State Secrets by Linda Lael Miller

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, buthis 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 alittle. “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 pysche 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