by Mary McBride
It wouldn't hurt to shake her two protectors up a bit, she'd decided, and make them work together instead of at cross-purposes, so when Robert obediently began reading a copy of that abhorrent newspaper, Daisy had slipped off to the ladies’ room, locked the stall door, sat and pulled her feet from view as she'd seen somebody do in some silly movie recently, and stifled her laughter when they came looking for her.
Now, though, she was suffering the consequences of her shenanigan. Her knees ached like the very devil as she stretched out her legs and stood. Hearing the outer rest room door open and footsteps coming in, Daisy flushed the toilet even though she hadn't used it. It seemed the proper thing to do before she pulled back the bolt on the stall door and stepped out.
“Real cute,” Robert said. He had a hip cocked on one of the washbowls, and his arms were crossed.
Daisy's surprise immediately turned to defensive indignation. “I beg your pardon,” she said, striding on her stiff knees toward the other sink. “This is the ladies’ room, in case you hadn't noticed.” She gave the handles a jerk and proceeded to wash her hands.
“I won't even ask why you did it, Mrs. Riordan,” he said calmly, “but I sincerely hope you won't do it again. We were worried about you, ma'am.”
“That's very comforting,” she said, flicking water off her fingers before she punched on the electric dryer.
The door opened again.
“You found her,” Angela said a bit breathlessly.
“You both found me,” Daisy snapped. “Good work. Now, shall we go?”
“She doesn't know,” Angela insisted while she chopped celery. “How could she possibly know?”
Bobby, sitting at the kitchen table, shrugged. “She's not a stupid woman.”
“Well, neither am I, Bobby, and I don't think I've done anything to give us away.” Her hair swung fetchingly as she looked over her shoulder and pointed her knife, not so fetchingly, in his direction. “Which, of course, leaves you.”
He shook his head. “I think she's just having a good old time playing cat and mouse with us. That's fine. As long as she doesn't boot us out of the house.”
“What did she say when you found her in the bathroom?”
“Mostly she just bristled up like a cat.” He chuckled. “Kind of like the way you do when you've been caught doing something stupid.”
Angela didn't say anything, but the squaring of her shoulders and the little twitch of her butt pretty effectively told him to go to hell. She was frustrated with this assignment. He was, too. As Secret Service agents, they were used to working with people who wanted their protection, who were even grateful for it.
In her frustration, she was attacking the celery so viciously it was a miracle her knife didn't go right through the chopping block. Bobby wondered why he'd never spent more time watching her cook, when she put on such an enjoyable show. If he had it to do over again—when he had it to do over again—he'd study her articulate body language in addition to her incredible body. Hell, maybe he'd even put on an apron and cook with her. One of those denim deals.
While she scraped the little pieces of celery into a bowl, she said, “Do you really think she suspects that we're agents?”
“Probably. She's just twitting us a little.”
“Why, for heaven's sake?”
“I dunno, Ange. Probably because she resents being misled, even if it is for her own protection. Probably because she's lonely and a little bored being cooped up in this house most of the time.”
“That makes sense.” She nodded solemnly while she reached into one of the shopping bags they'd brought home from the store and came up with an onion the size of a baseball, then tossed it from hand to hand as she leaned a hip against the counter. “The manager of the store told me he hasn't seen Mrs. Riordan in there in months. He seemed to be genuinely concerned. You know, we should probably offer to take her out, Bobby, as long as we're cooped up here, too.”
“Sure. Let's ask her.”
She stopped tossing the onion back and forth to level an accusing glare at him. “Unless that conflicts with any future engagements you might have down at the local honky-tonk.”
Lousy as he felt about the night before, Bobby had to admit some degree of satisfaction, if not outright pleasure, in the fact that Ange appeared jealous. Pressing a hand over his heart, he offered his wife a look of such sweet, undiluted innocence it would have made an angel weep. “Who, me?”
“Right.” She made one of those annoying tsking noises, then pitched the onion at him. “Here, Romeo. Chop this. I'm going to go check in with Doug.”
Bobby was standing by the sink ten minutes later when Angela came back to the kitchen. His head was bent forward, and every inch of his posture signaled sadness, like a mourner standing over a grave. The second she heard him draw in a wavering, wet breath, Angela rushed to him, curling her arms around him from behind, pressing her cheek to his warm back.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she whispered.
He sniffled again. She could hear his voice clog in his throat, so she held him tighter. “Bobby, please let me help you. Tell me. What's wrong? What is it?”
He dragged in another wet breath and let it out. “Goddamned onion.”
“Excuse me?”
“I'm dying from these fumes.”
First Angela clenched her teeth in order not to take a bite out of his shoulder blade, next she willed her hopeless heart to change from pudding to concrete, then she loosened her arms and stepped back. “Move,” she told him. “Give me the stupid knife. Get out of my way.”
Bobby handed her the knife, then dragged his forearm across his wet eyes. “That was brutal. You did that on purpose, didn't you?”
Angela gave him a shove with her hip, then took his place at the cutting board and hacked at the onion as if it were his flesh. She should be so lucky.
He reached into a cabinet for a glass, filled it with water from the tap, and drained it in a couple big gulps before he asked, “Did you get hold of Doug?”
Her lips were compressed so tightly she could hardly speak. She squinted in the onion fumes. “Yes,” she finally said, drawing out the s in a hiss.
“And?”
Ignoring him, she transferred handfuls of the diced onion to the bowl with the celery, then rinsed her hands in the sink. No one could make her as angry as Bobby did. Damn him. And no one else could turn her heart to instant pudding, either. Not even Rod. She hated the emotional bind her husband had her in. Why couldn't she be free of the useless anger as well as the hopeless love?
“And?” Bobby asked again.
She drew in a long breath. God. She'd already broken her vow not to let personal issues get in the way of the job. After what the special agent in charge had just told her, the job seemed to be heating up. “Doug said they received another threat in D.C. A letter similar to the one the other day. They're faxing him a copy.”
Bobby swore. “I was really hoping there wouldn't be a follow-up. Where was this one postmarked? Did he say?”
“Florida. Same as the first. The forensics people can't come up with anything much other than ‘generic’ ”
“Great,” he muttered, raking his fingers through his hair. “Well, I'm going to hunt up some pruning shears and have a go at those generic bushes out in front so our generic stalker can't take cover in them. What time is lunch?”
“Mrs. Riordan's is at twelve-thirty,” she said with only a slight dash of acid in her voice. “Yours is whenever you want. It'll be in a bowl in the refrigerator. Just slap it on a plate, and please rinse your dishes and put them in the dishwasher when you're done.”
He stared at her a moment, apparently trying to figure out her mood and failing in his effort. “Look, I know you're not wild about this kitchen duty. If you want to go out and hack at the shrubbery, Ange, be my guest. I'll fix her lunch and take her tray upstairs. It really doesn't make any difference to me.”
I thought you were crying, she ached to say. I thought you were finally
going to let me comfort you, and that maybe you ‘d comfort me, but it was just the stupid onion.
Her throat tightened painfully. “No, you go on outside. I really just want to be alone for a while.”
After he was gone, Angela washed her hands for the gazillionth time that morning, then peeled and chopped apples and put together her Waldorf tuna salad, all the while trying not to think about how desolate Bobby had looked when she'd come into the kitchen or how all her best intentions had been foiled by onion fumes.
She almost wished the threat to the president's mother would materialize today so they could put the bastard in cuffs and leg irons and be done with this.
Daisy thought her female bodyguard was looking decidedly pale and shaky when Angela placed the lunch tray on the table by her chair. She hoped she hadn't gotten the two young people in trouble with their superiors with her disappearing act this morning, when her intention had been for it to bring them together.
This assignment—having to cook and clean for a fussy old woman—had to be a far cry from what Angela expected when she joined the Secret Service. Certainly Robert hadn't signed on to trim shrubbery, as he was doing at the moment below her window. Perhaps the tension she kept witnessing between them was merely professional displeasure in being relegated to this duty, which must have been the equivalent of keeping watch over William's ancient Labrador retriever.
Daisy sighed softly and looked down at her plate. Good God. “What an interesting way to prepare tuna,” she said. “Are those raisins?”
“Yes, ma'am. It's my mother's recipe. Part tuna salad, part Waldorf salad.”
It looked a bit heavy on the mayonnaise, but she held her tongue. Angela seemed distressed enough already, and Daisy assumed it was her fault. “I enjoyed getting out this morning,” she said, intending to work her way up to a vague, veiled apology for her behavior in the supermarket.
“I'm so glad,” Angela said. “We'd be happy to take you anywhere you'd like to go, Mrs. Riordan. Day or evening. A concert. The theater. Anything. Tonight, if you'd like.”
“That's very kind of you. Perhaps next week. With my bridge club coming tomorrow for the second time this week, I'm afraid that will be the extent of my socializing for the time being.” She didn't add that the impending card game would also put a strain on her ability to tolerate fools.
When Muriel had insisted, and rather vehemently too, on the second get-together, Daisy had agreed just to shut the woman up. Merely contemplating another few hours with Muriel was enough to give her a headache, and the other two, Norma and Adele, were no picnic either.
“Any time,” Angela said. “Just let us know.” She moved toward the door. “Don't forget that I'll be setting your place in the dining room tonight, Mrs. Riordan.”
“No. I haven't forgotten.”
“Good. Enjoy your lunch.”
“Thank you.”
When Angela closed the door, Daisy cast a baleful glance at the tray, telling herself she needed to remember, once the Hollands were gone, to amend the section in her binder that listed Foods to Avoid. Tuna salad was going to go at the top of the revised list.
How kind and truly good-hearted of them, though, to want to take an irritable old crone out on the town. It had been several years since she'd attended a concert or the theater or even a movie. A movie! Now that was an inspired idea. Not for her, but for the Hollands. Daisy smiled. She could already imagine the two of them, Robert and Angela, holding hands in a darkened theater, while a love scene played across the screen.
Bobby half expected Crazy Daisy to drop a flowerpot or a water balloon on his head while he lopped off the scraggly tops of the shrubs at the front of the house. He was convinced that she knew he and Angela were special agents. It had been pretty boneheaded for their superiors in the agency to think otherwise. The president's mother was a bright woman, for chrissake, and she knew the difference between domestic help and federal agents.
For a moment Bobby considered just telling her the truth about their protective assignment. If the woman was apprised of the threat against her life, maybe she wouldn't pull any more stunts like the one this morning. The fact that she wasn't nabbed in the supermarket didn't necessarily mean there wasn't somebody out there waiting for the opportunity to do it, and he and Angela were working hobbled without radio communications. That new threatening letter was not good news.
Still, if he told her the truth, then, being the stubborn woman that she was, Daisy Riordan would probably feel compelled to insist on her right to privacy and have both him and Angela duly removed from the premises.
That was what he didn't want to screw up. Even more than his assignment, maybe even more than his career right now, Bobby didn't want to screw up his proximity to Angela. The longer he could be here with his wife, the better. Whether she hated him or not, the mere fact that Angela was here in Illinois with him meant she wasn't in California with Harry Hollywood, the frigging movie star, the “somebody else.”
He'd watched her through the kitchen window this morning while she deftly, almost surgically castrated the amorous milkman. What a woman. He was so in love with her he almost couldn't see straight. There had to be a way to make her know that.
“Talk to your wife,” the department shrink had told him. “Share your feelings with her.” But the shrink hadn't told him how, and Bobby hadn't asked. Feelings? My God. He was sharing his life with Angela. That was how he felt. What was there to share beyond that? How did you put that in words?
He whacked at the greenery with a vengeance. The pruning shears he'd dug out of a bin in the toolshed probably hadn't been sharpened since the first Reagan administration, so by the time he had the bushes the way he wanted them—low enough so they wouldn't conceal an intruder—Bobby had worked up a fairly good appetite, not to mention a shirt-soaking sweat. He was standing, hands braced on his waist, stretching the kinks out of his back, when a little pickup truck—turquoise with pink feathering on the front fenders and doors—wheeled into Mrs. Riordan's driveway.
Cyn. As in sin. Judas Priest.
Bobby trotted down the brick sidewalk toward the truck, and reached it just in time to see Doug and young Mike Burns hustling up the driveway from the backyard, their hands just itching to go for their weapons. Maybe he should let them, he thought morosely. Maybe they'd miss the blonde, hit him instead, and put him out of his misery.
Coward that he was, he waved them off and shouted, “I've got it, Doug.”
Special Agent in Charge Doug Coulter, a tad out of breath from his sprint from the trailer, appeared to be mentally consulting agency rules and regulations for any excuse to put a bullet in his colleague. Instead be shot Bobby a look that said, “You got it, and you best get rid of it, too, son. Pronto.”
Bobby braced his hands on the pickup's roof and bent down to speak with Cyn through the open window. She hadn't been all that attractive in the muted neon illumination of the bar, and daylight didn't improve her looks one little bit. Her overbleached hair was the color and texture of straw. The lips that seemed so lush and glossy last night looked chapped and pale today. Her perfume smelled vaguely familiar and thoroughly rank in the warm afternoon sunshine.
“Remember me?” she asked. Her breath smelled like bubble gum today instead of peanuts and beer.
“Sure I do, darlin’. Did I thank you for the ride home last night?”
“Well enough.” She squinted through the windshield, down the driveway where Mike and Doug still stood, staring at her truck. “Those are Secret Service agents, huh?”
“The older one with the beer gut is,” he said, angling his head toward Doug, biting down on a grin. “The younger guy's an electrician just like me.”
“Oh.” Cyn sighed. It clearly wasn't easy for a little girl from Hassenfeld to find her fair share of excitement these days. She turned her hopeful gaze back on him. “Oh, well. So I was wondering if I'd be seeing you at the Wayward Wind tonight?”
He shook his head, managing to look somber
and deeply regretful even as he was thinking, Sorry, darlin’. My wife won't let me go. “Gotta work,” he said. “I probably won't be getting off duty much anymore.”
“Lemme give you my number, just in case, okay?” She rummaged through the glove compartment, pulled out a crumpled receipt, and scribbled on it.
Bobby straightened up and stashed the little paper deep in the back pocket of his jeans, then gave the pickup's roof a tap. “Guess you better go. You're making these government boys a little nervous. See you around, Cyn.”
“Yeah. Okay. See you.” She threw the little truck into reverse and stepped on the gas, maneuvering the turquoise vehicle back the way it had come.
It was a comfort to know he hadn't lost his touch with women, but Bobby was relieved as hell to see her go, especially before Angela came outside to see what was going on in the driveway. Making her jealous had been a dumb idea. All it did was make him appreciate her more in comparison.
“Bobby.” Doug had come up behind him. He was wearing his take-no-prisoners look while his gaze roved from Bobby to the shrubs at the front of the house. “Everything going okay inside?” he asked. “They're updating the president every few hours.”
“Everything's fine. No problems.”
The older agent angled his head toward the street where Cyn had just shifted into drive and pressed the accelerator to the floor, laying a little rubber to punctuate her exit. “See that it stays that way,” he said, “because if I have to pull you from this duty, I can't for the life of me imagine why William Riordan would want you back at the White House. You know what I mean?”