Three Fates

have—”
    “They will, I imagine. Oh, it’s shocking.” He snuck a hand up to stroke her breast.
    “Don’t tease me.”
    “I can’t help it, any more than I can help wanting you again. I like you out of bed, Tia, but I have to tell you.” He bit her earlobe and made her shiver. “I surely like you in it as well. I’m just going to take a few more minutes here, and show you.”
    “We have to get up, right now,” she began, but his tongue slid down to her breasts. “Well. Well, I guess a few more minutes won’t make any difference.”

Seventeen
     
     
     
     
    G IDEON Sullivan should give lessons on payback, Cleo decided. He should write a goddamn book on it.
    HOW TO MAKE YOUR LOVER FEEL LIKE SLIME IN TEN EASY LESSONS
    But there was no way she was going to break. He could be cold; she’d be colder. He could speak in monosyllables. Well then, she’d communicate in grunts.
    If he thought the fact that he’d chosen to sleep on the stupid roof rather than share a piece of the bed with her hurt her feelings, he’d miscalculated.
    She wished it had rained. Buckets.
    They used the subway, which was, Cleo thought, the perfect venue for a stony silence. She sat with her well-developed New York stare into middle distance while he read a tattered paperback edition of Ulysses.
    Guy should lighten up, she thought to herself. Anybody who chose, of his own free will, to read James Joyce for pleasure wasn’t her type anyway.
    He probably figured she’d never cracked a book in her life.
    Well, he was wrong. She liked to read as much as the next guy, but she didn’t choose to spend her spare time wading through some metaphoric jungle of depression and despair.
    She’d just leave that to Slick, who was so goddamn Irish he probably bled green.
    She got to her feet at their stop. Gideon simply marked his place in the book and shuffled off the car with her. She was too busy sulking to notice how his gaze swept over the others who got off, or the way he angled his body to shield hers. He followed her through the tunnels to the crosstown train.
    He stood patiently on the platform while she tapped her foot, shifted her weight.
    “Don’t think we were followed,” he said quietly.
    She nearly jolted at the sound of his voice, which irritated her enough that she forgot to grunt in response. “Nobody knows we’re at Tia’s, so they can’t follow us.”
    “They may not know we’re at Tia’s, but someone might be watching her building. I wouldn’t want to lead them to her or let them scamper along after us.”
    He was right, and it reminded her she’d led someone to Mikey. “Maybe I should just throw myself in front of the next oncoming train. Maybe that would be enough penance for you.”
    “That’s a bit over the top, and self-defeating. At least until you get the statue out of the bank.”
    “It’s all you ever wanted anyway.”
    The platform vibrated with the sound of the crosstown train. “It must comfort you to think that.”
    She shoved herself, blindly, into the subway car, all but hurled herself into a seat. He took one across from her, opened his book, began to read.
    And kept reading when the ride bumped and juggled the words on the page. There was no point in arguing with her, he reminded himself. Every reason not to do so in public. The priority was to get to the bank, retrieve the Fate, get it back to Tia’s. Quietly and unobtrusively.
    After that a good shouting row might be in order. Though he could hardly see what good it would do. Despite the enforced intimacy they were, at the base, strangers. Two people from different places, with different ideas. And different agendas.
    If he’d let himself think of them as more, had let his feelings for her tangle up with the reality of things, that was his problem.
    His primary quest, so to speak, had been Lachesis. And so, shortly, that part of the journey would end.
    He wished he could go back to Cobh, back to the boatyard and work off some of this excess energy and heat by scraping hulls or some damn thing. But the second Fate was only one of three, and he had a feeling it would be some time before he saw home again.
    He felt her move, caught the flash of the blue shirt she’d borrowed from his brother as she rose onto those endless legs of hers. He got up, shoved the book in his jacket pocket.
    She strode onto the platform and away as if she were in a great hurry. But then as everyone else did the same, Gideon doubted anyone would take notice.