The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 3

by Nora Roberts

  “I’d better go. I’d better go right now.” She fumbled in her bag for her inhaler.

  “I’m going to stay with you, Tia. I’m going to see you through this every step of the way.” Carrie had canceled two meetings to see to it. “Julian’s a genius. I swear it.” She squeezed Tia’s free hand as Tia sucked on the inhaler. “You’re going to feel like a new woman. What?” she asked when Tia mumbled.

  Removing the inhaler, Tia tried again. “I said, I’m just getting used to the old one. This is a mistake. I only did it because I was so upset with Dr. Lowenstein. Look, I’ll pay for the appointment, but I—”

  “Julian’s ready for you, Dr. Marsh.” Another wand-slim, black-clad female came out.

  Didn’t anyone here weigh over a hundred pounds? Tia thought frantically. Wasn’t anyone over twenty-three?

  “I’ll take her back, Miranda.” In the bright, cheerful voice mothers use when they drag their children to the dentist chair, Carrie hauled Tia to her feet. “You’re going to thank me for this. Trust me.”

  Tia’s vision blurred as they walked past operators, customers, past gleaming black shampoo bowls and sparkling glass displays holding dozens and dozens of sleekly packaged products. Dimly she heard overlapping chatter and a cackle of laughter that sounded just a bit insane.

  “Carrie.”

  “Be brave. Be strong.” She steered Tia toward a large cubical done in dazzling black and silver. The man who stood by the big leather chair was short, sleek as a grey-hound, with white-blond hair cut like a skullcap.

  For some reason, he made her think of a very hip Eros and that didn’t comfort her a bit.

  “So,” he began in a voice that bit down on vowels with the teeth of a native New Yorker, “this is Tia, at last.” He took one look at her pale face and judged his quarry. “Louise! Some wine here. Sit.”

  “I was just thinking that maybe—”

  “Sit,” he interrupted Tia, then leaned over to kiss Carrie’s cheek. “Moral support?”

  “You bet.”

  “Carrie and I have been plotting endlessly on how to get you in my chair.” He got her there, finally, by simply nudging her backward. “And from the looks of this . . .” He fingered a lock of hair that had come loose from its knot. “It’s not a moment too soon.”

  “I really don’t think I need—”

  “Let me be the judge of what you need.” He took one of the wineglasses Louise brought in, handed it to her. “When you go to the doctor, do you tell him what you need?”

  “Actually, ha, yeah, I do. But—”

  “You have lovely eyes.”

  She blinked them. “I do?”

  “Excellent brow line. Very nice bones,” he added and began to touch her face with smooth, very cool fingertips. “Sexy mouth. The lipstick’s wrong, but we’ll fix that. Yes, it’s a fine face we’ve got here. Dull, outdated hair.” With a couple of tugs, he had the pins out and the heavy weight of it tumbling free.

  “It doesn’t suit you at all. You’re hiding behind your hair, my Tia.” He swiveled the chair around so she was facing the mirror, and his head was close to hers. All but cheek to cheek. “And I’m going to expose you.”

  “You are? But don’t you think . . . What if there’s nothing particularly interesting to expose?”

  “I think you underestimate yourself,” he chided. “And expect everyone else to do the same.”

  While she was blinking over that she found herself being shampooed by one of the slender shop girls in one of the glossy black sinks. By the time she thought to ask if they used hypo-allergenic products, it was too late.

  Then she was back in the chair, facing away from the mirror with a glass of very nice white wine in her hand. He talked to her. Asked her what she did, who she dated, what she liked. Every time she gave a noncommittal answer or asked what he was doing with her hair, he asked another question.

  When at one point she made the mistake of looking down and seeing the piles of shorn hair littering the floor, her breath began to hitch. Little white dots danced in front of her eyes, and from a distance she heard Carrie’s alarmed voice.

  The next thing she knew Julian pushed her head between her knees, holding it there until the roar of her heartbeat slowed. “Steady, honey. Louise! I need a cold cloth here.”

  “Tia, Tia, snap out of it.”

  She opened her eyes to find Carrie crouched on the floor in front of her. “What? What?”

  “It’s a haircut, okay? Not brain surgery.”

  “A traumatic event’s a traumatic event.” Julian laid a cool, damp cloth on the back of Tia’s neck. “Now, I want you to sit up slowly. Deep breath now. That’s the way. Now another. There now, tell me about this Irish guy Carrie mentioned.”

  “He’s a bastard,” Tia said weakly.

  “We all are.” The scissors began to snip again, frighteningly close to her face. “Tell me all about it.”

  So she did, and when his reaction was shock, fascination, delight—so very different from Lowenstein’s—she forgot about her hair.

  “Incredible. You know what you have to do, don’t you?”

  She stared up at him as he clicked her chair back. “What?”

  “You have to go to Ireland, find this Malachi and seduce him.”

  “I do?”

  “It’s perfect. You track him down, seduce all pertinent information on the statues out of him, then you add that to what you’ve dug up, and you’re ahead of everyone. We’re going to put in a few highlights, jazz it up a bit, especially around her face.”

  “But I can’t just . . . go. Besides, he isn’t really interested in me that way. And more to the point, it’s not right to use sex as a weapon.”

  “Sweetie, when a woman uses it on me, I’m usually grateful. You have wonderful skin. What are you using on it?”

  “Oh, well, right now I’m using this new line I read about. All natural ingredients. But you have to keep the products refrigerated, which is a little inconvenient.”

  “I have something better. Louise! BioDerm, full skin care treatment. Normal.”

  “Oh well, I always do a patch test before I use another new—”

  “Not to worry.” He dipped a flat brush in a small bowl and came up with a dab of pale purple goo. “You just lie back and relax.”

  It wasn’t easy to relax when a strange woman was rubbing creams on your face, and your hair—what was left of it—was full of goop and aluminum foil. And no one would let you look in the mirror.

  But he gave her another glass of wine, and Carrie stayed loyally within arm’s reach.

  Somehow she was talked into having her eyebrows waxed and dyed to give them more definition, then after her hair was rinsed, into a full makeup treatment. By the time Julian was wielding the blow dryer on her she was so tired, so tipsy, she nearly nodded off in the chair.

  Whoever claimed an afternoon at the salon was a luxury had a sick sense of humor.

  “Keep your eyes closed,” Julian ordered, and the wine sloshed around in her head a little as her chair revolved. “Now, open up and take a look at Tia Marsh.”

  She opened her eyes, looked in the mirror and felt a fast slam of pure panic.

  Where did she go?

  The woman who stared back at her had a sunny cap of hair, with a snazzy fringe down to dramatically arched eyebrows. Her eyes were enormously and richly blue, her mouth wide and boldly red. And when Tia’s jaw dropped, so did hers.

  “I look . . . I look like Tinkerbell.”

  Once again Julian lowered his head so that his was close to hers. “You’re not far wrong. Fairies are fascinating, aren’t they? Clever and bright and unpredictable. That’s how you look.”

  Carrie’s face joined theirs in the mirror so that for a dizzy second, Tia imagined herself with three heads, none of which was actually hers. “You look fabulous.” A tear trickled down Carrie’s cheek. “I’m so happy. Tia, look! Really look at yourself.”

  “Okay.” She took a huge breath. “Okay,
” and reached up gingerly to touch the nape of her neck. “It feels so strange.” She shook her head a little, laughed a little. “Light. But, it doesn’t look like me.”

  “Yes, it does. The you that was hiding. Give me some photo ID,” Julian demanded.

  Baffled, she dug in her purse, in her wallet, and took out her bank card.

  “Which,” he asked, “do you want to be?”

  Tia stared at the photo, stared at the mirror. “I’ll take everything you used on me today, and another appointment in four weeks.”

  SHE’D SPENT FIFTEEN hundred dollars. Fifteen hundred on nothing more than vanity. And, Tia thought as she sat in the cab with her shopping bag brimming with beauty products, she didn’t feel guilty about it.

  She felt exhilarated.

  She couldn’t wait to get home and look at herself in the mirror again. And again. Because she couldn’t, she slid her hand into her purse, clicked open her compact. Holding the mirror inside the bag to shield her foolishness from the cabdriver, she tilted it up. And grinned at herself.

  She wasn’t ordinary at all. Not beautiful, certainly, but not by any means ordinary. She was even pretty in an odd sort of way.

  Caught up with herself, she didn’t register that they’d stopped in front of her building until Rosie O’Donnell’s recorded voice reminded her to take all her belongings. Flustered, Tia dropped her compact back into her purse, fumbled with the fare she would normally have had ready, then, juggling her bag and her purse, climbed out.

  As a result, she dropped her purse on the sidewalk, had to scoop the contents hurriedly back in. When she straightened, took a step toward her building, she nearly plowed into the couple who’d stepped into her path.

  “Dr. Marsh?”

  “Yes?” She answered without thinking, as she was looking at the beautiful, tall brunette who’d obviously been crying.

  “We need to speak with you,” he began, and the Irish in his voice finally got through. As did, when she shifted her gaze to his face and homed in on the family resemblance, the name.

  “You’re a Sullivan.” She said the name as some might an oath, with bitter passion.

  “I am, yes. Gideon. This is Cleo. If we could come up to your flat for a minute?”

  “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  “Dr. Marsh.” He put a hand on her arm as she turned.

  She whipped back, surprising them both with the speed and the fury. “Take your hand off me or I’ll start screaming. I can scream very loud, and very long.”

  As he was a man who understood and respected a woman’s temper, he lifted his free hand, palm out, in a gesture of truce. “I know you’re angry with Mal, and I don’t blame you for it. But the fact is, we’ve got nowhere else to go right at the moment, not that’s safe. We’re in trouble here.”

  “That doesn’t concern me, and neither do you.”

  “Let her alone, Slick.” Cleo said it wearily, weaving a little from the whiskey. “It’s all fucked anyway.”

  “You’ve been drinking.” Outraged—and conveniently forgetting two glasses of afternoon wine—Tia sniffed. “You’ve got some nerve, coming around here drunk, accosting me on the street. You want to get out of the way, Mr. Sullivan, before I call the police.”

  “Yeah, she’s been drinking.” With his own temper rising, Gideon took Tia’s arm again. “Because I saw to it as it was the only way I knew to numb her enough for her to deal with having her closest friend murdered. Murdered because of the Three Fates, murdered because of Anita Gaye. You can walk away from that, Dr. Marsh, but it doesn’t stop you being part of it.”

  “He’s dead.” Cleo’s voice was flat and dull, and in it Tia heard the ravages of grief. “Mikey’s dead, and hassling her won’t bring him back. Let’s just go.”

  “She’s sick, and she’s tired,” Gideon said to Tia. “I’m asking for her, let us come in. She needs a place until I can think what to do.”

  “I don’t need anything.”

  “Come in. Damn it.” Tia dragged a hand through her newly styled hair. “Come on.” She streamed in ahead of them, jammed the button for the elevator.

  Didn’t it just figure that Malachi Sullivan would find some way to ruin her triumphant day?

  “I’m grateful to you, Dr. Marsh.”

  “Tia.” Inside, she jammed the button for her floor. “Since your friend’s very likely to pass out on my floor, why be formal? I hate your brother, by the way.”

  “I understand. I’ll let him know next time I see him. I almost didn’t come up to you outside. Mal said you had long hair.”

  “I used to.” She led the way down the hall to her apartment. “How did you recognize me?”

  “Well, he said, too, that you were blond and delicate and pretty.”

  With an unladylike snort, she opened the door. “You can stay until she feels better,” Tia began and set aside her purse and shopping bag. “Meanwhile you can tell me what you’re doing here and why you expect me to believe Anita Gaye murdered anyone.”

  His face hardened, and in it Tia saw the resemblance again. Malachi’s had taken on that same look of barely restrained violence in her trashed hotel room in Helsinki.

  They might be very attractive, musically voiced men, she thought. But that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.

  “She didn’t do it personally, but she’s responsible. Is there a place Cleo can lie down?”

  “I don’t need to lie down. I don’t want to lie down.”

  “All right, then, you’ll sit down.”

  Tia frowned as Gideon dragged Cleo to the sofa. His voice was rough, she noted, not particularly kind despite the lovely lilt of it. But he handled the brunette gently, as a man might some fragile antique glass.

  And he was right to get her off her feet, Tia decided. The woman was sheet-white and shaky.

  “You’re cold,” she heard him say. “Now do what you’re told for once. Put your feet up.” He hauled them up himself, pulled the throw off the back of the sofa and tucked it around her.

  “I’m sorry for this,” he said to Tia. “I couldn’t risk a hotel, even if I had enough of the wherewithal for one just now. I haven’t had time to think since everything happened. It was a quest, you see. An adventure, with some annoyances and expenses, to be sure, and a risk of a fist in the face or ass-kicking. But it’s different now. Now there’s murder.”

  “I’m sick.” Cleo pushed off the couch, swayed. “I’m sorry. I’m sick.”

  “There.” Tia pointed to a door on the left and felt a twist of sympathetic nausea in her own belly as Cleo lurched for it. Gideon was two steps behind her and got the door slammed in his face.

  He stood, staring helplessly at it, then lowered his brow to the door.

  “I guess it’s the whiskey. I poured it into her because it was all I could think of.”

  He was grieving, too. She could see that now. “I’m going to make tea.”

  He nodded. “We’d be grateful.”

  “Come in the kitchen where I can see you, and start explaining.”

  “My brother said you were a fragile kind of thing,” Gideon commented as he followed her into the kitchen. “He’s not usually so wrong.”

  “He’s the same one who claimed one of New York’s most respected dealers is a thief. Now you add murder.”

  “It’s not a claim, it’s a fact.”

  With restless movements, he paced back to the doorway, looked toward the powder room door, paced back.

  His brother, Tia noted, was more contained. At least, she amended, as far as she knew.

  “She took what wasn’t hers,” Gideon continued. “And because she wants more, she’s upped the stakes beyond anything that can be justified. A man’s dead. A man I met only yesterday, one who gave me his bed because his friend asked him. A man who fixed me breakfast just this morning. A man who’s dead only because he was loyal to a friend.”

  “How did you meet Cleo?”

  “I tracked her down in Europe.”<
br />
  “Who is she in this?”

  “She’s connected to the second Fate.”

  “How?” she demanded.

  “Through ancestry. She comes down from the White-Smythes. One was a collector in London.”

  All right, Tia mused. All right. Another piece of the puzzle in place.

  “You recognize the name.” Gideon’s statement proved to Tia she’d have to work on her acting skills. “You’ve looked into it, then.”

  “I think, under the circumstances, I should be the one asking the questions.”

  “And I’ll answer them. If I could use your phone first off. I need to call my family.”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll call collect.”

  “You can’t use the phone. It’s tapped. Or maybe it’s tapped. Or maybe I’m just having a big, complicated hallucination after all.”

  “I’m sorry? Bugged? Your phone’s bugged?”

  “According to another surprise visitor.” She turned around. “I think, all in all, I’m really taking this very well, don’t you? I mean, here I am, with a couple of strangers in my apartment—one who is currently being sick in my powder room and the other telling me fantastic stories in the kitchen. And I’m making tea. I think even Dr. Lowenstein would agree that’s progress.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Why should you? Tell me why you believe Anita’s responsible for this man’s death.”

  “I’m responsible.” Cleo stood, braced against the doorway. She was still very pale, but her eyes were clear again. “He’d be alive if it wasn’t for me. I got him involved.”

  “I’m the one who got you involved,” Gideon reminded her. “So you might as well hang it on me.”

  “I’d like to, but it won’t wash. I was double-crossing you. I’d justified it, and you were going to get your share, but I was doing a shuffle on you, and I pulled Mikey into it. She must’ve had them watching the street, so when we came down after I made the deal with her, Mikey goes his way, I go mine. They split up and tail us, only I make my shadow and, being so goddamn clever, lose him. Only Mikey’s clueless, so he just bops on home, and that bastard takes him down there. If he hadn’t been with me, they wouldn’t have known he existed.”