by Nora Roberts
“No, it’s not okay. It’s certainly not okay. Excuse me.”
She popped out of the chair and marched out of the room. Because he wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t going for a weapon, Jack followed her.
She opened a cupboard in the kitchen, and his brows shot up at the rows of pill bottles. She snagged aspirin, wrenched open the refrigerator. “I have a tension headache, thank you very much.”
“I apologize. I couldn’t risk the phone. Look.” He lifted the kitchen portable off its stand, opened the mouthpiece. “See this? It’s a tap—decent quality.”
“Since I wouldn’t know a listening device from a horned toad, I’ll just have to take your word, won’t I?”
His research hadn’t indicated she was quick. “Guess you will. I’d be careful what I said on this line.”
“Why should I take your word, Mr. Burdett?”
“Jack, make it Jack. Got any coffee?” Her withering look made him shrug. “Okay. Anita Gaye.” He smiled when she slowly lowered the water bottle. “Thought that would ring a bell. Odds are she’s the one who got your phone tapped. She wants the Fates, and you and your family have a connection to them. Henry Wyley’s statue of Clotho wasn’t lost on the Lusitania, was it, Tia?”
“If you and Anita are friends, ask her.”
“I didn’t say we were friends. I’m a collector. That’s something you can confirm with your father, but I’d appreciate it if you’d do it face-to-face so Anita isn’t tracking my moves. I’ve bought some nice pieces from Wyley’s. The latest was a Lalique vase, molded. Six nude maidens pouring water from urns. I like naked women,” he said with a chuckle. “Sue me.”
“I thought you liked red silk panties.”
“I haven’t got anything against them.”
“I can’t help you, Mr. Burdett. You might as well go back and tell Ms. Gaye she’s wasting her time with me.”
“I don’t work with or for Anita. I work for myself, and I have a personal interest in the Fates. Anita dropped some bait on me, gotta figure she’s hoping I’ll do some of her legwork and lead her to them. She miscalculated. She’s covering bases with you, too,” he added, gesturing toward the phone. “I’m betting you know something she doesn’t. I think we can help each other out.”
“Why should I help you, even if I could?”
“Because I’m really good at what I do. You tell me what you know and I’ll find them. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“I haven’t decided what I know.”
“Who’s Malachi Sullivan?”
“That’s one thing I’m sure of.” Sure because the mere mention of his name made her chest tight. “He’s a liar and a cheat. He claimed that Anita duped him, but for all I know they’re thick as . . . thieves,” she decided.
“Where would I find him?”
“I assume he’s back in Ireland. Cobh. But I’d prefer he was roasting in hell.”
“What’s his connection?”
She hesitated, then could find no reason not to elaborate. “He claims that Anita stole one of the Fates from him, but as his tongue would probably turn black if it tasted truth, I’ve reason to doubt that. Now, this has been very interesting, but you’ve interrupted my work.”
“You’ve got my card. You think about it, get in touch.” He started out, then turned and looked back at her. “If you know anything, be careful where you step. Anita’s a snake, Tia, the kind that likes to gulp down soft, pretty things.”
“And what are you, Mr. Burdett?”
“I’m a man who respects and appreciates the whims of fate.”
Malachi Sullivan, he thought as he walked out.
It looked as if Jack was going to take a trip to Ireland.
IT WAS A long trip from London to New York. Longer when you were wedged into a center seat the size of a postage stamp between a woman whose legs were nearly as long as your own and a man who used his elbows like switchblades.
Gideon tried to bury himself in his book, but even Steinbeck’s brilliant prose couldn’t compete. So he spent the hours thinking, winding his way through the morass of the situation he, and his family, had gotten themselves into.
He survived the flight, then shuffled brainlessly through the agony of customs and baggage retrieval.
“You’re sure about this friend of yours,” he asked Cleo.
“Look, you asked me to come up with a friend in the city who’d put us up for a few days, no questions, no hassles because you’re too cheap to spring for a hotel. That’s Mikey.”
“I can’t afford a bloody hotel at this point, and I don’t know how you can trust a grown man named Mikey.”
“You’re just cranky.” Cleo took deep gulps of air as they walked through the terminal. It was airport air, but it was New York. “You should’ve slept on the plane. I slept like a log.”
“I know it, and for that single act, I’ll hate you till my dying day.”
“Bitch, bitch, bitch. It won’t bother me a bit.” She stepped outside, into the choking exhaust and helacious noise. “Oh baby, I am back!”
He’d hoped to doze in the cab, but the driver had some sort of eye-twitching Indian music on the radio.
“How long have you known this Mikey?”
“I don’t know. Six, seven years, I guess. We’ve done some gigs together.”
“He’s a stripper?”
“No, he’s not a stripper,” Cleo retorted. “He’s a dancer, and so am I. Look, I’ve done Broadway.” Briefly, but she’d done it. “We were partnered up in the revival of Grease. Did the road tour.”
“The two of you have a thing going?”
“No.” She tucked her tongue in her cheek. “Mikey’s a lot more likely to hit on you than on me.”
“Oh. Wonderful.”
“You’re not homophobic, are you?”
“I don’t think so.” He was too tired to search his social conscience. “Just remember the cover story and stick to it.”
“Shut up, Slick. You’re spoiling my homecoming.”
“Been a week with the woman,” he grumbled as he shut his eyes. “Not once does she use my name.”
Cleo glanced over at him and found herself smiling. He was all rumpled and tapped out and so damn cute with it. He’d be feeling a whole lot better in a day or two, after she implemented her plan.
He wasn’t the only one who’d spent time thinking on the flight.
The first order of business was getting the statue to a nice, secure place. Say a bank box. Then she’d contact Anita Gaye and get down to serious negotiations. She figured she could settle for a cool million. And being a stand-up gal, she intended to split it with Gideon.
Sixty-forty.
Oh, he’d bitch about it, but she’d bring him around. A bird in the hand, after all. He was never going to finesse the first Fate from a woman like Gaye. Not in this lifetime. And if he wanted to go chasing off after the third, well, he’d have financial backing.
She was doing him a favor. Payback, to her way of thinking, for getting her to New York, and for finding her a way to plump up her bank account. Six hundred thousand would tide her over very nicely.
After he’d calmed down, maybe he’d hang in New York for a few weeks. She’d like to show him around. Show him off, too.
Despite the heat, Cleo rolled down the window so New York could slap her in the face. The blast of horns was music as the cab inched its way in jerks through crosstown traffic.
By the time they pulled to the curb in front of Mikey’s building off Ninth, she was riding on such a high she didn’t think to complain when Gideon told her to pay the driver.
“So what do you think?” she demanded.
“About what?” he asked groggily.
“New York. You said you hadn’t been here before.”
He looked around numbly. “It’s crowded. It’s noisy, and everybody looks annoyed about something.”
“Yeah.” Cleo felt sentimental tears clog her throat. “It’s the best.” She danced up to
the call box at the entrance to the building and pressed Mikey’s button.
Moments later there was a long, vaguely obscene sucking sound that made Cleo laugh. “Mikey, you perv. Buzz me in. It’s Cleo.”
“Cleo? Damn! Get your fine, firm ass in here.”
The buzzer sounded, locks clicked, and Cleo dragged open the door. There was a tiny closet of a lobby and a dull gray elevator that made suspicious grinding noises as the doors opened. But Cleo, apparently unconcerned, stepped right on and pushed a button for the third floor.
“Mikey’s from Georgia,” Cleo told Gideon. “From a fine upstanding family full of doctors and lawyers. Since we both ended up being an embarrassment to our parents, we bonded fast.”
At the moment, Gideon didn’t care if Mikey came from Georgia or the moon, whether he was gay or had three heads. As long as he had a shower with hot running water and an available bed.
When the doors ground open again, Gideon got a glimpse of a tall, dark-skinned man wearing a red muscle shirt, tight black pants and an explosion of glossy dread-locks. He let out a ululant howl that had Gideon bracing for attack, then moved like lightning.
Cleo was plucked off her feet and swung around. Before Gideon could react, she was plunked down again, then whipped into some sort of dance—he thought it was a kind of jitterbug—that spun her and her partner down the narrow hallway.
She didn’t miss a beat and ended the impromptu number with her arms wrapped around his neck and her legs around his waist.
“Baby doll, where have you been? ”
“Everywhere. Jesus, Mikey, you look great.”
“Damn right I do.” He kissed her, one cheek, the other, then with a humming smack on the lips. “You look like you’ve been dragged through the street and dumped on the curb.”
“Could use a shower.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “So could my friend.”
Mikey angled his head, his body and gave Gideon a long, piercing look. “Mmm, what have you brought me, Cleopatra?”
“His name’s Gideon.” Enjoying herself, Cleo ran her tongue over her top lip. “He’s Irish. I picked him up in Prague. I’m keeping him for a while.”
“He’s fucking gorgeous.”
“Yeah. He’s got some personality flaws, but in the looks department, he’s aces. Come on, Slick, don’t be shy.”
“Does that mean the show’s over for now?”
“Moves well,” Mikey commented when Gideon came down the hall. “Lovely accent.”
“So’s yours.”
At Gideon’s response, Mikey’s lips spread in a huge, toothy grin. “Come inside. I want to hear everything.” And though in Gideon’s opinion the man was built like a toothpick, he carried Cleo’s not unsubstantial weight into the apartment.
“It’s humble,” he added, setting Cleo down, patting her ass. “But it’s home.”
Gideon didn’t see humble. What he saw was color, from the navy blue walls and white trim, the dozens of theater posters, the wildly geometric pattern in the rug. The couch was white leather, big as a boat and piled with plump, multicolored pillows.
He imagined falling facedown on it and sleeping for the rest of his life.
“Cocktails,” Mikey announced. “Tall, frosty cocktails.”
“I think Slick here could use a tall, frosty shower first,” Cleo said. “Go ahead, back through the bedroom there, on the right.”
He glanced at Mikey, got a friendly wave of invitation. “Help yourself, handsome.”
“Thanks.” Gideon hauled his duffel with him and left them alone.
“Gin and tonics, I think.” Mikey crossed to the glossy white bar. “Lots of ice, lots of gin and a whiff of tonic for form. Then you can tell Daddy all.”
“Sounds perfect. Mikey, can we bunk here a couple days?”
“Mi casa, and all that, sugarplum.”
“It’s a hell of a story.” She crossed over to the bedroom door, angled her head in until she heard the shower start. Then, easing the door shut, she walked back to the bar and told him the whole of it.
Gideon was wet and naked when she stepped into the bathroom with a gin and tonic. “Thought this might come in handy.”
“Thanks.” He took the glass, downed the contents in one grateful gulp. “Do we stay?”
“We stay,” she confirmed. “In fact, he’s generously offered you his bed.”
Gideon remembered it from his pass through to the shower. Big, soft, red. And so appealing at that point he’d barely blinked at the mirrors on the ceiling over it. “Do I have to sleep with him?”
She laughed. “No, you get me. Go ahead, tune out for a few hours.”
“I will. In the morning, we’re going to work out how to get our hands on the Fate. I’m too punchy to think straight now.”
“Then get some sleep. Mikey and I can spend some time catching up before he leaves for the theater. He’s in the chorus of Kiss Me, Kate.”
“Good for him. Tell him I appreciate the hospitality.”
Still naked, still damp, Gideon went to the bed, crawled in and conked out.
HE WOKE TO the sounds of horns and the rumble of garbage trucks. While his brain caught up he stared in mild fascination at the reflection in the overhead mirror. The red sheets hit him at the waist so that he looked as if he’d been cut in two during the night.
No, he corrected. Like they had.
Cleo was sprawled over him, her hair swept back, black against red, so that it seemed to melt into the sheets. Her skin was shades darker than his own so that the arm she’d flung over his chest, the long curve of her shoulder, the long line of her back lay like gold dust against the white of him and the glossy scarlet sheets.
He remembered the dreamy sensation of her sliding into bed sometime in the night. Of her sliding over him in the dark. And him sliding into her.
She hadn’t spoken, not a word. He hadn’t been able to see her. But he’d known the shape of her, and the taste. Even the scent. What did it mean, he wondered, when he knew her so instantly, so intimately in the dark?
He’d have to think about it, eventually. Just as he’d have to analyze why, with a bed as big as a lake, they’d tangled together in sleep, and held on.
But for now there were other things to think about. A man couldn’t trust his brain until it had been primed with coffee.
He started to ease away and was surprised and oddly touched when Cleo shifted closer and snuggled in. It made him want to cuddle right back, and perhaps wake her so he could make proper use of the mirror on the ceiling.
Won’t do, he thought and, giving her a careless kiss on the top of her head, untangled himself.
He tugged on jeans and, leaving her sleeping, went out to find the kitchen.
His first jolt of the day didn’t come from caffeine, but from seeing Mikey stretched out on the white leather couch all but buried in the colorful pillows, his own dread-locks and a sheet of bright emerald green.
Though it felt awkward, the desire for coffee was stronger than his sense of propriety. Gideon skirted the couch and moved as quietly as possible into the kitchen.
It was like a page from a catalogue, all glossy and spotless with a number of canny-looking devices tidily arranged on the counter. He opened cupboards, found dishes of navy and white, in perfectly alternating stacks. Glasses, arranged according to type and size. And finally, when he was on the point of whimpering, a bag of coffee. He opened it, swore under his breath when he stared into a bag of fragrant beans.
“What the hell do I do with these? Chew them?”
“You could, but it’s easier to grind them.”
Gideon jolted, spun and stared.
Mikey was wearing a pair of gold briefs that barely covered his balls.
“Ah . . . sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I sleep like a cat.” Mikey plucked the bag from Gideon’s hand and poured some of the beans into a grinder. “Nothing like the smell of freshly ground beans,” he said over the noise of it. “Did you sl
eep well?”
“I did, yes, thanks. We shouldn’t have kicked you out of your own bed.”
“Two of you, one of me.” He sent Gideon a sidelong look as he measured out water. “You must be starving. How about some breakfast to go with this? I’m in the mood for French toast.”
“That’d be brilliant. It’s kind of you to let us drop in on you this way.”
“Oh, Cleo and me, we go back.” With a careless wave, Mikey started the coffee, then turned to get eggs and milk from the refrigerator. “That girl’s my honey. I’m so glad to see her back, and hooked up with someone with style. I warned her about that Sidney character. He looked tasty, no argument there, but he was all flash, no substance. And what does he do but steal her money and leave her high and dry.” He made disapproving sounds while he cracked eggs into a bowl. “And in Prague, of all places. But she told you all about that.”
“Not really.” And Gideon was fascinated. “You know Cleo. She tends to skim over the details.”
“Wouldn’t have run off with that rat bastard, excuse my French, if her daddy hadn’t told her, again, how she was wasting her time, how she was embarrassing herself and the family.”
“How?”
“Dancing. Theater.” He said it with a deliberately dramatic air, doing a fluid leg extension as he got down coffee mugs. “Fraternizing with people like me. Not only a black man, but a gay black man. A gay, black, dancing man. I mean, really. Cream, sugar?”
“No, thanks. Just straight.” He winced. “That is—”
Mikey let out a rollicking laugh. “Me, I like a whole lot of sugar. He wouldn’t like you, either,” Mikey added as he handed Gideon a mug. “Our Cleopatra’s daddy.”
“No? Well, fuck him.” Gideon lifted his mug in toast, then drank. “Ah, God be praised.”
“Drink up, honey.” Mikey dipped thick slices of sour-dough bread in the egg batter. “You and me, we’re going to get along just fine.”
And they did. Plowing through half a loaf of bread, a pot of coffee and nearly a quart of the orange juice Mikey squeezed fresh.
By the time Cleo staggered out of the bedroom, Gideon no longer found anything odd about the gold briefs, the tattoo of a dragon on Mikey’s left shoulder blade or being called honey by another man.