Sam finally, completely, understood what he was saying . . . and doing. The look she gave him back was every bit as warmly intimate as his had been, and it was just as deliberate. “Good night,” she said softly, biting her bottom lip to hold back her smile. “I’ll let you know when I’ve made up my mind and I’m ready to invite you in, Mack,” she promised sweetly, closing the door.
Holding her cell phone in her hand, Sam pressed the numbers for his cell phone, but not the button that would make the call go through and his phone vibrate. She waited more than a full minute to do that . . . long enough for him to have taken the elevator down to the lobby . . . then she pressed the send button on her phone.
He answered almost instantly with his name, his deep voice clipped and businesslike. “McCord.”
“Mack?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve made up my mind.”
“Open your door.”
Sam turned the knob; then she stepped back in shock. He was standing exactly as he’d been when she opened the door the last time—with his hand braced high on the doorframe, only this time he was holding his own cell phone in his hand. He wasn’t laughing; he was looking at her intently, and Sam felt her voice shake at the enormity of what he was telling her solemnly with his eyes.
“Would you like to come in?” she asked unsteadily.
His arm dropped from the doorframe. He nodded slowly, twice.
Sam stepped back. He stepped forward.
He closed the door. She opened her robe and let it slide to the floor.
His burning gaze followed it down; then he pulled her tightly into his arms. “You just ran out of time, Sam,” he warned, his lips slowly lowering to hers.
“Time for what?” she whispered, sliding her hands over his shoulders and around his neck.
“To change your mind about us.”
“I’ll never change it,” she promised him achingly—a moment before she lost the ability to use her mind at all.
IN THE HOSPITAL WAITING ROOM, Michael stood in front of the television set, his hands shoved into his pants pockets, watching the rerun of McCord’s brief press conference on the late-night news: “I understand the mayor is preparing a statement regarding Mr. Valente, which he will make shortly” McCord said. “In the meantime, I would like to express my gratitude for Mr. Valente’s assistance . . . and my admiration for his unbelievable forbearance.”
Beside him, Leigh slipped her hand through his arm and smilingly said, “I think we should send him and Samantha Littleton tickets to the play next week, and then take them out to dinner, don’t you?”
“In Paris,” Michael agreed with a chuckle.
Chapter 75
* * *
“What a fantastic place!” Courtney exclaimed when O’Hara let her into the living room of Michael’s penthouse apartment on Central Park West. After Jane Sebring’s death three weeks before, Leigh had moved out of her old apartment, and she’d insisted that O’Hara and Hilda come with her so that she could oversee their recuperation. “I phoned Leigh this morning and asked if I could come over. Is she here?”
“She’s in the kitchen, trying to convince Hilda to leave the dust on the top of the doorframes until Hilda feels better,” Joe replied irritably.
“Didn’t Mr. Valente have a housekeeper of his own?”
“Sure, but Hilda ran her off a week ago. That woman can spot dust where there is no dust.”
“How are you feeling?” Courtney asked him.
“Foolish,” O’Hara replied. “I barely got winged with that bullet and I got a heart attack over it.”
“No, you didn’t,” Courtney argued, and with a rare show of affection, she linked her hand through his arm as they strolled toward the dining room. “You got a heart attack because you thought Hilda was dead. I think you’re sweet on her.”
“I am not. She’s the bossiest woman I’ve ever met. But at least she lets me cut the cards when we play gin.”
“You never bothered to cut them when we played, so I stopped asking you.”
“That’s because I was in a hurry to lose all my money to you and get it over with,” he joked. “At least with Hilda, I’ve got a fair chance of winning.”
Courtney nodded, but her mind was on something else, and she sobered. “I got my invitation to Leigh and Michael’s wedding. It’s still three weeks away, but I brought one of their wedding presents with me. They’ll either like it or hate me for the rest of my life.”
Joe stopped short. “What do you mean? What sort of present is it?”
“It’s a newspaper,” Courtney replied vaguely; then she put on a determinedly happy face and walked into the kitchen, where she said to Hilda, “O’Hara told me he’s figured out a way to cheat at gin when he cuts the cards.”
Hilda swung slowly around, her hands on her hips, her brows drawn together into an irate frown that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’ll keep a close eye on him after this.”
“Good idea,” Courtney replied, sliding onto a chair at the kitchen table, where Leigh was going through the mail. “Where’s Brenna? Why isn’t she handling the mail?”
Leigh enfolded her in a quick hug and shoved the mail aside. “She had a lunch date.”
“How are the wedding plans coming?”
Leigh laughed. “We invited one hundred people and we seem to have one hundred and eight attending. Mayor and Mrs. Edelman and Senator and Mrs. Hollenbeck are going to be there, and the manager at the Plaza is determined to provide special security, which the mayor and the senator don’t want. The banquet director is convinced we should move the event to a larger room, which I don’t want. The chef is tearing his hair out over some of my special requests, and Michael’s aunt is threatening to cater the event herself.” When Courtney didn’t smile or reply, Leigh studied her for a moment and then said, “What’s up?”
“Nothing. Well—something is.” Reaching into her oversize shoulder bag, Courtney pulled out several typewritten sheets of paper and a copy of USA Today. She handed Leigh the typewritten sheets, but kept the newspaper folded on her lap. “Two weeks ago,” she explained, “after I interviewed Lieutenant McCord, I finished my article about Michael for my investigative journalism class. I thought you might like to see it.”
“I’d love to see it,” Leigh said, puzzled by the teenager’s unusual apprehension. Leaning back in her chair, Leigh read the article written by a teenager for a special journalism class for the intellectually gifted:
Among citizens of the United States, there is a widely held, fundamental belief that the criminal justice system exists to protect law-abiding citizens, and that when this system errs, it errs on the side of leniency to the guilty, rather than deliberate persecution of the innocent.
Most of us believe in this premise as surely as we believe that a person must be considered innocent until he has been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; that “double jeopardy” prevents anyone from being tried over and over again for the same crime and that once a debt has been paid to society, the debt is . . . paid in full.
But there are those among us who have reason to doubt all those concepts, and their doubts are based on bitter experience, rather than intellectual self-deception and wistful philosophy. Michael Valente is one of these people.
Michael Valente is not an easy man to know. And until you know him, he is not an easy man to like. But like everyone else who reads the newspapers or watches the news, I thought I knew all about him long before I met him. And so I did not like him.
I like him now.
More than that, I admire and respect him. I wish he were my friend, my brother, or my uncle. I wish I were older or he were younger, because, as I’ve seen for myself, when Michael Valente loves a woman, he does it unselfishly, gallantly, and unconditionally. He does it permanently, forever.
Of course, there is one small drawback to being loved by him: It apparently allows the entire criminal justice system a license to spy, to malign, to misrepresent, and to perse
cute—not only him, but you as well. It allows them to violate every civil right the Constitution promises and that they have sworn to uphold.
From that point on, Courtney’s article was factual, rather than emotional, and it documented several of the cases brought against Michael. By the time Leigh finished reading, Courtney had gotten an apple and was munching it while stealing worried glances at her.
Leigh was so touched by the article that she reached out and laid her hand over Courtney’s.
“What do you think of it?” Courtney asked.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Leigh said softly. “And I think you’re wonderful, too.”
“Hold that thought,” Courtney said obliquely.
“Why?” When Courtney hesitated, Leigh thought the problem must have been that Courtney’s journalism professor hadn’t liked it, so Leigh asked what he’d thought.
Before replying, Courtney took another bite of apple. “Well, he wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as you are. He busted me for displaying a flagrant bias in favor of my subject, and for using a writing style that was ‘so gushingly sentimental that it couldn’t be digested on an empty stomach.’ He said the only connection between investigative journalism and what I wrote was that I used paper to write it on.”
“I don’t think that’s fair—” Leigh exclaimed loyally.
“Why not? He was absolutely right on target. I knew he’d say stuff like that.”
“Then why did you write it that way?”
Courtney took another bite of apple and chewed it while she contemplated her answer. “I wanted to set the record straight on Michael Valente.”
“I know you did, and I appreciate that. But I also remember that your professor was only going to give out one A in the class, and I know how much you wanted to get it.”
“I did get it.”
“You did? How?”
“I got major points for ‘Degree of difficulty of access to the subject’ and for ‘Fresh point of view.’ ”
“I can believe that,” Leigh said with a smile.
“But there was one other little thing that practically guaranteed me that A”
“What was it?” Leigh asked, trying to fathom Courtney’s hesitant expression.
In answer, Courtney pulled a new issue of USA Today out of her lap, opened it to an inside page, and folded it; then she slid it across the table to Leigh. “I even got my own byline on the story.”
Leigh’s eyes widened with a mixture of alarm and horrified amusement as she transferred her gaze to the open newspaper. “Oh, my God.”
“Honestly—I didn’t realize our professor was going to submit all the articles to the news services, just to see what might happen,” Courtney explained, “but when I heard my article was the one they chose, I really felt that since Michael was maligned in the national media, that’s where the situation ought to be corrected. I mean, he’s already sort of a hero in New York City to anyone who’s ever been hassled by a rude cop over a traffic ticket. But I wanted to set the record straight everywhere else.”
She seemed to run out of words in her own defense, and her shoulders slumped. “What do you think Michael will say? I mean, it’s sort of an invasion of his privacy, particularly when I never actually interviewed him—formally, I mean.”
Unaware that Hilda and O’Hara were also looking worriedly at her, Leigh tried to imagine how Michael would feel about the article. “He’s never cared what other people think of him,” she said after a moment. “He didn’t care when the newspapers blackened his reputation, so I doubt that he’ll be any more concerned that you’ve shined it all up for him.”
Chapter 76
* * *
With her cheek resting atop the muscled warmth of Michael’s chest, Leigh glanced at the clock on his nightstand and realized it was almost time to start getting dressed for their wedding. But first she had something to tell him, and she decided on an indirect approach. “There’s something very hedonistic about making love right before you go to your wedding,” she remarked softly.
Michael smiled, completely contented, lazily tracing his fingers over the curve of her shoulder and down her arm. “Nice word, ‘hedonistic.’ ”
“Actually, there’s a section in our contract that relates to that subject.”
“To the pursuit of pleasure?”
She nodded, her cheek rubbing against his chest.
“I don’t remember that section,” he teased. “What does it say?”
“It says that in your diligent pursuit of pleasure, certain results may occur that require amending one of the other clauses.”
“Which clause needs to be amended?”
“I think you said it was Clause 1, Section C—the one that’s headed, ‘Someone to Watch Over Me.’ ”
“Mmm,” Michael replied. “Have I failed to live up to that clause?”
“Not at all,” Leigh hastily told him. “But the clause needs to be amended because the pronoun is no longer correct.”
“Really?” Michael asked, his smile already widening in anticipation of her answer. “What should that clause say now?”
“It should say, ‘Someone to Watch Over Us.’ ”
She was telling him she was pregnant, and Michael’s joy made his voice husky. “Renegotiating a prior, binding contract can be a complicated, lengthy procedure. When will that particular clause need to be changed?”
“In about seven and a half months.”
He gazed at the ceiling for a moment, calculating dates, and his smile turned to a grin. “Really? The first night?”
“Probably so.”
“A baby,” he sighed. “What a perfect wedding present!”
She buried her laughing face against his chest. “I knew you would see it that way.”
“Have you picked out names yet?”
She laughed harder. “No. Have you?”
“No,” he admitted, “but in anticipation of this moment—” He paused to reach over to his nightstand and open the drawer. “—I got one of these a few days ago.” Into Leigh’s hand he placed a tiny, delicately crocheted infant’s bootie. It was yellow, with blue laces up the front and interlocking pink and green circles on the side.
“You only got one of them?” Leigh asked, her eyes swimming with tears of mirth as she lifted them to his.
He nodded.
“Don’t you think you should have gotten two?”
“There’s something inside that,” he explained.
Leigh felt it then—a hard object in the bottom. “Please tell me it isn’t a toe,” she joked.
Beneath her cheek, his chest shook with laughter as she turned the bootie upside down.
An exact replica of the bootie dropped out, perfect in every detail and color. It was made of diamonds.
Chapter 77
* * *
With his tuxedo jacket slung over his shoulder, Michael headed toward the bar, intending to open a bottle of champagne while Leigh was getting dressed for their wedding. They still had almost two hours to go, and the Plaza was only a few blocks away, but Jason Solomon had phoned a while ago and said he needed a ride from the theater on Broadway to the Plaza. For some reason, Leigh had agreed to go all the way down to the theater district to pick him up, instead of telling him to take a cab or phone a car service.
Michael was in the process of opening a bottle of Dom Pérignon when he heard O’Hara answer the phone in the kitchen. A moment later, O’Hara appeared and said, “Lieutenant McCord is downstairs in the lobby with Detective Littleton. Is it okay to let them come up?”
“It’s fine,” Michael said, but he was understandably puzzled by the arrival at his home of two of his wedding guests, whom he expected to see later, at the Plaza, instead.
As Leigh had suggested at the hospital, they’d sent McCord two front-row tickets to Leigh’s play, and McCord had escorted Samantha Littleton. After the play, Michael took everyone to the Essex House for dinner at Alain Ducasse, and during their three-hour meal, a sud
den friendship had sprung up between the two women. On the surface, they had little in common except two things: They were both about the same age, and they were both in love with men who were unapologetically in love with them. Within minutes after sitting down to dinner, Michael had sensed that McCord was completely hooked on the pretty brunette detective, and when Michael made a pointed, joking remark about that, McCord hadn’t denied it.
That at least gave Michael something in common with McCord, which was a good thing, because Michael had the distinct impression that Leigh and Sam Littleton wanted McCord and him to be friends; though, at the time, he couldn’t imagine why two intelligent, lovely women would think that he and McCord had anything whatsoever in common. Nevertheless, Michael went along with their scheme because he sensed that Leigh wanted to forge new friendships of their own, as part of her life with him, rather than drawing him into all her old friendships, many of which were tainted with memories of Logan.
Since McCord was heading up the mayor’s investigation into all the charges brought against Michael by the City of New York, McCord and he were required to meet periodically to discuss all that, so they’d actually seen quite a lot of each other in the last three weeks. To Michael’s secret amusement, he was actually developing a wary liking for his former enemy, and he knew McCord felt the same way about him.
As he thought about that, he heard O’Hara letting them in and he poured champagne into four glasses. He handed the first one to Sam Littleton, who gave him a smile and a quick hug. “You look very handsome,” she told him. “I don’t know how you do it, but you and Mack both manage to look macho and rugged in tuxedos, instead of like penguins.”
“Thank you,” Michael replied with a lazy grin. “And may I say that you look extremely feminine in that gown even though I know the bulge in your beaded handbag is probably a large, loaded, semiautomatic weapon.”
“You’re right, it is.” She laughed. “Where’s Leigh?” she asked, accepting the glass of champagne he was handing to her.