Three Fates

“No receipt?”
    “I might have thought to ask for one if she hadn’t been undoing my trousers at the time. We had sex, and we had wine. Or I had wine. The bitch must’ve put something in it because I didn’t wake up until past noon the next day. She was gone, and so was the Fate.”
    “She drugged you?”
    He caught the edge of disbelief, set his teeth. “I don’t pass out near to twelve hours on a bounce and two glasses of wine. I didn’t believe it myself at first. I went to Morningside and was told she was in meetings and unavailable. I left messages there and at her hotel. She never returned them. When finally I managed to contact her after she’d come back to New York, she told me she had no idea who I was or what I was talking about, and not to bother her again.”
    It wasn’t easy hazing the image of him and Anita romping in a hotel bed, but she worked at it so she could think clearly. “You’re telling me that Anita Gaye, of Morningside Antiquities, drugged you unconscious after sleeping with you, then stole from you, then denied ever meeting you?”
    “I’ve just said so, haven’t I? Made a fool of me in the bargain, using sex, pretending to care—” He broke off when he caught Tia’s arch look.
    “Yes, it’s mortifying, isn’t it?”
    “This wasn’t the same.” But his stomach pitched nearly to his knees. “Not at all the same.”
    “Just because we didn’t get to the . . . ‘bounce’ doesn’t change the intent, or the result. You could’ve approached me directly, honestly. You chose not to.”
    “I did. As far as I knew you might’ve been as calculating as she was. Or, failing that, how could I know if you wouldn’t get it into your head to push some claim on the Fate?”
    He lifted his hands. What had seemed perfectly reasonable, certainly necessary at the time, now looked very cold, and very ugly.
    “It may not have come to me by a tidy route, Tia, but it’s been ours for almost ninety years. And when we found out about there being three of them, and what that meant, it changed things considerably. Part of it’s just wanting back what’s ours, and the other, well, damn it, we’re talking a lot of money. Great pots of money. We can use it. Ireland’s booming at the present, and if we had more to work with, we could expand our business.”
    “Your shipping business?” she asked dryly and saw he had the grace to look embarrassed.
    “It’s boats anyway. We run tours out of Cobh and around the Head of Kinsale. Still have a hand in fishing as well. I thought you’d be more comfortable with me if you believed I was in your circle of things.”
    “So, you considered me shallow.”
    He let out a breath, met her eyes directly. “I expected you to be. I was wrong.”
    “You were going to come back here with me tonight, go to bed with me. That’s cold. That’s despicable. You used me, right from the beginning, a means to an end, as if I had no feelings. I never mattered to you at all.”
    “That’s not true.” He crossed to her then, and though she held her arms rigidly at her sides, gripped her hands. “I won’t have you think that.”
    “When you came up to me the first time, when you smiled at me, asked me to go for a walk, it meant nothing to you. I meant nothing. All you wanted was to see if I could be of any use, nothing more or less.”
    “I didn’t know you. At first, you were just a name, just a possibility. But—”
    “Please. Is this the part where you tell me everything changed once you got to know me, to care about me? Spare us both that particular cliché.”
    “I got tangled up being with you, Tia. That wasn’t part of my plan.”
    “Your plan’s a mess. Let go of my hands.”
    “I’m sorry I hurt you.” It was pitiful, but he could think of nothing else. “I swear to God I never meant to.”
    “Let go of my hands,” she repeated. When he did, she stepped back. “I can’t help you, and wouldn’t now if I could. But you can comfort yourself that I’ll be no help to Anita Gaye, either. I’m useless to both of you.”
    “You’re not useless, Tia. Not to anyone. And I’m not speaking of the Fates.”
    She only shook her head. “It’s all we have to speak of. Now I’m tired. I’d like you to go.”
    “I don’t want to leave it like this.”
    “I’m afraid you’ll have to. I really have no more to say to you, at least nothing more that would be the least bit constructive.”
    “Throw something, then,” he suggested.