In the week and a half since he'd told her about his misspent youth, the police had subpoenaed all her husband's business papers from his office at home, and on New Year's Eve, a local television station broke the story that she was supposedly a suspect in her husband's murder. Michael had witnessed her reaction: She'd stood up slowly, her arms wrapped around her middle, her face turning deathly pale. He'd put his arm around her shoulders-and she'd leaned into him, closed her eyes, and turned her face into his jacket. She'd been devastated, but not angry enough to fight back or even make a phone call in her own behalf.

Since then the media speculation had gone completely wild. Depending upon which newspaper, magazine, or news program was doing the story, everyone was a suspect-and as of that morning, Michael was now one, too. Up until then, brief mentions of his comings and goings to her apartment had appeared in the press, but that morning the Daily News had run a headline that read: VALENTE IMPLICATED IN MANNING MURDER.

According to the story that accompanied it, the police had "new evidence" to support a theory that Michael had killed Logan Manning in order to free Leigh of her cheating husband, take over his business, and then claim Leigh for himself.

Before the Daily News article, Michael hadn't been able to convince her to leave the apartment and go out in public for her own sake, but when Leigh saw the Daily News headline that morning, she'd been so angry she'd phoned him and invited him out to dinner. She was absolutely certain William Trumanti was responsible for the leak to the press. "It sounds just like the things he's done to you in the past," she told him on the phone, "but he isn't going to get away with it this time. I think the worst thing we can do is hide from everyone as if you're guilty of something, don't you?"

She'd been too humiliated and crushed to stand up and fight for herself, but now she was determined to be his champion, and the realization filled Michael with tenderness. He didn't give a d.a.m.n about Trumanti or the Daily News story, and he a.s.sured her of that, but she had a new cause-a distraction from her own woes-and he was willing to let her run with it. "Hiding could be a mistake."

"I think we should go out to dinner together tonight. That is, if you're not busy."

He a.s.sured her he was not too busy and told her he'd pick her up at eight and that he wanted to choose the restaurant.

At a few minutes after eight, she'd walked out of her bedroom, dressed for battle in a long-sleeved black sheath and high heels that showed off her beautiful long legs. Her color was high, her neckline was low, and her eyes were bright.

"Trumanti can't frame you for this. I won't let him," she added as she walked straight up to him and turned her back. Her zipper was stuck. She needed help with it, so she lifted up her heavy hair from her neck to show him the problem.

The nape of her neck made his mouth go dry.

"Would you do something with that zipper? It's stuck."

To Michael's increasing amus.e.m.e.nt, William Trumanti was turning out to be quite an ally.

As soon as she stepped out of the elevator into the building lobby with him, a shout went up outside, and photographers and reporters flocked to the front windows. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked her worriedly.

She looked up at him, her porcelain skin and high cheekbones tinged with pink, her long-lashed green eyes uncertain, her lovely mouth soft and vulnerable; she looked too fragile to cross the lobby, let alone go near a pack of reporters. That was how she felt inside, he knew. Then she lifted her chin very slightly, gave her head an imperceptible toss, and before his eyes she became serenely calm. Regal. Distant and untouchable. Mesmerized by the unexpected privilege of watching an incomparable actress cloak herself for an important role she needed to play, he started to offer her his arm, but she smiled and shook her head. She was going to walk onstage unaided, unsupported, for this appearance in his behalf. Less than two months ago, she'd been Broadway's reigning queen; now she had abdicated, she was dethroned, but she was emerging from her self-imposed exile. For his sake.

He stayed one step behind her, his chest swelling with pride as she walked gracefully past a blinding barrage of camera flashes, past the same throng of shouting reporters she'd been hiding from for weeks. "Where are you going, Miss Kendall?" one of them called as Leigh started to step into the Bentley.

She'd ignored all the other questions they'd shouted at her, but she turned to answer that one. "Mr. Valente and I are going out to dinner."

"Do you have any comment about the story in the Daily News today?" the reporter from the Daily News demanded.

"Yes," she said with quiet disdain. "If Commissioner Trumanti, or anyone under him, approved of the slander you printed today, then he is as criminally irresponsible as your newspaper."

Having said that, she slid onto the backseat, and Michael followed her inside.

He couldn't believe she'd dared to accuse a powerful newspaper of slander, the commissioner of police of criminal negligence, and the entire NYPD of implied misconduct. Michael knew she'd been shaken by the confrontation, but she hid it perfectly behind a happy face. "I think that went very well," she said, "don't you?"

He swallowed a laugh. "Not bad," he said, straight-faced.

He forgot about all that when O'Hara spoke from the front seat. "We've got a tail, Mr. Valente," he said. "A couple of reporters tried to follow us in a taxi, but I lost them in the second block."

Leigh leaned forward nervously. "The stalker?"

O'Hara shook his head. "This guy's in a dark sedan that makes every move we do. He drives like he's attached to my b.u.mper with a chain, but he thinks he's invisible. That means he's a cop."

In the rearview mirror, O'Hara lifted his brows, waiting for instruction.

"Lose him," Michael ordered.

"Done."

Leigh gasped and grabbed Michael's knee as O'Hara floored the Bentley and sent it angling across three lanes of traffic and shooting into an alley. At the end of the alley he made a hard left turn, and Michael put his arm across the back of the seat, curving his hand around Leigh's upper arm to hold her against him.

"Nice driving," he told O'Hara with a chuckle.

O'Hara glanced in the rearview mirror again and grinned. "You better hang on to Mrs. Manning."

He swung the Bentley down another alley, narrowly missing several Dumpsters, and Leigh looked at Michael in laughing terror. "What restaurant are we going to?"

"It's a surprise. You'll like it-trust me."

She nodded. "I do."

She did trust him, Michael knew. Despite all the betrayals she'd suffered, she trusted him completely, and she liked having him close by, not only because she trusted him, but because she was desperate for some sort of continuity in her life, and she'd known him longer than anyone else in New York. A few nights ago, she'd told him that she trusted him now because her instinct had been to trust him years before-back in the days when her instincts had been more reliable.

Michael had instincts, too, and they warned him not to wait much longer before he took her to bed-that it was a mistake to let her create a role of "dear and trusted friend" for him to play, because she would try to keep him locked in that role simply for the sake of safety and continuity.

He wanted to take her to bed before Logan's infidelities and the public humiliation she was suffering because of them convinced her forever that she was somehow to blame, that she was inadequate as a woman and a wife. She'd already made remarks that indicated she was thinking exactly that.

Most of all, he wanted to take her to bed-because he wanted to take her to bed. He longed to take her to bed.

Her hand was resting on his knee, and he covered it with his own; then he twined his fingers with hers and held her hand on his thigh.

The gesture startled Leigh for a moment, and she looked down at the masculine hand engulfing hers. A treacherous feeling of safety came with that warm handclasp. He was her friend-she knew that beyond a doubt. In the past few weeks, she'd learned volumes about him. He had taken on the federal, state, and local law-enforcement authorities time after time and he'd not only beaten them, he'd prospered beyond imagining while doing it.

He had tolerated Trumanti's persecution for all these years, and yet she had a feeling that he wouldn't tolerate anything from anyone else. The unleashed violence she'd witnessed fourteen years ago, when he'd taken on two thugs with knives, had become a lethal, quiet strength, but it was still there, restrained, and just as potent.

The clothes he wore now were elegantly understated and beautifully tailored, but his shoulders were just as powerful and his hips just as lean as they'd looked in the snug jeans and faded T-shirts he'd worn long ago.

There were things about him that she'd never noticed before at all, like the startling glamour of his sudden white smile or the blatant sensuality in the mold of his mouth. Back then, his dark beard and unfriendly disposition had disguised those particular attributes, and his amber eyes had always been hard-except on the night of the fight when they'd taken on a chilling, feral gleam.

She thought back to the night of her party when she'd first seen him standing at the edge of the crowd in her living room, looking as coldly formidable and unapproachable in a dark suit and tie as he'd ever looked with a beard, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. What surprised her even now, though, was that she hadn't instantly recognized his voice the night of her party. That distinctive, rich baritone voice of his had sent an odd little thrill down her spine in the old days, and it still captivated her when he spoke.

When he was with her on New Year's Eve, he told her he'd been married once, briefly, a long time ago, but when she asked him about it, he immediately closed the door on the conversation.

Leigh sensed that he was a loner. She was a loner now, too. She wanted no more husbands, no more lovers or boyfriends.

And at the same time, she felt amazingly close to Michael Valente. He had walked into her life again, not to save it this time, but to help her save her sanity.

If he'd given her a kidney, he could not have been more essential, and she could not have been more grateful, or felt closer to him, than she already did.

He hadn't spoken a word in many minutes, and Leigh pulled her gaze from their clasped hands and looked up at him. He was studying her very closely.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Kidney donors," she joked; then she shook her head, negating the flippant answer, and quietly told him the truth. "I was thinking about you." His handclasp tightened.

In the East Village they turned onto Great Jones Street, and Leigh looked at him with unabashed delight. "I should have guessed you'd take us back home. I knew this place had changed, and I meant to see it for myself sometime when I was downtown, but I could never quite make myself do it. In my memory, it was so ugly and run-down, but just look at this-!" She leaned forward, gazing at a quaint neighborhood of beautifully restored, nineteenth-century buildings, some of them converted into fashionable boutiques, others into elegant loft apartments.

Angelina's Market was still on the corner, but it was no longer a dark, decrepit little store; expansion and a face-lift had turned it into an inviting gourmet deli and market. Next to it and extending partway down the block was a trendy restaurant/bistro with gaslights outside and the mellow glow of lanterns illuminating the windows from within. Above the door, a discreet bra.s.s sign said "Angelini's," and as Leigh stepped out onto the curb and saw it, she stopped short. "I knew a popular restaurant was called Angelina's,' but that's a fairly common name, and I thought the place was somewhere south of here."

She put her hand on his sleeve as he started past the market. "Wait, let's go inside for a minute. It's been such a long time."

A few people were waiting in line at the cash register to pay for their purchases, but no one looked their way. Relieved that they weren't going to be recognized, Leigh wandered down the first aisle, then the next one, and finally the one next to that, remembering her trips there when money had been so short, but life had been so uncomplicated. Somewhere behind her, she heard Michael remark with a smile in his voice, "You were right there the first time I saw you."

She turned, surprised that he would remember such a thing. "Really? You remember that?"

"Very clearly." He shoved his hands into the pockets of his cashmere overcoat. "You were wearing jeans and a sleeveless shirt, and you were juggling an armload of cans and fresh oranges. An orange fell off the top of the pile, and when you bent down to pick it up, the next one fell off, then the next one."

"Where were you?"

"Right here, behind you."

"Did you offer to help?"

He gave her a wicked grin. "And spoil that picture? You have to be kidding."

Blissfully unaware of the new, dangerous ground she was treading, Leigh laughed and rolled her eyes. "I should have known it wouldn't be my face that you admired. You were very perverse in those days."

"I wasn't completely perverse. I finally walked around in front of you when you spilled the whole pile onto the floor."

"How gallant."

"I wasn't being gallant. I wanted to see what you looked like from the front."

"What did you see?"

"Hair."

She choked, laughing. " Hair?"

He nodded. "You'd gotten down on your hands and knees to reach for some oranges that rolled under the shelf, and when you looked up at me, your hair had fallen forward, covering the side of your face. So all I saw was a curtain of shiny reddish brown hair-and two great big laughing eyes of Caribbean green." He shook his head, and said as if to himself, "I had the d.a.m.ndest reaction to those laughing eyes."

"What kind of reaction?"

"That would be a little difficult to explain," Michael said with veiled amus.e.m.e.nt; then he glanced at his watch. "Let's go next door." She joined him and strolled with him to the end of the aisle; then she faltered and stopped cold, staring at the newspaper and magazine rack directly in front of them.

VALENTE IMPLICATED IN MANNING MURDER.

Beneath the Daily News's hideous headline were large pictures of Leigh and Michael shown in profile, as if they were looking at each other.

Mesmerized by the timing of the moment, Leigh glanced over her shoulder at the aisle where he'd first seen her picking up oranges. "Just think," she said somberly, "fourteen years ago we were back there. And now"-she nodded at their pictures splashed across the News's lurid front page-"and now we're there."

"Together at last," he joked, sliding his arm around her shoulders.

His outrageous quip wrenched a shriek of laughter from Leigh, and she buried her face against his chest, her shoulders shaking with guilty mirth, her hands clinging to his lapels.

Michael tightened his arm around her and smiled at her bent head. He'd finally seen those dazzling blue-green eyes light up with laughter again, and he was having the same old reaction.

CHAPTER 46.

The interior of Angelini's restaurant was invitingly "hip," with exposed brick and mortar on parts of the walls and beautiful frescoes depicting the Tuscan countryside on others. The tables were dressed with fine linen, beautiful Italian pottery, tapered candles, and lavish bowls of fresh flowers. Trellises with flowering vines had been placed at strategic intervals to bring a cozier, more intimate atmosphere to what was actually a very large restaurant.

Business was definitely booming, with customers waiting at the maitre d's desk and stacked three deep at a long, raised bar at the far left of the entrance.

Michael handed their coats to an attendant; then he put his hand on the small of Leigh's back, guiding her through the crowd.

Near the rear of the restaurant, there were three empty tables in a row beside a frescoed wall. "This is perfect," Leigh told him as he sat down across from her at the table in the center of the three. As she reached for her napkin, she noticed the design on the colorful charger in front of her. "There's a little village on a mountaintop in northern Italy where pottery like this is made," she said, recalling being there with Logan. By then, after two weeks in Italy, Logan had already run out of patience with everything, even the architecture of the medieval church in the center of the square. He'd hated to travel anywhere outside the U.S. because he felt too far removed from his business interests.

"I've been there," she added.

"So have I."

"Really. How long were you in Italy?"

"A month, the last time," he said, pausing briefly while a young man filled their gla.s.ses with ice water. "I combined it with an extended business trip to France."

It was easy for Leigh to imagine him now as a world traveler. Leaning back in his chair, with his forearm resting on the table and a thirty-thousand-dollar Patek Philippe wrist.w.a.tch peeking from beneath the monogrammed cuff of his shirt, he was the personification of relaxed masculine elegance, power, and wealth.

She started to ask him about his travels, but her concentration was derailed by the excited voices of four people at a table across the aisle who'd just recognized them and were discussing the article in the News. Leigh's spirits sank a little.

"We've been spotted," she said, even though she knew perfectly well Michael could hear them.

"It was inevitable," he said, lifting his wide shoulders in a shrug that dismissed their audience as if they were mere specks of dust on the floor. His att.i.tude amazed and dazzled her. She was an actress; she could pretend, but he wasn't pretending indifference. He was indifferent. He was accountable to no one but himself-the self-appointed master of his own destiny.

Their waiter, a jovial, heavyset man in his sixties, bustled up to them with a bottle of red wine that he put down on the table while he shook Michael's hand and was introduced to Leigh as Frank Morrissey.

"I'll tell Marie you're here," Frank told Michael. "She's in the kitchen arguing with the chef." He pressed the corkscrew to the bottle's cork and began expertly twisting it while he proudly explained to Leigh, "I knew Hawk before he was old enough to use a fork. In fact, I was there when he decided to have his very first gla.s.s of wine."

He glanced at Michael and chuckled as he drew out the cork. "Do you remember how old you were when I caught you and Billy with that bottle of wine?"

"No, not really."

"How old were they?" Leigh asked eagerly, noting Michael's pained look.

"I can't tell you exactly how old they were," Frank confided with a grin, "but they were too short to reach it without climbing on a stool."

Leigh laughed, reveling in the almost-forgotten feeling of being lighthearted.