by Nora Roberts
She’d made some mistakes, of course, Sidney Walter being the most recent and the most costly. But by and large she thought she had a good, healthy sex drive and a reasonably discriminating taste in bed partners.
It was true that drive had diminished radically during her stint as a performer at Down Under, but strip clubs tended to show men and sex at their most basic and ordinary. In the same way, she imagined that experience had only honed her discrimination.
It certainly seemed to have worked this time around.
Gideon Sullivan not only knew how to make the earth move, he had it doing the merengue. And the tango. And the rumba. The man was a regular Fred Astaire in the sheets.
It was, she decided, going to add a nice dimension to this odd business partnership of theirs.
Not that he considered it a partnership, but she did. And that’s what counted. Plus, she had an ace in the hole. She opened her eyes and looked at the purse that sat on the pockmarked dresser.
Make that a queen in the hole, she mused. A silver queen.
She intended to deal squarely with him when the time came. Probably. But experience had taught her it was wise to keep something in reserve. For all she knew, if she told Gideon about the statue, he’d take off with it just as he had her earrings.
Damn it, she’d really liked those earrings.
Of course, he didn’t seem to be a total prick. The man had ethics when it came to sex, and she respected that. But money was a whole different ball game. It was one thing to heat the sheets with a man she’d known less than a week, and another to trust him with a potential gold mine.
Smarter, much smarter to keep her own counsel and pump him for information.
She rolled over, scraped her teeth along his hip since it was handy. “I didn’t realize you Irish guys had such stamina.”
“Guinness for strength.” His voice was rough with sleep. “Christ Jesus, and I do need a beer.”
“You’ve got a nice build here, Slick.” To please herself she walked her finger up his thigh. “You work out?”
“Like at a gymnasium? No. Bunch of sweaty guys and terrifying machinery.”
“You run?”
“If I’m in a hurry.”
She laughed and slithered up to his chest. “So what do you do back in Ireland?”
“We have boats.” He stirred himself to trail fingers into her hair. He really liked all that dense, dark hair of hers. “Tour boats, fishing boats. Sometimes I run tourists around, sometimes I fish, and half the time I’m hammering one of the bloody boats into proper repair.”
“That explains these.” She pinched his biceps. “Tell me more about the Fates.”
“I told you already.”
“You told me some of the history stuff. But that doesn’t tell me how you’re so sure they’re worth a lot of money. Why it’s worth our time to try to track them down. I’ve got an investment here, too, and I don’t even know for certain who the hell chased me out of Prague.”
“I know they’re worth a lot of money, first, because my sister, Rebecca, researched them. Becca’s a demon with research and facts and data.”
“No offense, Slick, but I don’t know your sister.”
“She’s brilliant. Has so much information in her brain I’m always expecting it to start spilling out of her ears. It was she who pushed the whole idea of the touring business on the family. She was only about fifteen and here she comes up to Ma and Da with all these figures and projections and systems she’d put together. The economy was going to boom, she was sure of it. And with Cobh already of interest to tourists because of the Titanic and the Lusitania, and the fine scenery and harbor, we’d only have the more of them as time went on.”
She forgot for a moment that she was luring him into giving her more information. “They listened to her?” The idea of parents paying any attention to the ideas of a child seemed both fascinating and ridiculous.
“Sure they listened to her. Why wouldn’t they? ’Twasn’t as if they jumped up shouting, ‘Well, of course, if Bec says to do it, then we must.’ But it was discussed and picked over and hammered at until the conclusion was reached that she had a fine notion there, one worth exploring.”
“My parents wouldn’t have listened.” She settled her head on his chest. “Of course, by the time I was fifteen, we’d stopped having what you could define as conversations.”
“Why would that be?”
“Ah, let’s see. Oh right, I remember. We don’t like each other.”
Curious, and struck by the sheer bitterness in her tone, he rolled them over so he could see her face. “Why do you think they don’t like you?”
“Because I’m wild, argumentative, nasty and wasted the many opportunities they offered me. Why are you smiling?”
“I was just thinking the first three seem to be why I’m starting to like you. What opportunities did you waste?”
“Education, social advancements, all of which I squandered or threw back in their faces, depending on my mood.”
“Hmm. And why don’t you like them?”
“Because they never saw me.” The minute she said it, she was embarrassed. Where in hell had that come from? To counter it, she wiggled under him and danced her fingers over his ass. “Hey, as long as we’re here . . .”
“What did you want them to see?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She rubbed her foot over his calf in long strokes, lifted her head enough to take a quick nip at his mouth. “We washed our hands of each other some time ago. They pretty much washed hands of each other, too. Stopped pretending to be married when I was sixteen. My mother’s been married twice since. My father just whores around—discreetly.”
“It’s rough on you.”
“Nothing to do with me.” She jerked a shoulder. “Anyway, I’m more interested in now, and whether you’ve got one more round in you before we go get that beer.”
He wasn’t so easily distracted once he’d pinned to a point. But he lowered his head to nibble at her throat. “How’d you end up in Prague, working at that club?”
“Stupidity.”
He lifted his head. “That’s a wide area in my experience. What specific form?”
She huffed out a breath. “If I’m not going to get laid again, I want to take a shower.”
“I like to know more about the woman I’m making love with than her name.”
“Too late, Slick. You already fucked me.”
“The first time I fucked you,” he said in a cool, steady voice that made her feel ashamed. “The second time it was more. If we go on this way, there’ll be more yet. That’s how it works.”
It sounded, quite a bit, like a threat. “Do you complicate everything?”
“I do, yes. It’s a talent of mine. You said they didn’t see you. Well, I’m looking at you, Cleo, and I’m going to keep looking until I see clearly. Let’s see how you deal with that.”
“I don’t like being pushed.”
“That’s a problem, then, as I’m pushy.” He rolled off her. “You can have the shower first, but make it snappy. I’m half starved to death and dying for a beer.”
He folded his hands on his belly, shut his eyes.
Frowning, Cleo climbed off the bed. On her way to the bath, she shot him one last curious look, then grabbed her purse and shut herself in the bathroom.
Confused her, Gideon thought. That was fine as she sure confused the hell out of him.
HE WAITED UNTIL they were settled at one of the low tables in the pub, she with her tough little steak, he with the better choice of fish and chips.
“Being as your family’s of New York society, would you know Anita Gaye?”
“Never heard of her.” The steak required a great deal of work, but she wasn’t going to complain about it. “Who is she?”
“You know Morningside Antiquities?”
“Sure. It’s one of those old, snooty places where rich people pay too much for things that used to belong to other rich people.” She toss
ed back her mass of hair. “Me, I like bright, shiny and new.”
He grinned. “That’s a damning description, particularly by a rich person.”
“I’m not rich. My family is.”
Privately, he thought anyone who paid more than three hundred American dollars for something that dangled from the earlobes was either rich or foolish. Possibly both. “No inheritance?”
She shrugged, sawed at the beef. “I’ve got a nice pile due when I hit thirty-five. That won’t keep me in beer and pretzels for the next eight years.”
“Where’d you learn to dance?”
“What does Morningside have to do with our current situation?”
“All right then. Anita Gaye is, at the moment, in charge of Morningside, being the widow of the former proprietor.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” She wagged her fork. “I remember something about that. Old dude marries sharp young chick. Worked for him or something. My mother got all righteous about it, lunched on the horror for weeks. Then when he kicked off, there was a whole second round. I was still speaking, on rare occasions, to my mother then. She was back in New York between husbands. And I said something like, if the bimbo saw to it the old goat died happy, what’s the diff? She, my mother, got all pissed off about it. I guess that was one of our last bouts before we did the Pontius Pilate routine.”
“Washed your hands of each other?”
“Bingo.”
“Over someone else’s dead husband?”
“Actually, the hand-washing came when her latest husband got a little grabby with my tits and I was annoyed enough to tell her about it.”
“Your stepfather touched you?” His tone was filled with moral outrage.
“He wasn’t my stepfather right at that point. And it was more of a grab boobs, squeeze boobs, resulting in my knee rammed into his groin sort of event rather than touching. I said he’d come on to me, and he, in a rare use of gray matter, countered that I’d come on to him. She bought his side, foul language issued from all interested parties. I left, she married him, and they moved to his turf. L.A.”
She shrugged, lifted her beer. “End of sentimental family saga.”
He touched the back of her hand. “I suppose she deserves him, then.”
“I suppose she does.” She shook it off, drank down beer. “So Anita Gaye applies to us because . . . She’s the one who backed the muscle who went after us in Prague?” Cleo pursed her lips. “Maybe not such a bimbo.”
“She’s a calculating, devious woman. And a thief. She has one of the Fates because she stole it from us. From my brother, specifically. She wants all three and won’t quibble about the method of acquiring them. That’s something we’ll use against her. We get to the other two first, then we negotiate.”
“So, there’s no client. It’s your brother.”
“My family,” he corrected. “Malachi, my brother, is working on another angle, and my sister’s researching a third. The trouble we’re having is, whatever route we take, Anita Gaye’s right there. A step ahead, a step behind, but always close. She’s anticipated us, or she has another source of information. Or, more troubling, she’s got a way of keeping tabs on us.”
“Which is why you and I have been staying at crappy hotels, paying cash, and you’ve been using a bogus name.”
“Which can’t go on much longer.” He sipped his own beer while scanning the crowded, noisy pub. “I’m reasonably sure we’ve lost her, for now. It’s time you got to work.” His lips twitched, then curved. “Partner.”
“Doing what?”
“You said you recalled seeing the Fate, which means it’s still in your family. So I think the best approach is to start off with a phone call, a nice daughterly call, I think, with just a hint of contrition and apology.”
She stabbed one of his chips with her fork. “That’s not even funny.”
“Wasn’t meant to be.”
“I’m not calling home like some repentant prodigal.”
He only smiled at her.
“I’m not.”
“After your story, I’m no fonder of your mother than you are. But you’ll call her if you want a fifth of the take.”
“A fifth? Check your math, Slick.”
“Nothing wrong with my figures. There are four of us, and one of you.”
“I want half.”
“Well, you can want the world on a string, but you won’t get it. A fifth of potentially millions of pounds should be enough to hold you until you reach the ripe age of thirty-five. Are things so strained between you she’d refuse a collect call? Or perhaps you’d do better with your father.”
“Neither of them would accept charges if I were calling from the third level of hell. But I’m not making the call anyway.”
“You are. We’ll just have to put the call on a credit card. How’s yours holding up?” When she folded her arms over her chest, stared stonily, he shrugged. “We’ll put it on mine, then.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“Best to find a phone box,” he decided. “If Anita has some way of tracking my card, I’d as soon not put a target on my back. Hopefully, we’ll be out of London by tomorrow in any case. You need to work in the statue, so I’m thinking a bit of sentiment there. Missing the familiar things of home, that kind of thing. You play it right, maybe one of them’ll wire you some money.”
“Listen to me. I’ll speak very slowly and in short syllables. They wouldn’t give me a dime, and I’d slit my own throat before I asked them to.”
“Don’t know till you try, do you?” He tossed some money on the table. “Let’s find a phone box.”
How did you argue with someone who didn’t argue back but simply kept moving forward like a big, shiny steamroller?
Now she was in a real fix and had very little time to wheedle her way out of it.
She didn’t waste her time talking to him as they walked through the light rain that turned the streets glossy black. She had to use her head, calculate her choices.
She could hardly tell him, Gee, no point in calling Mom or Dad because—ha ha—I happen to have the statue right here in my purse!
And if she called—and she’d rather be staked to an anthill than do so—her parents would probably speak to her. Coldly, dutifully, which would only piss her off. If she maintained her temper and asked about the statue, they’d ask her if she was doing drugs. A common inquiry. And she’d be reminded, stiffly, that the little silver statue had stood in her room at home for years. A fact they would know, as her room had been searched weekly for those drugs, which she’d never done, or any sign of immoral, illegal or socially unacceptable behavior.
Since neither of those choices appealed to her, she had to come up with a third.
She was still calculating when he pulled her out of the rain and into a shiny red phone booth. “Take a minute to think about what you’re going to say,” he advised. “Which one do you think might be best? Mum in Los Angeles? Da in New York?”
“I don’t have to decide because I’m not going to call either of them or say anything.”
“Cleo.” He tucked her wet hair behind her ear. “They really hurt you, didn’t they?”
He said it so quietly, so sweetly, she had to elbow her way around and stare out into the rain. “I don’t need to call them. I know where it is.”
He leaned down, brushed his lips over her hair. “I’m sorry this is hard for you, but we can’t keep knocking around from place to place this way.”
“I said I know where it is. Get me to New York.”
“Cleo—”
“Damn it, stop patting me on the head like I’m a puppy. Give me some goddamn room in here.” She used her elbow again to shove him back, then dug into her purse. “Here.” She pushed the scanned photograph into his hands.
He stared at it, then lifted his gaze and stared at her. “What the hell is this?”
“The wonders of technology. I made a call from Down Under after our little sight-seeing jaunt. Had a
picture taken of it and sent to me on Marcella’s computer. I figured you’d cough up the money I wanted, and the ticket, once you had proof I could get my hands on it. The chase scene changed things. Having a couple of goons come after me upped the stakes.”
“You didn’t bother to show it to me until now.”
“A girl needs an edge, Slick.” She could hear the temper—the cold fire of it—licking at the edges of his voice. She didn’t mind it. “I didn’t know you from Jack the Ripper when we drove out of Prague. I’d have to be pretty stupid to toss all my cards on the table until I had a handle on you.”
“Got one now?” he said softly.
“Enough of one to know you’re supremely pissed, but you’ll choke it back. First, because your mother raised you not to hit girls. Second, because you need me if you want to hold that thing in three dimensions instead of in a picture.”
“Where is it?”
She shook her head. “Get me to New York.”
“How much money do you have?”
“I’m not paying—”
He simply grabbed her purse. She dug her fingers into it like talons and yanked back.
“All right, all right. I’ve got about a thousand.”
“Koruna?”
“Dollars, once they’re exchanged.”
“You’ve got a thousand fucking dollars in here, and you haven’t parted with a single flipping cent since we started?”
“Twenty-five pounds,” she corrected. “Earrings.”
He shoved out of the phone booth. “You’ve just upped your investment, Cleo. You’re paying to get us to New York.”
WHEN ANITA GAYE wined and dined a client, she did so superbly. In general, she considered such matters a business investment. When the client was an attractive, desirable man she’d yet to lure into bed, she considered it a challenge.
Jack Burdett intrigued her on a number of levels. He wasn’t as polished, as smooth, nor was his pedigree as sterling as the men she normally chose for her escorts.
But he was, precisely, the type she often preferred as a lover.