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Leigh can’t come back to work, and Jane’s got the leading role. I don’t know what to do.”
“Fire her.”
“My God, there’s nothing I would like more, but her agents drew up a contract that has me by the throat.”
“Pay her off.”
“I wish I could, but I don’t have that kind of money lying around. I’ve already committed a large chunk of the profits from Blind Spot to my next play. If I weren’t worried about financing that play, I’d pay Sebring off, believe me. Her understudy can play Sebring’s part, and she’d cost me a fraction of what Sebring is getting.”
“How much are you looking for to finance your next play?”
Solomon told him.
Michael reached into his jacket pocket. And took out a checkbook.
“You’re serious?” Solomon breathed, looking from the amount written on the check to Michael’s face.
“The proof that I am is in your hand,” Michael said mildly, tipping his head toward the check. “Send the appropriate documents to my office by messenger tomorrow. Draw them up in Leigh’s name.”
“Leigh’s name?”
Michael nodded.
“I could use another drink!” Solomon declared with a confused laugh. “How about you?” Without waiting for an answer, he signaled the waitress for another round. When he glanced back, he saw his companion looking at something outside the windows.
Michael was watching Leigh get out of the Farrell limo in a bright sapphire blue coat and dress. She was smiling up at O’Hara, who was holding the door.
A man was getting out of a taxi right behind her. He hung back, then followed her slowly down the sidewalk toward the side entrance. Michael didn’t notice; he was concentrating on Leigh.
“Is something going on out there?” Jason asked, turning around.
“Yes,” Michael said, flicking a smiling glance at him. “Your new partner is just arriving.”
Lost in the thrilling poignancy of the moment, Michael watched the woman he loved, knowing she was finally his. She was glamour and grace, coming to meet him at the St. Regis in an outfit of sapphire blue . . .
She was a laughing girl in jeans with an armload of oranges.
She was a solemn girl, trying to give a gift to a rude cynic who was crazy about her. “I wanted to thank you properly . . . for being so gallant,” she’d explained.
“Gallant? Is that what you think I am?”
“Yes, I do.”
“When did they let you out of your playpen?”
“My mind is made up. Don’t try to change it, because you can’t. Here . . . this is for you.”
She was the naïve girl he had rescued and walked home while she lectured him about civic duty. “How do you expect the police to protect us if citizens won’t cooperate? Among other things, it’s every citizen’s duty . . .”
She was the entrancing young woman who had walked through a line of shouting reporters, armed with only her courage and loyalty to him, and launched a simultaneous attack on the entire NYPD and the Daily News. “If Commissioner Trumanti, or anyone under him, approved of the slander you printed today, then he is as criminally irresponsible as your newspaper.’
She was the intoxicating angel who’d laughed in his arms the night before in a grocery market, where their pictures were plastered across the Daily News’s hideous front page. “Together at last,” he’d joked with her.
Michael watched her push through the entrance doors and begin walking up the long marble ramp. Smiling with possessive pleasure, he stood up to wait for her. Together at last, he thought.
Leigh felt excited, eager, and strangely nervous about seeing Michael after the night they’d spent together and the promises they’d made. It had all happened so fast. If someone else had been telling her this story, she would have sent the woman for extensive therapy!
She’d spotted him as soon as she walked into the side entrance, and she’d watched him come to his feet—a man who was six feet three inches of formidable masculinity, bold strength, and unbelievable gentleness. He was watching her cross the lobby, and the tender things he’d said the night before began to flash through her mind. “I wanted something much better for you, than me . . . I believe you were meant to be my beacon I was meant to watch over you.”
She thought of him that morning, smiling into her eyes when she silently agreed to marry him. “A kiss on the hand is equal to two nods. Very, very binding.”
And then she remembered what his aunt had said at dinner the night before: “Every week, Michael went to Dean and DeLuca to buy your pears. . . . He was going to school, and he had no money, so he stretched every penny . . . but for you, only the best would do.
“Michael knows how to make you happy, and you know how to make him happy . . .”
He was standing only a few yards away, his eyes smiling into hers, pulling her forward. Leigh started walking faster, and suddenly she was rushing straight into his arms. He caught her in a fierce hug, and laughing, she twined her arms around his neck, her cheek pressed to his chest. Pulling back, she looked up at him and said cheerfully, “Hi.”
“Hi,” Michael replied with a grin.
Ignoring Jason Solomon completely, she kept her arms around his neck and teasingly asked the question wives routinely ask husbands: “How was your day?”
Michael thought about that before answering. His day had started with lovemaking and a marriage proposal; then he’d met with his attorney, voluntarily gone to a police precinct, and been interrogated by an obnoxious asshole lieutenant. He’d been chased down by another detective who hitched a ride in his car and then followed him into a building where he was meeting with private investigators. He’d hired the investigators, had them relay a verbal threat to the lieutenant; now he’d just arranged to have Leigh’s costar ejected from the play and Leigh made a partner in Solomon’s next one.
“The usual,” he said with a grin. “But it’s improving fast.”
“Jason,” Leigh said without looking at the gaping playwright. “Can you keep a secret?”
He looked stung by the question. “No!” he unhesitatingly replied.
“Good
. I just wanted to be sure you hadn’t turned over a new leaf.” Satisfied, Leigh told him the “secret” she didn’t want him to keep: Looking into Michael Valente’s eyes, she said, “I love you.”
At a table nearby, a new customer sat down and watched the tender scene with shock. And then with fury. He stayed until the couple started to leave; then he threw a crumpled bill on his table and followed slowly behind them.
O’HARA WAS WAITING at the curb with the car. “Where to next?” he asked as he barged into traffic, cutting off another limo driver, who blasted him with his horn. “Do you want to get something for dinner?” he said, looking at Michael in the rearview mirror.
Instead of answering, Michael put his arm around Leigh, his fingers drifting over the side of her neck and her soft cheek, his gaze fixed on her lips. “Do you know what I really want?” he whispered.
Leigh looked into those heavy-lidded, smoldering amber eyes, and chuckled. “I’ll bet I can guess.”
“You’ve guessed the first half of it. The second half is directly related to the first half, but it’s a slightly longer-term ‘want.’ Have you figured it out?”
Leigh considered the fact that he’d raced from platonic friendship to marriage in the space of twelve hours. After twenty-four hours, it seemed obvious where his thoughts would be by now. With absolute confidence, she smiled and said, “Grandchildren.”
He threw back his head and gave a shout of laughter; then he said with a boyish grin, “I like the way you think.”
Chapter 62
* * *
Sam pressed the up button again and looked at her watch while she waited nervously for the Eighteenth’s old elevator to make its creaking journey to the first floor. She’d taken a taxi instead of walking to the subway because it was sleeting, and the cab had gotten hopelessly snarled in traffic. She was already five minutes late for work, and she hated being late for work—particularly today, when Mack might understandably think she was trying to take advantage of their new situation.
