by Nora Roberts
He should write a goddamn book on it.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR LOVER FEEL LIKE SLIME IN TEN EASY LESSONS
But there was no way she was going to break. He could be cold; she’d be colder. He could speak in monosyllables. Well then, she’d communicate in grunts.
If he thought the fact that he’d chosen to sleep on the stupid roof rather than share a piece of the bed with her hurt her feelings, he’d miscalculated.
She wished it had rained. Buckets.
They used the subway, which was, Cleo thought, the perfect venue for a stony silence. She sat with her well-developed New York stare into middle distance while he read a tattered paperback edition of Ulysses.
Guy should lighten up, she thought to herself. Anybody who chose, of his own free will, to read James Joyce for pleasure wasn’t her type anyway.
He probably figured she’d never cracked a book in her life.
Well, he was wrong. She liked to read as much as the next guy, but she didn’t choose to spend her spare time wading through some metaphoric jungle of depression and despair.
She’d just leave that to Slick, who was so goddamn Irish he probably bled green.
She got to her feet at their stop. Gideon simply marked his place in the book and shuffled off the car with her. She was too busy sulking to notice how his gaze swept over the others who got off, or the way he angled his body to shield hers. He followed her through the tunnels to the crosstown train.
He stood patiently on the platform while she tapped her foot, shifted her weight.
“Don’t think we were followed,” he said quietly.
She nearly jolted at the sound of his voice, which irritated her enough that she forgot to grunt in response. “Nobody knows we’re at Tia’s, so they can’t follow us.”
“They may not know we’re at Tia’s, but someone might be watching her building. I wouldn’t want to lead them to her or let them scamper along after us.”
He was right, and it reminded her she’d led someone to Mikey. “Maybe I should just throw myself in front of the next oncoming train. Maybe that would be enough penance for you.”
“That’s a bit over the top, and self-defeating. At least until you get the statue out of the bank.”
“It’s all you ever wanted anyway.”
The platform vibrated with the sound of the crosstown train. “It must comfort you to think that.”
She shoved herself, blindly, into the subway car, all but hurled herself into a seat. He took one across from her, opened his book, began to read.
And kept reading when the ride bumped and juggled the words on the page. There was no point in arguing with her, he reminded himself. Every reason not to do so in public. The priority was to get to the bank, retrieve the Fate, get it back to Tia’s. Quietly and unobtrusively.
After that a good shouting row might be in order. Though he could hardly see what good it would do. Despite the enforced intimacy they were, at the base, strangers. Two people from different places, with different ideas. And different agendas.
If he’d let himself think of them as more, had let his feelings for her tangle up with the reality of things, that was his problem.
His primary quest, so to speak, had been Lachesis. And so, shortly, that part of the journey would end.
He wished he could go back to Cobh, back to the boatyard and work off some of this excess energy and heat by scraping hulls or some damn thing. But the second Fate was only one of three, and he had a feeling it would be some time before he saw home again.
He felt her move, caught the flash of the blue shirt she’d borrowed from his brother as she rose onto those endless legs of hers. He got up, shoved the book in his jacket pocket.
She strode onto the platform and away as if she were in a great hurry. But then as everyone else did the same, Gideon doubted anyone would take notice. She practically flew through the streets as he scurried after her.
When she reached for the door of the bank he forgot his vow not to touch her, and his hand closed over hers. “You walk in there ready to chew a hole in somebody’s neck, people are going to notice.”
“This is New York, Slick, nobody notices nothing.”
“Chill it down, Cleo. You want a round with me, then we’ll have one. But right here and right now, chill it down.”
She decided, right there and right then, that the one thing she hated most about him was that he was able to cut through the crap and maintain. “Fine.” She offered him a frozen smile. “All chilled.”
“I’ll wait out here.” He stepped back from the door.
He watched the traffic, cars and people. He saw no one who appeared to be interested in him and had just reached the conclusion that anyone who opted to live in a place with so many people and so much noise was either brain-damaged or would be before it was done, when Cleo came out again.
She nodded to him, tapped her fingers lightly on her shoulder bag. He moved in so the bag and its most recent contents were tucked between their bodies.
“We’ll take a cab back,” he said.
“Fine. But we’re making a stop. Tia lent me two hundred. I need some damn clothes.”
“This isn’t the time to shop.”
“I’m not shopping, I’m buying. I’m desperate enough to settle for the Gap, and that’s going a ways for me. We can hike over to Fifth.” She was already heading in that direction, giving him no choice but to follow. “Then we’ll be sure nobody’s tailing us, I grab a couple of shirts, some jeans, we catch a cab and we’re home. Then I might just burn the clothes I’ve been stuck with since Prague.”
He might have argued, but was a man who knew how to weigh his options quickly. He could drag her into a cab, then sit on her until they got back to Tia’s.
Or he could give her a half hour to do what she felt she needed to do.
“I hate it in here,” she muttered the minute they were inside. “It’s so . . . pert.” She headed for black.
He kept so close to her side, Cleo was tempted to grab something and head to a dressing room just to see if he’d come in with her. She wouldn’t put it past him.
Trust was obviously not the word of the day.
She got what she considered the absolute bare essentials. Two T-shirts, a long-sleeved tee, jeans, one sweater, one shirt. All black. Then watched the total ring up to two hundred twelve dollars and fifty-eight cents.
“Arithmetic isn’t your long suit, is it?” he asked when she swore under her breath.
“I can add. I wasn’t paying attention.” She dug out what she had, and was still eight dollars and twenty-two cents short. “Give me a break, will you?”
He gave her a ten, then held out his hand for the change.
“It’s less than two bucks.” She slapped the money into his hand, swung the bag over her free shoulder. “I’m busted.”
“Then you should take more care with how you spend what you have. Mind you take the eight and twenty-two off what I owe you for the earbobs. I’ll spring for the taxi.”
“You’re a real sport, Slick.”
“If you want to be kept by a man, you’ll have to look elsewhere. I’m sure you’d have no problem finding one.”
She said nothing to that. Could say nothing over the ball that lodged in her throat. Instead, with him gripping her arm, she marched to the curb and shot out a hand for a cab.
“I’ll apologize for that.”
“Shut up,” she managed. “Just shut up. We both know what you think of me, so just drop it.”
When her head was clear again, she’d thank whatever god of the despairing had a free cab veering to the curb at her feet. She climbed in, snapped out Tia’s address.
“You don’t know what I think of you. And neither do I.”
He let that be the last of it during the ride.
She’d have walked straight into her temporary bedroom when they entered the apartment, but Gideon stopped her. “Let’s see the statue first.”
“You want to see it.” She
shoved her purse into his stomach hard enough to knock the breath out of him. “Go ahead.”
She made it halfway across the room when she stopped dead.
“Look, Cleo—”
She held up a hand, shook her head frantically. His stomach, already suffering, took a fast dive as he imagined her weeping. But when she turned, her wide, foolish grin had him narrowing his eyes.
“Quiet!” She hissed it out in a whisper, jerked a thumb toward Tia’s bedroom. “They’re in there.”
“Who?” Visions of Anita Gaye or one of her muscle men burst in his brain. Cleo had to leap in front of him.
“Jesus, Slick, open your ears.”
He heard it then, the quick, strangled cry that could mean only one thing. When dumbfounded curiosity sent him a few steps closer, he caught the unmistakable sounds of a mattress squeaking.
“Well, Christ.” He dragged a hand through his hair and had to swallow a laugh. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?” He whispered it, finding himself grinning back at Cleo. “I can’t just stand out here listening to my brother going at it with Tia. It’s mortifying.”
“Yeah. Mortifying.” Snickering, she all but pressed her ear to the bedroom door. “I think they’ve got a ways to go yet. Unless your brother’s one of those get on, get in, get off, get out sort of guys.”
“I wouldn’t have any way of knowing. And I’d as soon not find out. We’ll go up on the roof for a bit.”
“Go, Tia!” Cleo murmured as they headed toward the front door. She managed to hold off the laughter until they were safely in the elevator, heading up.
“Do you think they heard us?”
“I don’t think they’d have heard a nuclear blast.” Cleo caught her breath and walked out with him to take the steps to the roof. She walked into the sunlight, dropped into a chair and kicked out her long legs.
Then felt her mood dip again when Gideon opened her purse. The moment of shared amusement was over, and it was back to business.
He pulled out the Fate, held it up so it glinted and gleamed. “Not much of a thing,” he commented. “Pretty enough, and canny, too, when you take a moment to examine the details. You’ve let it get tarnished.”
“It was a lot worse before. It’s still only one of them.”
His gaze shifted, studied the sun flash on her dark glasses. “It’s one Anita doesn’t have, and we do. The middle one, the one who measures. How long will this life be? she might think. Fifty years, five, eighty-nine and three-quarters ? And what will be the measure of this life in deed? Do you ever think of that?”
“No. Thinking about it doesn’t change it.”
“Doesn’t it?” He turned the statue over in his hand. “I think it does. Thinking about it, pondering over what you’ll do, what you won’t, those are layers to a life.”
“And while you’re thinking about it, you get run over by a bus, and so what?”
He leaned back against the wall, studying her as she sat among pots of flowers, pots of greenery. “Is that why you didn’t tell me you had it? Because it’s nothing more than a means to an end to you? Without any meaning at all?”
“You plan to sell it, don’t you?”
“We do. But it’s not just money I’m holding in my hand. Now more than ever it’s not.”
“I’m not going to talk about Mikey.” Her voice went thin and quivered before she clamped down and steadied it. “And I’m not going to apologize again for playing it the way I did. You got what you wanted out of me, and some heat in the sheets besides. You’ve got no complaints.”
He stood, Fate curled in his hand. “And what did you get, Cleo?”
“I got the hell out of Prague.” She leaped to her feet. “I got home, and I’ve got the potential for enough money to keep the wolf from my throat for a good long time. Because whatever you think, I’m not looking to whore myself so some guy will pave the way for me. I stripped, okay, but I didn’t turn tricks. And I’m not stupid enough to let some guy fuck me over and leave me broke and stranded again like I was after Sidney.”
“Who’s Sidney?”
“Just another bastard in the perpetual lineup I seem to attract. Can’t blame him, though, since I was the one who was stupid. He came on to me, and I fell for it. Told me how he was part owner of this theater in Prague, how they were putting together a show and looking for a dancer—an American dancer who could choreograph and was willing to invest. What he wanted was a patsy, and some free nooky. With me, he got two-for-one.”
She tucked her thumbs in her front pockets because what she wanted to do was hug herself, hard, and rock. “He wanted to get back to Europe, and I was his ticket. I sprang for the freight because what the hell. I wanted to try something new. I wasn’t making a name for myself here, so I’d make one over there. The more bullshit he pumped out, the more I bought.”
“Were you in love with him?”
“Yeah, you’re a bone-deep romantic.” She tossed her hair back, walked to the wall. Dark hair streaming back, eyes shielded by sunglasses, lips curled in a cynical twist. “He was great to look at, and he had a real smooth line. Lines always sound just a little smoother with an accent. I was gone over him, which is different from being in love. And I was all wrapped up in the idea of someone giving me a shot at choreography.”
A shot at something, she thought now, she could be good at. “So I lived the high life in Prague for a few days, then woke up one morning to find he’d cleaned me out. Took my money, my credit cards, left me with a whopping hotel bill I couldn’t pay until I pawned the watch and couple rings I was wearing.”
“Did you go to the police? The embassy?”
“Jesus, Gideon. What color is the sky in your world? He was gone, long gone. I reported the credit cards stolen, packed up and got a job. And I learned a lesson. When something sounds too good to be true, it’s because it’s a big, fat lie. Lesson number two? Look out for number one. First, last, always.”
“Maybe you should learn one more.” He turned the Fate so its face shone like the sunlight. “If you don’t believe in something, in someone, what’s the fucking point?”
DOWNSTAIRS IN THE apartment, Tia snuggled up against Malachi and thought about taking a nap. Just a short one, a catnap, as she felt very like a cat at the moment. One with a bellyful of cream.
“You have the loveliest shoulders,” he told her. “They should always be naked. You never want to cover these up with clothes or hair.”
“Anita said men like long hair on a woman.”
The name spoiled his dreamy mood and had his mouth tightening. “Don’t think about her just now. We’d best get up and see if Gideon and Cleo are back.”
“Back?” She sighed, started to stretch. “Back from where? Oh my God!” She sat up straight, too shocked to think about snatching sheets to cover herself. “It’s eleven o’clock! Something must have happened to them. What were we thinking!”
She scrambled out of bed, picked up her hopelessly wrinkled blouse and stared at it, mildly horrified.
“If you come back here a minute, I’ll show you what we were thinking.”
“This is completely irresponsible.” She pressed the blouse to her breasts and backed toward her closet for a fresh one. “What if something’s happened to them? We should go out and look for them, or—”
She broke off when her bell rang. “That must be them now.” Relief was so huge, she grabbed a robe rather than her blouse and bundled hurriedly into it as she dashed for the door.
“Thank God. I was so worried . . . Mother.”
“Tia, how many times have I told you, even when you look through the peephole, you should always, always ask who’s there.” She aimed a kiss an inch above Tia’s cheek as she sailed in. “You’re ill. I knew it.”
“No, I’m not ill.”
“Don’t tell me.” She pressed a hand to Tia’s forehead. “Flushed, and in your robe in the middle of the day. Your eyes are heavy, too. Well, I’m on my way to the doctor, so you can come with
me. You take my appointment, dear. I’d never forgive myself otherwise.”
“I’m not sick. I don’t need to see the doctor. I was just . . .” Lord, good Lord, what could she say?
“We’ll just get you dressed. I have no doubt, none whatsoever, that you picked up some strange foreign virus while you were traveling. I told your father as much this very morning.”
“Mother.” Tia hurdled over a footstool and, with the skill of a tight end, did a fast lateral rush in front of the bedroom door. “I