Sam looked at his ruggedly virile, implacable features while she tried to adjust to the new reality that Mitch.e.l.l McCord did want her, and had wanted her all along, and at the same time he was also trying to safeguard her career and rea.s.sure her about his feelings for her. He had been something of a hero to her before, but now everything she had imagined him to be seemed so much less than he actually was.

"While we're pretending," he continued after allotting her just enough time to catch up with his reasoning so far, "you'll have time to decide whether or not you want to be with me when this case is over. If, during this time, you decide the answer is no, I'll know it, and we won't discuss it. We'll part on the best of terms when this case is over, and you can simply go on pretending that the things I'm about to do to you, and with you, never happened." He paused again to gauge her reaction. "How does this sound so far?"

It was so like him-optimum planning and organizational skills in full use right to the end. Unable to control the trembling smile in her heart or the one lighting her eyes, Sam whispered, "It sounds... exactly like you, Mack."

He rejected that reply as inconclusive and raised his brows, waiting for an answer, his blue gaze pinning hers.

In reply, Sam reached up and pulled the band and pins out of her hair; then she gave the heavy ma.s.s a hard shake that sent it tumbling down in a chestnut waterfall over her shoulders.

He took her face in his hands and slowly threaded his fingers through the sides of her hair, turning her mouth up to his. "Sam," he whispered softly, as if he held some special reverence for her name. Lowering his head, he touched his lips to hers. "Sam," he said again in an aching whisper.

When he left, Sam closed the door, secured the locks; then she turned and leaned against the same wall he had backed her against. Smiling, she slid slowly down it to the floor; then she drew her legs against her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Resting her cheek on her knee, Sam closed her eyes, savoring the lingering sensations of his hands and mouth against her skin, the hardness of his aroused body against hers. Her long hair, neat and orderly an hour before, spilled over her other cheek and across her leg in a tangled ma.s.s, crushed and combed by his hands.

She had followed Mitch.e.l.l McCord right along that imaginary path, just as she'd known she was doing.

And she had walked off that cliff into thin air.

Oh, but what a fall!

CHAPTER 61.

The King Cole Room at the St. Regis on Fifty-fifth Street was not Michael's idea of a good place for the sort of discussion with Solomon that he had in mind.

Wide, shallow, and dimly lit, it was paneled in dark wood. Stretching its length was a long bar lined with barstools, all of them already occupied with the room's usual Manhattan crowd stopping for drinks after work.

The only other seating in the room was a few feet from the bar at a parallel row of tiny c.o.c.ktail tables lined up along the wall with chairs jammed around them. It was not only dark as pitch in there, it was noisy, which, Michael thought with a knowing smile, was probably why Leigh had chosen it for her obligatory meeting with Jason. In the bad light, she wouldn't be recognized, and Jason would have to raise his voice to "badger" her about coming back to work.

Next to that room was a discreet little "salon" with c.o.c.ktail tables, better lighting, and only a few customers. Michael chose a table that would at least enable him to see Leigh if she used the side entrance, which was across the room and down a long, wide ramp; then he ordered a drink and impatiently watched the time.

Solomon arrived fifteen minutes late, exuding regret and bursting with nervous ire over the reason he'd been delayed.

"I can't apologize enough!" he said, shaking hands with Michael and sitting down. Since they'd never met, Michael expected him to start talking about Leigh right away, since she was the only thing they had in common. However, as Michael immediately realized, Solomon now felt he had something else-something very significant-in common with Michael.

"I'm late because of the cops!" Solomon exclaimed irately. "Two detectives showed up at the theater-without an appointment-asking me a lot of questions about my relationship with Logan Manning. I couldn't get rid of them!

They're tenacious b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, aren't they?"

"You won't get an argument from me on that," Michael replied.

"You have to deal with those people all the time," he reminded Michael.

"How do you handle cops when they show up and start prying into your business?"

"I usually bribe them to go away."

"Does that work?"

"If it doesn't, I shoot them."

Belatedly realizing that he was being politely informed his comments were in bad taste, Jason leaned back in his chair and briefly closed his eyes. "Would you mind very much," he said bluntly, "if we started all over again?"

Michael glanced at his watch. "Let's just go on as we were."

"Are you interested in what the cops were asking me about?"

"Should I be?"

"They wanted to know how Logan paid me for his share in the play."

That interested Michael very much, so he lifted his brows inquiringly, and the nervous playwright gave him the details. "I told them Logan had two hundred thousand dollars in cash he wanted to use as payment for his share in the play, so I took it. We signed a contract, I gave him a receipt, and I deposited the money into the play's main bank account. What's the big d.a.m.ned deal? We deposit five or six hundred thousand dollars a week from box office receipts into that account."

Michael casually raised his gla.s.s to his lips in order to seem less intrigued than he was. "How much of your box office receipts are cash?"

"A big chunk, usually."

"But Manning's two hundred thousand dollars wasn't box office receipts. Why didn't you deposit Manning's money into a general account instead of calling it box office receipts and depositing it into your box office account?"

Solomon lifted his hands. "That's what the cops asked."

"What did you tell them? "

"I told them the truth. I'm not a bookkeeper and I'm not an accountant. Logan gave me cash and suggested I deposit it into the box office receipts account, and I did. I told the bookkeeper it was a shareholder payment, and she made the appropriate internal adjustments, whatever the h.e.l.l they are. I hate accountants."

Jason looked up to signal a waitress and order a drink. He was very fussy about the way his martinis were made, Michael noted impatiently, so that took another two minutes of time that Michael didn't have to spare.

"Did Manning give you any idea where he got the money?" Michael asked when Jason had finished ordering.

"Logan said," Jason explained, "that somebody paid him in cash and he'd been hanging on to the money because he didn't want to deposit it into his own account."

"Did he say why he didn't?"

"The cops asked me the same question."

"What answer did you give them?"

Before replying, Solomon paused to search for a particular kind of nut in the bowl on their table. "Logan said he didn't want to deposit it into his bank account because he'd have to make twenty different trips to his bank. Did you know that if you deposit or withdraw one dollar more than ten thousand dollars in cash, your bank notifies the IRS? I mean," he asked Michael seriously, "who the h.e.l.l wants the IRS crawling all over them?"

"Not I," Michael said gravely.

"They're the American gestapo."

"I couldn't agree more."

"In my case, though," Jason explained, hunting for another nut in the bowl, "we're a legitimate cash business, because of our box office receipts, so the IRS doesn't look at us in the same way." He watched the waitress carrying his drink to him, and while she waited, he tasted it to make certain it was "stirred, not shaken," and that "one drop, not two drops," of vermouth was in it. "This is fine," he told her; then he took a fortifying swallow, relaxed in his chair, and seemed to suddenly remember that Michael had specifically requested this private meeting with him before Leigh arrived. "Now then," he said cordially, "what can I do for you, Mr. Valente? Or-shall I call you Michael, since Leigh says you're actually an old friend of hers?"

Michael felt, absurdly, a pang of nonsensical hurt that Leigh hadn't told Solomon he was a little more than an old friend. On the other hand, he reasoned fairly, it was one thing to love him in private, but it was going to be difficult for her to explain to friends how she could possibly consider allying herself with the name Valente-whether she actually ever used it or not. Neither Michael, nor his name, would ever be an a.s.set to her publicly. Just the opposite, in fact. "Call me whatever you'd like," Michael said. "There's nothing you can do for me, but there's something I may be able to do for you."

If there was one way to get Solomon's attention, Michael noted, it was to offer him something he wanted-even if he didn't know what it was. "Leigh tells me you want her to come back to work," he said.

"G.o.d, yes!"

"She won't do it as long as she has to share a stage with Jane Sebring."

"Leigh has no choice! She's a professional-"

"She does have a choice, and she's made it," Michael told him coolly. "She feels, understandably, that she'd be turning herself-her private self-into a public spectacle."

At his implacable tone, Jason stopped arguing, and for several seconds he appeared to lose himself in contemplation of the olives in the bottom of his gla.s.s. "I'm going to tell you the blunt truth," he said finally, lifting his gaze to Michael. "Jane Sebring is a little insane. I do not say that lightly. She has a sick obsession with becoming Leigh. Leigh is going to have something Jane wants more than anything in life."

"Which is?"

"Theatrical immortality."

"Excuse me?"

"The Barrymores and the Sebrings, except for Jane, have been immortalized for their work on Broadway. Only three actresses have ever reached that pinnacle-Ethel Barrymore, Marianna Sebring, and Delores Sebring. Leigh Kendall will be the fourth, but if she willfully banishes herself from the theater at this stage in her career-and over nothing but a cheating husband-she will lose her place in the clouds. Actors act!" Jason said fiercely, and Michael suddenly had the feeling he was hearing the speech Solomon had prepared to give Leigh. "They act when they're sick, when their father is dying, when they're so drunk they can't see straight, and when they're almost catatonic with clinical depression. When the curtain goes up, they get on stage, and they act!"

Michael was about to interrupt Solomon's lecture on theatrical customs, but the playwright's next words instantly captivated him. "Do you have any idea how incredibly, richly mult.i.talented Leigh really is?" He held up a hand without waiting for a reply. "Don't try to answer because you don't know. No one knows.

At NYU, they called her a prodigy because they didn't know how else to describe what she can do. The critics call her 'magical' because they can't explain it either." Folding his arms on the table, he leaned forward and said, "During opening night for Blind Spot, in the second act, when Leigh leans toward the audience and says she knows a secret, I watched the whole d.a.m.ned audience lean forward in their chairs to hear it."

Michael looked up and saw several people coming from the lobby toward the bar, and reluctantly ended stories that he would happily have listened to for hours. "Let's talk about Jane Sebring."

Jason shuddered and flopped back in his chair. "She's moved into Leigh's dressing room. The day after Jane's affair with Logan hit the papers, she told me Leigh would never come back to the play, and she told me she wanted Leigh's dressing room. I told her absolutely not. I mean, for G.o.d sakes, both dressing rooms are identical, but she wants to be where Leigh is. Literally and figuratively. Logan's death has turned out to be a complete boon to her. Leigh can't come back to work, and Jane's got the leading role. I don't know what to do."

"Fire her."

"My G.o.d, 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 doc.u.ments 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 naive 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."