Cursed by Love (5 page)

Not sell the Sleeping Lotus?

Gabe couldn’t believe the delectable
Molly Webber could be so impractical.

He juggled grocery bags and pushed his
way through the back door of the small, shabby rental he shared with his
grandfather, sister, and niece. Suspended on the verge of optimism for the
first time in a long time, he ignored the worn linoleum and clutter that
obscured the chipped Formica counter. The house was better than some of the
dumps he’d lived in as a child, but a far cry from the upscale condo he’d lived
in last year. Maybe he’d be able to return to that level of comfort again
someday.

“Granddad!” He shoved a stack of mail
aside to dump the bags on the counter. “I’m home.”

Since the television blared in the next
room, he stopped to put away the box of
Dreamsicles
he’d bought on impulse. He stuck a frozen pizza into the oven, before following
Alex
Trebek’s
voice into the living room.

The small space was crammed full of one
after another of his grandfather’s former interests. Stamp-collecting… cameras…
partially constructed model ships… baseball cards… a telescope. Varied,
fascinating, and now, abandoned. Gabe always worried about what the old guy
would get interested in next. Some hobbies had been more affordable than
others. He wondered if it would be worthwhile to resell any of them.

“Normandy,” his grandfather shouted from
his recliner. “What is Normandy?”

Gabe nabbed the remote and lowered the
volume. “He can’t hear you, no matter how loud you yell. And you can only hear
me if you wear your hearing aid. Where is it?”

“In the bedroom.” As usual, Granddad
roared the answer, as if Gabe had the hearing problem.

He cupped his hand around his mouth like
a megaphone. “Where are Sierra and Chloe?” He loved his grandfather, but
sometimes communicating with him gave him a headache.

“Sierra’s at the office. She’s as bad as
you are, working all the time. Chloe’s eating and playing at her friend
Isabel’s house.”

“Good.” Gabe would rather have this
discussion without either one of them around. Especially without Sierra. She’d
be all over the possibility of a curse like black on midnight.

Granddad eyed Gabe suspiciously. “What
happened with the appraisal?”

“Get your hearing aid,” Gabe told him,
helping him up. “I’ll tell you about it when you get back.”

The old man scuttled out of the room and
returned twice as fast, following Gabe to the kitchen as he adjusted the device
in his ear. “Okay, now tell me. Which appraiser did you have? You didn’t let
them stick you with some newbie who didn’t know ancient Chinese artistry from
his elbow, did you?”

He stopped and looked Gabe over with the
same penetrating gaze he’d used from the time the five-year-old boy came to live
with him and occasionally tried to get away with something. Granddad was
eighty-two and Gabe was thirty-one now, but no one could read Gabe better.

Granddad must have liked what he saw,
because he grinned from ear to ear. “The jade
is
valuable, isn’t it?
Didn’t I tell you? Tell me the truth, boy. Is it valuable?”

Unable to suppress his grin, Gabe
couldn’t keep him in suspense any longer. “Extremely.”

“Hot damn!” The old man attempted to
slap palms with Gabe in an arthritic high-five. “I knew it! Tell me everything.
What is it? How much is it worth?”

Gabe unwrapped the jade and placed it in
the center of the table as he began the story. Granddad dug around in the
fridge and retrieved two longneck bottles of beer. He popped the caps off,
passed one to Gabe and sat down across from him. He listened to the tale with
rapt attention.

When Gabe finished, Granddad shook his
head in wonder. He stroked his finger along the jade’s protuberance. “A man and
a woman doing what nature intended, huh? Who would’ve guessed?”

“Not me and certainly not Molly.”

“Molly?” Granddad’s white caterpillar
eyebrows crinkled together above his wire-rimmed glasses. “Is that the other
owner? What’s she like?”

“Pretty. Sweet. Smelled good.” He
thought of
Dreamsicles
and shifted in his seat. She’d
tasted good, too. Damned good.

“Where’d she get hers?”

“From a grandmother who died a few
months ago. Molly didn’t know any more about it than I know about this one.” He
took a swallow of beer, then pushed the bottle aside. “The appraiser said if we
can establish the history and the chain of ownership, the value of the Sleeping
Lotus could be increased.”

“Oh, sure.” The old man waved the
obstacle away with a gnarled hand. “I know all about provenance.”

Gabe snorted as the oven-timer dinged.
“Well, you could have shared that information with me before I went there.”

“I would have, but you didn’t want to
listen.”

“I’ll listen now.” Having saved the best
for last, Gabe waited until he’d pulled the pizza from the oven before
revealing the amount. “For half-a-million dollars, I’ll listen to damn near
anything.”

“Half-a-million dollars?
Lordy
,
Lordy
.” Granddad clapped a
hand to his heart and sagged backward, feigning a heart attack. But not for
long. His arthritic knees creaked and he got up to pace the kitchen. “
Yesss
!” He pumped his fist in triumph. “Didn’t I tell you?”

Wearing one of the wild Hawaiian shirts
he favored and a pair of baggy green chinos, his rim of frizzy gray hair
fluttered behind him. He looked even more like a demented island gnome than
usual.

“That’s fan-damn-
tastic
!”
he continued. “More than I ever dreamed. We’re saved, aren’t we? The company’s
saved!”

“Not so fast.” Gabe hated to put a
damper on the old man’s spirits, but he couldn’t let him get carried away. He
set the pizza and a couple of plates in the center of the table. “There’s more
to it than that.”

Granddad dropped into his chair at the
table. “Like what?”

“For starters, this so-called provenance
you say you understand.” He nipped off the pointy end of his wedge of steaming
pizza.

“Don’t worry about provenance, boy.
We’ve got provenance out the wazoo.” Granddad waved away the concern and dug
into his slice of pizza, too.

“And the fact is, if you divide the
Sleeping Lotus by two, we might end up with twenty thousand for the piece we
went in with, not half of the potential half-million dollars for the whole
enchilada.”

“Well, crap on a cracker.” Granddad
grunted, his enthusiasm deflating as he slumped back and chewed. “But surely
this sweet-smelling, pretty girl who owns the other half could find a use for
two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars, too, couldn’t she?”

Gabe frowned at the memory of her flat
refusal. “Not one she’d thought of when we talked about it. She said the money
might be fun. She thought it might be, and I quote, a nice little bonus.”

Exasperated, Granddad held up his hands
in question of Molly’s judgment, then prodded Gabe’s arm with his finger.
“Well, talk to her again.”

“She’s intrigued, but unwilling to commit
to a sale.” Gabe hesitated about telling the old man more, but the Sleeping
Lotus rightfully belonged to him. This whole thing was his deal. He deserved
the truth. “And she’s superstitious. Apparently there’s a curse.”

“A curse? What kind of curse?”

Gabe shrugged, sliding a second piece of
pizza onto his plate. “Unknown at this time, but Molly seems to put plenty of
stock in the notion. She doesn’t want to”—He did the air-quote thing with his
fingers—“‘make fate mad’ by selling it, until she knows more.”

Even though they both knew Sierra was
out of the house, Granddad looked around nervously, as if uncertain he could
prevent her from hearing him. He lowered his voice in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Good God, keep that part quiet, won’t you? Don’t tell Sierra about any curse.”

“I don’t intend to.” Gabe had never
understood how anyone with his sister’s intelligence could get so taken in by
theories that couldn’t be proven. Personally, he didn’t believe in anything
that couldn’t be seen, touched, and put in its proper place.

“Find out enough about the curse to
discredit it, and then sweet talk this young woman,” Granddad urged. “Turn on
the Shaw charm. After that last gambling foray of Harold’s, we need that
money.”

“Don’t remind me.” The idea of talking
to Molly again appealed to Gabe on multiple levels. He rubbed the back of his
neck, remembering her body plastered against his.

He sure didn’t believe that bunk James
had whispered about the sexually stimulating qualities attributed to the
conjoined Sleeping Lotus, even if it did explain the wham-bam slam of lust that
had twined around him and Molly earlier. She sure hadn’t shown any signs of
undeniable, uncontrollable lust for him before that—or after.

And while he’d found her attractive,
surely he could have kept his hands off her if she hadn’t thrown herself at
him. And if she hadn’t smelled so good.

And if the Sleeping Lotus hadn’t been
urging him on, a little voice said in his ear.

Hah!
Not bloody likely.

Then, he pictured all the different
methods of sweet-talking he could attempt with Molly, with or without the aid
of the Sleeping Lotus. That train of thought brought up even more heady
fantasies.

“Well, what do you say, boy?” Granddad
demanded.

“I’ll see what I can do.” Gabe wiped
beads of perspiration from his forehead. “Before I call her and make a
monumental fool of myself, tell me everything you know about provenance.”

Molly lugged two large boxes of
Nonna’s
memorabilia home with her. On her second trip
through her bright, colorful kitchen, she nearly tripped over her white-faced,
black kitten, Houdini. He squeaked his disapproval at the close call and pulled
his famous disappearing act. Just like all of the other men in her life.

Only after Molly filled his bowls with
fresh food and milk did he deign to return and offer a standoffish greeting.
Oh, sure, he expected her to earn his affection.

While Houdini crunched kitty chow, Molly
changed into yoga pants and a T-shirt, fed the fish, watered her plants, and
then fixed a glass of iced tea. When she lowered herself to her living room
floor and began sorting, Houdini climbed into her lap to supervise.

Molly worked through the box one paper
at a time. Each bill of sale and newspaper article created fascinating glimpses
into her grandmother and great-grandmother’s lives, but examining every one of
the bits and pieces got old fast.

Stroking Houdini’s soft kitty coat,
Molly devised a strategy. She’d refrain from reading any of the individual
items until after she’d sorted the contents of both boxes by decade and
category.

An hour later, stacks of papers littered
the floor around her, and still, the first carton remained half full. And
Houdini’s persistent curiosity hampered her efforts.

Molly wished her mom had been interested
in helping with this project, but after a half-hearted effort, she’d claimed
fatigue and a desire to turn in early.

With her nose twitching, she reached for
a bundle of red-and-blue bordered letters tied with a blue ribbon. A glance at
the postmark and a US Military address grabbed Molly’s interest.

“What’s this, Houdini?”

He pushed his nose between her hands for
a sniff.

“It’s correspondence addressed to my
grandmother, Lorena Eckert from...” She peered closer at the handwritten return
address. “Captain John Eckert.”

Houdini batted the ends of the ribbon.
Molly scratched between his ears. “That’s right, you clever kitty. John Eckert
was my grandfather.”

Her grandmother’s husband. The father
who had died shortly after Mom’s birth.

Goosebumps marched up her arms as she
flipped through the packet. It contained half a dozen letters from the time her
grandfather had shipped overseas until the scandal of his 1960 death, shot down
over Russia as a military spy. She traced a fingertip across the fading script,
listening with her heart for echoes from the past.