Three Fates (28 page)

She wasn’t prepared for the little private jet, or for Jack himself to take the controls.

“Is it yours?” She ordered her nerves to quiet as she took her seat in the cockpit beside him.

“The company’s. Simplifies things.”

She cleared her throat as he went over his checklist. “And you’re a good pilot, are you?”

“So far,” he replied absently, then shot her a glance. “You’ve flown before?”

“Of course.” She blew out a breath. “Once, and on a big plane where I wasn’t required to sit beside the pilot.”

“There’s a parachute in the back.”

“I’m trying to think if that’s funny or not.” She kept her hands folded as he was given clearance and began the taxi to his assigned runway. When he picked up speed, she watched the gauges, and when the nose of the plane lifted, her stomach gave one quick shudder.

Then smoothed out.

“Oh, it’s something, isn’t it?” She strained forward, watching the ground fall away. “Not like a big plane at all. It’s better. How long does it take to get a pilot’s license? Can I have a go at the wheel?”

“Maybe on the way back, if we have clear weather.”

“If I can pilot a boat in a storm, I ought to be able to fly a little plane in a shower of rain. It must be grand being rich.”

“It has its advantages.”

“When we have the Fates and sell them to you, I’m taking my mother on a holiday.”

It was interesting, he thought, that that would be her first priority. Not that she would buy a fancy car or fly to Milan to shop, but that she would take her mother on vacation.

“Where to?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Relaxed now despite the turbulence, she eased back to peer at the stacks of clouds. “Someplace exotic, I think. An island like Tahiti or Bi-mini, where she can stretch out under an umbrella on the beach and see blue water while she drinks some silly thing out of a coconut shell. What’s in those things anyway?”

“The road to perdition.”

“Is it now? Well then, that’ll be good for her as well. She works so hard, and she never complains about it. Now we’ve been throwing money around right and left when by rights it should be in the bank so she can feel secure.”

She paused, then shifted to look at him. “What she said to you yesterday, that it wasn’t about greed. That’s the truth for her. I might be greedy, though I prefer to think of it as practical, but she’s not.”

Greedy? No, a greedy woman didn’t fantasize about taking her mother to a tropical island and getting her plastered on coconut drinks.

“Is that your way of telling me when you get the statue back you’ll skin me over the purchase price?”

She only smiled. “Let me have a go at the wheel there, Jack.”

“No. Why haven’t you asked me why we’re going to Dublin?”

“Because you wouldn’t tell me, and I’d be wasting my breath.”

“That’s refreshing. I’ll tell you this instead. I did background checks on you and your brothers, and on Cleo Toliver.”

“Is that so?” Her voice cooled.

“You ran me, Irish, so let’s call it tit for tat. Toliver had some light smears on her juvenile record—underage drinking, shoplifting, disorderly conduct. Basic teenage-rebellion-type stuff. She got plugged into the system because her parents didn’t rush to get her out again.”

“What do you mean?” A combination of shock and outrage warred inside her. “That they let her go to jail? Their own child?”

“Juvie’s not jail, but it’s close enough. Her parents divorced, and her mother likes to remarry. She bounced between the two of them, then took off when she hit eighteen. No dings on her adult record, so she either cleaned up her act or got better at avoiding the cops.”

“You’re telling me this because you think with her background, her record, she might be a problem for us. If Gideon thought that, he’d have said so.”

“I don’t know Gideon, and I prefer drawing my own conclusions. Speaking of your brothers, they’re both clear as far as legal difficulties. And you, you’re as pure as your skin.”

She jerked her head back when he reached over to brush a fingertip down her cheek. “Mind your hands.”

“What is it about Irishwomen and their skin?” he said as if to himself. “Makes a man want to lap it up, especially when it smells like yours.”

“I don’t mix flirtations and business,” she said stiffly.

“I do. As often as possible. Being a practical woman, I’d think you’d appreciate the efficiency of multitasking.”

She had to laugh. “Well now, I’ll admit that’s a unique line, Jack. But if you think the sophisticated world traveler can lure the naive village girl with clever lines, you’ve mistaken the matter.”

“I don’t think you’re naive.” He turned his head, met her eyes. “I think you’re fascinating. And more, I’m curious about what I felt run through me when I looked over the high grass and old stones of a cemetery and watched you lay flowers on a grave. I’m very curious about that, Rebecca, and I always satisfy my curiosity.”

“I felt something, too. That’s as much why I’ve come with you as wanting to know what’s in Dublin. But don’t think you can maneuver me, Jack, because you can’t. I’ve a goal to meet, for myself, for my family. Nothing can get in the way of it.”

“I didn’t think you’d admit it.” He gave his attention to his instruments. “That you’d felt something. You’re a straightforward woman, Rebecca. A straightforward woman who knows computers, who can pack for a last-minute trip in a single bag and be on time. Where have you been all my life? We’re about to start our approach,” he said before she could answer.

 

 

THERE WAS ANOTHER rental car waiting at Dublin airport, and this time Jack hauled up Rebecca’s bag before she could grab it herself. She didn’t comment on it, nor on the conversation they’d had in the plane. She wasn’t sure either would be safe topics at the moment.

She didn’t speak at all until he headed away from the city instead of toward it.

“Dublin’s the other way,” she pointed out.

“We’re not actually going into the city.”

“Then why did you say we were?”

Her suspicious nature was just one more thing he found appealing. “We flew into Dublin, and now we’re driving a few miles south. When we’re done, we’ll drive back and fly out of Dublin.”

“And where might we be spending the night?”

“At a place I haven’t been to for a couple of years. You’ll have your own room,” he added, “with the option of sharing mine.”

“I’ll take my own. Who’s paying for it?”

He grinned, lightning fast, in a way that engaged his whole face and made her want to trace a finger over that faint, crescent scar.

“That won’t be a problem. It’s pretty country,” he commented, gesturing at the rising green hills that shimmered through the thinning rain. “Easy to see why he decided to retire here.”

“Who?”

“The man we’re going to see. Tell me, do you share your mother’s belief that the Fates are a kind of symbol?”

“I suppose I do.”

“And that they belong together for reasons more than their monetary, even artistic value?”

“Yes. Why?”

“One more. Do you agree that what goes around comes around?”

She blew out an impatient breath. “If you’re meaning there are cycles and circles to things, I do.”

“Then you’re going to appreciate this.” He took the car up a hill, then around to a pretty road lined with dripping hedgerows and painted bungalows with thriving gardens.

The road climbed again, turned again, and he swung into a short drive beside a lovely stone house where the chimney was smoking and the gardens were a small sea of beauty.

“Your friend lives here?”

“Yeah.”

Even as Jack stepped out of the car, the door of the house opened. An old man stood in the doorway, leaning on a cane and grinning. He had a monk’s fringe of snowy hair topping a wide face lined with deep creases. Silver-framed glasses slid down his nose.

“Mary!” His voice croaked like a frog. “They’re here,” he shouted, and came forward even as Jack hurried to him.

“Don’t come out in the rain.”

“Hell, boy, little rain doesn’t hurt. Everything else does at my age, but not a bit of wet.” He caught Jack in a one-armed embrace.

Rebecca saw now the old man was quite tall, but bent a bit with age. His big hand reached up to lie across Jack’s cheek and looked, despite its size, fragile there, and somehow sweet.

“I’ve missed you,” Jack said, and leaned down in an easy, unself-conscious gesture Rebecca admired and kissed the old man lightly on the lips. “This is Rebecca Sullivan.”

He shifted his body, and again she noted the gentleness in him when he slid a hand under the man’s arm.

“Well, you said she was a beauty, and so she is.” He reached out and took her hand, simply held it. And she saw with puzzled embarrassment the sparkle of tears come into his eyes.

“Rebecca, this is my great-grandfather.”

“Oh.” At sea, she managed a smile. “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

“My great-grandfather,” he repeated. “Steven Edward Cunningham, the Third.”

“Cunningham?” Her throat snapped closed. “Steven Cunningham? Sweet Jesus.”

“It’s a great pleasure to welcome you into my house.” Steven stepped back, blinking at tears. “Mary!” he shouted again. “Deaf as a post,” he stated, “and she’s forever turning her bloody hearing aid off. Run up and get her, Jack. I’ll take Rebecca into the parlor. She’s fussing with your room,” he said as he led Rebecca away. “Been fussing since Jack called to say you were coming.”

“Mr. Cunningham.” Off balance, she walked blindly into a neat parlor where everything gleamed, and sank at his urging into the deep cushions of a wing-backed chair. “You’re the same Steven Cunningham who . . . who was on the
Lusitania
?”

“The same as who owes his life to Felix Greenfield.”

“And you’re Jack’s—”

“Great-grandfather. His mother’s my granddaughter. And here we are. Here we are,” he repeated and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “I’m sentimental in my old age.”

“I don’t know what to say to you. My head’s spinning.” She lifted a hand to her temple as if to hold it in place. “I’ve heard of you all my life. And somehow always thought of you as a little boy.”

“I was just three when my parents made that crossing.” He sighed deeply, then tucked the handkerchief away. “I can’t be sure how much I actually remember, or how much I think I remember because my mother told me the story so often.”

He walked over to a polished gateleg table crowded with framed photographs and lifted one, brought it to Rebecca. “My parents. It’s their wedding photo.”

She saw a handsome young man with a dashing mustache and a woman, hardly more than a girl, glorious in silk and lace and her bridal glow.

“They’re beautiful.” Tears threatened to spill. “Oh, Mr. Cunningham.”

“My mother lived another sixty-three years, thanks to Felix Greenfield.” Steven took his handkerchief out again and gently pressed it into Rebecca’s hand. “She never remarried. For some there’s only one love in a lifetime. But she was content, and she was productive, and she was grateful.”

“The story’s true, then.” Composing herself, she handed him the photograph.

“I’m proof of that.” He turned at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. “Here comes Jack with my Mary. When she’s done fussing over you, we’ll talk about it.”

 

 

MARY CUNNINGHAM WAS indeed deaf as a post, but in honor of the occasion, she turned her hearing aid on. Rebecca was given a lovely room with fresh flowers in china vases and invited to rest or freshen up before supper.

She did neither, but simply sat on the side of the bed hoping her mind would settle. It was Jack who knocked on her door fifteen minutes later. Rebecca stayed where she was and studied him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought it would mean more this way. It did to him, and that matters to me.”

She nodded. “I think in my heart, I always believed it happened just as I’d been told. But in my head, I wasn’t so sure. I want to thank you for bringing me here, for giving me this.”

He crossed over, crouched in front of her. “Do you believe in connections, Rebecca? In the power of them, even the inevitability of them?”

“I’d have to, wouldn’t I?”

“I’m not a sentimental man,” he began, but she laughed and shook her head.

“I saw you with Steven, then with Mary, so don’t tell me you’re not sentimental.”

“About people who matter to me, but not about things. I don’t romanticize.” He took her hand, felt her brace. “I looked at you. That’s really all it took.”

“It’s confusing.” She managed to keep her voice steady, though her heart was humming in her throat. “This maze of circumstances that links our families.”

“It’s more than that.”

“I’d like to keep things simple.”

“Not a chance,” he told her as he drew her to her feet. “Besides, I like complications. Life’s bland without them. You’re a hell of a complication.”

“Don’t.” She pressed a hand to his chest as he pulled her closer, and felt like an idiot. “I’m not being coy, I’m being careful.”

“You’re trembling.”

“Oh, you enjoy that, don’t you? Getting me all stirred up and confused.”

“Damn right.” He gave her one hard tug. It brought her to her toes, had her sucking in a breath for an oath. Then his mouth was on hers, hard and hot and hungry enough to blur the curse into a small sound of shock.

He kissed like a man accustomed to taking, with a ruthless skill that had her pulse pumping fast and her belly quivering with need. Though the reaction stupefied her, she felt her own bones go liquid.

And so did he.

His hands dived into her hair, used it to draw her head back. “The first time I saw you,” he said. “That’s never happened to me before.”