Three Fates

have to deal with them.”
    “I’ve been dealing with them.” She shoved at him. “I’ve been dealing with them all along. And it’s not fair. I don’t care that life doesn’t have to be fair, because this is my life. And I can’t make it easy on you, no matter how often I told myself I would. I want you to go stay at Jack’s. You can’t be here with me, it’s too much.”
    “You’re tossing me out? Before I go, I’ll know why,” he said and grabbed her.
    “It’s too much, I said. I’ll finish what we started, and I won’t let the others down. But I won’t, I will not be the quiet, unassuming lover who makes it convenient for you when it’s over and you walk away, when you go back to Ireland and pick up your life where you left it off. Where you leave me off. For once, I’m doing the ending, and I’m telling you to go.”
    “Have I ever asked you to be quiet or unassuming?”
    “No. You changed my life, thank you very much. There.” She tried to twist away and was hauled back. “You want more? Fine. It’s very considerate of you to be honest enough to tell me it’s all temporary—lives bumping together and moving on. You’ve got a home and a business to run in Ireland. So good luck.”
    “You’re a confusing woman, Tia, and a great deal of work.”
    “I’m a very simple woman, and extremely low maintenance.”
    “Bollocks. You’re a maze, and constantly fascinating to me. Let’s just back all this up, for clarity’s sake. In your opinion, I was about to tell you this morning that it’s been nice, it’s been fun, and very pleasurable as well. I’d probably add that I’m quite fond of you, and knowing you to be a quiet, unassuming woman—ha ha—I’m sure you’ll understand that when this business is done, then so are we.”
    The image of him was hazed through tears. For the first time she wished, viciously, that he was ordinary—to look at, to speak with. To make love with.
    “It doesn’t matter what you would have said because I’m saying it now.”
    “Oh it matters,” he disagreed. “I’m thinking it matters. So I’ll tell you what it is I realized I should have told you before. I love you. That’s what I should have told you before. What do you think of that?”
    “I don’t know.” A tear spilled over now, but she didn’t notice. “Do you mean it?”
    “Of course not.” He laughed as her mouth fell open, then scooped her off her feet. “What, I’m a liar now as well? I love you, Tia, and if I changed your life, you changed mine right back. If you think I can pick up where I left off before you, then you are stupid.”
    “Nobody ever said that to me before.”
    “That you’re stupid?”
    “No.” She touched his face as he sat on the side of the bed with her in his lap. “‘I love you.’ No one’s ever said that to me.”
    “Then you’ll have to make do with me telling you, until you’re tired of hearing it.”
    She shook her head as her heart swelled. “No one’s ever said it to me, so I never had the chance to say it back. Now I do. I love you. I love you, Malachi.”
    Spinning threads, she thought as she pressed her lips to his. Spinning them into yet another pattern. If her thread was cut short, she could look back at this moment and have no regrets.

Twenty-eight
     
     
     
     
    S HE was close. She knew it.
    She’d spent hours combing trinket shops, more paying calls on antique and art houses with the pretense of doing business. She’d had endless, and so far fruitless, conversations with local collectors she’d tagged thanks to Stefan.
    To reward herself Anita enjoyed a long, cold drink at a shady table by the sparkling pool beside the Nikoses’ guest house.
    Despite his introductions to collectors, Stefan wasn’t being as helpful as she’d hoped.
    Hospitable enough, she mused as she sipped her frothy mimosa. He and his dull wife had welcomed her with open arms. Another time, she’d have relished the time in the spectacular white house flowing over the hills above Athens, with its acres of gardens, its army of servants and its cool, fragrant courtyards.
    It was very satisfying to stretch out here on thick cushions beside a shimmering pool fed by a fountain depicting Aphrodite, to scan the sheltering trees and flowers under a hot blue sky and know that she had only to lift a finger and anything—anything—her appetites craved would be brought to her.
    That was the silken shelter of true wealth, true privilege, where there