Someone to Watch Over Me

“I’d like to make a deal with you,” she said as he raised his champagne glass to his mouth.

He paused warily. “What sort of deal?”

“I would like us to agree that tonight we will not talk about Logan. If I start to do it, I’d like you to stop me. Agreed?”

The night was looking better and better. “Agreed.”

“Can I choose what we talk about instead?”

“Absolutely.”

“And can we agree we’ll talk completely openly and honestly?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

Michael’s guard went up again, but it was way too late. He’d already agreed. “When I said ‘yes,’ that constituted a promise.”

She took a sip of champagne to hide her smile. “You look awfully uneasy.”

“Because I am uneasy. What is it you want to talk about?”

“You.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Are you going to back out?”

He looked at her and said firmly, “You know I’m not.”

She glanced around him at the dining room table, where Hilda was lighting clusters of candles. “What are we having for dinner, Hilda?”

“Lasagna. It’s in the oven. I’ve made a fresh Caesar salad to go with it.”

“We’ll serve ourselves,” Leigh told her. “There’s no need for you to do anything else when you’re finished setting the table.” To Michael she added, “Hilda’s lasagna is divine. She must have made it in your honor because you’re Italian.”

“I made it for you, Mrs. Manning,” Hilda said bluntly, “because it’s the most fattening dish I could think of. Mr. Valente?”

Michael turned. “Yes?”

“Be sure that fire is out when you leave,” she warned him. “And don’t get any ashes on the carpet.”

Michael was both startled and amused by her tone, and Leigh understood why. As soon as Hilda made another trip to the kitchen, Leigh lowered her voice and said, “Hilda does not abide dirt in any form, and she bosses us all around. She is also totally loyal to me.”

She was worried about his feelings, Michael realized, and he wanted to pull her into his arms. Even with her life in shambles, she was thoughtful and kind and courageous. He wanted to tell her how proud he was of her. Instead he made small talk with her until Hilda announced that they could eat whenever they wished and that she was going to her room for the night.

“Shall we go into the kitchen?” Leigh suggested.

On the center island, Hilda had put out a bowl of cooked jumbo shrimp in an icy nest, surrounded with lemon wedges and parsley. Leigh pulled two wrought-iron stools out from beneath the island and perched on one. “Hilda is out of earshot, and your reprieve is officially over,” she warned him, smiling. “Let’s talk about you now.”

The champagne he’d been pouring for her was having the effect he’d hoped it would. Her smile came more readily, and her eyes no longer had a wounded look. “Where do you want me to begin?”

“Begin when they started calling you Hawk.”

“You already know how I got that nickname,” Michael told her bluntly. “I was the lookout. Are you trying to find out about my early life of crime?”

She hesitated, and then nodded. “Yes,” she said simply. “I guess I am.”

He walked to the other side of the island and leaned his hip against the counter behind him. “In that case, I’m going to add an amendment to our bargain.” Nodding toward the bowl of shrimp in front of her, he said, “I’ll talk about all that, but you have to eat while I do it.”

She picked up a shrimp and dipped it in cocktail sauce, and he kept his part of the bargain. . . .

“I was about eight and my parents were still alive when Angelo tagged me with the nickname. He was eleven and a born leader with a devoted group of followers, including me, and also my best friend, Bill, who lived next door. Bill and I started out with hubcaps, but within three or four years, we were helping Angelo and his guys heist anything on the street that was moveable and saleable. We spent the rest of our time helping them ‘protect our turf,’ with fistfights at first, but by the time we were in our teens, knives were the weapon of choice—among other things.”

When he paused, Leigh leaned forward. “Go on with your story.”

“Have another bite of shrimp.”

She obeyed automatically, and Michael stifled a grin at how intent she was on hearing the tale. “When I was about sixteen, we made a little foray into the turf of another, much bigger gang, and in the fight that followed, I got cut up pretty badly. Angelo pulled two guys off me, and he nearly died from the wounds he got. We were the only ones there when the cops arrived, and of course, we both got busted.”

“Was that the first time you were arrested?”

“No, but it was the first time I nearly got killed, and I didn’t like it. I was supposed to be the ‘idea man,’ the brains behind Angelo’s operation, but,” Michael admitted, “I was not cut out to be an active participant.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I hated the sight of blood, particularly my own, and I didn’t see the point of wasting it.”

Leigh giggled in spite of herself and took a sip of champagne and another bite of shrimp. “You were living with your aunt and uncle by then. What did they think about the trouble that you and Angelo were getting into?”

“My uncle died of a heart attack a year after my parents were killed, and my aunt couldn’t control Angelo or me. She didn’t even believe we were doing the things we were getting busted for doing. She thought the cops were persecuting us.”

“What about Bill’s parents? What did they do when he got busted?”

“They called Bill’s uncle, who was a lieutenant with the NYPD, and he got Bill off, and also made sure there was no record of the bust. Bill was the only one of us without a police record, thanks to his uncle. What made that so ironic was that Bill was probably the meanest hothead in the neighborhood, but he was very small and slight, so neither his parents nor his doting uncle could believe he was as bad as the rest of us.

“As time went on, it began to infuriate Angelo that we all had rap sheets, except for Bill, and Angelo started cutting Bill out of everything we did; then he put the word out on the street that Bill was a snitch.”

“How did you feel about Bill getting off?”

“I wasn’t nearly as hostile about it as Angelo.”

“Because you were—what?—more reasonable?”

“No, because in the early years, Bill’s uncle also saved my ass along with Bill’s several times. Remember, before my parents died, Bill’s family and mine were friends. Bill’s uncle still harbored sentimental memories of Bill and me in the same playpen while the two families had dinner together.”

Leigh leaned her chin on her hand and came up with a heartfelt explanation to justify what he’d been in those days. “There were very good reasons for the way you were and the things you did.”

“Really,” he said, fascinated. “What were the reasons?”

“Well, you lost your parents at an early age, and you came from a disadvantaged neighborhood. There was poverty, bad schools, bad companions; you were disenfranchised—”

“Leigh—” he interrupted.

“Yes?”

“I was a thug. I was a thug because that’s what I chose to be.”

“Yes, but the point is, what made you choose that?”

“I chose it because I wanted things for myself, but I wanted to get them my way, not the system’s way.”

“Go on with your story.”