Cursed by Love

by Jacie Floyd

  “If you know American history from the early nineteen hundreds, you might have heard of Jebediah. He was a financier with grandiose ideas. They say he made and lost three fortunes before he was thirty-five. But rich or poor, he hobnobbed with all the important players of the day.”

  Moly snapped her fingers. “A flamboyant speculator along the lines of Diamond Jim Brady, right?”

  “That’s what they say.” And it explained a lot about the subsequent line of Shaws—spectacular losses, minus Jebediah’s spectacular successes, but big dreamers everyone. Except for Gabe. Soul-sucking reality was challenging enough for him.

  She ticked through the generations on her fingers. “Your grandfather, his father named Jonas, and his grandfather Jebediah. Does your grandfather remember Jebediah?”

  “No, when Jonas was still a boy, a Model-T backfired and spooked a horse that trampled Jebediah. That was way before Granddad’s time. Some people thought Jebediah’s death was intentional—murdered over a deal gone bad, but that was never proved. Family legend says he received the Lotus as an engagement gift.”

  “An engagement gift!” Her eyes lit up with excitement. “Really? From whom?”

  “Good question, but Granddad doesn’t know the answer.”

  “And your great-great-grandmother didn’t survive to tell anyone the tale?”

  “Nope, she died having Jonas. The gift apparently would have been for his second marriage to some opera singer, but the wedding never took place.”

  “Opera singer?” Molly’s already wide eyes grew wider. She leaned toward him with new urgency. “What was her name?”

  “Bella Simone, according to Granddad.”

  “That’s it! That’s the link!” Molly exclaimed. “We did it!”

  “What did we do?” He put his hand on her arm as if to keep her grounded, but really, he just wanted an excuse to touch her.

  “Bella Simone was my great-great-grandmother.” A confident head toss sent her hair fluttering around her glowing face. Her eyes glittered with excitement. She threw her arms around him for a quick hug, rubbed against him, then jerked away. “One of my family’s two claims to fame.”

  Whistling his surprise, Gabe’s head spun with desire while barely hanging onto the thread of the conversation. “What happened to her?”

  “She died.” Molly paused, building the suspense. “On the Titanic.”

  He ignored the dramatic delivery and mentally did the math. “That would have been two years after Jebediah bit the dust.”

  “Sensitively put.” Molly’s face pulled into a pained expression. “But yes. She’d been singing to packed houses in London, and her manager-slash-husband at the time wanted to take her home in style. Plus, they were eager to get back to the States, because they’d left their infant daughter with Bella’s sister, Rose.”

  Molly straightened her shoulders. Gabe’s gaze was drawn to the undulating flag on the front of her shirt. With her charms jingling on her bracelet, she tapped her index finger against her lips. “So, Jebediah and Bella didn’t marry after they received the Sleeping Lotus as a betrothal gift, and both of them died tragically. Coincidence? I think not.”

  Gabe glared in Molly’s direction. “Don’t start about the curse. Life was uncertain in those days.” The way she looked today, he’d follow her almost anywhere. But not down that road, not in the direction of pure hogwash. “Bad things happened to people all the time, even to nice people. And by all reports, Jebediah wasn’t all that nice.”

  The shrug of her shoulders sent the flag waving once again. “All right, I won’t go there until I know more. But while we’re here, I may as well do some research. If you want to keep on with—” she gestured to the laptop screen, “whatever you were doing, I can look through these reference books for information about the curse—er, I mean, the carving.”

  He reached out to raise the screen, but thought better of it as a couple of teens in baggy shorts with huge sports’ logo shirts and expensive trainers shuffled nearby. While he waited for the boys to move on, he tapped the ten-pound tome on the top of Molly’s stack of reading material. “Where did you get those?”

  “I called this afternoon and asked the librarian to dig up some material for me.”

  “Good thinking.” He watched as two giggling teenage girls wiggled into the room, homing in on the boys. “But unnecessary. I can locate anything we need on the Internet in five minutes or less.”

  She leaned back and gave him an indecipherable look. “I’m old-school, I guess. Using the Internet is definitely the way to go if I’m desperate at two o’clock in the morning to find out the gestation period of gerbils or the weight of Jupiter. But otherwise, it’s too surreal, too unconnected. I prefer to have an actual book in my hands, or I don’t feel like I’m learning.” She ducked her head. “For me a brick-and-mortar library is a place of knowledge where anyone can come to be enlightened. For free.”

  Gabe had lived and breathed computer-anything since he’d played his first game of Mario Brothers when he was six. After rescuing the princess, he’d taken the system apart to figure out how it worked. Now, rubbing his chin, he searched for a response that would rescue her from the dark ages and into the enlightened world of technology.

  “Books have their place, but they’re restricted by the author’s thoughts and knowledge. The scope of the information you can find through the Internet is unlimited.”

  She stopped riffling through the volume in front of her and looked up. “But not the depth.”

  “No matter how huge or intricate the system, all the pieces fit and interlink together, superseding all the previously accepted boundaries of time and space. All the knowledge in the universe is available at my fingertips. And with a little probing, it’s easy to figure out where to look.”

  She gestured around them, a little bit shocked. “Don’t you feel the same way about the library? The Internet might offer a thousand answers, but a librarian will provide the right one.”

  “Sometimes I don’t know what answer I need until I start looking. And you have to physically be here in the library to access this information. I can mine the ‘net from anywhere. Information retrieval from the library is limited to the armload of books you can carry home. What if you don’t check out the right one? Or someone already has the book you want? Or the one you want can’t be checked out?”

  “There are ways around those problems.” Her chin lifted to a stubborn angle. “And who’s to say the information on the Internet is accurate?”

  “Who’s to say the information in books is accurate? Books can be wrong, too, you know. There were books published contradicting Newton. How many books challenge evolution? Or the first moon landing? Or the holocaust?”

  Her mulish expression and the set of her shoulders became less flexible the more he talked. However, he was just as determined to persuade her to his point of view as she was to stick to hers.

  “Let’s have a contest,” he suggested. “What do you want to research?”

  “I thought I’d try to uncover the facts about the curse.”

  “‘Facts about the curse’, huh? That seems like a contradiction, but if that’s how you want to spend our time, I’m game.” He drummed his fingers against the table, mentally preparing his challenge. “I’ll bet I can find out about the curse on my laptop faster than you can find the same information in a book.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “What’s the wager?”

  Without much hope of getting her agreement, he ventured, “Exclusive rights to the Sleeping Lotus?”

  “No.”

  “The exclusive right to decide the disposition of the Sleeping Lotus?”

  “Don’t push your luck. How about the winner treats the loser to a Graeters ice cream?”

  “Now, that’s tempting. I’ve had a craving for orange sherbet lately, but let’s make the outcome more interesting.” If Gabe had to romance her to coax her cooperation on the Lotus, he didn’t have much time. He’d need bigger
stakes than ice cream. “How about dinner and a movie?”

  “Hmmm, possibly.” Molly pinched her lower lip between her fingers while she considered. “Who gets to pick the time and place?”

  No way would he risk having her refuse the wager based on anything as immaterial as food choice or viewing preferences. “If I win, you do. If you win, you do. Shake on it?” Holding out his hand, Gabe forced the issue.

  Molly nodded and slid her soft, small hand inside his. He wrestled with himself to let her go after she sealed the deal with business-like efficiency. “When do we start?”

  “Game on,” he said with a wink. “One, two, three, go.”

  “Cheat.” She made the accusation as she flew into action. She flipped pages, marked passages, amassed other tomes, and ran her finger down indexes.

  Gabe set to work on his keyboard and located curse sites with no trouble at all. His only problem was his concentration.

  Or lack of it.

  With Molly sitting innocently across the table, her delicious orange scent swirled around him. Her simplest gesture, like stretching on a yawn, or nibbling her bottom lip, distracted him. Silver-tipped fingernails tapped against her chin while she concentrated.

  Her charm bracelet tinkled when she tucked her chin-length hair behind her ears, revealing tiny silver unicorn earrings that fascinated him.

  His mouth went dry when she reached up for a book on a top shelf and her shirt rode up, exposing a smooth expanse of lickable lower back with a tramp-stamp of a thumbprint-sized dragon with colorful wings.

  When she returned to the table, he noticed a ring decorating one of her toes. And then her toenails—painted the same shade of shiny as her fingernails—drew his eyes to the most adorable feet he’d ever seen.

  Adorable feet? Oh, come on. He shook his head. He’d never had a foot fetish before this. Get a grip. So she had feet. Didn’t everyone?

  Disgusted with himself, he turned the laptop at a ninety-degree angle away from her, removing her tempting face, form, back, and yes—feet—from his line of sight.

  Much better. Now he could think straight.

  Within seconds, he found what he needed. He quickly read over the wording of Li-Wang’s curse, groaning at the reaction he expected from Molly when she heard about it. But then he skimmed down to the next paragraph. Some people, the web source claimed, believed the Sleeping Lotus held potent powers, like an aphrodisiac. Just as James had indicated.

  Apparently, when the two pieces fit together, they produced a powerful essence that stimulated sexual awareness, arousal, potency, even endurance.

  Holy crap. Had the ancient equivalent of Viagra prompted the clinch he and Molly shared? Had the attraction he felt toward her intensified before or after James linked the jade halves? He honestly couldn’t remember. He looked up to find Molly studying him with a puzzled expression. “What?”

  “I found the information about the curse.”

  “Me, too.” He sounded normal, but his mind continued to trip over the aphrodisiac bit. Had that been part of the information she’d uncovered too? “Did you just locate it?”

  “A few minutes ago. I read some of the information first.”

  “Me, too.”

  Her luscious mouth turned down at the corners. “So the bet’s a draw? A tie? That’s no fun. What do we do about that?”

  “We’ll work something out.” He gestured to the place she’d marked in her book. “Read yours first.”

  She cleared her throat. “‘When the root of the male symbol joins together with the open petals of the female, the Sleeping Lotus bestows passion, good fortune, and fertility upon its possessors. Separate Yin from Yang by design or fate, the hearts, spirits and souls of the possessors are doomed to unrequited love, loneliness, misery, and death.’” She looked up and licked her lips, before continuing. “‘Only those with true love in their hearts can keep the segments joined throughout eternity.’” Her voice rose on the last words and she ended the quotation on a strangled note. “What does yours say?”

  “Nearly the same.”

  “But what does it mean? Damned if we do, damned if we don’t?” She clutched his sleeve with strong fingers. Her luminous blue eyes swam with tears.

  Both his sister and his niece knew tears were the way to win any argument with him. When faced with female weeping, his sole instinct was to make-it-all-better. But he couldn’t let a few tears from Molly force him into buying this baloney about a curse. For her sake as well as his. “Only if you believe in such tripe.”

  “This is worse than I thought.” She jumped up and began gathering her stuff. “Much worse.”

  Try as he might, Gabe couldn’t contain a snort of disbelief. “It’s bull.”

  “You think so?” Molly drew back with indignation. “Well, how about this? When my grandmother was expecting my mother, my great-grandmother Dora died. That’s when Nonna inherited the Lotus petals. Her husband died rather spectacularly in an International incident during the Cold War just a few weeks later.”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “What kind of International incident?”

  “Did you ever hear of John Eckert?”

  “Hmmm.” The name sounded familiar. Gabe typed “John Eckert” in a search and scanned the first result. “US pilot shot down spying on Russia?”

  “So they said.”

  Reaching for her hand, he rubbed his thumb against her silky palm, hoping to soothe her with his touch. “Was it true?”

  “According to family legend…” She exhaled a deep breath. “Probably. The government never acknowledged it, but they settled a boatload of money on my grandmother so she wouldn’t press for more information than they wanted to provide.”

  Gabe adopted the reasonable voice that usually succeeded with everyone from his overly-excitable relatives to recalcitrant clients. “I’m sure that was rough on your grandmother and your mother, but a lot of military men die in unfair situations.”

  Molly’s eyes followed the repetitive motion of his thumb for a moment before she pushed on. “A month after Nonna died and my mother inherited the Lotus petals, my father left her and filed for divorce.”

  “Sad, but people get divorced all the time.”

  “Not my parents.” Molly’s voice rose in volume. Heads around the room turned toward her. She moderated her tone, and pulled her hand from his. “Not after more than thirty years of being happily married.”

  If Gabe were of a mind to be moved, or under almost any other circumstance, the hurt in Molly’s eyes would have done the trick. But he was a desperate man who needed money and that meant discrediting the idea of a curse. “He can’t have been happy or he wouldn’t have left.”

  She dismissed the comment with a sniff. “And a month later, when I‘d taken the Lotus petals home with me, my fiancé called off our engagement.”

  “You were engaged?” His heart dipped a little. The knowledge that she’d very recently loved someone else, might very well still love that someone, and that the ingrate might very well have broken her superstitious little heart, damn him, put Gabe on edge.

  He wanted to offer words of comfort, but in his world of intellect and reasoned action, he’d never been good at sentiment. He felt an overwhelming urge to throttle the man who’d hurt Molly. Instead, Gabe reached out again, patting the back of her hand. She turned the hand palm up and curled her fingers around his.

  She nodded. “Briefly.”

  “You don’t believe it was just a matter of your fiancé being a jerk? Or of extremely bad timing?” He knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words came out of his mouth.

  She snatched her hand away from his, outrage shining behind the sheen of tears. “Of course, I don’t. Both relationships were fine until the Sleeping Lotus entered the picture.”

  “Maybe,” he allowed.

  “What about your side? Is the Jebediah/Bella relationship the only unsuccessful one in the Shaw family tree?”

  He thought of his father, his grandfather, his
sister, even his own miserable track record. It would be all too easy to blame the hardwired irresponsibility of most of the Shaws on something as impersonal and random as a curse.

  In reality, he believed they’d gained their reputations through generations of selfishness, abandoning the ones who cared about them and deserting the ones who needed them the most. “Not by a long shot, but not because of any curse.”

  “Then what do you blame it on?”

  He’d never given it any thought before. “Genetics? Most of the male Shaws are like Jebediah—irresponsible schemers with big dreams. They enjoy life on a grand scale, and don’t bother with trivialities like the women and children in their lives, or responsibility and dependability.”

  Their eyes met, their gazes connected, and he felt like she was seeing deep inside him. “You’re not like that.”

  He liked it that she thought so, even on such short acquaintance, although her assumption wasn’t entirely correct. He entertained more potential for irresponsibility then most people realized. But that was his dirty little secret, and he wasn’t about to share it with her.

  “I’m trying to make damned sure the flawed gene skips this generation.” He’d worked too hard, for too long, and he wasn’t going to let anyone under his protection sink. There were too many of them depending on him.

  He intended to drag the current generation of Shaw men into line, kicking and screaming, if it killed him. Uncle Harold. Lenny. Terry. Dominic. They were borderline, but all of them had potential. Except maybe for Harold.

  And Gabe wouldn’t let any stupid curse prove otherwise. With a surge of determination, he closed his laptop. “Are we done here? What do you want to do now?”

  “I want to go explain to my mother why her marriage broke up.” Molly closed a thick volume on the table with a snap. “And tell her not to plan any ocean cruises.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Gabe heard himself say.

  It spoke volumes about her state of mind that she didn’t object.

  Chapter Five

  When Molly turned into the driveway of her mother’s two-story traditional brick house on a neatly upscale cul de sac in Blue Ash, her father’s shiny new Jaguar lurked at the curb. The temptation to leave pulled at her. But before she could get the car in reverse, Gabe pulled his Harley in behind her, blocking the drive.