by Nora Roberts
Tia opened her mouth, then swallowed the placating, agreeable words. “I’m sorry. I hope you feel better soon.”
“Boy, she’s good.” Cleo came out of the kitchen the instant she heard the front door close. “I mean, she’s the champion. Hey.” She walked over to hook an arm around Tia’s waist. “You’ve gotta shake it off, honey. She was doing a number on you.”
“I could’ve gone with her. It would only have taken a little time.”
“Instead you stood up to her. A better choice, if you ask me. What you need is some ice cream.”
“No, but thanks.” She took a deep breath, felt it catch near her sternum, but resolutely pushed it out. Then turned so she could face all of them at once. “I’m embarrassed, I’m tired, and this time I do have a headache. I’d like to apologize for the entire business, all at once. And I’d like to see the Fate, examine it, hopefully verify it before I take some medication, get dressed and go downtown to see my father.”
Malachi held up a hand and showed her the statue his brother had given him in the kitchen.
Without a word, Tia took it into her office, to the desk. There with her glasses perched on her nose, she studied it under a magnifying glass. She felt them hovering behind her as she continued her studies. “We’d be more certain if my father could examine it or, better yet, give it to an expert.”
“We can’t chance that,” Malachi told her.
“No. I certainly won’t risk my father by connecting him. These are the maker’s marks,” she said, tipping the base up. “And, according to my research, they’re correct. You and Gideon are the only ones here who’ve seen Clotho. I’ve only seen photographs and artists’ renderings, but stylistically this is a match. And you see here . . .” She tapped the tip of her pencil on the notches, right and left on the base. “These slots connect her, the middle sister, with Clotho on one side, Atropus on the other.”
She glanced up, waited for Malachi to nod. She took a tape measure out of the drawer, noted down the exact height, width. “Another match. Let’s check weight.”
She took it into the kitchen, used her scale. “It’s exact, down to the gram. If it’s a forgery, it’s a careful one. And the odds of that, given its connection through Cleo, are small. In my not so considered opinion, we have Lachesis. We have the second Fate.”
She set it on the counter, slipped her glasses off and set them beside the statue. “I’m going to get dressed.”
“Tia. Damn it. Give me a minute,” Malachi said to Gideon, then went after her.
“I need to take a shower,” she told him and would have closed the door in his face if he hadn’t just pushed it open. “I need to change and figure out what I’m going to tell my father and what I’m not going to tell him. I’m not as skilled in this game-playing as you are.”
“Are you embarrassed we made love, or embarrassed your mother knows of it?”
“I’m embarrassed period.” She turned into the bathroom, took a bottle of pills out of the medicine cabinet. She took one of the bottles of water she kept in the linen closet and downed a Xanax. “I’m upset that I had an argument with my mother and sent her away unhappy with me. And I’m trying not to imagine her collapsing on the street because I was too busy and disinterested to go with her to her doctor’s appointment.”
“Has she ever collapsed on the street before?”
“No, of course not.” She got out another bottle of pills and took two extra-strength Tylenol for the headache. “She just mentions the possibility of it often enough so the image is always fresh in my mind.”
With a shake of her head, she met his gaze in the mirror. “I’m a mess, Malachi. I’m twenty-nine years old, and I’ve been in therapy for twelve years next January. I have regular appointments with an allergist, an internist and a homeopathic healer. I tried acupuncture, but since I’m phobic about sharp implements, that didn’t last long.”
Even thinking about it made her shudder a little. “My mother’s a hypochondriac and my father’s disinterested,” she continued. “I’m neurotic, phobic and socially inept. I sometimes imagine myself suffering from a rare, lingering disease—or being lactose intolerant. Neither of which is true, at least up till now.”
She braced her hands on the sink because saying it out loud, hearing herself say it out loud, made it all sound so pathetic. “The last time I went to bed with a man—other than this morning—was three years ago in April. Neither of us was particularly delighted with the results. So, what are you doing here?”
“First, I’d like to say that if it’d been over three years since I’d had sex, I’d be in therapy as well.”
He turned her to face him, then kept his hands lightly on her shoulders. “Second, being shy isn’t being socially inept. Third, I’m here because here’s where I want to be. And finally, I’d like to ask if when we’ve got all this business done with, you’d come back to Ireland with me for a bit. I’d like you to meet my own mother, under less touchy circumstances than I met yours. Now look what you’ve done,” he said when the bottle she held slipped out of her hand and hit the floor. “You’ve got those little pills everywhere.”
Eighteen
ANITA considered the possibility of flying to Athens and personally interrogating every antique dealer and collector in the city. Though there would have been something satisfying in this hands-on approach, she couldn’t expect another Fate to simply fall into her lap.
Moreover, she wasn’t willing to go to quite that much trouble on the vague memory of a bumbling fool like Tia Marsh. No, as much as she craved action, it wouldn’t do.
She needed direction, she needed leads. She needed employees who could follow both so she wasn’t required to shoot them in the head.
She sighed over that. She’d been vaguely disappointed that her former employee’s murder had warranted no more than a few lines in the New York Post. Really, that said quite a bit about the world, didn’t it? she mused. When a dead man garnered less press than a pop singer’s second marriage.
It only proved that fame and money ran the show. Something she’d known all her life. Those two elements had been her goal even when she’d been moldering in that lousy third-floor walk-up in Queens. When her name had been Anita Gorinsky, when she’d watched her father work himself to a nub for a stingy paycheck her mother had struggled to stretch week by week.
She’d never belonged there, inside those dingy walls her mother had tried to brighten with flea market art and homemade curtains. She’d never been a part of that world, with its rooms that smelled forever of onions and its tacky hand-crocheted doilies. Her mother’s wide, fresh-scrubbed face and her father’s scarred workingman’s hands had been an embarrassment to her.
She’d detested them for their ordinariness. Their pride in her, their only daughter, their joy in sacrificing so that she could have advantages, had disgusted her.
She’d known, even as a child she’d known she was destined for so much more. But destiny, Anita thought, often needed a helping hand.
She’d taken their money for schooling, for clothes, and had demanded more. She’d deserved it. She’d earned it, Anita thought. Every penny of it she’d earned with every day she’d lived in that horrid apartment.
And she’d paid them back, in her way, by seeing that their investment in her produced considerable dividends.
She hadn’t seen her parents, or her two brothers, in more than eighteen years. As far as the world she now lived in was concerned—as far as she herself was concerned—she had no family.
She doubted anyone from the old neighborhood would recognize little Nita in the woman she’d become. She rose and walked to the giltwood pier glass that reflected the spacious sitting area of her office. Once her hair had been a long fall of mink brown her mother had spent hours brushing and curling. Her nose had been prominent and her front teeth had overlapped. Her cheeks had been soft and round.
A few nips, a couple of tucks, some dental work and a good hairstylist had changed the oute
r package. Streamlined it. She’d always known how to enhance her better assets.
Inside, she was exactly as she’d always been. Hungry, and determined to feed her appetites.
Men, she knew, were always willing to set a full plate in front of a beautiful woman. As long as the man believed the woman would pay with sex, there was no end to the variety of meals.
Now, she was a very wealthy widow—who could buy her own.
Still, men were useful. Think of all the contacts her dear, departed husband had put at her disposal. The fact was, Paul was handier dead than he’d been alive. Widowhood made her even more respectable and available.
Considering, she went back to her desk and opened her husband’s burgundy leather address book. Paul had been very old-fashioned in some respects and had kept his address book meticulously up to date. In the last years, when his hand hadn’t been quite so steady, she’d written in the names herself.
The dutiful wife.
She paged through until she found the name she was looking for. Stefan Nikos. Sixtyish, she recalled. Vital, wealthy. Olive groves or vineyards, perhaps both. She couldn’t quite recall. Nor could she recall if he currently had a wife. What mattered was he had money, power and an interest in antiquities.
She unlocked a drawer, drew out a book of her own. In it, she’d noted down everyone who’d come to her husband’s funeral, what flowers they’d sent. Mr. and Mrs. Stefan Nikos hadn’t made the trip from Corfu, or Athens—they had homes in both places—but had sent an offering of five dozen white roses, a Mass card and, best of all, a personal note of condolence to the young widow.
She picked up the phone, nearly buzzed her assistant to make the call, then reevaluated. Best to make it herself—friend to friend—she decided, and was already practicing the words and tone as she dialed.
She wasn’t put through right away, but she held the line and her temper so that when Stefan picked up, her voice was as warm and welcoming as his.
“Anita. What a wonderful surprise. I must apologize for keeping you waiting.”
“Oh, no. You didn’t. I’m the one who’s surprised I’d be able to reach a busy man like you so easily. I hope you and your lovely wife are well.”
“We are, we are, of course. And you?”
“Fine. Busy, too. Work’s a godsend to me since Paul died.”
“We all miss him.”
“Yes, we do. But it’s wonderful for me to spend my days at Morningside. He’s here, you know, in every corner. It’s important for me to . . . well . . .” She let her voice thicken, just slightly. “It’s very important to keep his memory alive, and to know old friends remember him as I do. I know it’s been a very long time since I contacted you. I’m a bit ashamed of that.”
“Now, now. Time passes, doesn’t it, my dear?”
“Yes, but who knows better than I that one should never let people drift away? And here I am, Stefan, calling you after all this time for a favor. I nearly didn’t.”
“What can I do for you, Anita?”
She liked the fact that a hint of caution had come into his voice. He’d be a man accustomed to hangers-on, to old acquaintances hitting him up for favors. “Yours was the first name I thought of because of who you are, and your friendship with Paul.”
“You are having difficulties with Morningside?”
“Difficulties?” She paused, then let embarrassment, even a touch of horror, color her tone. “Oh no. No, Stefan, nothing like that. Oh, I hope you don’t think I’d call this way to ask for any sort of financial . . . I’m so flustered.”
She twirled, gleefully, in her desk chair. “It concerns a client, and some pieces I’m trying to track down at his behest. Honestly, your name popped into my mind, a kind of shot in the dark, as the pieces are Greek images.”
“I see. Is your client interested in something in my collection?”
“That would depend.” She tried a quiet laugh. “You don’t happen to own the Three Fates, do you?”
“The Fates?”
“Three small silver statues. Individual, that apparently link together by their bases to make a set.”
“Yes, I have heard of them, but only as a kind of story. Statues forged on Olympus that will, if complete, grant the owner anything from eternal life to untold fortunes, even the fabled three wishes, one for each Fate.”
“Legends increase the value of a piece.”
“Indeed they do, but it was my impression that these pieces were lost, if they ever existed in the first place.”
“I believe they existed,” she said, running a fingertip over the statue of Clotho, which sat now on her desk. “Paul often spoke of them. More to the point, my client believes it. To be frank, Stefan, he’s piqued my interest enough that I’ve made some inquiries, started considerable legwork. One source, which appears to be valid, insists that one of the statues, the third one, is in Athens.”
“If this is so, it’s not come to my ear.”
“I’m tugging on any line at this point. I hate to disappoint a client. I was hoping you could make some discreet inquiries. If I can possibly get away in the next few weeks, I’d love to take a trip to Greece myself. Combine business and pleasure.”
“Of course you must come, and stay with us.”
“I couldn’t impose.”
“The guest house here in Athens or our villa on Corfu are at your disposal. Meanwhile, I’ll be happy to make those discreet inquiries.”
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. My client is somewhat eccentric, and very much obsessed just now with these pieces. If I could locate even one, it would mean a great deal. I know Paul would be so proud to know that Morningside had a part in finding the Fates.”
Pleased with herself, Anita made a second, personal call. She glanced at her watch, flipped through her day-book and calculated when she could most conveniently squeeze in the meeting she intended to set up.
“Burdett Securities.”
“Anita Gaye for Jack Burdett.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Gaye, Mr. Burdett is unavailable. May I take a message?”
Unavailable? Stupid twit, don’t you know who I am? Anita set her teeth. “It’s very important I speak with Mr. Burdett as soon as possible.”
Instantly, she thought. She had a second-tier plan to put into motion.
“I’ll see he gets your message, Ms. Gaye. If you’d give me a number where he can reach you, I’ll—”
“He has my numbers. All of them.”
She slammed down the phone. Unavailable, her ass. He’d best make himself available, and soon.
She wasn’t about to let Cleo Toliver and the second Fate slip through her fingers. Jack Burdett was just the man to run them down for her.
HE WAS ON the phone himself. In fact, Jack had spent most of the trans-Atlantic flight on the phone, or on his laptop. For herself, Rebecca watched two movies. Actually, one and a half, as she’d fallen asleep during the second. And had yet to forgive herself for wasting a single minute of the flight in sleep.
She’d never flown first-class before, and had decided it was a method of travel she could easily grow accustomed to.
She wanted to use the phone herself, to call her mother, to call her brothers. But she didn’t think the current budget would swing for that sort of expense. And she could hardly ask Jack to pay for it.
At the rate they were going she was a little concerned he’d think she was only interested in his money. That was hardly the case, though she didn’t consider his money a strike against him.
She’d liked watching him with his great-grandparents. He’d been so sweet and so gentle with them. Not sappily so, she thought now. So many, to her mind, treated the elderly as if they were children, or inconveniences, or simply oddities.
There’d been none of that with Jack. It said something about a man, in her opinion, when he had an easy and natural way with his family.
Of course he was a bit too bossy for her usual taste, but she had to be honest enough to admit
that men who fell in line whenever she snapped her fingers annoyed the very hell out of her.
He was a pleasure to look at as well, and that was no more strike against him than his wallet. And he was smart—more, he was canny. Since she was trusting him with a great deal, it helped knowing she’d put her faith in a canny sort of man.
She shifted, started to speak to him, and saw he was making yet another call. Although a bit annoyed, Rebecca promised she wouldn’t point out he’d barely said two words to her in more than five hours.
“Message from Anita Gaye,” Jack said suddenly.
“What? She called you? What did she want?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Are you ringing her back?”
“Eventually.”
“Why don’t you do it now so we know—”
“Let her stew awhile, that’s one. Second, I don’t want her to know I’m on a plane, and we’re about to start the final approach with all the accompanying announcements. If she’s calling, she wants something. We’ll just let her want it for a while longer.”
NEW YORK WAS a thrill, and though Rebecca didn’t want to behave like a slack-jawed tourist, she intended to enjoy every minute of it. There were important things to do, and vital business to attend to, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t hug the excitement of being there, of finally being somewhere, tight against her.
It was everything she imagined. The sleek towers of buildings, the acres of shops, the fast and crowded streets. To see them for the first time while being whisked along in a limousine—a genuine limousine as big as a boat, with seats of buttery leather and a uniformed driver complete with cap—was the most delicious of adventures.
She could barely wait to call her mother and tell her about it. And oh, how her fingers itched to flip and fiddle with all the little switches. She sent Jack a sidelong look. He was sitting, legs stretched out, dark glasses in place with his hands folded restfully over his stomach.