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She crouched a little to see into the niche below. “Yes, he was. But for reasons I couldn’t understand, it always bothered me that he didn’t like me. I kept trying
to befriend him.”
“He probably noticed that.”
“Maybe so. But here’s what’s really peculiar: Years later, I discovered he’d spent his money to buy me special pears he wouldn’t give to me in person . . . and he also went to see me in a play.” She moved past the next case, stopping at the one after that, then she came to the end and began slowly retracing her steps. “One night, he risked his life to save mine. Don’t you find all that a little odd?”
“On the surface, yes.”
“What do you think I should do about it?”
“In your place,” Michael said with solemn amusement, as he put his brandy glass on a shelf and started toward her, “I would insist on an explanation.”
She sent him a sideways glance beneath her lashes. “Do you have one?”
“Yes.” Putting his hand on her arm, he turned her around to face him while he told her the truth: “Fourteen years ago, I wanted you to have the most beautiful pears in the state of New York, and I wanted to be the one who got them for you. I wanted you to talk to me, and I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to keep the gift you gave me, and I wanted to give you gifts. In short,” he finished, “I wanted you.”
She stared at him in a comic struggle to understand. “And you thought you could make me want you by being hateful?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head firmly in the negative. “I already had a dark past and a gray future; I didn’t want you to have anything to do with me. I wanted something much better for you, than me.” In a tone of reprimand, he added, “I also wanted something a hell of a lot better for you than that phony, preppy asshole you fell for. I was furious when you told my aunt you were engaged to him. I could not believe I’d actually saved you from me, only to have you end up with Logan Manning.”
For several moments, Leigh struggled against simultaneous urges to laugh, cry, and lean up and kiss his lean cheek. “That is the most bizarre story I’ve ever heard,” she told him finally with a winsome smile. “And very possibly the sweetest.”
Smiling back at her, he put his arm around her shoulders and started walking toward the doorway while he told her something so poignant that she leaned her head against his shoulder: “I’ve kept that knight somewhere in sight in every office I’ve had. It was my beacon. In the early years, if I faltered over a choice, I’d look at that little pewter knight and remember that I was ‘gallant’ in your eyes, and I would make whatever choice was ethical and right.” Teasingly, he explained, “I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to be ‘gallant,’ so I settled for ethical instead.”
He stopped in the sitting room and perched his hip on the back of a sofa; then he drew her close against his legs and settled his hands on her waist.
Leigh sensed that whatever he wanted to say next was very important, because he seemed to be taking an unusual amount of time thinking about it. Either that, or he didn’t know what he wanted to say. Reaching toward the table, she picked up her brandy and sipped it, waiting, noticing how attractive he looked in an open-collared white shirt. His was a sternly handsome face, more stern than handsome, at times, but infinitely more “male” than Logan’s face. Michael had strength carved in his jaw and pride stamped on his rugged features. And he had wonderful eyes, eyes that could turn hard or be soft, but they were always knowing and wise. Logan’s mind had usually been on something besides the person talking to him; his eyes had strayed along with his thoughts.
Michael didn’t notice that she was taking stock of his face; he was trying to decide what to say next. He knew exactly what he wanted to say: “I’m in love with you. Come to bed with me, and I’ll make you forget how badly he hurt you.” The problem was that her husband’s betrayal would stop her from believing him if he told her how he felt, just as it was going to stop her from wanting to go to bed with him now.
He was as sure of that as he was that her feelings for him went much deeper than she wanted to realize right now. There had always been an inexplicable bond between them; some essential understanding that took over as soon as they were together. Years ago, she’d seen something good in him and instinctively forced it to the surface. Even now, when the world understandably believed the worst of him, when a newspaper could make a logical case for the theory that he’d murdered her husband, she—who should have been the most suspicious—was his staunchest supporter.
Unfortunately, those were all emotional issues, and he did not think she was ready to talk about them, because her emotions were already overburdened. But he decided to try that approach first. He slid his hands up her arms, and quietly asked, “Do you believe in fate?”
She laughed, and there was a catch in her voice. “Not anymore.” After a pause she wrinkled her nose and said, “Do you?”
That catch in her voice made him hate Logan Manning twice as much as he already did. “I’m Italian and Irish,” he joked. “My forebears invented superstition and folklore. Of course I believe in fate.” She smiled at that, so he continued lightly, “I believe you were meant to give that knight to me. You were meant to be my beacon.”
He watched uncertainty and disbelief darken her eyes, but he kept going anyway, testing her emotional boundaries. “I was meant to watch over you. I was meant to be there for you when two punks tried to attack you. I was also supposed to keep you,” he added bluntly, “but I screwed up and let Logan Manning have you. Do you know what else I believe?”
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”
Damn Logan Manning. “I believe fate is giving me another chance to do my job.”
“And—what do you think your job is?” she asked with wary amusement.
“I told you,” Michael said, trying not to sound as solemn as he felt, “my job is to watch over you. And part of that job right now is to help you get over Logan. It’s time to get even with him for cheating on you and betraying your trust. You’re not going to be able to feel like yourself until you get some of your pride back.”
“And how would I get even?”
He looked at her with a slow, roguish grin. “An eye for an eye—” he said. “He cheated on you, so you have to cheat on him now—on his memory.”
Her eyes were swimming with mirth and she bit her lip to stop from laughing, but there was unmistakable affection in her voice. “Have you ever considered an insanity plea, when the police hassle you?” she asked, “because I really think we could get you off with—”
“?‘We’?” he repeated, interrupting her. “Notice how naturally you team up with me. You wouldn’t fight for yourself, but when that newspaper said something evil about me, you came out swinging at everybody involved.” He chuckled and shook his head. “We’d have made a hell of a team fourteen years ago.”
With an effort, he put that poignant thought aside and braced himself for a brief skirmish. “But that was then, and this is now, and here I am—ready to do my job and help you get even with Logan tonight. Volunteering, in fact. Come to bed with me.”
It hit Leigh for the first time that despite his teasing attitude, he was serious. Very, very serious. “No! Absolutely not! That’s insane. It would change everything. We wouldn’t be the same. I love the way we are. And besides that, it wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be fair.”
“To whom?”
“To you! How could you think I would ever . . . use . . . you like that? I wouldn’t dream of it!”
He chuckled. “I want to be used.”
He was laughing, but he wasn’t merely serious, he was resolute! She could hear it in his voice. The mere thought of going to bed with him, of exposing herself emotionally as well as physically, made her cringe with panic. She would lose him, along with what little self-respect she had left. “Please,” she said achingly, “please don’t do this to me. Let things stay the way they are. I don’t want to . . . to do that. Not with anyone.”
She pulled back enough to put her glass down, but his hands tightened and he stood up when she tried to back out of his reach.
“You’re going to hav
e to tell me why . . .” Rage at Logan Manning poured through Michael’s veins like acid, but he kept his voice neutral. “ . . . or I’m not going to take no for an answer.”
Her voice broke. “Damn you, why are you doing this to me!” She leaned her forehead against his chest, her eyes flooding with tears of humiliation and despair. “Can’t you leave me a little pride?”
He stared over her head blindly, his hands tightening protectively on her back while he purposely probed at her wounds. “I want you to tell me why you won’t go to bed with me. I want you to tell me the truth.”
“Fine!” she cried. “Here’s your truth! The whole world knows ‘the truth.’ My husband didn’t want me. I don’t know what you think you’d get out of going to bed with me, but it wasn’t enough for him, and it won’t be enough for you. I loved him,” she choked brokenly, “and he didn’t even care enough about me to keep his hands off my friends, or my colleagues. Let go of me, I want to go home!” She struggled harder, and when his arms tightened even more, imprisoning her against his chest, she collapsed against him sobbing. “The names of his lovers are in all the newspapers. . . .”
“I know,” he whispered. Holding her tighter, he rested his cheek against the top of her head, swallowing against the aching lump of emotion in his throat, his hands drifting over her sides and back while her slim shoulders shook with anguished weeping. He remembered the first time he saw those laughing green eyes looking up at him, framed by a curtain of auburn hair, and he squeezed his own eyes closed.
He waited until her crying finally started to subside; then he firmly shook off his own sorrow and resolved to make her laugh. “I don’t blame you for crying. I mean, where will you ever find another man with so much integrity, loyalty, and ego?” With a joking sigh, he added, “You’re going to have to tramp through a lot of manure-filled pastures before you can find a pile as big as the one you had.”
Her body stiffened as if a jolt of electricity had shot through her, and after a moment of tense stillness, her shoulders began to shake again, only harder than before. Grinning, Michael lifted his head. He knew she was laughing even before she dragged her face away from his shirt and lifted her glorious eyes to his.
