Three Fates

better, smarter, worthier than any of the ladies-who-shopped inside that cool, fragrant air, trailing pampered fingers over hand-stitched silks.
    She’d never had a doubt she’d be on the other side, the right side of the glass. She’d never had a doubt she was meant to be.
    She’d had something a great many of the workforce lacked as they’d scrambled to their next hive. A towering ambition and a nearly violent belief in self. She’d never intended to work her life away just to put a roof over her head.
    Unless the roof was spectacular.
    She’d always had a plan. A woman, Anita thought as she pushed back from the rosewood desk, was a man’s toy, his doormat or his punching bag if she didn’t have a plan. And most often, a combination of the three.
    With a plan, and the brains to implement it, he became hers.
    She’d worked hard to get where she was. If marrying a man old enough to be her grandfather wasn’t work, she didn’t know the meaning of the word. When a twenty-five-year-old woman had sex with a sixty-six-year-old man, the woman—by God—worked.
    She’d given Paul Morningside his money’s worth. For twelve long, laborious years. Dutiful wife, faithful assistant, elegant hostess and live-in whore. He’d died a happy man. And not a minute, in Anita’s estimation, too soon.
    Morningside Antiquities was hers now.
    Because it always entertained her, she took a turn around her office, letting her heels sink into the faded wool of the Bokara carpet, click lightly on polished wood. She’d selected every piece personally, from the George III settee to the T’ang horse riding on a shelf of the Regency breakfront.
    It was a mix of styles and eras that appealed to her, an elegant and distinctly female melding, all in superior taste. She’d learned a great deal from Paul, about value, continuity and perfection.
    The colors were soft. She saved the bold and splashy for other areas, but her downtown office was done in quiet female tones. The better to seduce clients and competitors.
    Best of all, she thought as she picked up an opal snuff box, everything in the room had once belonged to someone else.
    There was such a thrill in possessing what had been another’s. It was, to her mind, a kind of theft. A legal one. Even a distinguished one. What could be more exciting?
    She was perfectly aware that after fifteen years, three of them as head of Morningside, some continued to consider her little more than a gold digger.
    They were wrong.
    There had been gossip, there had been snide comments when Paul Morningside had fallen for a woman more than forty years his junior.
    Some had passed her off as a bimbo.
    They’d been very wrong.
    She had been, and was, a beautiful woman who knew exactly how to exploit her attributes. Her hair was flame-red, and at forty, she wore it in a sleek, chin-length sweep to play up smooth, round cheeks and a full, deceptively soft mouth. Her eyes were bright blue and Kewpie-doll wide. Many who’d looked into them found them guileless.
    They were wrong, too.
    She had pale, flawless skin, a small, streamlined nose. And a body a former lover had described as a walking wet dream.
    She presented the package carefully. Tailored suits for business, fashionably elegant gowns for social occasions. Throughout her marriage she’d been meticulous about her behavior, public and private. There might have been some who whispered, but there were no whiffs of scandal, no questionable behavior attached to Anita Gaye.
    Some might continue to look askance, but they accepted her invitations, and they issued them to her in return. They patronized her company, and paid well for the privilege.
    Inside the package was the brain of a born operator. Anita Gaye was the dedicated widow, the society hostess, the respected businesswoman. She intended to live the part for the rest of her days.
    It was, she mused, the longest con on record.
    Gold digger, she thought with a quiet laugh. Oh no, it had never been just about money. It had been about position and power and prestige.
    It was no more about dollars and cents than owning something was about filling space on a shelf. It was about status.
    She crossed to a Corot landscape, pushed a mechanism hidden in the frame to lever out the painting. With quick fingers she punched in her security code on the keypad behind it, input the combination to the safe.
    For her own pleasure, she took out the silver Fate.
    And hadn’t it been fate, she reflected, that had