“You know what the two most obscene words in the English language are, Cathy?” Ryan asked nearly two hours later.
” ‘Assembly required,’ ” his wife answered with a giggle. “Honey, last year I said that.”
“A small Phillips.” Jack held his hand out. Cathy smacked the screwdriver into his hand like a surgical instrument. Both of them were sitting on the rug, fifteen feet from the eight-foot tree. Around them was a crescent of toys, some in boxes, some already assembled by the now-exasperated father of a little girl.
“You ought to let me do that.”
“This is man’s work,” her husband said. He sat the screwdriver down and sipped at a glass of champagne.
“You chauvinist pig! If I let you do this by yourself, you wouldn’t be finished by Easter.”
She was right, Jack told himself. Doing it half-drunk wasn’t all that hard. Doing it one-handed was hard but not insurmountable. Doing it one-handed and half-drunk was . . . The damned screws didn’t want to stay in the plastic, and the instructions for putting a V-8 engine together had to be easier than this!
“Why is it that a doll needs a house?” Jack asked plaintively. “I mean, the friggin’ doll’s already in a house, isn’t she?”
“It must be hard, being a chauvinist pig. You dodos just don’t understand anything,” Cathy noted sympathetically. “I guess men never get over baseball bats — all those simple, one-piece toys.”
Jack’s head turned slowly. “Well, the least you could do is have another glass of wine.”
“One’s the weekly limit, Jack. I did have a big glass,” she reminded him.
“And made me drink the rest.”
“You bought the bottle, Jack.” She picked it up. “Big one, too.”
Ryan turned back to the Barbie Doll house. He thought he remembered when the Barbie Doll had been invented, a simple, rather curvy doll, but still just a damned doll, something that girls played with. It hadn’t occurred to him then that he might someday have a little girl of his own. The things we do for our kids, he told himself. Then he laughed quietly at himself. Of course we do, and we enjoy it. Tomorrow this will be a funny memory, like the Christmas morning last year when I nearly put this very screwdriver through the palm of my hand. If he didn’t enlist his wife’s assistance, Ryan told himself, Santa would be planning next year’s flight before he finished. Jack took a deep breath and swallowed his pride.
“Help.”
Cathy checked her watch. “That took about forty minutes longer than I expected.”
“I must be slowing down.”
“Poor baby, having to drink all that champagne all by himself.” She kissed him on the forehead. “Screwdriver.”
He handed it to her. Cathy took a quick look at the plans. “No wonder, you dummy. You’re using a short screw when you’re supposed to use a long one.”
“I keep forgetting that I’m married to a high-priced mechanic.”
“That’s real Christmas spirit. Jack.” She grinned as she turned the screw into place.
“A very pretty, smart, and extremely lovable high-priced mechanic.” He ran a finger down the back of her neck.
“That’s a little better.”
“Who’s better with tools than I am, one-handed.”
Her head turned to reveal the sort of smile a wife saves only for the husband she loves. “Give me another screw. Jack, and I’ll forgive you.”
“Don’t you think you should finish the doll house first?”
“Screw, dammit!” He handed her one. “You have a one-track gutter, but I forgive you anyway.”
“Thanks. If it didn’t work, though, I had something else planned.”
“Oh, did Santa come for me, too?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll check in a few minutes.”
“You didn’t do bad, considering,” his wife said, finishing off the orange plastic roof. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Last one,” Jack confirmed. “Thanks for the assist, babe.”
“Did I ever tell you what — no, I didn’t. It was one of the ladies-in-waiting. I never did find out what they were waiting for. Anyway, this one countess . . . she was right out of Gone With the Wind,” Cathy said with a chuckle. It was his wife’s favorite epithet for useless women. “She asked me if I did needlepoint.”
Not the sort of thing you ask my wife. Jack grinned at the windows. “And you said . . . ”
“Only on eyeballs.” A sweet, nasty smile.
“Oooh. I hope that wasn’t over lunch.”
“Jack! You know me better than that. She was nice enough, and she played a pretty good piano.”
“Good as yours?”
“No.” His wife smiled at him. Jack reached out to squeeze the tip of her nose.
“Caroline Ryan, MD, liberated woman, instructor in ophthalmic surgery, world-famous player of classical piano, wife and mother, takes no crap off anybody.”
“Except her husband.”
“When’s the last time I ever won an exchange with you?” Jack asked.
“Jack, we’re not in competition. We’re in love.” She leaned toward him.
“I won’t argue with you on that,” he said quietly before kissing his wife’s offered lips. “How many people do you suppose are still in love after all the time we’ve been married?”
“Just the lucky ones, you old fart. ‘All the time we’ve been married’!”
Jack kissed her again and rose. He walked carefully around the sea of toys toward the tree and returned with a small box wrapped in green Christmas paper. He sat down beside his wife, his shoulder against hers as he dropped the box in her lap.
“Merry Christmas, Cathy.”
She opened the box as greedily as a child, but neatly, using her nails to slit the paper. She found a white cardboard box, and inside it, a felt-covered one. This she opened slowly.
It was a necklace of fine gold, more than a quarter-inch wide, designed to fit closely around the neck. You could tell the price by the workmanship and the weight. Cathy Ryan took a deep breath. Her husband held his. Figuring out women’s fashions was not his strongest point. He’d gotten advice from Sissy Jackson, and a very patient clerk at the jewelry store. Do you like it?
“I better not swim with this on.”
“But you won’t have to take it off when you scrub,” Jack said. “Here.” He took it from the box and put it around her neck. He managed to clasp it one-handed on the first try.
“You practiced.” One hand traced over the necklace while her eyes looked deeply into his. “You practiced, just so you could put it on me yourself, didn’t you?”
“For a week at the office.” Jack nodded. “Wrapping it was a bitch, too.”
“It’s wonderful. Oh, Jack!” Both her arms darted around his neck, and he kissed the base of hers.
“Thanks, babe. Thanks for being my wife. Thanks for having my kids. Thanks for letting me love you.”
Cathy blinked away a tear or two. They gave her blue eyes a gleam that made him happier than any man on earth. Let me count the ways . . .
“Just something I saw,” he explained casually, lying. It was something he’d seen after looking for nine hours, through seven stores in three shopping malls. “And it just said to me, ‘I was made for her.’ ”
“Jack, I didn’t get you anything like –”
“Shut up. Every morning I wake up, and I see you next to me, I get the best present there is.”
“You are a sentimental jerk right out of some book — but I don’t mind.”
“You do like it?” he asked carefully.
“You dummy — I love it!” They kissed again. Jack had lost his parents years before. His sister lived in Seattle, and most of the rest of his relations were in Chicago. Everything he loved was in this house: a wife, a child — and a third of another. He’d made his wife smile on Christmas, and now this year went into the ledger book as a success.
About the time Ryan started assembling the doll house, four identical blue vans left the Brixton Prison at five-minute intervals. For each, the first thirty minutes involved driving through the side streets of suburban London. In each, a pair of police officers sat looking out the small windows in the rear doors, watching to see if there might be a car trailing the truck on its random path through the city.
They’d picked a good day for it. It was a fairly typical morning for the English winter. The vans drove through patches of fog and cold rain. There was a moderate storm blowing in from the Channel, and best of all, it was dark. The island’s northern latitude guaranteed that the sun would not be up for some hours yet, and the dark blue vans were invisible in the early morning.
Security was so strict that Sergeant Bob Highland of C-13 didn’t even know that he was in the third van to leave the jail. He did know that he was sitting only a few feet from Sean Miller, and that their destination was the small port of Lymington. They had a choice of three ports to take them to the Isle of Wight, and three different modes of transport: ordinary ferry, hovercraft, and hydrofoil. They might also have chosen a Royal Navy helicopter out of Gosport, but Highland needed only a quick look at the starless sky to rule that one out. Not a good idea, he thought to himself. Besides, security is airtight. Not more than thirty people knew that Miller was being moved this morning. Miller himself hadn’t known until three hours before, and he still didn’t know what prison he was heading to. He’d only learn when he got to the island.