“What do you mean?” she asked as he got up and came around the table to pull back her chair.
“I’d like you to see where I live.”
Leigh’s heart slammed into her rib cage.
Chapter 47
* * *
Leigh slid into the backseat of the Bentley and sat next to Michael in the same place she’d occupied on the way there, but this time, he draped his arm across the back of her seat, a possessive gesture only if he touched her, but he wasn’t touching her. For that she was as profoundly relieved as she was confused about his intentions later.
“How was dinner?” O’Hara asked.
“Very good,” Michael replied after a pause that told Leigh he’d expected her to say something.
Leigh barely noticed. She couldn’t seem to grasp all the implications of the last ten minutes in that restaurant. She hadn’t been able to fully adjust to the things his aunt had told her, and she hadn’t known how to cope with the way he acted after that. At first, he had looked at her in silence, steadily, neither apologizing nor making light of what he’d done. But when she tried to pretend she didn’t understand the meaning of it, he’d made it clear he wouldn’t tolerate evasions. On the one hand, he was perfectly willing to put up a wall in the middle of a restaurant to protect her and he was willing to show her the most amazing kindnesses, but he drew the line at a minor little deception.
She did not understand him at all. She honestly couldn’t believe he intended to try to seduce her tonight; she couldn’t even imagine why he would want to try. And yet . . . there was something about the decisive way he said, “The night isn’t over,” and “I’d like you to see where I live,” that still alarmed her. He was such a magnificent man in so many ways, and she didn’t want anything to spoil the amazing fledgling relationship she’d formed with him. She didn’t know if it was strong enough yet to withstand a conflict over sex, and she didn’t want to put it to the test.
Leigh gave an unsteady sigh and looked out the window. As if he sensed the tumult in her mind, his arm settled around her shoulders, drawing her close for a quick, reassuring hug. He released her almost instantly, but his hand stayed on her upper arm, drifting up and down, soothing.
O’Hara pulled to a stop in front of Michael’s building on Central Park West. “Should I wait here?” he asked Michael as he helped Leigh out of the car. “Or should I come back in a while?”
“Don’t you ever get a night off?” Michael joked.
Leigh’s entire body seemed to lean in the direction of that conversation.
“Nope, never. I’m on duty twenty-four hours a day. It goes with the job.”
“Then tonight’s your lucky night,” he said, closing the car door and the discussion. “I’ll bring her home in a taxi and pick up my car then.”
Chapter 48
* * *
He owned the penthouse, Leigh realized as he put his key into that slot inside the elevator. Too nervous to attempt idle conversation, she rode with him in silence to the twenty-eighth floor.
It was pitch black inside his apartment, but instead of turning on lights, he stopped close behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “May I have your coat?”
His fingers brushed the bare skin of her shoulders when he started to draw it off, and Leigh shivered, pulling it back on. “I think I’ll just keep it on. It’s a little chilly in here.”
“I’ll turn up the thermostat,” he replied firmly.
Leigh relinquished her coat, trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness as he opened a door next to them and hung up her coat, then his.
“Ready?” he asked her.
“For what?” she asked uneasily.
“For your first look.” He stepped to one side, and a moment later a series of lights came on, illuminating what looked like an empty acre of gleaming black marble floors that were divided into two circular areas, each on a raised dais with graceful white columns and arches.
There was no furniture! No furniture . . . no bed. No bed . . . no danger to this extraordinary relationship that she treasured more every day.
“I haven’t moved in yet.”
Leigh’s tension over his intentions evaporated in a rush of happy relief. “This is . . . glorious,” she breathed, walking down the foyer steps. “You can see the Hudson from there.” She pointed toward the huge dais on the left and looked questioningly over her shoulder at him.
“That’s the dining room,” he told her. “The dais on the right is the living room.”
She turned back toward him, studying the wide curving staircase near the front door, her gaze moving along the intricate wrought-iron railing that had once adorned a palatial old New York mansion, tracing it across the balcony overhead. “It’s exquisite.”
From there, he guided her toward an arched hallway adjoining the dining room, their footsteps echoing hollowly in the high-ceilinged room.
“You dislike closed-in spaces,” Leigh said, smiling. “So do I.” A big, inviting kitchen was completely open to a family room whose two glass walls at either end had a view of the Hudson River to the west and overlooked Central Park to the east.
The south wall had a stunning alabaster fireplace surrounded by mellow wood panels and wide carved molding, all of it so distinctive that Leigh recognized it at once. “This came from the Sealy mansion.” Clasping her hands behind her back, she slanted him a knowing look over her shoulder. “You were the ‘unnamed bidder’ who paid ‘an undisclosed fortune’ to get it.” She walked over to the windows on the east. “Your views are all breathtaking. I can even see our—my—apartment over there across the park.”
As she spoke, Michael walked over to the bar that was recessed in the wall, the family room shared with the dining area. He took off his suit coat and tie, tossing them over a barstool; then he loosened the top button of his shirt. She joined him at the bar, walking toward him with the same unconscious grace that he’d always admired in her. She’d relaxed the moment she realized his apartment wasn’t furnished, so he intended to give her a glass of brandy to help her relax before she discovered that his bedroom suite was furnished.
She slid onto a barstool, folded her hands, and perched her chin on them. “I had such a lovely time tonight. I love your aunt. It must be nice to live where you grew up, and be able to see people like Frank Morrissey who’ve known you all your life.”
“And whose personal lifetime goal is to assault your dignity every time he has the chance,” Michael joked, locating the bottle of brandy. “The night I walked you home, you told me you were from Ohio. Is that where you were born
?”
“No, I was born in Chicago. My mother was a nurse and I lived with her there until I was four.”
“What about your father?”
“He left her as soon as she got pregnant with me. They weren’t married.”
“How did you end up in Ohio?” He bent down and located some brandy snifters in the moving boxes behind the bar, and then he straightened, but what she said next made him forget the snifters were in his hands.
“When I was four, my mother was told she had what was then an incurable form of fast-spreading cancer, so she sent me to live with my grandmother in Ohio. She thought it would be easier for me to make the adjustment to living permanently without her if she did it that way, in stages. She came to see us often at first, while she was undergoing an experimental treatment at her hospital, and she kept working as long as she possibly could.”
“Then what happened?”
Leigh dropped her hands and spread them, palms down, on the bar as if bracing herself. “One day, when I was five, she hugged me and kissed me good-bye and said she’d see me soon. She didn’t realize there wasn’t going to be another chance for that.”
Leigh’s eyes, her face, her gestures—they were so expressive that they’d drawn him into the story with her, just as they mesmerized and drew in audiences that paid to see her perform. But she wasn’t performing now, this wasn’t a script, and he was a hell of a long way from being an impersonal observer. He had to look down and concentrate on pouring the brandy to break free of the spell. “Do you remember her well?”
“Yes, and no. I remember loving her and being excited to see her. I remember she read me stories at bedtime, and—as odd as this seems under the circumstances—I truly remember her as being happy and gay when we were together. And yet she knew she was dying, that her life was ending before it had a chance to begin.”
This time, he met her gaze. “You must have inherited her gift.”
“What gift?”
“Her gift for acting.”