Three Fates by Nora Roberts Page B

laughed.

Five
     
     
     
     
    “Y OU lost track of them.” Anita Gaye leaned back against the butter-soft leather of her desk chair and examined her manicure. The phone call did not please her.
    “Were my instructions unclear?” she asked in a low, silky voice. “Which part of ‘locate the woman and find out what she knows’ didn’t you understand?”
    Excuses, she thought as she listened to her employee’s apologetic explanation. Incompetence. It was really very annoying.
    “Mr. Jasper?” she interrupted in the most pleasant of tones. “I believe I told you ‘by any means.’ Do you need a definition of that phrase? No? Well then, I suggest you find them, and quickly, or I’ll be forced to think you’re not half as clever as a second-rate Irish tour guide.”
    She broke the connection, then to calm herself swiveled in the chair to gaze out at her view of New York. She enjoyed being able to watch the noise and bustle of the city, while being removed from it.
    She enjoyed more knowing she could leave her plush corner of the elegant brownstone, stroll directly onto Madison Avenue, wander into any of the tony shops and have whatever her whim dictated.
    And be recognized, admired, envied, as she did so.
    There had been a time, not so many years before, when she’d been out there on the streets, rushing over the pavement, hounded with worries about rent payments, credit card bills and how to stretch her paycheck into one more good pair of shoes.
    Standing with her nose pressed to the window, she thought now, knowing she was 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