by Mary McBride
“Well, okay then, if you won't share Rod Bishop, how about if I take Bobby off your hands?”
“We're still married,” she snarled, and immediately regretted the harsh tone that sent Suzanne scuttling off the bed and heading back toward the living room. “I'm sorry, Suze,” she called to her. “I didn't mean to sound so abrupt.”
“That's okay,” her roommate called back. “Hey, divorce is tough. Been there. Done it. Believe me, I understand.”
No, she didn't, Angela thought. How could her roommate understand when she didn't even understand it herself after all this time? She wasn't divorced. But then, in spite of what she'd just told Suze, she wasn't really married either, was she? She was just … well … separated.
“Separated? What the hell is that?” her father, the ex-cop, had exclaimed when she told him about her decision last year on the phone. “You're either married or you're not.”
Her Little Limbo, as Rod kept calling her situation, much to her irritation. Her Current Confusion. Her Marital Mess. You need to make some decisions, my love.
Yes, she did, didn't she?
Angela drew in a deep breath and decided to get dressed for the premiere. At the moment, it was the best that she could do.
The red-eye flight to Chicago was on time and almost empty. For a woman who was a crack shot with a pistol and could take down a man twice her size with a few deft moves, Angela was a wimp when it came to flying. It had something to do with being at the mercy of an unseen pilot and a host of invisible, possibly incompetent mechanics. It had more to do with her tendency to be a take-charge person who knew she was out of her element, not to mention her league, in the air. Plus she just didn't like being cooped up with a bunch of sneezing, coughing strangers for hours on end.
Tonight, though, first class was empty, and she sighed gratefully as she settled into her dim little corner, buckled her seat belt, closed her eyes, and then finally——finally— got the big 757 into the air by fierce concentration while brutalizing a wad of strawberry bubble gum and saying half a dozen Hail Marys.
When the wheels came up, she opened her eyes and gazed out at the carpet of lights below. Dear God. An hour ago, somewhere down there, Rod Bishop had asked her to marry him.
He'd been waiting for her in front of the theater, smoking one of his long, thin cigars, standing just behind a police barricade that wasn't doing much to discourage a legion of screaming, camera-wielding fans. Rod was wearing standard Hollywood black—tux, silk shirt, and tie—clothes that fit his lean six-foot-two-inch frame as if he'd been born to wear Armani or Versace. Amazingly, the man looked just as good in faded denim and washed-out flannel. Maybe better.
His handsome, angular face was softened by the beginnings of a beard, and his dark hair grazed his shoulders, all in preparation for the western he was due to begin work on in Mexico the following week. Framed by all that dark hair and his perpetual tan, his lovely light blue, oh-so-expressive eyes had taken on a translucent, almost haunting quality.
“I'm late,” she said, grasping his warm hand and climbing out of the limo.
“You're beautiful.”
Ah. He made her feel that way. He really did. Beautiful to the marrow of her bones. It was just that Angela kept wondering how important feeling beautiful was to her in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not as important as feeling strong and competent at this point in her career. Certainly not as valuable a quality as skilled marksmanship or speed or upper-body strength. Beauty was nowhere on the list of requirements for a Secret Service agent. It just wasn't important to her, and yet …
When Rod drew her against him in front of the theater, when he whispered, “Don't fly east tonight, Angel. I need you here with me,” and kissed her in full view of several hundred screaming young women, any one of whom would have worked a quick deal with the devil to be in Angela's sling-back pumps just then, she couldn't help but think that she didn't really appreciate her situation. Here was a man who needed her, who actually said so, out loud and in front of witnesses. Wasn't that what she wanted? Wasn't that one of the reasons she'd left Bobby, because he was incapable of such demonstrations of affection?
Then, after the premiere, on bended knee in the back of the limo, with tears in his aquamarine eyes and a diamond the size of a skating rink, Rod had asked her to marry him. Marry him! She hadn't even slept with him! In many ways, she barely even knew him. But to Angela's utter amazement, she hadn't told him no.
She hadn't said yes exactly either. What she said was, “I'll talk to a lawyer.”
“When?” he asked, quite unashamed of the rough little catch in his throat, of the tremor in his hands as he held the diamond ring she'd just declined to wear for now, of the tears shining in his eyes.
“I don't know. As soon as I get back from Illinois.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
She'd promised. God. Had she meant it?
Out the window now, far below, the twinkling lights of L.A. had disappeared. Everything was black, opaque. It matched her mood.
The proposal wasn't supposed to happen. Rod Bishop was meant to be a fling, a distraction, a Band-Aid for her wounded ego, and—yes—even a way to make Bobby jealous and bring him to his knees. When she was assigned to his movie set as a Secret Service adviser, she never dreamed that Rod Bishop would be anything but a beautiful cardboard cutout, a tan Adonis made of papiermâché’ and styling gel, an egocentric jerk. Instead, he'd turned out to be sort of sweet and smarter than most and always sympathetic. Most of all, though, he was patient and persistent. And he loved her! Or so he said. Repeatedly.
In the past few months, Angela's little fairy-tale fling had somehow turned into the real thing. The prince was more than charming. The glass slipper was a pretty good fit. Shit.
“May I get you something to drink?” The flight attendant sounded ungodly cheerful for half past one in the morning.
“Coffee, please. Black.” It would keep her awake, Angela thought, as well as obliterate the lingering taste of Rod's champagne and cheroot kisses.
A moment later the flight attendant was back. “Here you go, Ms. Holland. Coffee. Black. Careful, it's hot.” She perched on the armrest of the seat across the aisle. “The manifest says you're a federal agent, flying armed.”
“That's right.” Angela blew on the steaming coffee. “Is there a problem?” Please let there be a problem so I don't have to sit here and think anymore. Well, not a problem with the plane. Not that kind of problem. She didn't mean that. Jeez. She needed to be a lot more careful what she wished for.
“Not yet. We have a passenger in back who was pretty tanked when he boarded. You may have seen him at the gate.”
Angela shook her head. She'd been the last one to board, thanks to Rod and his unwillingness to let her go. She'd actually had to jerk her hands out of his and dodge his amorous lips one last time.
“Well, anyway,” the woman said, “we're about to close the bar on this guy in back, and he looks like the type who could get fairly unruly. I hope not, but I thought I'd better touch base with you, just in case.”
“I'm glad you did.” She tried not to sound too eager or too relieved that a crash wasn't imminent. “Let me know if you need my help.”
“Thanks.”
The flight attendant rose, squared her shoulders, and headed toward the rear section of the plane. Sipping her coffee, Angela listened for raised voices, almost wishing for a little ruckus to take her mind off Rod. And Bobby. Always Bobby.
The two men in her life couldn't have been more different. Dark night and bright day. Closed and open. Dry and wet.
In the theater this evening, when the violins came up and his character breathed his final, heroic breath onscreen, Rod had surreptitiously offered Angela his handkerchief, but then she'd had to give it back when Rod's wet sniffling threatened to surpass her own. Tears and testosterone. What a guy. What a deadly combination, at least in Angela's book.
She hadn't always felt t
hat way. In fact, she'd grown up feeling quite the opposite, thanks to her big, melodramatic, hand-wringing, breast-beating family. The men, her father and four brothers, cried at the drop of a hankie, just like her mother and four sisters. There was a time when Angela swore she wasn't even a Callifano. She was the only blond in the bunch, after all, but her mother always said that was from the Milanese Fragossis on her father's side of the family. “Blonds, all of them,” her mother had said, “and fussbudgets, too, just like you, Miss Prim.”
She wasn't. She was simply organized, more restrained, more self-contained. She wept right along with the rest of them, but quietly, without the histrionics and the wet boo-hooing that used to humiliate her in public. That was probably the reason she'd fallen so hard for Bobby. She had taken his emotional reticence for strength. His silences signified the depth of still waters. A single twitch of a smile from Bobby Holland had meant more than all the melodramatics in the world.
But the trait that attracted her in the beginning had repelled her in the end. That emotional reticence of Bobby's was the reason she had walked out on him. And it was also the reason, once she returned to California from Hassock, Illinois, she was going to divorce him and the six-foot-high brick wall he'd built between them.
“Ms. Holland?” The flight attendant was back, looking distinctly harried. “I wonder if you'd come back and give us a hand with this clown?”
Angela gulped the last of her coffee, unbuckled her seat belt, and stood. Good. Hallelujah. She wouldn't have to think anymore about anyone or anything. Not Rod or Bobby or even Crazy Daisy Riordan. Out of habit, she touched the small of her back, but she was still wearing her black jersey dress, so of course her handcuffs weren't there. She picked up her handbag with her weapon and cuffs tucked inside. Maybe she wasn't so good at marriage, but she was damned good at her job.
“I'll follow you,” she said.
2
Bobby Holland had been in a bad mood for the past eleven months, two weeks, and four days, but who was counting? Almost everyone in the agency knew it, and they pretty much tiptoed on eggshells around him. But Mike Burris was new, which was why he was currently on the receiving end of an ice cold stare.
“Come on, Bobby. Give the kid a break,” Special Agent in Charge Doug Coulter said.
Mike Burris stuck out his hand. “Whatever I said, hell, I'm sorry, man. Bygones, huh?”
“Sure,” Bobby said, grasping the kid's hand. “Sorry.” He wasn't even all that certain now what the young agent had said. All that had registered was “your wife” and “candy-ass actor” before Bobby's temper had almost gotten away from him.
Doug Coulter clapped him on the shoulder. “Save it for the bad guys, son,” he drawled in an avuncular tone that matched his gray brush cut. He'd been in the Secret Service long enough to claim he'd just missed taking a bullet for Lincoln. Right now he was special agent in charge of this hastily put-together operation. In other words, Bobby Holland's boss.
Bobby shrugged as he looked around the hangar at Andrews Air Force Base, where one of the Treasury Department Lear Jets was undergoing some last-minute maintenance before flying him halfway across the country to Springfield, Illinois, where he was scheduled to meet up with his female partner for the thirty-mile drive to Hellhole, otherwise known as Hassenfeld, the birthplace of President William Riordan and current residence of his mother, Crazy Daisy. Hassenfeld—otherwise known as the last place on earth Bobby wanted to go.
Los Angeles. That was where he'd planned to go. Not that he had a clue what he'd do when he got there, aside from hunting down the candy-ass actor who was moving in on his wife and leaving this pretty boy, Rod Bishop, with a face good only for horror movies.
He'd been adamant in his refusal of this Illinois assignment. No way. He had the seniority. He had enough sick days built up to accommodate a hundred bouts of flu. No freaking way! He'd told Doug yesterday.
Then, at ten last night, he'd picked up the phone and known immediately that he was a goner when the operator said, “Mr. Holland? Please hold for the president.”
“You know I don't want to do this, Doug,” he growled now to the man standing at his side.
“I don't see where that counts for much, Bobby, do you?” the gray-haired man responded quietly before he called out, “You boys got that bird about ready to fly?”
Bobby carved out a place for himself in the aft of the Lear Jet, slung out his legs, crossed his arms, and fell asleep listening to a muted debate on the merits of the standard-issue Sig Sauer P229 semiautomatic versus the new and improved Glock, figuring either one would have sufficed at the moment to blow his brains out.
God only knew how long he'd have to be in Illinois. Los Angeles seemed like more than a few thousand miles away right now. The City of Angels—the city of Angela—might just as well have been on the dark side of the moon.
Angela. Jesus. Half the time he wanted to strangle her for walking out on him. Half the time he didn't blame her one bit. Hell, he didn't even like living with himself. Why would she? All he did was make her cry.
She had been crying the day they met. He'd gone to Cavanaugh's with a couple of the guys when their shift was over at the White House. They were sitting at the bar, and somebody—Jack Sears?—hooked a thumb toward the front door and asked, “Hey, did you get a look at the new pussy on the vice president's detail?”
“Who?” Bobby asked.
“She's outside. Go have a look for yourself.”
There she was, out in the snow and sleet, sitting at the top of a stairwell and looking like she was in agony. He thought maybe she'd twisted her ankle on the frozen sidewalk in front of the bar, so he squatted beside her to ask if she was okay.
She rolled her wet green eyes, swore like a drill sergeant, and told him to go away.
Fat chance, babe.
“Look, if you're hurt, let me help you,” he said.
“I'm not hurt. Just go away.”
“Then what's the problem?” He clenched his teeth, turned the collar of his suit coat up against the cutting wind. “Shit. It's freezing out here.”
“That's the problem,” she said. “Look.”
She eased apart the bunched lapels of her trench coat, and Bobby found himself staring at another pair of big green eyes.
“It's a fucking cat,” he said, trained observer that he was.
“It's a freezing cat, you idiot. I can't take him home because they don't allow pets in my apartment, and I won't take him to the pound. I just don't know what to do.”
Neither did Bobby, which was unusual, because he always knew what to do. As it turned out, he wound up taking the damned cat back to his place. Angela came to visit it Friday night, then stayed till Monday morning, when—obviously under some sort of wicked feline spell—Bobby had asked her to marry him.
Mr. Whiskers, the ingrate, ran away as soon as the temperatures warmed up. Angela waited a year and a half to do the same.
Somebody nudged his foot. “Bobby.”
He opened one eye. Doug had moved to the seat next to his, and was wearing his game face. The new kid, Mike Burris, leaned forward across the aisle.
“I want to go over a couple things before we land in Springfield,” Doug said.
“Shoot.” Bobby straightened up.
“This is a real weird assignment.”
Bobby snorted, earning a flicker of ire from his boss.
“But weird or not, the job's gotta be done and done right.” Doug glanced at Mike, who nodded eagerly. “The director seems to consider this threat serious enough to warrant the expense of additional protection. The president, obviously, doesn't want to have anything happen to his mother.” He sighed softly before continuing. “The president doesn't want the old lady upset, either.”
Bobby wouldn't have called Daisy Riordan an old lady exactly. She didn't look her seventy-some years. Still, he'd never seen the woman in person. That was probably why he had the dubious honor of working undercover in her house.
; Out of habit, Doug patted his empty shirt pocket in search of one of the cigarettes he was trying to quit. His game face turned a bit more sour. “Mrs. Riordan has declined our protection ever since her son took office, as I'm sure you know, and our surveillance team, installed at the president's direction, has to keep a respectable distance on her property.”
“Otherwise she nails them with her BB gun,” Bobby added for Mike's edification. “How long do you think it's going to take her, Doug, to catch on to the fact that I'm no goddamned butler?”
“You're going to be a goddamned butler, Bobby, or a goddamned chauffeur or bottle washer or Indian chief or whatever the hell else she wants you to be. This woman is not to know that there are Secret Service agents under her roof. Is that clear? Because if it's not clear—”
“Yeah. Yeah. I've got the picture.”
“Who else will be inside, sir?” Mike asked.
“A female agent. She'll be meeting us in Springfield.”
Bobby stifled a groan. He hated working with new people, women most of all, especially on protective detail. They distracted him because he always felt responsible for their safety, no matter their level of skill on the job. Angela said he felt that way about working with women because he was a natural-born protector, or—in her words—“one-third German shepherd and one-third mama hen.”
“What's the other third?” he'd asked, always the ideal straight man.
“Male chauvinist pig.”
As if reading his mind, Doug said, “I guess I don't have to tell you that your ability to get along with this female agent is crucial to the success of this job.”
“No, sir.”
“You won't be wearing radios or earpieces, for obvious reasons, and your weapons are to be concealed at all times.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If it turns out that you and your partner don't get along or even hate each other's guts for some reason, you'll keep those personal feelings under wraps, at least while you're in the presence of Mrs. Riordan. She's been informed that her new housekeepers are married.”