“What are you trying to do?”
“Improve this script that Melville gave me. Write believable dialogue between a man and a woman.”
“Where’s the dialogue supposed to take your characters?”
“Into bed.”
“Oh.”
Leslie pulled her legs up underneath her on his couch and gazed down at the pages she’d brought with that little frown between her brows, looking even more delectable. She was so at ease, so without self-consciousness. Was that because she sensed he wasn’t a threat to her? Or was it because the worst had already been done to her. He hated to think that might be the case.
Those brown eyes flashed up to him. “Michael.” Excitement made her eyes sparkle with her flash of inspiration. “You’re a man.”
“Yeesss.”
“Suppose you take the part of the guy and I take the part of the girl. Here, I’ll scoot closer to you so we can read off the same page.”
Must you? That seems to do even worse things to my body.
“I’m working on this section here, where they are in his apartment and he’s trying to seduce her. Now I want you to think about what you would honestly say.”
She was giving him that quizzical look with her head tilted, as only Leslie could do so endearingly. “Are you all right with this, Michael?”
Define all right. “Of course, why wouldn’t I be? It is just playacting, after all.”
“See? I’m right here.” She stabbed one of her lovely slender fingers with the nails decorated with pale pink polish at a line in the script. “He’s already asked her if she wants a drink and she says yes. So they have their drinks. Now what?”
Oh, joy. I’m in deep trouble here. “Well, if it were me,” he paused, knowing he was about to step into a tidal wave, “I’d ask her if she wouldn’t like to get out of this stuffy apartment and go up on the roof.”
“I like that idea,” she said, grabbing her pencil out of her hair. “But this is a stage play. We might be limited…”
“No. I’ve seen lots of stage musicals where the furniture disappears and nothing is left but the night sky done with a projection screen. After the apartment furniture goes, a few benches glide on, along with a table and chairs, giving the look of a rooftop terrace.”
“Of course that’s possible.” The gleam in her eyes told him she was visualizing it. “I wasn’t aware you were so versed on stage settings.”
“I’ve seen quite a few in my day.”
“In your day,” she scoffed. “You say that like you’re a hundred years old.”
Under his breath, he murmured, “Yes, ma’am.”
“So what happens next,” Leslie asked him.
“He pulls out a chair and says, “Will you have a seat, my lady? The show is about to begin.”
“It would be better if we physically went through the motions. Let’s use your table and chairs.” She went to his small kitchen set, her papers in her hand, the tail of her terry robe dragging on the floor.
“May I take you on a tour of the constellations?” Here your man would sweep his hand at the sky. “Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Perseus. In one version, Cassiopeia was a vain queen who bragged about her beauty and made the other goddesses quite angry. She was told the only way to save herself was to sacrifice her daughter Andromeda by chaining her to a rock and letting a sea monster kill her. But Perseus killed the monster in true hero style, rescued Andromeda and married her. As a punishment for her vanity, Cassiopeia spends half of her time in her chair upside down.”
Leslie grabbed Michael’s hand and tugged him toward the door.
“Where are we going?”
“Up on the roof. You wanted reality, let’s do it right.”
Leslie exploded out of the door onto the roof of the building and padded across the hard surface to stretch her arms around and laugh up at the sky. Michael couldn’t believe it. There was a table with chairs, just as he had imagined. There was even a couch, its beige faux leather mottled and cracked.
“Instead of sitting in the chair, let’s say he pushes her gently down on the top of the table,” Leslie said, grabbing Michael’s shirt and bringing him so close to her that he could smell her shampoo, a lavender scent. “Now point out the stars and while you’re talking, edge yourself up on the table so that you’re sitting next to me.”
Michael wanted to say, who is directing this scene, anyway, but he did what she told him to do.
She turned her beautiful face up to him. “Now what would a guy do?”
“Well, if he still has his wits about him, he would say, “I am glad you are not chained to a rock. I am not very good with sea monsters.”
“Oh, Michael. That’s just crazy enough that I like it. What would she say?”
“Well, that is your part.”
“Right, I forgot. I guess I’d be honest and say, “How are you with women?”
“I would be honest and say, “I am not very good with them, either.”
“Oh, that’s perfect. He’s pretending he’s as inept as she is.” Leslie grabbed up the pad she’d carried up with her and scribbled fiercely for a bit. “Wow, I guess it’s my turn. In true woman-like fashion, I wouldn’t want him to feel bad about himself. I’d say something like, “I bet that’s not true. I think you’re an interesting guy and I’m sure other women would, too.”
“I do not care about other women. I only care about you.”
Ping.
“That sounded very…sincere. I’m not sure my guy in this play would be that sincere.”
Michael thought quickly. “He would if he were trying to seduce her.”
“I guess you’re right about that. That line would be hard to resist. But she’d be skeptical. She’d give him a cliché line like, “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”
“He would say, No, I have never said that to any woman before, and lean in and kiss her.”
Leslie looked so lovely in the moonlight, so vulnerable in her no nonsense pajamas and terry robe, that Michael captured her cheeks in his hands and leaned over to touch his lips to hers, just a feather light brush and then again, longer this time, sliding his tongue across her lips.
When he lifted his mouth and looked into her eyes, she gave him a dazed look, as if she couldn’t believe what had happened. Then she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him with twice the ardor. While he struggled to recover from the eroticism of her kiss, she pulled away from him and looked as if she didn’t understand anything about this. “We’re just acting out the script, right?”
He hesitated. “That was what you wanted, yes?”
Flustered, she said, “Yes, yes of course. That’s why we came up here.” She gave him that direct, honest look he was beginning to recognize. “What happens after the kiss?”
“That should be up to you. A man moves in to kiss a woman, but then, if he knows anything at all about a relationship with a female, he gives her space and lets her decide what is going to happen next.”
“You seem to know a great deal about this, Michael.”
“It comes from many years of watching musical shows.”
“You attended a theater in Dublin?”
“I was involved in a community theater some distance away from Dublin.” The truth, if stretched a little. He needed to guide Leslie away from inquiries into his background. “Do you wish to continue or do you have enough to keep your editing going?”
She gazed at him for a minute, as if trying to see into his mind. “I probably have enough to keep it going.”
“Good.” He did what he knew he had to do. He slid off the table and held out his hand courteously to help her down. “Then we are done here.”
“We are? Are you sure?” she asked plaintively.
“I am sure.” He was firm.
Two hours later, lying in my bed and staring up at the ceiling like the idiot I was, I went over that scene on the rooftop in my mind. Michael always seemed so careful with me, as if I were his sister. When he kissed
me, it didn’t feel like a brotherly kiss. That kiss had been the twenty-four carat gold kind. But when he helped me off the table, Michael acted as if nothing unusual had happened, so I had to do the same.
I was too close to Adam’s rejection to think about another man. Let’s face it, I was in no condition to get involved with anybody. Michael was sweet…and naïve. He’d never believe that I’d let myself become pregnant with a man who didn’t want me or his child. Michael saw me as a nice girl who’d helped him find a suit off a second-hand rack, and an apartment. In return, he’d taken over my job at Moniker’s. The man had a beautiful heart, but he seemed to lack the natural barriers that city people erected around themselves. He could get hurt very easily. I didn’t want to be the one to hurt him. The only way to keep him safe was to stay away from him. Because I’d liked that wonderful kiss far too much. So much I’d returned it in spades.
Michael stood at his bedroom window, looking out over the city. The night buzzed with lights and the sound of automobiles and the laughter of people exiting clubs. He’d just received a tongue lashing from Gabriel and his ears still rang. You cannot do this. You are not a human. You cannot fall in love.
Michael wanted to tell Gabriel he didn’t need to worry. He would not fall in love with Leslie. She just fascinated him. He supposed it must have happened the first day he met her, but discretion, in this case, was certainly the better part of valor. He had an ache, which was becoming way too familiar to him. It began in his lower extremities and extended upward until it was like a burning in his brain. He didn’t like it. If this was a normal condition for men, he could understand why they fought bloody battles over women. Didn’t male elephants establish the alpha male in the herd? Didn’t pronghorn rams butt each other until one conceded defeat and limped away? Didn’t male lions have their pecking order? Why should it be any different with men? He wanted to seek Adam out and punch him soundly in the nose. But he couldn’t. He was not even supposed to know that Leslie was expecting a child.
It was his job to protect Leslie. He was too late to save her from feeling heartbreak. Maybe he could save her from feeling shame.
Chapter Five
Althea Hudson entered Moniker’s with fire in her eye. Her gray hair was done in old-fashioned finger waves, the hair style of her day, and she’d donned a brand new hat, a saucy beige cloche with a blue feather. Around her shoulders lay a faux fur leopard coat, and if Michael could believe it, designer shoes with a dangerously high heel.
“Christian Louboutain, the Leopard print pumps,” Jerome said in his ear. “Eight hundred and twenty-five dollars a pair. You’ve turned a crow into a bird of paradise.”
“I’ve done nothing.”
“Oh, come off it, Michael. Everyone knows you took an interest in her from the get go. We don’t know what you did but it must have been pretty spectacular to have this result. Oh, oh. Watch out. Here she comes, aimed at you like an arrow from a crossbow.”
Althea marched through the aisle of the little restaurant, pushed open the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the dining area and grabbed Michael’s wrist with her arthritic hand. “Who are you?”
“I am sorry, ma’am, but patrons are not allowed in the kitchen area,” Michael began.
“Oh, stuff and nonsense. I want to know who you are.”
Her grip tightened, not painfully, but enough to tell him that she meant business. “I want your full name.”
“Michael O’Malley, ma’am.”
“I just want you to know you won’t receive any reward.”
“I do not know what you are talking about, ma’am.”
“Oh, yes you do. You need to understand you’ll gain nothing by what you’ve done.”
“Whatever you say, ma’am.”
She released her hold on him. “Well, then. Why are you just standing there? Come out and take my order. Now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And stop calling me ma’am. You make me feel a hundred years old instead of eighty. Don’t you know that eighty is the new sixty? Call me Althea.”
“Yes, ma’am…Althea.”
When she trailed back through the tables, every eye in the place was on her. And on the new waiter.
Althea sat down and shrugged off her coat onto the chair back. “I’d like a house salad with blue cheese dressing, a Porterhouse steak well done, a baked potato with sour cream, a slice of cherry pie, heated to room temperature with ice cream.”
Like a good waiter, he said nothing about her complete change of dining fare. “I will see to it right away.”
“Then I expect you to sit down at this table and tell me exactly who you are.”
Michael hurried back to the computer and punched in the order, thinking this was a new emotion he was feeling. What was it? Worry? Fear? Apprehension? All of the above? He thought he’d gotten accustomed to the ebb and swell of human emotions, but this onset was quite fierce. What was he going to tell Mrs. Hudson? Obviously he’d have to lie. Lying wasn’t something he did well. And of course, there was Gabriel to remind him that lying was not acceptable behavior, even for a wingless angel.
He hit the lever that released ice into the tallest glass and filled it with unsweet tea. He turned to thread his way through the tables, plunked the iced tea down in front of Althea and made his escape back into the kitchen before she could corner him again.
When her food order came up, he was not so lucky. It took him time to pluck the plate of steak and baked potato off his tray and center it on her placemat. By the time he had the huge tray emptied, she’d already caught his wrist with that grip that was surprisingly strong for a woman her age.
“Now you sit down.” She indicated the chair across the table from her.
“Ma’am, I cannot do that. I have other customers…”
“Right now, the only customer you have is me. Sit.”
He sat.
She proceeded to spread butter on her potato. “Butter’s been unduly vilified. There’s nothing wrong with butter. It’s just hard cream.”
Michael sat there, watching, silently sending frantic messages to storm the gates of heaven for help and getting nothing.
“How do you feel about it?”
“How do I feel about what?”
“Butter,” she snapped impatiently. “Sort of like angels, don’t you think?”
It was a verbal segue that left him reeling. From butter to angels? He didn’t think Althea was senile. She certainly didn’t act it. He bet she could checkmate him at chess with one hand tied behind her back and cackle fiendishly in celebration of her victory.
“I think you have lost me, Althea.”
“Well, finally got you to call me by my name.” This crafty look came over her face. “Now if I could just call you by yours…”
“You know my name is Michael.”
“Not enough. I want your last name.”
“O’Malley,” he said, hoping that he’d picked a common enough one.
“Ha.” She leaned forward. “I had my lawyer google you. You don’t exist.”
“Yet here I am, sitting across from you.”
“There are roughly twenty-seven Michael O’Malleys in the state of New York, and none of them is you.”
“I keep a low profile on the internet. I doubt if the FBI could find me.”
Her eyes fastened on him like lasers. “You’re not on their list of most wanted, are you?”
“No, ma…Althea.”
“You arranged for that ceremony over my son’s grave.”
The last thing an angel could do was to admit to a good deed. “I do not know what you are talking about.”
“I saw you. You were there.”
“You could not have. I…was not there.”
“You did arrange for the ceremony and you were there.”
“Please. Do not go around saying these things. I would not want people to think you are getting senile.”
That earned him a ping and a scolding. “Michae
l. You must not frighten old people with vague threats.” If you will excuse me, I have to get back to work.”
He didn’t think she’d let him escape so easily, but as he eased himself up and made his way back to the kitchen, she said nothing to pull him back. It must be his imagination to think that he could feel her staring at his back. The feeling did not leave him until he made his escape through the swinging door. He was safe for now, but he probably hadn’t heard the last of her. He fended off a harsh look from Ned and hurried out to tend another table.
When he left the restaurant at ten thirty that night, a black limousine sat in the street, the motor idling. The uniformed driver came around and bowed to Michael. “Mrs. Hudson would like to give you a ride home.”
The last thing he wanted was to be closed in an automobile with Althea Hudson, who would undoubtedly lock the doors and not let him out until he gave her some answers, but it appeared he didn’t have much choice. Once he was inside, the driver inserted himself back under the wheel, and the car glided away from the curb.
“Mr. O’Malley,” Althea said in the way of a greeting.
“Althea, please call me Michael.”
“Who are you?”
“You know who I am.”
“Why would you do something like that for me?”
He didn’t answer her. He couldn’t.
“No one else in this world has ever bothered about me and my pain.”
“If you did not share the source of your pain with those closest to you, how could they know?”
“I suppose you’re right.” She cast her eyes over him, as if trying to see where his secrets were hidden. “Despite what I said, I want to do something for you.”
“There is nothing you can do for me.”
“There’s more to you than meets the eye, Michael O’Malley.”
“Is that not true of everyone?”
“I suppose it is. Here’s your apartment building.”
“Evidently you did not draw a complete blank about me.”
She tapped on the window behind the driver and he jumped out of the car and opened Michael’s door.
“You take care, Michael.”
“And you also, Althea.”
Some Kind of Angel Page 5
