by Nora Roberts
feel absolutely, perfectly well. You don’t want to miss your appointment, do you? You look a little pale. Have you been sleeping well?”
“When have I ever?” Alma smiled her martyr’s smile. “I don’t think I’ve had more than an hour’s rest at a time since you were born. Why, it took all my reserves just to get dressed this morning. I’m sure my platelets are low. I’m just sure of it.”
“You tell the doctor to test them,” Tia urged as she pulled her mother to the door.
“What’s the point? They won’t tell you when you’re really sick, you know. I need to sit down awhile. I’m getting palpitations.”
“Oh . . . Then I think you should hurry to the doctor. I think you need to—” She broke off, sagged, when the door opened to Gideon and Cleo. “Ah, well . . . hmmm. You’re back. These are associates of mine, Mother.”
“Associates?” She scanned the faded jeans, the Gap bag Cleo still carried.
“Yes, yes. We’re working on a project together. In fact, we were just about to—”
“You’re working in your robe?” Alma demanded.
“Busted,” Cleo said under her breath, but one of Alma’s many complaints wasn’t her hearing.
“Just what does that mean? Just what is going on here? Tia, I demand an explanation.”
“That’s a bit delicate.” Malachi stepped out of the bedroom. He, too, wore jeans and a smile that could have melted an iceberg at twenty yards. He’d tossed on a shirt, then deliberately left it unbuttoned. There were times, he’d calculated, the truth served best.
“I’m afraid I distracted your daughter while our associates were out.” He crossed over, took Alma’s hand and shook it gently. “Completely unprofessional of me, of course, but, well now, what could I do? She’s so lovely. I see now where she gets it.”
He lifted the hand he still held to his lips while Alma stared at him. “I’ve been completely undone by your daughter, Mrs. Marsh, since first we met.”
He draped an arm over Tia’s stiff shoulders and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “But I’m embarrassing her, and you as well. I’d hoped to meet you and Tia’s father under less awkward circumstances.”
Alma’s eyes rushed from Malachi’s face to her daughter’s, and back again. “Almost any would be less awkward.”
He nodded, adding as much sheepishness as he could manage. “Can’t argue with you there. Hardly a good beginning to get caught with your pants down by the lady’s mum before you’ve exchanged how-do-you-dos. I can only tell you I’m enchanted by your daughter.”
As gracefully as possible, Tia slipped out from under his arm. “Maybe you could step into the kitchen for a moment? All of you? So I could have a word with my mother.”
“If you like.” Malachi cupped her chin, lifted it until their eyes met. “It should be as you like.” He touched his lips to hers, lingering over it before he followed the others into the kitchen.
“I demand an explanation,” Alma began.
“I think an explanation is superfluous, under the circumstances.”
“Who are those people and what are they doing in your apartment?”
“They’re associates, Mother. Friends. We’re working together on a project.”
“And having orgies every morning?”
“No. That was just today.”
“What’s come over you? Strangers in your home? Strange Irish men in your bed in the middle of the morning? I knew nothing good would come of your running off to Europe. I knew there would be terrible consequences. No one would listen to me, and now look.”
“Terrible consequences. Mother, what’s so terrible about me having friends? What’s so dire about there being a man who wants to go to bed with me in the middle of the morning?”
“I can’t get my breath.” Alma clutched at her chest and dissolved into a chair. “There’s a tingling down my arm. I’m having a heart attack. Call nine-one-one.”
“Stop it. You can’t call an ambulance every time we disagree, every time I take a step away. Every time,” she added, crouching at her mother’s feet, “I do something just for me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My heart—”
“Your heart’s fine. You’ve got the heart of an elephant and every doctor you find tells you the same thing. Look at me. Mother, can’t you just look at me? I cut my hair,” Tia said quietly. “You haven’t even noticed because you weren’t looking. All you see when you look at me is a sickly little girl, someone who can keep you company at the doctor’s and give you an excuse for a nervous disposition.”
“What a horrible thing to say.” Shock had Alma forgetting all about the possibility of cardiac arrest. “First you take up with some strange man, and now you say horrible things to me. You’ve joined a cult, haven’t you?”
“No.” Unable to help herself, Tia lowered her head to her mother’s knee and laughed. “No, I haven’t joined a cult. Now I want you to go downstairs. Your driver’s waiting for you. Go to your appointment. I’ll come see you and Father very soon.”
“I’m not sure I’m well enough to get to the doctor’s on my own. I need you to come with me.”
“I can’t.” Gently Tia drew Alma to her feet. “I’m sorry. If you want, I’ll call Father and ask him to meet you there.”
“Never mind.” Wrapping martyrdom around her like a stole, Alma walked to the door. “Obviously nearly dying in childbirth, then devoting my life to your health and well-being aren’t enough to have you give me an hour of your time when I’m ill.”
Tia opened her mouth, then swallowed the placating, agreeable words. “I’m sorry. I hope you feel better soon.”
“Boy, she’s good.” Cleo came out of the kitchen the instant she heard the front door close. “I mean, she’s the champion. Hey.” She walked over to hook an arm around Tia’s waist. “You’ve gotta shake it off, honey. She was doing a number on you.”
“I could’ve gone with her. It would only have taken a little time.”
“Instead you stood up to her. A better choice, if you ask me. What you need is some ice cream.”
“No, but thanks.” She took a deep breath, felt it catch near her sternum, but resolutely pushed it out. Then turned so she could face all of them at once. “I’m embarrassed, I’m tired, and this time I do have a headache. I’d like to apologize for the entire business, all at once. And I’d like to see the Fate, examine it, hopefully verify it before I take some medication, get dressed and go downtown to see my father.”
Malachi held up a hand and showed her the statue his brother had given him in the kitchen.
Without a word, Tia took it into her office, to the desk. There with her glasses perched on her nose, she studied it under a magnifying glass. She felt them hovering behind her as she continued her studies. “We’d be more certain if my father could examine it or, better yet, give it to an expert.”
“We can’t chance that,” Malachi told her.
“No. I certainly won’t risk my father by connecting him. These are the maker’s marks,” she said, tipping the base up. “And, according to my research, they’re correct. You and Gideon are the only ones here who’ve seen Clotho. I’ve only seen photographs and artists’ renderings, but stylistically this is a match. And you see here . . .” She tapped the tip of her pencil on the notches, right and left on the base. “These slots connect her, the middle sister, with Clotho on one side, Atropus on the other.”
She glanced up, waited for Malachi to nod. She took a tape measure out of the drawer, noted down the exact height, width. “Another match. Let’s check weight.”
She took it into the kitchen, used her scale. “It’s exact, down to the gram. If it’s a forgery, it’s a careful one. And the odds of that, given its connection through Cleo, are small. In my not so considered opinion, we have Lachesis. We have the second Fate.”
She set it on the counter, slipped her glasses off and set them beside the statue. “I’m going to get dressed.”
“Tia. D
amn it. Give me a minute,” Malachi said to Gideon, then went after her.
“I need to take a shower,” she told him and would have closed the door in his face if he hadn’t just pushed it open. “I need to change and figure out what I’m going to tell my father and what I’m not going to tell him. I’m not as skilled in this game-playing as you are.”
“Are you embarrassed we made love, or embarrassed your mother knows of it?”
“I’m embarrassed period.” She turned into the bathroom, took a bottle of pills out of the medicine cabinet. She took one of the bottles of water she kept in the linen closet and downed a Xanax. “I’m upset that I had an argument with my mother and sent her away unhappy with me. And I’m trying not to imagine her collapsing on the street because I was too busy and disinterested to go with her to her doctor’s appointment.”
“Has she ever collapsed on the street before?”
“No, of course not.” She got out another bottle of pills and took two extra-strength Tylenol for the headache. “She just mentions the possibility of it often enough so the image is always fresh in my mind.”
With a shake of her head, she met his gaze in the mirror. “I’m a mess, Malachi. I’m twenty-nine years old, and I’ve been in therapy for twelve years next January. I have regular appointments with an allergist, an internist and a homeopathic healer. I tried acupuncture, but since I’m phobic about sharp implements, that didn’t last long.”
Even thinking about it made her shudder a little. “My mother’s a hypochondriac and my father’s disinterested,” she continued. “I’m neurotic, phobic and socially inept. I sometimes imagine myself suffering from a rare, lingering disease—or being lactose intolerant. Neither of which is true, at least up till now.”
She braced her hands on the sink because saying it out loud, hearing herself say it out loud, made it all sound so pathetic. “The last time I went to bed with a man—other than this morning—was three years ago in April. Neither of us was particularly delighted with the results. So, what are you doing here?”
“First, I’d like to say that if it’d been over three years since I’d had sex, I’d be in therapy as well.”
He turned her to face him, then kept his hands lightly on her shoulders. “Second, being shy isn’t being socially inept. Third, I’m here because here’s where I want to be. And finally, I’d like to ask if when we’ve got all this business done with, you’d come back to Ireland with me for a bit. I’d like you to meet my own mother, under less touchy circumstances than I met yours. Now look what you’ve done,” he said when the bottle she held slipped out of her hand and hit the floor. “You’ve got those little pills everywhere.”
Eighteen
ANITA considered the possibility of flying to Athens and personally interrogating every antique dealer and collector in the city. Though there would have been something satisfying in this hands-on approach, she couldn’t expect another Fate to simply fall into her lap.
Moreover, she wasn’t willing to go to quite that much trouble on the vague memory of a bumbling fool like Tia Marsh. No, as much as she craved action, it wouldn’t do.
She needed direction, she needed leads. She needed employees who could follow both so she wasn’t required to shoot them in the head.
She sighed over that. She’d been vaguely disappointed that her former employee’s murder had warranted no more than a few lines in the New York Post. Really, that said quite a bit about the world, didn’t it? she mused. When a dead man garnered less press than a pop singer’s second marriage.
It only proved that fame and money ran the show. Something she’d known all her life. Those two elements had been her goal even when she’d been moldering in that lousy third-floor walk-up in Queens. When her name had been Anita Gorinsky, when she’d watched her father work himself to a nub for a stingy paycheck her mother had struggled to stretch week by week.
She’d never belonged there, inside those dingy walls her mother had tried to brighten with flea market art and homemade curtains. She’d never been a part of that world, with its rooms that smelled forever of onions and its tacky hand-crocheted doilies. Her mother’s wide, fresh-scrubbed face and her father’s scarred workingman’s hands had been an embarrassment to her.
She’d detested them for their ordinariness. Their pride in her, their only daughter, their joy in sacrificing so that she could have advantages, had disgusted her.
She’d known, even as a child she’d known she was destined for so much more. But destiny, Anita thought, often needed a helping hand.
She’d taken their money for schooling, for clothes, and had demanded more. She’d deserved it. She’d earned it, Anita thought. Every penny of it she’d earned with every day she’d lived in that horrid apartment.
And she’d paid them back, in her way, by seeing that their investment in her produced considerable dividends.
She hadn’t seen her parents, or her two brothers, in more than eighteen years. As far as the world she now lived in was concerned—as far as she herself was concerned—she had no family.
She doubted anyone from the old neighborhood would recognize little Nita in the woman she’d become. She rose and walked to the giltwood pier glass that reflected the spacious sitting area of her office. Once her hair had been a long fall of mink brown her mother had spent hours brushing and curling. Her nose had been prominent and her front teeth had overlapped. Her cheeks had been soft and round.
A few nips, a couple of tucks, some dental work and a good hairstylist had changed the outer package. Streamlined it. She’d always known how to enhance her better assets.
Inside, she was exactly as she’d always been. Hungry, and determined to feed her appetites.
Men, she knew, were always willing to set a full plate in front of a beautiful woman. As long as the man believed the woman would pay with sex, there was no end to the variety of meals.
Now, she was a very wealthy widow—who could buy her own.
Still, men were useful. Think of all the contacts her dear, departed husband had put at her disposal. The fact was, Paul was handier dead than he’d been alive. Widowhood made her even more respectable and available.
Considering, she went back to her desk and opened her husband’s burgundy leather address book. Paul had been very old-fashioned in some respects and had kept his address book meticulously up to date. In the last years, when his hand hadn’t been quite so steady, she’d written in the names herself.
The dutiful wife.
She paged through until she found the name she was looking for. Stefan Nikos. Sixtyish, she recalled. Vital, wealthy. Olive groves or vineyards, perhaps both. She couldn’t quite recall. Nor could she recall if he currently had a wife. What mattered was he had money, power and an interest in antiquities.
She unlocked a drawer, drew out a book of her own. In it, she’d noted down everyone who’d come to her husband’s funeral, what flowers they’d sent. Mr. and Mrs. Stefan Nikos hadn’t made the trip from Corfu, or Athens—they had homes in both places—but had sent an offering of five dozen white roses, a Mass card and, best of all, a personal note of condolence to the young widow.
She picked up the phone, nearly buzzed her assistant to make the call, then reevaluated. Best to make it herself—friend to friend—she decided, and was already practicing the words and tone as she dialed.
She wasn’t put through right away, but she held the line and her temper so that when Stefan picked up, her voice was as warm and welcoming as his.
“Anita. What a wonderful surprise. I must apologize for keeping you waiting.”
“Oh, no. You didn’t. I’m the one who’s surprised I’d be able to reach a busy man like you so easily. I hope you and your lovely wife are well.”
“We are, we are, of course. And you?”
“Fine. Busy, too. Work’s a godsend to me since Paul died.”
“We all miss him.”
“Yes, we do. But it’s wonderful for me to spend my days at Morningside. He’s her
e, you know, in every corner. It’s important for me to . . . well . . .” She let her voice thicken, just slightly. “It’s very important to keep his memory alive, and to know old friends remember him as I do. I know it’s been a very long time since I contacted you. I’m a bit ashamed of that.”
“Now, now. Time passes, doesn’t it, my dear?”
“Yes, but who knows better than I that one should never let people drift away? And here I am, Stefan, calling you after all this time for a favor. I nearly didn’t.”
“What can I do for you, Anita?”
She liked the fact that a hint of caution had come into his voice. He’d be a man accustomed to hangers-on, to old acquaintances hitting him up for favors. “Yours was the first name I thought of because of who you are, and your friendship with Paul.”
“You are having difficulties with Morningside?”
“Difficulties?” She paused, then let embarrassment, even a touch of horror, color her tone. “Oh no. No, Stefan, nothing like that. Oh, I hope you don’t think I’d call this way to ask for any sort of financial . . . I’m so flustered.”
She twirled, gleefully, in her desk chair. “It concerns a client, and some pieces I’m trying to track down at his behest. Honestly, your name popped into my mind, a kind of shot in the dark, as the pieces are Greek images.”