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 p.r.o.noun is no longer correct."

"Really?" Michael asked, his smile already widening in antic.i.p.ation 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 Perignon 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 Ess.e.x House for dinner at Alain Duca.s.se, and during their three-hour meal, a sudden 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 gla.s.ses. 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 gla.s.s of champagne he was handing to her.

"Getting dressed," Michael said.

"I'll go see if she needs any help," Sam said, and Michael handed her another gla.s.s of champagne to take to Leigh.

He gave the last gla.s.s to McCord along with an inquiring look, which McCord understood. "I'm here to deliver a wedding gift from the mayor," he explained.

Since McCord had a gla.s.s of champagne in his right hand and his left hand was in the pocket of his black tuxedo trousers, Michael said, "What gift?"

"You have to look out the window to see it," McCord replied, strolling over to the wall of gla.s.s that overlooked Central Park West. "Look down there on the street."

Michael did, and what he saw, twenty-eight floors below, was his limousine surrounded by a bevy of uniformed police officers on motorcycles. "Oh, good,"

he said dryly. "Cops. Just what I always wanted."

"It's a motorcycle escort," McCord clarified with a chuckle. "Compliments of His Honor, the Mayor."

"Really? From up here, with those helmets on, I thought they might be skeet, and I was going to ask to borrow your gun."

Together they strolled back to the bar. The granite countertop was high enough for Michael to comfortably lean his right forearm on it, which he did while keeping his eye on the living room, waiting for his first glimpse of Leigh in her wedding dress. "We have to leave early," Michael said idly, taking a sip of champagne. "We're picking Solomon and Eric Ingram up at the theater and taking them to the hotel."

McCord walked around to the other side of the bar and leaned his left forearm on the granite countertop. "Why?" he asked, lifting his own gla.s.s to his mouth.

Michael shook his head, his voice filled with tolerant amus.e.m.e.nt. "I have no idea why Leigh agreed to pick them up there, but she did. Do you want to ride with us?"

"We'll pa.s.s," McCord replied. "Solomon is in a snit because the IRS is auditing him. He thinks it's because we questioned him about Manning's two-hundred-thousand-dollar cash deposit, and then sent the IRS after him. He's written a stern letter of protest to the governor."

Michael chuckled and sardonically said, "That will do him a h.e.l.l of a lot of good."

"Sam and I are getting married," McCord said quietly.

Michael glanced over his shoulder and quirked a brow at him in mock surprise. "What kind of drug did you use on her to get her to agree to that?"

"A slightly less potent one than you used on your bride, I imagine," McCord replied unconcernedly.

"I own a chateau in France. If you actually get that beautiful woman to marry you, instead of shooting you, you could use it for your honeymoon."

"Sam's a h.e.l.l of a marksman," McCord remarked proudly, taking another sip of champagne.

"In that case, be sure you never let her go to bed with you when she's angry,"

Michael replied with a chuckle, taking a swallow of his drink.

"She'd love a honeymoon in a French chateau, I think. So would I."

Michael nodded. "Let me know the dates you want it, and I'll make sure it's staffed and ready."

Sam and Leigh emerged from the bedroom, started across the living room, and then stopped in amused surprise at the sight of the two men at the bar. They were both leaning on a forearm, drinking champagne, and regarding each other over their shoulders. "They are so much alike!" Sam whispered with a laugh. "I realized it a long time ago."

"So did I," Leigh replied. "But they don't think they're anything alike."

Sam was quiet for a moment, thinking of an a.n.a.logy that fit them. "A pair of lions," she said aloud.

Leigh nodded, looking at Michael. "They would have made terrible foes."

At the sound of their voices, Michael looked up and his breath caught at the sight of Leigh walking toward him in a long, strapless cream sheath covered in French lace. At her throat she was wearing the diamond-and-pearl choker he'd given her. Deep inside her slender body, she was sheltering his child.

She handed him the aquamarine velvet wrap she was carrying over her arm, and she turned around. He draped it over her shoulders; then he slid his hand protectively over her flat abdomen. "Thank you," he whispered.

She covered his hand with hers and gave him a melting smile over her shoulder. "I was going to say the same thing to you."

CHAPTER 78.

It was twilight when the motorcade turned onto Broadway, and O'Hara slowed the limousine down. On the street, pedestrians turned to watch them go by, trying to see inside the darkened windows of the long Mercedes.

In the backseat, Michael glanced out the window, automatically waiting to see the name "Leigh Kendall" lit up on the marquee above Solomon's theater. It was a habit of his-this watching for her name on theater marquees. He'd been doing it for years, consciously and unconsciously, whenever he happened to be on Broadway. Invariably, the sight of her name there had given him a surge of nostalgia followed by a plunge into fatalistic reality because he'd pa.s.sed up his long-ago chance with her.

But fate had given him a second chance, Michael thought with an inner grin, and he hadn't let this one slip past, nor had he wasted a moment's time. Three months ago, Leigh had been Logan Manning's wife. Since then, Michael had swept her from widow to bride-with a stop for motherhood in between.

Only twelve weeks ago, she'd stood in front of him at a party wearing a red dress and hiding her disdain behind a polite mask. Tonight, she was sitting beside him in his car, wearing a gorgeous wedding gown and holding his hand.

In a little over an hour, she was going to stand beside him in front of a supreme court judge and voluntarily join her life with his. And seven and a half months from now, she was going to give him his first child.

He had, of course, been aided in all that by an attraction between them that was so strong, and so vital, that it had sprung instantly to life after being dormant for fourteen years.

"What are you thinking about?" Leigh asked him.

"Second chances," he said with a smile at her upturned face. "I was thinking about fate and second chances. I was also thinking that if Solomon isn't ready and waiting for us at the theater, I will haul him bodily into this car in whatever state of dress-or undress-he's in when I find him."

Leigh laughed at his threat and nodded out the car window. "We're almost there now, and I can already see Jason on the sidewalk, but it looks like he's having lighting problems again."

Michael looked out the window and saw that the marquee above Solomon's theater was lit up with the words BLIND SPOT, but Leigh's name was dark.

Solomon was standing on the sidewalk in a tuxedo, his head tipped back toward the marquee, a cell phone at his ear. Eric Ingram was standing a few yards back, also in a tuxedo, looking up at the marquee. At the box office, people were already lining up in hope of buying unclaimed tickets to the show if any became available at the last minute.

"Poor Jason," Leigh explained with a sympathetic little sigh. "He's been plagued with lighting problems of one kind or another since opening night."

Michael's mind was on marriage, not marquees, so he missed the odd, tender note in her tone when she said, "Could we get out for a minute? Otherwise, he'll stand there forever, frustrating himself and yelling at the lighting supervisor on his phone."

He nodded, resigned and amused that when show business was involved, lighting problems evidently took precedence over everything else, including impending marriages. Raising his voice a little, he said to O'Hara, "Pull over in front of the theater as close to the curb as you can get us. We're going to get out.

Solomon has lighting problems."

"You gotta be kidding!" O'Hara exclaimed, gaping at Michael in the rearview mirror. "You're both in your wedding clothes, and I've got four cops on motorcycles in front of me and four more behind me. Can't Solomon call an electrician like everybody else does?"

"Evidently not," Michael said wryly.