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He lifted his hand, and she started to raise hers for what she thought would be a handclasp, but his hand bypassed hers and settled under her chin. With narrowed eyes, he turned her face slightly to the right, then slightly to the left, inspecting it, and she simply let him do it, her own eyes wide and unblinking.
He was an old friend, and by now she already knew the sort of murmured concerns that old friends—the true ones and the false ones—all said to her when they saw her. She waited for him to say “How are you feeling?” or “Are you doing all right?”
Instead, he dropped his hand and stood there, his broad shoulders blocking her view of the room, his deep voice tinged with a pretense of hurt feelings. “I haven’t seen you in weeks. Aren’t you going to ask me how I feel, Leigh?”
Her eyes widened in disbelief, and shock tore a forgotten response from her. Leigh laughed. She held out her hands to him, but her laughter dissolved as suddenly as it swelled to the surface, leaving behind a sudden, over-whelming impulse to cry. She clamped down on the impulse, and forced herself to keep smiling. “I’m sorry,” she said. “How are you feeling?” It took her a moment to realize he was switching roles completely with her.
“I feel like hell,” he said somberly, “I ache all over, but mostly inside. Everything I believed in turned out to be wrong, and the people I trusted betrayed me. . . .” To her horror, Leigh felt tears flood her eyes and spill over her cheeks as he continued quietly, “I can’t sleep, because I’m afraid I’ll start dreaming. . . .”
She reached up to brush the tears away, but he pulled her forcefully into his arms and pressed her face against his chest. “Cry, Leigh,” he whispered. “Cry.”
Moments before, he’d made her laugh; now she found herself sobbing helplessly, her shoulders shaking with the force of her pent-up anguish. She would have pulled away and run, but his arms tightened around her when she tried, and his hand cradled her face, his fingers tenderly stroking her cheek. “It’s going to be all right,” he whispered when the flood of tears finally began to recede. “I promise,” he added, offering her a handkerchief with one hand.
She took it and leaned back in the circle of his arms, wiping her eyes, too embarrassed to look at him. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to get over this,” she admitted.
He put his hand beneath her chin and tipped it up, forcing her to meet his gaze. “You aren’t suffering from terminal cancer or any other incurable disease, so you can get over it. You have the power to decide how long, and how badly, you’re willing to go on suffering for your husband’s betrayals and your misplaced love.”
She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I’ve gotten angry at times, but it doesn’t help.”
“Anger is nothing but self-inflicted torture.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Well, for your own self-respect, I think you might feel better if you fought back and got even with him.”
“Fine!” she said tearily. “Get a shovel and we’ll dig him up!”
He laughed, and pulling her close, he laid his jaw against the top of her head. “I like your spirit,” he said with tender amusement, “but let’s start with something a little less strenuous.”
Self-conscious about standing in his embrace, Leigh stepped back after a moment and managed a halfhearted smile. “What do you recommend?”
“I recommend that you have dinner with me tonight.”
“All right. I’ll ask Hilda to fix—”
“Not here.”
“Oh, you mean a restaurant? I don’t think—No, really—”
He looked as if he wanted to argue, but she shook her head, appalled at the thought of having to face the prying eyes of strangers and the inevitable pack of reporters who would surely turn up before they finished eating. “Not a restaurant. Not yet.”
“Here, then,” he agreed.
“I’d like to shower and change clothes,” she said. “Would you mind waiting for me for a half hour?”
The question seemed to amuse him. “Not at all,” he said with exaggerated formality. “Please take all the time you need.”
Disconcerted by the hint of mocking humor in his reply, Leigh headed toward her bedroom on the opposite side of the apartment.
Michael watched her walk away. Did he mind waiting a half hour for her?
Not at all.
He’d been waiting years for her.
Belatedly recalling that he’d been playing cards with O’Hara and Courtney Maitland when Leigh walked into the kitchen, he turned abruptly. Courtney was staring at him, transfixed; O’Hara was standing beside his chair, frozen in the same position he’d been in when he first announced to Leigh that Michael was there.
Shoving his hands into his pockets, Michael lifted his brows and returned their stunned gazes in wordless acknowledgment of what he knew they were thinking.
Courtney finally reached for her purse and slowly stood up. “I have—” She paused to clear her throat. “I have to go now.”
Her words seemed to release O’Hara from his own paralysis. “I’ll tell Hilda to fix a nice dinner,” he said, sidling along between the island and the kitchen counter, toward the rear hall.
Courtney started past Michael, then paused and looked searchingly at him.
“Yes?” he prompted her after a moment.
She shoved the strap of her purse onto her shoulder and shook her head at whatever she’d been thinking. “Good night,” she said instead.
“Good night.”
As she reached for the service door that opened from the kitchen into the elevator foyer, she glanced over her shoulder at him one more time, and when she sp
oke she no longer sounded like a flippant teenager. “Leigh told me once that she loves to sit in front of a roaring fire in the fireplace.”
Chapter 44
* * *
Michael tossed another log onto the fire he’d built in the fireplace and used the poker to move it back farther on the grate. In the dining room, Hilda was setting the table for dinner. Straightening, he brushed off his hands and stood up just as Leigh walked into the living room wearing a long, belted cream wool dress with large covered buttons down the front, a wide collar, and full sleeves.
It reminded him of a dressy robe until he realized that was purely wishful thinking.
“You’ve built a fire,” she said as he handed her a glass of champagne.
Her auburn hair was loose at her shoulders, shiny in the firelight, more red than brown in that light.
“Champagne?” she asked, lifting questioning eyes to his.
“It seemed appropriate for such a special occasion,” Michael said.
“What occasion is that?”
In answer, he touched his glass to hers and made a toast. “To a new beginning. To fighting back—Phase One.”
“To Phase One,” she declared with a brave smile, and took a sip of champagne. “What was Phase Two again?”
“That’s the getting-even phase.”
She didn’t ask for the details of Phase Two, and he was glad, because she wasn’t ready to hear them, let alone put them into practice.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
Michael looked at the luminous eyes that had mesmerized him fourteen years ago, and he watched her reach up and comb her heavy hair off her forehead with her fingers. He remembered the gesture as clearly as he remembered that in bright daylight her eyes were aquamarine, but in other light—like now—they turned the deep blue-green of zircons. He remembered the attentive way she listened, with her head tipped slightly to the side, as it was now. His gaze dropped to her lips, and he remembered the way she looked a month ago, coming toward him in that little red dress—leggy and sophisticated and gracious. “What is it that you’ve been thinking about?”
