Three Fates

by Nora Roberts

  “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 sleep 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.

  PART TWO

  Measuring

  I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

  T. S. ELIOT

  Ten

  “SUGARPLUM, I’m not sure you’re doing the right thing here.”

  “I’m doing the smart thing,” Cleo insisted. “The smart thing’s always the right thing.”

  “Whatever’s going on between you and Gideon is going to get screwed up.” Mikey shook his head as they hit the bustle of Broadway and squeezed through the eastbound crosswalk traffic. “I’ve got a good feeling about you two, and you’re going to fuck it over before you get it started.”

  “You’re too romantic for your own good.”

  “Can’t be,” he disagreed. “Romance turns sex into art. Without it, it’s just a messy, sweaty business.”

  “That’s why you get your heart broken, Mikey, and I don’t.”

  “A little heartbreak would do you good.”

  “Don’t sulk.” Because she knew he would, she slid an arm around his waist as they turned on the corner of Seventh and Fifty-second and headed north. “Besides, I’m doing this for him as well as myself. Once Anita’s got the Fate, she’ll leave him alone, and he’ll have a big fat pile of money out of it. The statue is mine, after all. I don’t have to share, but I’m going to.”

  She gave him a quick squeeze as she swung into the bank. “Let’s make this as fast as we can. If I don’t meet him by one, he’s going to ask questions, and,” she added, dropping her voice as they stepped into the quiet lobby, “he’s got something going himself right this minute, or he’d never have agreed so easily to me heading out to run some errands without him.”

  “Your trouble, Cleopatra, is you’re a cynic.”

  “You try working a few months in a strip club in the Czech Republic,” she chided. “We’ll see if you come out of it with a Pollyanna complex.”

  “You didn’t go into this with one,” he pointed out, and she gave him a smirk as she stepped up to a teller.

  “I need to get a safe-deposit box.”

  WHEN SHE WALKED back out on Seventh, the Fate was safely locked in the vault. Both she and Mikey had keys. That, she’d calculated, was the smartest move. If there was any trouble, which she didn’t anticipate, he could retrieve the statue in her stead.

  “Okay, now I make the call, set up the meet. Someplace public,” she added as she held out a hand for Mikey’s cell phone. “But where it’s unlikely anyone we know will come by and recognize us.”

  “It’s like a spy thriller.” And because he loved a good melodrama, Mikey grinned as he handed her his phone.

  “It’s business. And I’ve got the perfect spot for it.” She pulled out the scrap of paper on which she’d written the number for Morningside, and dialed as they walked toward Sixth. “Anita Gaye, please. It’s Cleo Toliver. I think she’ll recognize the name and speak with me. Now. If she doesn’t, just tell her I’m calling to discuss the price of fate. Yes, that’s right.”