by Mary McBride
“Bobby.”
Her arms were crossed, and her green eyes looked like emerald fire. The flush of love on her cheeks had turned to ire, and her chin was pointing like a bayonet. Everything was coming apart again. As it always did. Angela would demand. He'd defer. Hell. They'd be right back where they started. No. Right back where they ended.
Unless …
Unless he changed. Unless he talked. Unless he told the truth.
“I got a tattoo.”
Her narrowed eyes blinked wide, and Bobby wasn't sure which surprised her more—the fact that he'd done something stupid or the fact that he'd actually, willingly, confessed to it.
“You got a what?” she exclaimed, her breath coming out in a shocked little laugh.
“I got a tattoo.”
“On your arm?” Her gaze zeroed in on the limb in question. “A tattoo?”
“Yes.”
She sat there, apparently pondering his revelation or his candor or his sheer stupidity; then she asked, “Of what?”
No. He wasn't ready yet. Getting a heart tattooed on your sleeve was still a far cry from wearing the real thing there. “I'll show you when it's all healed and pretty,” he said.
“Bobby,” she said sternly.
“Nope. Sorry. You're just going to have to wait, Ange. It's—”
Before he could say it was a secret, an alarm screeched from the surveillance trailer and running feet pounded on the driveway.
Bobby blew out the back door. Angela raced through the house and flew out the front door just in time to see somebody being taken down by Agents Coulter and Yates. Tricia rammed a knee in the man's back while she deftly cuffed him.
At the same moment that Bobby skidded to a halt on the sidewalk, Daisy Riordan leaned out her second-story bedroom window.
“What, in the name of the Almighty, do you people think you're doing?” she screamed. “Let that man go immediately.”
It was only then that Angela focused on the white hair of the man now spread-eagled on Mrs. Riordan's lawn. Professor Emeritus Gerald DuMaurier Gerrard. “Oh, brother,” she muttered.
“No kidding,” Bobby said, brushing past her. “What's going on here?” he demanded in the perfectly protective tone of a loyal butler.
“This man was throwing rocks at Mrs. Riordan's window,” Doug said rather sheepishly, looking suddenly bemused and perturbed at the same time.
“He was trying to get my attention, you infernal idiot,” the president's mother called down, pounding her fist on the sill. “Now unhand him this moment.”
Tricia Yates appeared extremely reluctant to remove her knee from the professor's back. A collar like this would've looked so good on her record. The Man-Eater scowled at her hapless victim, then angled her head up to Doug, seeking advice, no doubt hoping her supervisor would direct her to terminate the man. With prejudice.
“Take the cuffs off,” he growled, his voice trailing off in a few well-chosen curses before he called up to the window, “My apologies, ma'am. We were just being cautious.”
“Cautious, my derriere. Rest assured my son will hear about this. Tell me your name and your rank or title or whatever it is you people go by, young man.”
Doug blinked, probably at being called a young man, and then sputtered, “Special Agent in Charge Douglas Coulter, ma'am.”
Above him, Daisy snorted in a most undignified fashion. “You'll be special agent in charge of my son's Labrador retriever if I have anything to say about it.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“And who is that Amazon with the handcuffs?”
Angela almost burst out laughing. It looked as if Bobby was also having a hard time keeping a straight face while Crazy Daisy was kicking ass and taking names.
“She's Special Agent Tricia Yates, Mrs. Riordan,” Doug said. “Again, ma'am, we were merely being cautious.”
“Well, tell her she's not that special. And go be cautious somewhere else,” she snapped. “Robert, assist that poor man onto his feet, and tell him I'll be right down.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Bobby said, trying to sound serious as he took the professor's arm and helped him up.
“My apologies, sir,” Doug grumbled to Gerald Gerrard, then he latched on to Tricia's elbow and escorted her briskly down the sidewalk and out of sight.
The front of the professor's light gray seersucker suit was drenched with dew and spotted with grass stains. His tie was askew, and his Phi Beta Kappa key dangled precariously from a ripped vest pocket. Bobby, playing the helpful valet, assisted him in brushing off assorted twigs and clippings. The poor man appeared stunned for a moment, then he chuckled.
“Well, that ought to teach an old dog not to behave like a pup, eh?” He winked in Angela's direction while he produced a large white handkerchief from his pocket and proceeded to wipe his eyeglasses.
“They were just doing their job, I guess,” Angela said, quietly thanking God for averting yet another civilian lawsuit against the agency.
“Quite ferociously,” the professor said, fitting his glasses to the bridge of his nose, then rotating his shoulders rather stiffly. “Well, nothing seems to be broken that I'm aware of, although I must say my dignity took a pummeling.”
“It seems pretty intact to me,” she said.
“Thank you, my dear.” His eyes twinkled in the light from the porch. Then he folded his hands prayerfully and lofted that twinkling gaze heavenward. “Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere …. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.”
“That was lovely.” Angela smiled. “Shakespeare?”
He shook his white head, and the answer was just at his lips when Bobby answered, “Robert Louis Stevenson.”
While Angela stared at her husband in astonishment, the professor clapped his hands together and exclaimed, “Exactly so, young man. Let me guess. You attended Andover or Choate.”
Bobby laughed. “No, sir. Wishbone-Hernandez Consolidated High. But that was a favorite prayer of the chaplain at West Point.”
“Excellent,” the professor murmured. “Excellent.”
Just then the front door opened, and the president's mother, despite her small size, loomed within its frame. “Bring him in,” she commanded. “I suppose we're obliged to see that the old fool is all in one piece before we send him on his way.”
Instead of taking offense, Gerald Gerrard merely smiled. His face fairly glowed as he started for the door. Well, why not? The man had accomplished what he'd come for whether because of or in spite of the United States Secret Service. He was in.
Angela and Bobby followed.
“Robert Louis Stevenson,” she muttered.
“So?”
“Oh, nothing. It's just that I'm not used to you surprising me twice in one night, Robert.”
Bobby laughed and looped an arm around her shoulders.
“Well?” Angela asked.
“Well what?”
“Are you going to tell me what it is?” she grumbled. “What what is?” “The tattoo, Bobby.” “Oh. That.”
“Oh. That,” Angela echoed. “So, are you going to tell me?”
“Nope.”
She could hear her own teeth gnashing as he propelled her through the door in the professor's wake.
Ill-tempered as she may have seemed, Daisy Riordan hadn't had so much fun in years. It hadn't been easy stifling her laughter when the agents pounced on the nattily attired Gerald Gerrard and pinned him to the ground like a butterfly in a three-piece suit. Silly man.
Still, she was flattered by his attention. He was quite good-looking for a man who wouldn't see seventy again. His white hair was thick and healthy. His eyebrows were relatively tame and didn't straggle all over his forehead. His nose was nicely chiseled, his chin was firm, and his earlobes didn't hang down to his shoulders, as happened with so many old coots.
Better yet, the man didn't squirm at all beneath her intentional withering gaze and didn't shrivel
when she made the occasional … well, perhaps frequent … caustic remark. In many ways, he reminded her of her late husband, and that similarity unsettled Daisy as well as intrigued her. Romance? At her age? How absurd. How utterly ridiculous.
How … interesting.
Of course, his charm may have had a great deal to do with the fact that he was aware, as was Daisy herself, of Robert's nearby and constant presence in the hallway just beyond the living room. He coughed on occasion to make that presence known. No doubt the professor thought it natural for a bodyguard to remain at hand to protect the president's mother. For her part, Daisy considered it a hellacious waste of talent, not to mention taxpayers’ money, as well as a good indication of the agents’ boredom and desperation if Gerald Gerrard qualified as a suspect.
“Would you care for another glass of sherry, Gerald?”
His smile was quite fetching, actually, and his teeth appeared to be his own as far as she could tell. “I'm really more of a brandy man, Margaret.”
“Ah.” She was unable to suppress a wistful sigh. “So was the senator, my late husband.”
Gerald set his empty glass on the table beside his chair, then took off his glasses to polish the lenses with his handkerchief. A nervous habit, Daisy supposed, or an academic quirk. He'd done it several times over the course of the evening.
“I've enjoyed our conversation, Margaret,” he said, “but I really suppose I ought to be going.”
Amazingly, Daisy felt a little pang of regret in the vicinity of her breastbone. She so hoped her face didn't reflect it.
“I'm not familiar with the local restaurants yet, I'm afraid,” he said, “but I would love for you to join me for dinner tomorrow evening.”
“One or two are acceptable,” she said as the pang gave way to a distinct flutter. She remembered, with a little rush of guilt, how it felt when she was falling in love with Charles a half-century before. This wasn't right. She was being a foolish old woman. Worse than Muriel.
She stiffened her shoulders. “Unfortunately, I have plans for tomorrow evening. My young housekeeping couple are taking me to a movie.”
The man's smile remained steadfast. Undaunted. Undeterred. Damn him. “Perhaps I could join you?” he murmured.
“Well—”
The phrase “It's a free country” poised on the sharp tip of her tongue. She swallowed. “Yes. Well, why not? That would be lovely, Gerald.”
It was nearly midnight when Angela heard the front door close on the departing professor. She still couldn't believe Mrs. Riordan had let him stay so long, but then she'd been shocked that the woman had invited him in to begin with. Crazy Daisy. Go figure.
Actually, she couldn't figure Bobby out either. What was this business with the tattoo? And earlier, the Man of Steel had even confessed to a headache, and then had seemed so uncharacteristically accessible when she'd cuddled against him. Even now, the memory made her stomach do an erotic little flip. My God. Had she ever wanted him more than she had tonight before all hell broke loose in the front yard?
She looked up from the cookbook she'd been absently paging through just in time to see Bobby come into the kitchen after standing mind-numbing post in the hallway for the past few hours. Well, on second thought, it probably wasn't any more mind-numbing than attempting to read “The Year of the Chicken—365 Recipes to Delight Your Family.”
“What's up?” she asked, feeling her stomach perform another one of those incredible swan dives at the sight of him.
“We have a movie date tomorrow night.”
“We?”
“You, me, Daisy and the professor.”
Angela laughed. “Wow. He works fast.”
“No kidding.” He stalked across the room and began opening drawers, staring at their contents, then closing them again.
“What are you doing, Bobby?”
“I need a clean dish towel or rag and some kind of bag.” He jerked open another drawer and then slammed it closed.
“Mind telling me why?”
“I want to get Gerrard's empty sherry glass and have Doug send it out for prints. I just don't trust that guy.”
“I thought they already checked him out,” she said, getting up and going to the linen drawer near the sink, where she pulled out a towel.
“I want him rechecked,” he said adamantly.
From another drawer, Angela extracted a little plastic baggie. “Don't you think you're being just a little paranoid? Jeez. The professor seemed like a perfectly charming, very romantic guy to me. Mrs. Riordan obviously agrees. What in the world did he do to make you so suspicious?”
Bobby shrugged.
“Well, he must've done something,” she insisted.
His face hardened to stone, and there wasn't a trace of humor in his voice or a twinkle in his eye when he replied, “I don't know, Ange. Maybe I'm just naturally suspicious of perfectly charming guys who send flowers to lonely old women and toss pebbles at their windows.”
Angela's stomach stopped pirouetting and took a sickening turn. This was the real Bobby. The hard-ass, take-no-prisoners, feel-no-feelings cop. The one earlier, the vulnerable one, the one she'd ached for, was probably just a fragile figment of her imagination.
“Here.” She handed him the towel and the plastic bag. “Well, I guess you would be suspicious, then,” she said, almost hissing, “since you're not a flower-sending, pebble-tossing, meaningless-romantic-gesture kind of guy.”
If that cut him the way she intended, he didn't let it show. Not her Bobby. There wasn't so much as a flicker in his eye or a twitch in his hard-carved cheek. His voice was cold as ice when he said, “Hey, I'm just doing my job here, Ange.”
“How's your headache, Bobby?”
He just stood there, staring at her as if she had suddenly gone berserk. “What headache?” he snarled.
“Never mind.” She turned away before he could see the deep disappointment on her face. “That must've been somebody else.”
12
At seven-thirty the next morning, the president's mother came downstairs. As if her appearance in the kitchen at that hour weren't surprising enough, Crazy Daisy was also wearing an electric blue jogging outfit and a pair of Nike cross-trainers. And, unbelievably, a smile.
“Good morning,” she said with uncharacteristic cheer while Angela struggled up from her chair and blinked her bleary, nearly sleepless eyes.
“Good morning, Mrs. Riordan. I haven't even started to fix your tray yet. If you—”
“Oh, don't bother. I was wondering if Robert would like to accompany me on a walk this morning.”
“A walk?” Angela, no doubt, sounded as dumbstruck as she felt. This woman, the one who had barely left her bedroom in the past three years, wanted to go for a walk? At seven-thirty in the morning?
“Yes. It's such a lovely morning, and I feel like a bit of exercise, except I'm not sure these old tendons and bones are entirely trustworthy, so I was hoping for a companion.”
“Bobby's still—”
“I'm here.”
Angela turned to the doorway and the sound of her husband's voice. He was there, all right. Why was it, she wondered, that the more disillusioned she grew with him, the handsomer he became? With his shower-wet hair slicked back, the strong bones of his face jutted out in stark relief. His blue oxford cloth shirt had damp patches that molded to his chest. His jeans—Ah, God—looked as soft as velvet and faded to a robin's egg blue and clung to his long, muscular legs like a second skin.
Even the president's mother seemed to breathe a deep sigh of appreciation before she chirped, “Good morning, Robert. Would you care to accompany me on a walk?”
He glanced at Angela, who could only respond with a subtle lifting of her shoulders that translated as, “I have no idea what's going on.”
“Sure,” he said. “Let me put some shoes on, and I'll be right with you.”
Bobby yanked his shoelaces tight. Crazy Daisy wanted to go for a walk. After years of sitting in her room, she w
anted to go for a walk. Fine. Great. He'd encouraged her, hadn't he? Where was the surprise in that?
“Women,” he muttered. The only one he'd ever known who was at all predictable was his mother. If it was sunset, Treena Holland had a drink in her hand and distance on her mind. If you crossed her, she smacked you. It was all pretty simple, really.
It was his wife who held the world record in the surprise department, nestling up to him in bed one minute and the next minute cutting him off at the knees or, more precisely, chopping off his head about some damned headache he did or didn't have. Dogging him half the night about the damned tattoo, and then, after he'd taken the professor's glass down to the trailer and left instructions for prints, when he'd finally fallen into bed and said wearily, “Okay, Ange. You win, baby. I'll tell you about the tattoo,” she'd flopped on her side—away from him— and practically hissed, “I could care less.”
Christ. And the tattoo, when he'd taken off the bandage this morning, was nothing but a huge bruise that was beginning to scab over. He was already debating whether to demand his fifty bucks back from Tiny, or take the guy out in the alley behind his shop and give him a huge full-body bruise he'd never forget.
By the time Bobby got his holster firmly settled against his leg and went out the back door, Mrs. Riordan was pacing back and forth across the driveway.
“There you are,” she said as if he'd kept her waiting for an hour.
“Here I am.” He gestured down the drive. “After you, ma'am.”
The woman took off like a jackrabbit, a pace likely to bring on a coronary if he didn't slow her down, so he trotted up beside her and suggested they take it a little slower since he'd only just rolled out of bed. She glared at him, but seemed content enough to reduce her speed.
At the end of the driveway, she halted, looking left and right along the blacktop. “Well? Any suggestions?”
“Not really,” he said. “It's corn to the east and more corn to the west. Take your pick.”
She picked east, toward town, so Bobby took her elbow and guided her across the road where he could keep an eye on oncoming traffic, then ambled along beside her with Mrs. Riordan on his left, close to the shoulder, just in case he needed to shove her unexpectedly into the ditch.