Page 89 of Lawbreaker

He laughed as he watched her face. She was always so enthusiastic about things that pleased her. She made him feel as if he had champagne in his veins.

It was an odd sensation. He didn’t pay a lot of attention to it, of course. They could live for the moment, just for a week or two. But reality would soon come to invade the new and exciting relationship they were enjoying. He knew, as she didn’t, that there was no future for an ingenue with a man like him. Everything was against them. But he was going to enjoy her as long as he could. Later, when he was alone again, he’d have memories as sweet as candy canes.

The park was gorgeous. The maple trees were just starting to show a little color here and there. Before too much longer, they’d be decked out in yellow and orange leaves, bright as paint splashed on canvas. The wind was just nippy enough to be pleasant without chilling bones inside overcoats.

“I used to hear about New York City when I was little. I thought all of New York State was one big city.”

He chuckled. “A lot of people think like that.”

“Yes,” she agreed, nuzzling close to let a faster walker go by. “People used to say it was unfriendly, too, but it’s not. Once you’re here for a while, you get to know the people who live around you. It’s like a lot of little neighborhoods put together.”

“It is.” He had her hand in his while they walked. It felt good just to be with her.

She glanced up at him with loving eyes, which she tried to hide. “I really hate to bring it up. But what about Phillip James?”

He stopped and turned to her with a long sigh. “I suppose I can tell you. He’s one of those annoying variables that you have to add into every equation,” he said after a minute. “Right now, we’re playing politics with him. I have an acquaintance who sits on the intelligence committee. He was going to schedule a hearing and I had him protected from blackmail attempts by James to stop it. But he’s got a daughter with problems.” He smiled sadly. “It’s amazing how many people can be blackmailed.”

“He can’t be responsible for what his child does. Can he?” Then she remembered her own time with the law and how her poor parents stood to be prosecuted with her while both sides tried to find a compromise.

“He can,” he replied. “In politics, you never know what sort of scandal can cost you your position. When you’re a congressman, you’re even more vulnerable, especially if your constituents are conservatives. His are.”

“Is he a good person?”

He shrugged. “He keeps his word, and he doesn’t take kickbacks. That makes him a good person, in my book. But he had his hand in a particularly nasty pie when I saved your older brother from James and convinced him to help. I managed to get rid of the evidence that would have convicted him back then, but his daughter put him right back on the firing line.” He studied her pretty face. “We give hostages to fate when we love.” He laughed shortly. “Funny. A politician said that, back in the sixties. It’s still true today.”

“Isn’t there any way to get him before a judge?” she asked.

“I’m looking for one. It takes time.”

She sighed as she looked up at him, her eyes soft with feeling, her face faintly flushed from the cool wind and excitement at being near him.

“You’ll ruin me,” he said suddenly, taking her by the waist and pulling her gently closer.

“How?” she wondered aloud.

“The way you look at me,” he said, his eyes falling to her soft mouth. “You make me feel taller.”

She laughed. “Can I help it if you’re gorgeous?”

“You’re the gorgeous one,” he said, smiling. “Everywhere we go, you turn heads. Good thing I’m not the jealous type.” Actually he was, but he hoped it didn’t show. It was never a good idea to let a woman know how she affected you.

She let her eyes fall so he wouldn’t see the disappointment in them. “Yes,” she said.

He looked over her head. “What about that audition at the Met?”

Her heart jumped and ran away. She felt panic from the toes upward. Everybody thought it was just the audition that made her jittery, that kept her awake nights. Nobody but Stasia knew the truth. She’d kept it hidden even from her mother, all this time. It was why she hadn’t gone the traditional route to the Met, with competition at the district level and then at the Met itself. Instead, she had an agent to present her, along with the requisite materials that included an unaugmented tape of herself singing two arias.

It was easy to sing in a studio. Even to sing in the choir. Or to sing in competition at smaller venues.

But it took a whole different kind of attitude to get up in front of hundreds of opera fans who knew the works letter by letter and impress them. It took guts to face reviewers who wouldn’t take into consideration a small-town girl’s hidden fears. It took even more guts to do that night after night after night, in some of the biggest cities on earth. Because it might mean a trip overseas to sing in operas there as well as just at the Met in New York.

“You’re so quiet,” Tony said. “What’s wrong?”

She forced a smile to her lips. “Nothing. I was just thinking about the audition, and my voice lessons.”

“Listen, you sing like an angel,” he said softly. “There’s no question of getting picked to sing at Lincoln Center, you hear me? You’ll be turning down venues. I’ve never heard a voice like yours, and I know opera.”

She sighed as she met his dark, warm eyes. “I’m just being jumpy, that’s all,” she confessed.

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