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

The park was sunny, and in places patches of green-brown grass dappled the grubby snow. There were lots of children around, their laughter ringing in the ice-cold air, and a goodly number of parents, too.

“I wish I’d brought my sled,” Toby said wistfully, watching as some of the children pushed and pulled each other on Flyers and plastic saucers.

Something twisted inside Holly as she watched her nephew; despite all his friends at school, he was a lonely child, often feeling separate from the others. Alone. While Holly’s own childhood had been far from ideal, she had had Craig. Toby had no one near his own age.

The little boy squinted up at her, a grin forming on his face, and the toy Cessna seemed huge in his small hands. “You thinkin’ about my dad?” he asked directly.

Holly was stunned. Lately it seemed as though she went around with all her thoughts written on her forehead, so clearly did people read them. “How did you know that?”

Small shoulders, hidden beneath the weight of a down-filled snowsuit, moved in a shrug. “You get a sad look on your face when you think about Dad.”

“We were very close once,” Holly admitted distractedly, having to look away for a moment because of the tears that stung her eyes.

“Dad’s a bad man, isn’t he?” Toby probed seriously, his mittened hands working awkwardly with the airplane.

Holly shook her head so suddenly and so hard that her neck ached—as did her heart. “No, Toby. Your dad isn’t really a bad man, though he has done some bad things. He’s sick, Toby, and pretty confused.”

“He doesn’t want me.”

Holly knelt in the snow, which crackled beneath the worn knees of her oldest jeans, and clasped Toby by the shoulders. “It isn’t that way at all, Toby. Your dad loves you. But when people have the kind of troubles he does, they just don’t seem to have room in their lives for other things and other people.”

Toby’s face was scrunched up in the battle against unmanly emotion. “I liked Mr. Goddard a lot. How come he didn’t come back? Does he have problems, too, like Dad?”

Holly closed her eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath. “No, Toby. I don’t think he has the kind of problems that your dad has. As for why he didn’t come back—”

“He was a fool,” put in a deep, masculine voice.

Holly and Toby looked up simultaneously, squinting against the dazzling winter sun, to see David standing over them. He wore a dark blue ski jacket and jeans, a contrite expression on his face and held his own model airplane in his hands.

“Hi!” Toby whooped, overjoyed.

While Holly was glad enough to see David herself, glad enough to shout, in fact, she was a little injured by Toby’s enthusiasm toward the man. It was as though a hopeless day had just been saved at the last, cliff-hanging second. And there were all her misgivings, too...

“Truce,” he said gruffly, extending one hand to Holly, the plane tucked under his opposite elbow now. “Please?”

Holly swallowed. It was sheer, foolhardy madness to get further involved with this man and she knew it, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to refuse what she knew he was offering. “Truce,” she croaked out, after what seemed like a long time.

Eyes of an impossibly dark blue swept over her so swiftly that she could almost believe it hadn’t happened, and then they shifted to Toby. “Hi, slugger. Ready to fly?”

Toby was literally beaming. Again Holly found his obvious fondness for David Goddard unsettling. What would happen when David went away? What if he did something that would hurt Craig and thus Toby, too?

“I’m ready!” came the exuberant answer.

David proved to be a lousy pilot, always dropping his hand controls or sending his somewhat odd-looking model airplane plunging into bushes, but Holly was too amused to chalk this up as another reason to be suspicious of him. After all, he’d only said he owned a model plane, not that he was proficient at flying one.

In any case, David’s ineptitude only seemed to endear him further to Toby, who patiently demonstrated again and again how to handle the craft properly. Holly stood back and watched, full of mingled dread and tender inclinations. She was glad, even relieved, when Toby offered her a turn with his airplane, for that gave her something to think about besides David Goddard and all the wonderful, terrible things that could come of allowing him into her life.

As the small airplane glided and dipped and roared overhead in a perfect circle, following the commands Holly gave it with her handset, Toby and David both applauded. Privately, she was surprised that she hadn’t sent the thing crashing into a tree; her fingers wouldn’t stop shaking.

Finally the morning ended; it was time to take Toby home, give him lunch and let him have a few quiet minutes before driving him to the Coliseum, where he would join his classmates for the afternoon performance of the Ice Capades.

Leading Toby toward her car, she glanced uncertainly at David. What would happen now? Did he want to talk? Would he just leave, or would there be a renewal of the dangerous attraction that seemed to be sweeping them together?

Holly felt stiff, almost formal. Walk away and don’t look back! screamed her mind. This man is dangerous! But her heart said something entirely different. “We enjoyed seeing you again,” she ventured aloud.

David’s lips curved into a half grin, one that said he understood her feelings because they so closely paralleled his own, but his blue eyes were sad. “Toby will be busy this afternoon?” he asked evenly.

“I’m going to the Ice Capades!” the little boy crowed before Holly could assemble a polite answer.

David’s indigo gaze touched the child with real affection, then sliced back to Holly’s face. “I need to talk with you, Holly,” he said quietly. “To be with you. Will you have lunch with me?”

“Sure she will!” Toby announced with loud confidence, scrambling into the back seat of Holly’s car, setting his airplane and handset on the seat and buckling himself into the seat belt.

David laughed, but that quiet ache was still visible in his eyes. “Please,” he said.

Holly swallowed hard and nodded. “Shall I meet you somewhere?”

“I’ll pick you up at your place in an hour or so, if that’s all right.”

Holly nodded again and got into her car, busying herself with the fastening of her seat belt and the turning of the ignition key. Anything so that she didn’t have to look back and see David getting into that rented car of his, that car that didn’t suit him. She couldn’t bear the strain of wondering about him anymore, of weighing his motives all the time. No, just for this one day she was going to enjoy what she felt, without letting doubt spoil it.

While Toby consumed soup and a sandwich, his appetite made sharp by a morning of fresh air and exercise, Holly exchanged her Saturday jeans for a pair of fitted gray slacks, her T-shirt and poncho for a classic navy blue blouse with a tie at the throat and a charcoal velvet blazer. She brushed her hair carefully and put on makeup, too, telling herself all the while that she wasn’t trying to be attractive for David, not at all. It was just that as something of a local celebrity, she had an image to maintain.

Why she hadn’t been concerned with that image earlier in the day, when she’d gone to a public park in her oldest clothes, wearing no makeup, was a question she didn’t bother to examine.

When she returned from dropping Toby off at the Coliseum, David was waiting in front of her house. And he was driving a different car.

Holly parked her own Toyota in the driveway, locked it and went toward him, taking in the sleek lines of the red Camaro sitting at the curb. David got out, looking devastatingly handsome in jeans and a cream-colored bulky-knit sweater, and came around to open the car door for her.

“What happened to the rented one?” she asked. “The brown sedan?”

David shook his head, but he went back around the car and got in on his own side before answering. “I told you my car was being fixed, Holly. This is it.”

Again, Holly was unsettled. This car looked and smelled so new, how could anything have been wrong with it?

“Don’t weigh everything I say, Holly,” David said watching her. “I’m a man, not a mystery to solve.”

Holly said nothing. She couldn’t deny that he was a man, but the part about his not being a mystery was certainly open to debate.

Lunch, eaten in a plant-filled restaurant overlooking Riverfront Park, the site of a world’s fair and Spokane’s coveted antique carousel, was a stilted affair.

Holly was as annoyed as she was self-conscious. Hadn’t David said he wanted to talk to her? No, in fact, he’d said he needed to talk to her. So why didn’t he?

His glass of white wine seemed to fascinate him; he turned it in one strong, sun-browned hand, watching the ebb and flow. The silence lengthened.

“I thought you said we were going to talk!” Holly blurted out impatiently. What was it about this man that undid her so? She felt sure that it was more than her rising attraction to him, more even than her doubts about his motives for spending time with her.

He chuckled and the sound was hollow and humorless. “You’re in a lot of trouble, aren’t you, Holly? Or, I should say, someone very close to you is. Why won’t you let me help you?”