, and his voice sounded angry again.

“I said no, Craig. I’m not giving you money to buy poison! I absolutely will not!”

“Holly, I need—”

“You need help and I haven’t been giving it to you! Oh, God, how could I have been so stupid—”

“Get the money, Holly. Send it to this address—” He rattled off a post-office-box number in a small Oregon town. “I mean it, Holly. If you don’t, I’ll be home for Christmas. And not to turn myself in.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, sister dear,” he answered with tart patience, “that if you don’t help me I’ll take Toby on the road with me. That’s what I’m saying.”

“No! I won’t let you! I won’t let you expose him to that, drag him around the country—”

“You won’t be able to stop me, Holly. I know where he goes to school, and I know where you live. And remember I’m a former federal agent—I’ll find the kid no matter where you try to hide him.”

“Craig!”

“Send the money,” he said. He repeated the address once more and then hung up.

Slowly, her hand trembling so hard that she had to make several attempts before she could manage the task, Holly replaced the receiver in its cradle.

She sat there on the bed, cross-legged, her head in her hands, until she heard Toby downstairs. “Mom!” he yelled exuberantly, probably still excited from his afternoon at the Ice Capades, “I’m home!”

Holly quickly leaped off the bed, found herself a robe and went down the stairs.

Toby was waiting at the bottom, his beloved face alight. “Geez, Mom,” he said, barely able to stand still, “the ice show was great! They had the Flintstones and—” He stopped, taking in Holly’s bathrobe and mussed hair with concern. “Are you sick, Mom?”

“No, darling, I’m not sick,” Holly answered swiftly, forcing a smile to her face. “How did you get home, by the way? I thought I was supposed to pick you up.”

“David brought me!” Toby sang, spreading his mittened hands for emphasis.

Holly swayed backward, just slightly, stunned. How could she have missed seeing David, when he was standing only a few feet away? Why hadn’t she sensed that he was near?

“I hope you don’t mind,” David said quietly, but there was much, much more that his eyes were saying. They looked haunted, hollow.

Holly’s temper flared, fanned by her fear, and she shifted her eyes to Toby’s trusting, upturned face. “Don’t you ever, ever get into anyone’s car but mine, young man!” she hissed.

Toby retreated a step, looking as though she’d struck him. “But, Mom, David—”

David laid a quieting hand on the child’s shoulder. “No, Tobe. She’s right. We made a mistake, you and I.”

Toby was not appeased. He darted one furious look at his trembling aunt and dashed off into another part of the house, probably to take solace in the late-afternoon cartoons he loved to watch on television.

“What are you doing here?” Holly half whispered, watching David, loving him even though her every instinct commanded her to tear out his hair.

“I couldn’t stay away. Bringing Toby back from the ice show seemed the perfect excuse, so I did it. I’m sorry, Holly. I didn’t mean to undermine your authority.”

Holly held her chin high, but inwardly she was all too conscious of her appearance. “You are very, very good at finding excuses to keep tabs on me, aren’t you, David?”

There was a thunderous silence, and David averted his eyes for a moment before meeting Holly’s glare directly. “I love you, Holly.”

Nothing he could have said would have surprised Holly more; she came a step nearer and her hand tightened on the banister until her knuckles ached. “What did you say?”

“Don’t make me say it again, Holly. I already feel like enough of a fool as it is.”

“Thanks a lot!”

“Just get dressed, will you? We need to talk, you and I. Not fight, not make love. Talk.”

Holly stared at him for a few minutes and then, too confused to deal with anything, turned and dashed up the stairs. Safe in the shower stall, with hot water pouring down over her head and her newly awakened body, she rested her face against the tiled wall and tried to catch her breath.

David made himself at home in the kitchen, conscious of the glum little boy sitting slumped at the trestle table. “Your mom didn’t mean to yell at you, Tobe,” he said, finding the coffee and the filters before pouring cold water into the top of the coffeemaker.

“She’s sure grouchy lately! And it’s almost Christmas, too!”

David smiled somewhat sadly, and then turned to look directly at Toby, leaning back against the counter, the coffeemaker chortling behind him. “Sure enough, it is almost Christmas. Time to get a tree.”

Toby brightened a little, but he was still miffed. “Yeah, I guess.” His eyes strayed to Holly’s desk, to the answering machine there, its light blinking frantically. “She never listens to her calls, neither.”

For the first time since high school, David Goddard blushed. David Goddard, who had guarded presidents. “She’s been sort of busy.”

The child bounded off the bench, a study in impatience, and stomped over to the machine. Before David could intercede, he had pushed two buttons on the machine. There were two brief messages from Holly’s brother, followed by a long conversation that told David more than he really wanted to know.

Craig had a cocaine habit. He needed money. And he was in a town in Oregon, watching a certain post-office box. When he began to talk about taking Toby from Holly, David strode across the room and turned off the machine abruptly.

Toby’s eyes were brimming with tears, and his color, high from the cold weather outside and his time at the ice show, drained away. “I want my mom!” he blurted out, fleeing the room.

David swore and cast one despairing look at the ceiling before leaving the house. Five minutes later, from a phone booth outside a supermarket, he called the FBI.

Skyler, arriving unannounced, frowned at Holly. “My God,” he muttered, “you look terrible!”

On this dismal Sunday morning, a soft snow was falling; a fire was crackling on the kitchen hearth. “Thanks, Sky,” Holly said, stepping back to admit him to her kitchen. “A compliment always gives a day that little extra something.”

“Don’t be difficult,” Skyler chided, taking off his stylish muffler and shaking it, a look of disapproval on his face. “I bring great tidings and all that.”

Holly could have used some great tidings to offset the problems she was having with Craig and the confusion she felt over David’s disappearance the day before. He’d seemed so eager to talk, but when she had finished her shower, dressed and gone downstairs, he had already left the house. After a quick search, she’d found Toby in his room, sobbing into his pillow, and the little boy had refused to tell her what was wrong.

Finally, he had fallen asleep. When he woke up later, Holly had offered him dinner, but he had refused. He was still silent this morning, and his mood added to Holly’s growing collection of worries.

“So, what glad tidings do you bring?” she asked, going to the coffeemaker and helping herself to her third cup since getting out of bed an hour earlier. After pouring a cup for Skyler, she sat down at the trestle table and nodded for him to do the same.

He took in her drawn face and the smudges under her eyes with puzzled concern. “Holly, what’s wrong? You look—”

Holly held up one hand to stop him. “I know. Terrible.”

“You’re still in your bathrobe!” he marveled, shocked.

Skyler didn’t believe in looking less than one’s best at any time of the day or night.

“Toby had bad dreams last night,” she said, as though that were an explanation. She didn’t add that she had been tormented by nightmares, too—when she had been able to sleep at all.

Skyler shrugged, looking helpless and a little annoyed. “What you need, what you both need, is a day in the country. Holly, let’s drive out to my folks’ farm and cut down a Christmas tree.”

Holly knew that she shouldn’t go, that she would be encouraging Skyler’s affections if she went. Even though her involvement with David Goddard was an unholy mess, she didn’t want to do that.

On the other hand, a drive in the wintry countryside would certainly be a pleasant distraction.

“Skyler, I—”

He sighed, and his fondness for Holly was naked in his eyes. “I know, Holly. You’ve been seeing someone else. Surely it isn’t so serious that you can’t spend a day with me?”

Holly’s heart twisted slightly. The truth was, her entanglement with David was so serious that she
had
to spend a day with Skyler. If she stayed around the house, waiting for David or for another of Craig’s devastating phone calls, she would surely go insane. And Toby needed the outing just as desperately as she did.

Gently, she reached across the table and closed her hand over Skyler’s. She was surprised to find that he was trembling just a little. And she was saddened by what that probably meant. “I have been seeing David regularly, Sky. And I do care about him a great deal.”

“I’d guessed that by the way you kept turning me down whenever I asked you out, Holly.”

“I’m sorry,” Holly replied softly, and she truly was. She had never wanted to hurt Skyler or anyone else, but she clearly had done just that.

“Say you’ll come with me today, Holly. We’ll find a couple of Christmas trees and Mom has a great dinner planned.”

Skyler looked so hopeful that Holly wanted to cry. “Okay,” she said. “Just give me a few minutes to get dressed and throw some breakfast together.”

Skyler wasn’t looking at her but into the depths of his coffee cup. “Don’t bother with breakfast, Holly. We’ll stop and eat on the way out of town.”

Holly left the table, but she paused in the doorway of the kitchen, looking back at Skyler. Her throat ached and her answer came out sounding hoarse and raspy. “You’re a good friend, Skyler Hollis. Do you know that?”

Skyler said nothing at all. After watching him for a silent, painful moment and wishing that things could be different, she hurried upstairs to get dressed.

“I’d like it better if David was taking us,” Toby grumbled when Holly stopped by his room to ask him to get ready to go and find a Christmas tree.

So would I, Holly thought sadly, but she said, in a voice that quivered just the slightest bit, “Please don’t be difficult, Toby. We need a dose of fresh air, you and I, and we’re going to have it. Get ready, please. Skyler is treating us to breakfast.”

Glumly, Toby went about obeying. Just as glumly, Holly went on to the bathroom to take her shower.

The day with Skyler was, for Holly, a bittersweet experience. They were two people who knew that their relationship was going nowhere, and were trying to be cheerful despite it. All the same, it was a pleasant day, at least for Holly, giving her the time she needed to paste herself back together and think.

During breakfast she pondered Craig’s cocaine problem and his threat to take Toby away. While she was frightened by the things her brother had said, she began to suspect that the part about stealing his son was just hysteria. Deluded though he was, Craig couldn’t possibly believe that he would be capable, under the circumstances, of taking care of a child.

As for the cocaine, well, while it was certainly a horrible shock, it did explain a lot about Craig’s treason. And that’s what it was; Holly forced herself to accept the fact. It was treason.

After that, she was unable to finish her hearty breakfast, no matter how much a subdued Skyler might urge her. But what she had already eaten helped Holly considerably. She felt stronger, better able to cope.

Toby, too, was coming out of his curious mood, however reluctantly. He enjoyed eating in restaurants even when it involved spending time with Skyler.