by Nora Roberts
“I got most of the gunk off.”
“You should care better for your things. Sloppy. This is pretty,” she mused and tapped at it with a red-slicked fingernail. “Solid silver?”
“Yeah, it’s solid.”
“Where do you get?”
“It’s been in my family for years. I’ve had it since I was a kid.”
“And this man—the Irishman,” she assumed. “He wants it.”
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. He’s got a story that may or may not be true. Doesn’t matter to me. I’ve got it, he’ll pay for it. Can I use the equipment?”
“Yes, yes. This is an heirloom?” Marcella frowned as she turned the statue over in her palm. “You would sell your heirloom?”
“Heirlooms only count if family counts.”
Marcella set the statue on the desk, where it glinted in the lamplight. “That is a hard heart, Cleo.”
“Maybe.” Cleo waited while Marcella unlocked a desk drawer, took out the camera. “But it’s also a hard truth.”
“Get your picture, then put on your costume. You can put in the extra hour now.”
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, Cleo zipped up the tight black leather skirt that went with the bustier and silverstudded black jacket. The little whip worked well with the outfit, and Cleo gave it a testing flick that made the other girls jump and bitch at her.
“Sorry.” Turning to the mirror, she straightened the dog collar she’d strapped around her neck and ran a hand over the hair she’d sleeked back into a tight bun at the base of her neck.
A couple of good head shakes would free it, so she’d have to be careful it didn’t tumble down off cue. She added a little more black eyeliner, then practiced pivots and pliés in the high-heeled boots.
She was executing a spread-leg squat, shifting her weight from side to side, when Gideon burst in. Several of the girls called out comments or made kissing noises.
“Let’s go.” He snagged her hand and hauled her to her feet.
“Go?”
“Let’s move. I’ll explain later.”
“I’m on in three minutes.”
“Not tonight you’re not.” When he started to drag her to the door, she shifted her body, angled it, and jammed an elbow into his gut.
“Hands off.”
“Goddamn it.” He’d think about the pain later, and how to pay her back for it. But for now he caught his breath as the others in the dressing area cheered and whistled. “They’ve already been to your place. Your landlady’s in the hospital with a concussion. They can’t be more than five minutes behind me.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” She took a step back from him. Another. “Who’s been to my place?”
“Somebody who wants a particular item and isn’t as nice as I am about how they get it.” He grabbed her arm again. “They slapped your landlady around before they bashed her in the head. You want to wait for them to try it with you, or are you coming with me? You’ve got ten seconds to decide.”
Impulse, Cleo thought, had always gotten her in trouble. Why should tonight be any different? She snagged her purse. “Let’s go.”
He moved fast, heading out into the corridor, then dragging her to the right. “No, not out the front,” he said. “They could already be out there. We’ll go out the back.”
“Back door locks from the inside. We go out that way, and there’s trouble, we can’t get back in.”
He nodded, then opened the back door far enough to look out. The alleyway dead-ended to the left, and didn’t that just figure. But he could see nothing and no one at the mouth of it. “How fast can you move in those things?” he asked, gesturing toward the boots.
“I can keep up with you, Slick.”
“Then move.” He pulled her out, kept a hand like a vise on her arm as he jogged down to where the alley opened onto the street. When they came out on the street, he shot a quick glance in either direction, swore and turned a hard right. He slid an arm around her waist.
“Just keep walking. Two men across the street. One heading toward the club, the other for the alley. Don’t look back!”
But she already had, and made out both of them quickly enough. “We could take them.”
“Christ. Just walk. If we’re lucky, they didn’t see us come out that way.”
At the corner he glanced back. “So much for luck.” He switched his grip to her hand. “Here’s your chance to prove you can keep up.”
He ran, and when they were halfway down the block, yanked her out in the street and across traffic. Brakes squealed, horns blasted. Cleo felt the wind from a fender that missed her by inches.
“You crazy son-of-a-bitch.” But when she looked back she saw a man trying to thread his way between cars. She didn’t slow down. The heels of her boots skidded and slipped over the uneven bricks. If she could have spared ten seconds, she’d have dragged them off and run barefoot.
“There’s only one,” she called out. “There are two of us.”
“The other’s somewhere.” Following instinct, he pulled her into a restaurant, raced with her past a number of startled diners and through the kitchen and out the back onto the narrow street.
“Oh baby.” It was nearly a prayer when he spotted the sleek black motorcycle parked against the back of the building. “Give me a hairpin.”
“You start that thing with a hairpin, I’ll kiss your ass.” But panting a bit, she dragged one out of her hair.
Her hair tumbled free as he used the pin to pry off the ignition box. Within ten seconds, he had it hot-wired and was swinging his leg over.
“Get on. You can kiss my ass at a more private moment.”
Her skirt hiked up to crotch level as she climbed on so her black G-string pressed snug against his butt. He ignored that, as best he could, and the way her breasts pressed into his back as he whipped the bike into a tight circle and flew toward the mouth of the alley with the roar of a serious engine.
She strapped her arms around him and let out a whoop when they shot down the street. At the corner, he nearly ran over the toes of the man who’d pursued them. Cleo got a good, close look at his shocked and furious face, and laughed wildly as Gideon leaned into the turn.
“They’ve got a car!” she called out, straining to see behind her as the wind whipped her hair into her face. “The other guy must’ve gotten the car, the one you nearly creamed’s getting in it.”
“That’s all right.” Gideon swung around another corner, punched it, then bulleted down the first side street. “We’ll lose them on this.”
Using the map in his head, he maneuvered out of the city. He wanted an open road, the dark, and the quiet. He wanted five damn minutes to think.
“Hey, Slick.” Her voice was close to his ear. He could smell her, a pungent and erotic combination of female and leather. He could be sure now that her breasts, and they were beauties, were the ones God had given her.
“What? I’ve got to concentrate here.”
“You just go right ahead. I wanted you to know I’m not interested in the five thousand anymore.”
“You don’t sell that statue to me, they’ll keep after you.”
“We’ll talk about the why of that when we’re not so busy.” She looked behind her, at the lights and glow of Prague. “But the five thousand’s off the table.” She leaned into him again. “Because I just became your fucking partner.”
To seal the deal she nipped lightly at his ear. And laughed.
Five
“YOU lost track of them.” Anita Gaye leaned back against the butter-soft leather of her desk chair and examined her manicure. The phone call did not please her.
“Were my instructions unclear?” she asked in a low, silky voice. “Which part of ‘locate the woman and find out what she knows’ didn’t you understand?”
Excuses, she thought as she listened to her employee’s apologetic explanation. Incompetence. It was really very annoying.
&n
bsp; “Mr. Jasper?” she interrupted in the most pleasant of tones. “I believe I told you ‘by any means.’ Do you need a definition of that phrase? No? Well then, I suggest you find them, and quickly, or I’ll be forced to think you’re not half as clever as a second-rate Irish tour guide.”
She broke the connection, then to calm herself swiveled in the chair to gaze out at her view of New York. She enjoyed being able to watch the noise and bustle of the city, while being removed from it.
She enjoyed more knowing she could leave her plush corner of the elegant brownstone, stroll directly onto Madison Avenue, wander into any of the tony shops and have whatever her whim dictated.
And be recognized, admired, envied, as she did so.
There had been a time, not so many years before, when she’d been out there on the streets, rushing over the pavement, hounded with worries about rent payments, credit card bills and how to stretch her paycheck into one more good pair of shoes.
Standing with her nose pressed to the window, she thought now, knowing she was better, smarter, worthier than any of the ladies-who-shopped inside that cool, fragrant air, trailing pampered fingers over hand-stitched silks.
She’d never had a doubt she’d be on the other side, the right side of the glass. She’d never had a doubt she was meant to be.
She’d had something a great many of the workforce lacked as they’d scrambled to their next hive. A towering ambition and a nearly violent belief in self. She’d never intended to work her life away just to put a roof over her head.
Unless the roof was spectacular.
She’d always had a plan. A woman, Anita thought as she pushed back from the rosewood desk, was a man’s toy, his doormat or his punching bag if she didn’t have a plan. And most often, a combination of the three.
With a plan, and the brains to implement it, he became hers.
She’d worked hard to get where she was. If marrying a man old enough to be her grandfather wasn’t work, she didn’t know the meaning of the word. When a twenty-five-year-old woman had sex with a sixty-six-year-old man, the woman—by God—worked.
She’d given Paul Morningside his money’s worth. For twelve long, laborious years. Dutiful wife, faithful assistant, elegant hostess and live-in whore. He’d died a happy man. And not a minute, in Anita’s estimation, too soon.
Morningside Antiquities was hers now.
Because it always entertained her, she took a turn around her office, letting her heels sink into the faded wool of the Bokara carpet, click lightly on polished wood. She’d selected every piece personally, from the George III settee to the T’ang horse riding on a shelf of the Regency breakfront.
It was a mix of styles and eras that appealed to her, an elegant and distinctly female melding, all in superior taste. She’d learned a great deal from Paul, about value, continuity and perfection.
The colors were soft. She saved the bold and splashy for other areas, but her downtown office was done in quiet female tones. The better to seduce clients and competitors.
Best of all, she thought as she picked up an opal snuff box, everything in the room had once belonged to someone else.
There was such a thrill in possessing what had been another’s. It was, to her mind, a kind of theft. A legal one. Even a distinguished one. What could be more exciting?
She was perfectly aware that after fifteen years, three of them as head of Morningside, some continued to consider her little more than a gold digger.
They were wrong.
There had been gossip, there had been snide comments when Paul Morningside had fallen for a woman more than forty years his junior.
Some had passed her off as a bimbo.
They’d been very wrong.
She had been, and was, a beautiful woman who knew exactly how to exploit her attributes. Her hair was flame-red, and at forty, she wore it in a sleek, chin-length sweep to play up smooth, round cheeks and a full, deceptively soft mouth. Her eyes were bright blue and Kewpie-doll wide. Many who’d looked into them found them guileless.
They were wrong, too.
She had pale, flawless skin, a small, streamlined nose. And a body a former lover had described as a walking wet dream.
She presented the package carefully. Tailored suits for business, fashionably elegant gowns for social occasions. Throughout her marriage she’d been meticulous about her behavior, public and private. There might have been some who whispered, but there were no whiffs of scandal, no questionable behavior attached to Anita Gaye.
Some might continue to look askance, but they accepted her invitations, and they issued them to her in return. They patronized her company, and paid well for the privilege.
Inside the package was the brain of a born operator. Anita Gaye was the dedicated widow, the society hostess, the respected businesswoman. She intended to live the part for the rest of her days.
It was, she mused, the longest con on record.
Gold digger, she thought with a quiet laugh. Oh no, it had never been just about money. It had been about position and power and prestige.
It was no more about dollars and cents than owning something was about filling space on a shelf. It was about status.
She crossed to a Corot landscape, pushed a mechanism hidden in the frame to lever out the painting. With quick fingers she punched in her security code on the keypad behind it, input the combination to the safe.
For her own pleasure, she took out the silver Fate.
And hadn’t it been fate, she reflected, that had had her traveling to Dublin, spending those few weeks overseeing the opening of a Morningside branch there? Just as it had been fate that had urged her to take an appointment with one Malachi Sullivan.
She’d known of the Three Fates. Paul had told her the story. He’d had an endless supply of long-winded, tedious stories. But this one had caught her interest. Three silver statues, forged, some said, on Olympus itself. That, of course, was nonsense, but legend added a luster, and a value, to objects. Three sisters, separated by time and circumstances, falling into various hands over the years. And separated, they were no more than pretty bits of art.
But if and when they were brought together . . . She ran her fingertip over the shallow notch in the base, where Clotho had once linked to Lachesis. Together, they were beyond price. And some, a gullible some in Anita’s mind, said that together they were beyond power. Wealth beyond imagining, control of one’s own destiny unto immortality.
Paul hadn’t believed they existed. A pretty story, he’d claimed. A kind of Holy Grail for collectors of antiquities. She’d passed it off as well. Until Malachi Sullivan had asked for her professional opinion.
It had been child’s play to seduce him into seducing her. Then to blind his caution with lust until he trusted her enough to put the statue into her hands. For tests and assessments, she’d told him. For research.
He’d told her enough, more than enough to assure her that she could take the statue from him with impunity. What could he do—some middle-class Irish sailor, descended by his own accounting from a thief—against a woman of her unimpeachable reputation?
Stealing outright, she thought now, had been a glorious rush.
He’d made noise, of course, but her money and position, and the miles of ocean between them, insulated her against any trouble he could stir. As she’d expected, he’d quieted down again in a matter of weeks.
What she hadn’t expected was for him to outmaneuver her—even temporarily—for the other two pieces of the prize. She’d wasted time delicately questioning Wyley Antiques’s current owners while he had zeroed in on Tia Marsh.
He got nothing from her, Anita knew now. There hadn’t been time. There’d been nothing in her hotel room, nothing on her laptop that pertained to the statues, or to her ancestor.
And nothing in the more discreet search of her New York apartment. Still, she believed Tia was a key, one worth turning in any case.
She’d pursue that personally, she decided. Just as she would pursu
e the New York thread of Simon White-Smythe personally. She’d leave her incompetent employees to track down the black sheep of that family, while she courted the cream of it.
Once she had the second Fate, she’d use all her resources, all her energies, by any means, to find and acquire the third.
TI A SPENT THE first twenty-four hours after the flight home sleeping or shuffling around her apartment in her pajamas. Twice she woke up in the dark without a clue where she was. And, remembering, had hugged herself in sheer joy before snuggling back into her pillow and sleep.
The second day, she indulged in a long bath—lukewarm water and plenty of lavender oil—then changed into fresh pajamas and went back to sleep.
When she was awake and wandering the apartment, she’d stop to touch something—the back of a chair, the side of a table, the round dome of a paperweight. She would think, Mine. My things, my apartment, my country.
She could open the drapes and look out on her view of the East River, enjoy the look of the water that always managed to soothe and thrill her. Or close them again and imagine herself in a lovely, cool cave.
There was no one waiting for her, no need to dress, to style her hair, to gear up mentally and emotionally for an appearance.
She could, if she wanted, stay in her pajamas for a week and talk to no one. She could lie in her own, wonderful bed and do nothing but read or watch television.
Of course, that was bad for the back. And, of course, she needed to fix proper meals and reacquaint her system with basic routine. She was running low on echinacea, too, and really needed to go out and buy some fresh bananas if she didn’t want her potassium level to dip.
But she could make it one more day. Just one more. Because the prospect of having no conversations whatsoever, even with a clerk at the market, was so wonderful it was worth the risk of a potassium dip.
To relieve her guilt for not phoning her family, not stirring herself to travel the few blocks to see her mother, she sent her parents an e-mail. Then she confirmed her next appointment with Dr. Lowenstein the same way.