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

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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.

“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.

6

The 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!”