Still Mr. & Mrs.

by Mary McBride

Genres: Marriage & Divorce; Humor & Satire; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy; Workplace Romance

Synopsis

Meet Angela and Bobby Holland - the creme de la creme of the Secret Service. For their latest assignment, they have to go undercover as married housekeepers to protect the President's mother. There is only one major flaw in their plan: Angela and Bobby are on the verge of divorce!

Release date: December 5, 2008

Publisher: Forever

Print pages: 387

Sample

PROLOGUE

For a moment it was oddly quiet in the Oval Office. President William Riordan could even hear the springs in his chair as he leaned back behind his desk. The sound was something like a sigh of relief. Enjoy it while it lasts, he told himself, just as Mrs. Kemp stuck her head in the door.

“I have your mother on line three, Mr. President.”

So much for peace and quiet.

“Thank you, Mrs. Kemp.”

He sighed, straightened up, and leaned forward for the phone.

“Mother, I'm glad you called. Are you still taking potshots at your Secret Service agents?”

“They're your Secret Service agents, William, and they're damned lucky I'm using BBs instead of live ammunition.”

“You sound well,” he said in response. She sounded heavy on the starch, as usual. Cranky. Irascible. It was her normal disposition, but she'd gotten worse since his father had passed away. They didn't call Margaret Riordan “Crazy Daisy” for nothing. “Sorry I haven't been able to get out there to see you lately.”

The resultant silence on her end of the line was eloquent. It never failed to amaze William Riordan that he was president of the United States, and his mother could still make him squirm.

“You've been busy,” she said at last, absolving him even as she deftly reaccused him in a mere three words. She might just as well have said, “You're not a good son.”

He could have been better. He should have been better. But he was busy, for chrissake. Sometimes he just didn't know how to talk to her.

Then she said, “The Itos are abandoning me.”

The president blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I said the Itos are abandoning me. My domestics, William. My housekeepers.”

“Ah. The Itos,” he said as she continued.

“They're going on a cruise. Mediterranean, they said. Leaving. Just like that. And the silly people seem to think I don't know how difficult cruises are to schedule. I'm sure they've had this in the works for months and simply haven't had the courage to confront me.”

“Well, you can be intimidating, Mother.”

“Only to the weak-minded, William.” She sighed. “Anyway, dear, I wasn't calling to complain. Actually, I was wondering if you might have a cook and a gardener you could spare for a few weeks.”

“From the White House?”

There was a slightly strangled quality to his voice, quite inappropriate for the most powerful man in the world. His mother, of course, heard it too, and proceeded immediately for his jugular.

“You do live in the White House, don't you, dear?” she crooned, which translated as, “Even a homeless bum would move heaven and earth to help his aging mother in a crisis.”

As he was formulating a reply, Mrs. Kemp appeared in the doorway again, tapping her watch and whispering, “The director of the Secret Service is here for his appointment, Mr. President.”

“Send him in,” he replied without covering the mouthpiece. “Mother, let me see what I can do. I'll get back to you this afternoon.”

“Thank you, William. I nap at two.” She hung up, as always, without a good-bye, leaving her victim holding a dead phone.

The president returned the corpse to its cradle, sighed, and rose to greet the director.

Secret Service director Henry Materro had barely begun to describe the disturbing letter that had arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue late yesterday afternoon when the president suddenly stopped him with an upraised hand.

“Wait just a moment. Somebody wants to kill my mother?” William Riordan shook his head, chuckled softly, then added, “Other than me, you mean?”

It wasn't the response that the director had expected. The president received several thousand threats each year, a certain percentage of which were aimed at the First Lady or various members of the White House staff. The warnings—whether by letter, telephone, e-mail, or fax—streamed in on a daily basis, and each one required follow-up to a certain degree, but in the six years that Riordan had been in office, not a single threat had ever been directed at his mother. The agency was taking this threat, unprecedented as it was, very seriously. Very seriously indeed.

Thinking perhaps he hadn't explained the situation well enough, the director extracted a photocopy of the letter from his briefcase and slid it across the desktop.

“It's quite carefully done,” he said while the chief executive perused the document. “No prints. The paper is generic, available nationwide. Same for the envelope, which is postmarked Tampa and not a great deal of help. Our forensics people are working on the sources of the cutout words, but for now the most they can say is that the person who cut them is right-handed.”

“Doesn't narrow it down much, does it?” the president said, his voice now registering concern and his expression more appropriately grave.

“No, sir, it doesn't. The hope is that this will turn out to be just an isolated specimen from a crank who went to a great deal of trouble to create it and will get his satisfaction from the meticulous effort alone rather than carrying through with the threat.”

“And if not?”

Henry Materro leaned forward. This, after all, was the reason he was here in the Oval Office on such short notice. “Well, sir, we've already put some things in motion, which is why I requested this meeting with you as early as possible this morning in order to keep you apprised.” He watched the president nod, as if the man would be more than agreeable to and exceedingly grateful for any plan that would keep his elderly mother out of harm's way.

“You know, of course, Mr. President,” Materro said, “that the Secret Service already has agents monitoring Mrs. Riordan's house from the outside. The arrangement has been adequate for her protection until now. But in light of this threat, that isn't the case anymore. Now we feel it's imperative that we have agents positioned inside her residence, as well.”

William Riordan drew in a quick breath. The man nearly gasped. “Inside her house? My mother will never stand for it.”

“I think she will, sir. Let me explain what we've already done, on the assumption that you would concur.”

“The Itos,” the president said, sitting back in his chair. “The Itos and their unexpected cruise.”

“Yes, sir.” Henry Materro smiled. “Exactly.”

“Well, I'll be damned.”

“We've arranged for your mother's domestic staff to take an extended vacation, and beginning tomorrow, then-duties will be assumed by two agents, male and female.” The director cleared his throat. “In order not to offend Mrs. Riordan and to avoid any possible hint of scandal, we've chosen agents who are married.”

A small smile flickered across the president's lips. “To each other, I presume.”

“Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, you know the male agent. It's Bobby Holland. With your permission, we're pulling him off the presidential detail and sending him to your mother's house in Illinois. Mrs. Angela Holland will be joining him there from California.”

“Bobby's a good man,” the president said. “The best. But I thought he and his wife were divorced.”

“No, sir. It's my understanding that they've just been separated. A temporary thing.”

“I see.” The president cocked an eyebrow while he tapped a finger against his chin. “And now you're putting them, Bobby and Angela Holland, together under Crazy Daisy's—under my mother's roof?”

“Yes, sir. That would be the plan.”

“God help them, Mr. Materro. God help us all.”

1

Angela Holland was disgruntled, and she had a gun.

Of course, how she was going to conceal a semiautomatic weapon under a stupid apron was a mystery yet to be solved. This morning when Special Agent in Charge Dolph Bannerman had called her into his office and asked if she'd like to be reassigned to protective detail, undercover no less, Angela had leapt at the opportunity. She'd almost given her supervisor a high five and exclaimed “Would I!” before she bit her tongue and accepted the assignment with a proper and professional “I'd like that very much, sir.” It was only after Bannerman had outlined the duty that Angela realized she'd made a big mistake. A real boner.

She was probably looking at weeks, maybe months, of wearing slacks and an itchy, cumbersome ankle holster. She was definitely looking at weeks, maybe months, in the Siberia of the Secret Service, in the musty armpit of the universe—Hassenpfeffer, Illinois.

“Hassenfeld,” her roommate called out from the living room, making Angela realize that she'd been grumbling out loud while she trudged back and forth between her closet and the open suitcase on her bed.

“Hassenfeld,” she muttered, aligning the sleeves of a linen jacket, folding the garment carefully, and laying it into the already stuffed case. The black linen would be just right for September weather in Illinois. Her wardrobe would be perfect, in fact, as long as this September stint didn't stretch into late October or November.

The timing couldn't have been worse. Just when she was really beginning to enjoy L.A., dammit. Well, enjoy was probably a stretch. Tolerate was closer to the truth. Maybe she was just too uptight for the West Coast, where her colleagues all looked like surfers and tended to call one another “babe” or “dude.”

“How long do you think this assignment will last, babe?” Special Agent Suzanne DiCecco, alias Surfer Girl, wandered from the living room to stand in the bedroom doorway, spooning yogurt from a carton, apparently amused by her roommate's rotten disposition. “Are there any leads on the guy who made the threat against the president's mother?”

“None that I know of.” Angela was shoulder deep in her closet now, hunting for the scarf that went so well with her eggshell blouse. It wasn't where it should have been, in the top left drawer of the dresser, along with her other scarves.

“Any idea who you'll be working with?” Suzanne asked.

“Nope. I'm guessing that when Bannerman talked to me this morning, they still hadn't found anybody else dumb enough to do it.” Like me, she thought.

The opportunity to work undercover had had an immediate appeal, especially when it involved protective duty with the president's mother. She'd been pleased, really gratified, thrilled as hell to be singled out for such an assignment. It was only after she'd agreed to do it that her supervisor had told her she'd be working undercover as domestic help. A freaking maid!

Aha! The sought-after scarf had been left threaded under the collar and lapels of her navy blazer for some odd reason. Angela yanked it out.

“Ask me how much I'm looking forward to playing house with somebody I don't even know in Hassleville, Illinois.”

“Hassenfeld.”

“Whatever.” She smoothed out the wrinkles in the scarf, folded it, and laid it gently between the linen jacket and a pair of slacks. She wrapped the cord of her earpiece loosely around her radio and tucked it gently between several pairs of slacks. As always, her Kevlar vest went in last, although how she'd ever conceal it under an apron was another mystery. “That's it I'm officially packed.”

“So, how long do you think you'll be gone?”

“I don't have a clue, Suze. But don't worry about my half of the rent. I'm going to have them do a direct deposit of my paycheck, so I'll send you as many checks as I need to from Illinois. With any luck, it'll be just one, two at the most.”

The buff little brunette shrugged and licked her spoon. “I wasn't worried about that. You haven't been late with your half of the rent since we moved in together. You're the best roommate I've ever had, to tell you the truth. Compared to you, all the rest were total slobs.” She laughed. “Actually, compared to you, babe, everyone is a total slob.”

Angela, aka babe, smiled as she closed and zipped her suitcase. It was nice, she thought, having someone appreciate her organization. Normally her attention to detail tended to irritate people, to really get on their nerves. Some people more than others. Her siblings called her Miss Prim. Her own mother had once suggested that they might have brought the wrong baby—the offspring of a CPA and a crossword puzzle fanatic—home from the hospital. And then there was Bobby. Bobby. As soon as he entered her head, she banished the thought.

“You might as well use my health club membership while I'm gone, Suze. I'll leave the card on the dresser. Right beside the lamp. Oh, and will you forward any mail that looks important or interesting?”

“Sure. No problem.” Suzanne took another bite of yogurt, then cocked her head, grinning. “Can I also have Rod Bishop while you're gone?”

“Rod! Oh, my God!” Angela looked at her watch and swore softly. It was six-thirty, and Rod was sending a limo for her at seven. “I'm supposed to go to his premiere tonight. I completely forgot.”

“You forgot something?” Suzanne laughed. “How could anybody forget about going to a premiere, especially when they're Rod Bishop's date?”

Angela shook her head even as she was frantically calculating driving times and distances, no mean feat when freeway traffic patterns corrupted every equation. It was another reason she didn't like L.A. Its sprawl of communities and tangle of highways struck her as disorganized, just plain messy. In her next life maybe she'd come back as an urban planner. Or not. Since this life wasn't working out so well, maybe she wouldn't even bother with a next one.

To the best of her recollection, the premiere was in Culver City. Her flight to Chicago left LAX at 1:00 A.M. If she scrambled into her long black jersey dress and dragged a brush through her hair right now, she could do it. The last thing she wanted to do was stand Rod up on such an important evening.

No. The last thing she wanted to do was admit that she was really looking forward to seeing him, or confess that his sappy campaign to win her heart seemed to be making headway, or—worse—that part of the reason she had accepted the assignment to Half Ass, Illinois, was to put a bit of distance between herself and temptation.

She looked at Suzanne, who was perched on the bed, wearing not the standard-issue sober expression of a Secret Service agent but the fully glazed, semiconscious expression that always came over her whenever the actor's name was mentioned. Suzanne and a couple million other women, no doubt, all of them smitten with Hollywood's Hunk of the Year.

“He's just a guy,” Angela said irritably.

“Just a guy.” Suzanne sighed like a dopey teenager in the throes of puppy love. “That's like saying an AK-47 is just a gun.” Her glazed expression turned slightly elfish. “Or that Rod Bishop puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody else.”

“I really wouldn't know about that,” Angela snapped as she headed for the closet to get her black jersey dress.

“Oh, come on,” Suzanne called after her. “You've been seeing him for at least three months now, Angela. The guy is absolutely gorgeous, and he's obviously crazy about you. Are you telling me you're not—”

“I'm married, Suze.” She waved her left hand for emphasis before reaching for her dress. “That's a minor detail you seem to have overlooked.”

“You're separated,” the other agent said. “For an entire year.”

Actually, Angela thought, she'd walked out on Bobby eleven months, two weeks, and three days ago, but who the hell was counting? She snatched the plastic hanger off the closet rod with such force that she broke its little plastic neck.

“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 that 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 Coul. . .