by Nora Roberts
“Wood nymph? Me?”
“Honey, you ought to look in the mirror more often. You’re really hot.”
“No, I’m really very comfortable . . .” She trailed off when Cleo collapsed in wild laughter. “Oh. Hot.” Laughing herself now, she peered closely at Cleo’s face. “Are you drunk?”
“Nope, but I might work on that later.” She leaned back. She didn’t make friends easily, at least not with other women. But there was something about Tia.
“I always wanted to look like you,” Tia blurted out.
“Me?”
“Tall and sultry and exotic. And built.”
“We all work with what we got. And what you’ve got is making big brother’s glands go loop-de-loop. Take my word. Listen.” Cleo leaned closer. “When they get back, I’m going to drop a little bombshell. Slick’s not going to like it, and big brother’s already looking at me sideways. I could use some help. Support, a distraction, whatever you’ve got.”
“What is it?”
Cleo started to speak, then heard the key in the lock. Tia saw something move over her face that might have been grief, might have been regret. Then she tossed back the last of her wine. “Countdown,” she mumbled.
“ATHENS?” GIDEON BROKE into a delighted, almost demented grin. “Athens?” he repeated and plucked Tia out of her chair, kissed her enthusiastically on the mouth. “You’re a bloody genius.”
“I, uh . . . Well.” Her ears buzzed. “Thanks.”
“A bloody genius,” he said again, and swung her in a quick circle before he shot that grin at his brother. “And you were worried Anita would gobble her down like lunch. We’ve a certified mastermind here.”
“Set her down, Gideon, before you bruise her. That was clever,” Malachi said to Tia. “Clever and quick.”
“It was logical,” she corrected and, with her head spinning just a bit, and rather pleasantly, sat again. “I don’t know if she’ll actually go to Greece, but she’ll certainly look there.”
“It gives us some breathing space,” Malachi agreed. “Now what do we do with it? Rebecca’s doing what she does to get background information on this Jack Burdett. We’ll leave that, and him, to her for now. Seems the first thing, logically speaking, is to figure out how Cleo’s to get the White-Smythe Fate. We’ll want to do that quietly, without putting Anita on the scent, then get it into a safe, secure place.”
“That’s not a problem.” Cleo didn’t take a deep breath, but she did brace herself, did shift her gaze until she met Gideon’s directly. “I’ve already got it, and it’s already in one.”
Sixteen
“YOU had it all along?” Shell-shocked and with temper just starting to bubble beneath, Gideon stared at Cleo. “From the beginning?”
“My grandmother gave it to me when I was a kid.” She felt the bats beating wings in her stomach. “She’d started to get pretty spacey, so I guess she didn’t think of it as more than a kind of doll. It’s been like my good-luck piece. It went where I went.”
“You had it in Prague.”
“Yeah, I had it.” Because the steady, quiet tone of his voice made her feel a little sick, she poured another glass of wine.
“I never heard the story. The Three Fates deal. If that part of it ever came down through my mother’s family, it didn’t get as far as me. I didn’t know what it was until you told me about it.”
“And wasn’t it lucky for you I came along and educated you?”
She decided the bitter edge of the words, delivered with just the perfect dip of contempt, was as effective as a jab in the gut. “Look, Slick, some guy chases me down at work, starts asking about my good-luck charm, gives me the song and dance about big money and Greek legends, I’m not handing it over to him on a platter. I didn’t know you.”
“Got to know me, didn’t you?” He leaned over, clamping his hands on the arms of her chair, caging her in with his body. “Or do you make a habit of rolling around on a hotel floor with strangers?”
“Gideon.”
“This isn’t for you.” He whipped his head around, flicked the keen edge of his fury over his brother to silence any interference. Then snapped it back to Cleo.
“You knew me well enough for that. You knew me well enough, didn’t you, when we shared the bed Mikey gave us hours before he died.”
“That’s enough.” Though her hands were ice cold with fear, Tia used them to pull on Gideon’s arm. It was, she realized, like trying to pry open a steel wall with her fingers. “He was her friend. She loved him. However angry you are, you know that, and you know you haven’t the right to use him to hurt her.”
“She used him. And me.”
“You’re right.” Cleo lifted her chin, not in defiance but in a kind of invitation. Punch me, she seemed to say, I’d prefer it. “You couldn’t be more right. I overestimated myself, underestimated Anita. And Mikey’s dead. However much disgust and rage you’ve got working in you for me right now, it doesn’t touch what I’ve got for myself.”
“It might come closer than you think.” He shoved himself away from her.
“Okay.” Something inside her broke, something she hadn’t realized was there to be damaged. “Okay. I screwed up with you. I figured I’d cut a deal with Anita, take the money and hand you your share. Everybody’s happy. I figured, well, he’ll be a little pissed I did it behind his back, but when he’s got all that green in his hands, how can he complain?”
When he turned back, violence shimmering almost visibly around him, Tia stepped between them. “Stop. Think. What she did made sense. If she’d been dealing with a normal businesswoman, even a dishonest one, it made sense. None of us could have predicted how far Anita would go.”
“What she did was lie.” He ignored Tia’s tugging hand. “To all of us.”
“It started with lies.” Tia’s voice had just enough punch behind it to have Gideon glancing at her. “Trust and full disclosure’s been the main problem here all along. We’re all splintered in different directions, with different goals. Different agendas. And as long as we stay that way, Anita has the advantage. She has one direction, and one goal. Unless we agree on ours, she’s going to win.”
“That’s right.” Malachi laid a hand on Tia’s shoulder, and though she stiffened, she didn’t pull away. “I’m no more pleased about how we got to this point than any of the rest of us. We all, well, all but Tia here, have reasons for regrets. We can stew about them. Or we can punch a few walls. Gid.”
His voice gentled and he waited until his brother turned those angry eyes on him. “Remember the punching bag Da set up at the boatyard? We called it Nigel,” he said to the women. “And we beat hell out of it instead of each other. Most of the time.”
“We’re not boys now.”
“We’re not, no. So instead of sulking off, or finding a handy Nigel, why don’t we start from here? The good news is we have the second Fate. And where might this bank be, Cleo?”
“Over on Seventh.” She dug into her jeans pocket for the key she’d put there that morning. “I have to get it. I have to sign and show ID to get into the box. I can do it in the morning.”
“We’ll do it in the morning,” Gideon corrected. “Right now I want some air. I’m going up to the roof.”
Cleo sat where she was when the door slammed behind him. Then as the shards of what had broken inside her stabbed, she got to her feet. “That went real well.” Appalled that her voice broke, she bore down. “I’m going to take a nap.”
When the office door shut behind her, Tia pushed her hands through her hair. “Oh boy. I never know what to do. I never know what to say.”
“You did and said exactly right. Stop shoving yourself down, Tia. It’s irritating.”
“Well, pardon me. I’m going to go see if I can help Cleo.”
“No, that’s the easy way.” With a small sigh, he touched her shoulder again. “I’ll go talk to Cleo, you try Gideon. Let’s see if we can make this mess we’ve created into some sort of unit.”
He started for the office door, then turned. “You were brilliant with Anita,” he said, then knocked briskly and opened the door without waiting for an invitation.
Cleo lay on her back, on the unmade pullout. She wasn’t crying, but she knew she was working up to a good, explosive jag. “Look, I’ve had enough of the Sullivan brothers for this act. Let’s consider this intermission.”
“That’s too bad because the show’s not over.” He lifted her feet, sat, then dropped them into his lap. “And because this Sullivan brother is willing to admit he might have done exactly as you did. I wouldn’t be proud of it, would look back from here and see all the places where I went wrong, when I should’ve turned right instead of left. But that wouldn’t change a fucking thing, would it?”
“Are you being nice to me so I’ll cooperate? Go, team, go?”
“That’d be a nice benefit, but the fact is, you’ve had a hell of a time, and I’m part of the reason why. Gideon now, he’s not as devious-natured as you and me. Not that he’s a doormat or a fool, but he’s more inclined to say what he thinks and is often annoyed everyone doesn’t do the same. He has a refined sense of fair play, our boy.”
Knowing it, hearing Malachi say it, didn’t go far toward mollifying her. “People who play fair mostly lose.”
“Don’t they just?” He laughed a little and began to rub her feet in a friendly way. “But when they win, they win clean. That matters to him. You matter to him.”
“Maybe did matter.”
“Matter still, darling. I know my brother, so I know that. But not knowing you so well, I have to ask. Does he matter to you?”
She tried to tug her foot out of his hand, but he held it firmly, kept on rubbing. “I wasn’t trying to screw him out of the money.”
“That wasn’t my question. Does he matter to you?”
“Yeah, I guess he does.”
“Then I’ll give you a piece of advice. Fight back. Use shouts and oaths until you’ve burned him out, temper-wise. Or use tears and drown it. Either works with him.”
She shoved a second pillow under her head. “That’s going back to devious, isn’t it?”
“Well.” He patted her foot. “Do you want to win or lose?”
The crying jag had backed off, enough for her to sit up, sniffle once and study him. “I wasn’t sure I’d like you. It’s handy, all things considered, that I do.”
“That’s mutual. So tell me, as it’s a subject that’s been preying on my mind. Do most of the women who work as strippers have the body God gave them, or what medical science can provide?”
TIA WASN’T HAVING as much luck with Gideon. For a time, she just sat quietly in one of the little iron chairs in the roof garden. She rarely came up here, as she didn’t trust the air or the height. Which was a pity, she thought, as she so loved the view of the river.
As she was a woman accustomed to being ignored, she sat while Gideon stood at the stone rail, smoking and brooding in silence.
“We spent days and nights together, running all over goddamn Europe, and she had it in that fucking purse of hers all along.”
Okay, Tia mused, he speaks. That was a start. “It belongs to her, Gideon.”
“That’s not the point.” He spun around, ridiculously handsome, Tia thought, wrapped in his fury. “Did she think I’d cosh her on the head and steal it from her? Sneak out with it in the night after making love with her and leave her in some ugly room alone?”
“I can’t answer that. I wouldn’t have had the nerve to go with you in the first place, or the presence of mind to protect myself—which is what she did. I . . . this is going to sound sexist, but it’s different for a man to go running around Europe with a woman than it is for that woman to go running around with a man. It’s riskier and it’s scarier. It just is.”
“I won’t argue that, but we weren’t together a week when . . . things changed between us.”
“Sex is, in some ways, another scary risk.” She felt heat sting her cheeks as he frowned at her now. “If it had been a matter of using you—which is what you’re thinking—she’d have been the one to sneak out with Lachesis in the night. Instead she brought you here.”
“Then went behind my back and—”
“Made a mistake,” Tia finished. “One that cost her more than it cost you. You and I know what shape she was in when you brought her here. We’re the only ones who know that. And maybe I’m the only one who could see how you were with her. How gentle and kind. How loving.”
He made a short, rude sound and crushed the cigarette under his heel. “She was drunk and sick because I made her that way. What was I supposed to do? Shove her about?”
“You took care of her. And when I heard her wake up crying in the middle of the night, you took care of her again. She was probably too tangled up in her own grief to know that. I’ve never been in love,” she said, taking a few cautious steps toward him, and the wall. And the drop. “So I could be wrong thinking that you’re in love with her. But I know what it is to have feelings for someone stirred up, then be hurt by them.”
“Mal’s sick over that, Tia.” He took her hand, not realizing her instinctive resistance was for the height and not for the gesture. “I promise you.”
“This isn’t about that. I’m just saying that when you’re not so mad, or so hurt, you should try to look at it from her side. Or if you can’t, at least resolve yourself enough so we can work together.”
“We’ll work together,” he promised. “I’ll deal with the rest of it.”
“Good. Good.” Why was it people nervous about heights couldn’t resist looking down from tall buildings? she wondered. Compelled, she stared down at the street until her head spun. She managed a shaky step back, then another. “Whew. Vertigo.”
“Steady now.” He took her arm when she swayed. “You’re fine.”
“I guess I will be. More or less.”
CLEO DIDN’T HAVE a chance to try out Malachi’s advice. It was hard to fight—words or tears—with someone who avoided you as if you carried the plague. It was hard to have a showdown with a man who’d rather spend the night sleeping on the roof of an apartment building in New York than share a corner of the bed with you.
It hurt, in parts of her she hadn’t known she had to hurt. And was worse because she was afraid she deserved it.
“Go there, get it, come back,” Malachi repeated as a gritty-eyed Gideon gulped down a second cup of morning coffee.
“So you’ve said already.”
“Best not to take a straight route either way. The bank’s near enough . . . the other flat,” Malachi decided, with a glance at Cleo. “She might have people watching that general area yet.”
“We kept these guys off our asses all over Europe.” Gideon set his empty cup on the counter, then, at Tia’s meaningful clearing of the throat, picked it up again and rinsed it out in the sink. “We can handle this.”
“Just watch your back. And the rest of you as well.”
Gideon nodded. “Ready?” he asked Cleo.
“Sure.”
Tia linked her fingers together, barely resisted wringing them when Gideon and Cleo walked out her door. “You don’t need to worry about them,” she said as much to herself as Malachi.
“No. They can handle themselves all right.” But he stuck his hands in his pockets and wished, passionately, he hadn’t given up smoking. “It’ll be good to see it, have a good look at it. Be sure it’s authentic.”
“Yes. Meanwhile, I have a lot of work to catch up on.”
“This is the first time we’ve been alone, really. There are things I’d like to say.”
“You’ve said them.”
“Not all of them. Not things I thought of after you’d given me the boot.”
“They’re not applicable now. I haven’t been able to work on my book for days. I’m behind schedule. You can watch television, listen to the radio, read a book. Or go up and jump off the roof. It’s all the same to me.”
; “I appreciate the ability to hold a grudge.” He moved, smoothly, into her path as she started toward her office. “I’ve told you I’m sorry. I’ve told you I was wrong, and that hasn’t budged you a bit. So why not listen to the rest of it?”
“Let’s see . . . could it be that I’m not interested? Yes, that could be it.” She enjoyed hearing the sarcasm in her own voice. It made her feel in charge. “The personal portion of this relationship is over.”
“I disagree with that.”
He took a step toward her; she took one back.
And the retreat, however slight, made her feel vulnerable all over again. “You want to argue about it?” She shrugged, trying to put a little Cleo into it. “I’m not very good at arguing, but in the interest of putting this aside once and for all, I’ll do my best. You treated me like a fool, and worse than that, you made sure I believed you found me attractive, even desirable. And that, Malachi, is contemptible.”
“It would be, right enough, if it were true. The fact is I did find you attractive and desirable, and that was a major dilemma for me.” He watched irritation cross her face. Irritation he knew was rooted in disbelief. So he ignored it. “And so I made my first of several mistakes. Do you know what started me on that series of mistakes where you’re concerned?”
“No. And I don’t care. I’m getting a headache.”
“You’re not. You’re hoping you get a headache so you’ll have something else to think about. It was your voice.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your voice. When I was sitting in that auditorium, and your voice was so pretty, just a little nervous around the edges at first, then it got stronger. Such a nice, flowing voice. I admit I was bored witless about what you were saying, but I liked hearing you say it nonetheless.”
“I don’t see what that—”
“And there were your legs.” He wasn’t stopping now, not when he could see the nerves tangling up with her temper. “I passed the time listening to your voice and admiring your legs.”