Cursed by Love (7 page)

She stopped riffling through the volume
in front of her and looked up. “But not the depth.”

“No matter how huge or intricate the
system, all the pieces fit and interlink together, superseding all the
previously accepted boundaries of time and space. All the knowledge in the
universe is available at my fingertips. And with a little probing, it’s easy to
figure out where to look.”

She gestured around them, a little bit
shocked. “Don’t you feel the same way about the library? The Internet might
offer a thousand answers, but a librarian will provide the
right
one.”

“Sometimes I don’t know what answer I
need until I start looking. And you have to physically be here in the library
to access this information. I can mine the ‘net from anywhere. Information
retrieval from the library is limited to the armload of books you can carry
home. What if you don’t check out the right one? Or someone already has the
book you want? Or the one you want can’t be checked out?”

“There are ways around those problems.”
Her chin lifted to a stubborn angle. “And who’s to say the information on the
Internet is accurate?”

“Who’s to say the information in books
is accurate? Books can be wrong, too, you know. There were books published
contradicting Newton. How many books challenge evolution? Or the first moon
landing? Or the holocaust?”

Her mulish expression and the set of her
shoulders became less flexible the more he talked. However, he was just as
determined to persuade her to his point of view as she was to stick to hers.

“Let’s have a contest,” he suggested.
“What do you want to research?”

“I thought I’d try to uncover the facts
about the curse.”

“‘Facts about the curse’, huh? That seems
like a contradiction, but if that’s how you want to spend our time, I’m game.”
He drummed his fingers against the table, mentally preparing his challenge.
“I’ll bet I can find out about the curse on my laptop faster than you can find
the same information in a book.”

She cocked her head to the side. “What’s
the wager?”

Without much hope of getting her
agreement, he ventured, “Exclusive rights to the Sleeping Lotus?”

“No.”

“The exclusive right to decide the
disposition of the Sleeping Lotus?”

 “Don’t push your luck. How about
the winner treats the loser to a
Graeters
ice cream?”

“Now, that’s tempting. I’ve had a
craving for orange sherbet lately, but let’s make the outcome more
interesting.” If Gabe had to romance her to coax her cooperation on the Lotus,
he didn’t have much time. He’d need bigger stakes than ice cream. “How about
dinner and a movie?”

“Hmmm, possibly.” Molly pinched her
lower lip between her fingers while she considered. “Who gets to pick the time
and place?”

No way would he risk having her refuse
the wager based on anything as immaterial as food choice or viewing
preferences. “If I win, you do. If you win, you do. Shake on it?” Holding out
his hand, Gabe forced the issue.

Molly nodded and slid her soft, small
hand inside his. He wrestled with himself to let her go after she sealed the
deal with business-like efficiency. “When do we start?”

“Game on,” he said with a wink. “One,
two, three, go.”

“Cheat.” She made the accusation as she
flew into action. She flipped pages, marked passages, amassed other tomes, and
ran her finger down indexes.

Gabe set to work on his keyboard and
located curse sites with no trouble at all. His only problem was his
concentration.

Or lack of it.

With Molly sitting innocently across the
table, her delicious orange scent swirled around him. Her simplest gesture,
like stretching on a yawn, or nibbling her bottom lip, distracted him.
Silver-tipped fingernails tapped against her chin while she concentrated.

Her charm bracelet tinkled when she
tucked her chin-length hair behind her ears, revealing tiny silver unicorn
earrings that fascinated him.

His mouth went dry when she reached up
for a book on a top shelf and her shirt rode up, exposing a smooth expanse of
lickable
lower back with a tramp-stamp of a
thumbprint-sized dragon with colorful wings.

When she returned to the table, he
noticed a ring decorating one of her toes. And then her toenails—painted the
same shade of shiny as her fingernails—drew his eyes to the most adorable feet
he’d ever seen.

Adorable feet?
Oh, come on.
He shook his head.
He’d never had a foot fetish before this.
Get a grip. So she had feet.
Didn’t everyone?

Disgusted with himself, he turned the
laptop at a ninety-degree angle away from her, removing her tempting face,
form, back, and yes—feet—from his line of sight.

Much better. Now he could think
straight.

Within seconds, he found what he needed.
He quickly read over the wording of Li-Wang’s curse, groaning at the reaction
he expected from Molly when she heard about it. But then he skimmed down to the
next paragraph. Some people, the web source claimed, believed the Sleeping
Lotus held potent powers, like an aphrodisiac. Just as James had indicated.

Apparently, when the two pieces fit
together, they produced a powerful essence that stimulated sexual awareness,
arousal, potency, even endurance.

Holy crap.
Had the ancient equivalent of Viagra
prompted the clinch he and Molly shared? Had the attraction he felt toward her
intensified before or
after
James linked the jade halves? He honestly
couldn’t remember. He looked up to find Molly studying him with a puzzled
expression. “What?”

“I found the information about the
curse.”

“Me, too.” He sounded normal, but his
mind continued to trip over the aphrodisiac bit. Had that been part of the
information she’d uncovered too? “Did you just locate it?”

“A few minutes ago. I read some of the
information first.”

“Me, too.”

Her luscious mouth turned down at the
corners. “So the bet’s a draw? A tie? That’s no fun. What do we do about that?”

“We’ll work something out.” He gestured
to the place she’d marked in her book. “Read yours first.”

She cleared her throat. “‘When the root
of the male symbol joins together with the open petals of the female, the
Sleeping Lotus bestows passion, good fortune, and fertility upon its
possessors. Separate Yin from Yang by design or fate, the hearts, spirits and
souls of the possessors are doomed to unrequited love, loneliness, misery, and
death.’” She looked up and licked her lips, before continuing. “‘Only those
with true love in their hearts can keep the segments joined throughout
eternity.’” Her voice rose on the last words and she ended the quotation on a
strangled note. “What does yours say?”

“Nearly the same.”

“But what does it mean? Damned if we do,
damned if we don’t?” She clutched his sleeve with strong fingers. Her luminous
blue eyes swam with tears.

Both his sister and his niece knew tears
were the way to win any argument with him. When faced with female weeping, his
sole instinct was to make-it-all-better. But he couldn’t let a few tears from
Molly force him into buying this baloney about a curse. For her sake as well as
his. “Only if you believe in such tripe.”

“This is worse than I thought.” She
jumped up and began gathering her stuff. “Much worse.”

Try as he might, Gabe couldn’t contain a
snort of disbelief. “It’s bull.”

“You think so?” Molly drew back with
indignation. “Well, how about this? When my grandmother was expecting my
mother, my great-grandmother Dora died. That’s when
Nonna
inherited the Lotus petals. Her husband died rather spectacularly in an
International incident during the Cold War just a few weeks later.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “What kind of
International incident?”

“Did you ever hear of John Eckert?”

“Hmmm.” The name sounded familiar. Gabe
typed “John Eckert” in a search and scanned the first result. “US pilot shot
down spying on Russia?”

“So they said.”

Reaching for her hand, he rubbed his
thumb against her silky palm, hoping to soothe her with his touch. “Was it
true?”

“According to family legend…” She
exhaled a deep breath. “Probably. The government never acknowledged it, but
they settled a boatload of money on my grandmother so she wouldn’t press for
more information than they wanted to provide.”

Gabe adopted the reasonable voice that
usually succeeded with everyone from his overly-excitable relatives to
recalcitrant clients. “I’m sure that was rough on your grandmother and your
mother, but a lot of military men die in unfair situations.”

Molly’s eyes followed the repetitive
motion of his thumb for a moment before she pushed on. “A month after
Nonna
died and my mother inherited the Lotus petals, my
father left her and filed for divorce.”

“Sad, but people get divorced all the
time.”

“Not
my
parents.” Molly’s voice
rose in volume. Heads around the room turned toward her. She moderated her
tone, and pulled her hand from his. “Not after more than thirty years of being
happily married.”

If Gabe were of a mind to be moved, or
under almost any other circumstance, the hurt in Molly’s eyes would have done
the trick. But he was a desperate man who needed money and that meant
discrediting the idea of a curse. “He can’t have been happy or he wouldn’t have
left.”

She dismissed the comment with a sniff.
“And a month later, when I‘d taken the Lotus petals home with me, my fiancé
called off our engagement.”

“You were engaged?” His heart dipped a
little. The knowledge that she’d very recently loved someone else, might very
well
still
love that someone, and that the ingrate might very well have
broken her superstitious little heart, damn him, put Gabe on edge.

He wanted to offer words of comfort, but
in his world of intellect and reasoned action, he’d never been good at
sentiment. He felt an overwhelming urge to throttle the man who’d hurt Molly.
Instead, Gabe reached out again, patting the back of her hand. She turned the
hand palm up and curled her fingers around his.

She nodded. “Briefly.”

“You don’t believe it was just a matter
of your fiancé being a jerk? Or of extremely bad timing?” He knew it was the
wrong thing to say as soon as the words came out of his mouth.

She snatched her hand away from his,
outrage shining behind the sheen of tears. “Of course, I don’t. Both
relationships were fine until the Sleeping Lotus entered the picture.”

“Maybe,” he allowed.

“What about your side? Is the
Jebediah
/Bella relationship the only unsuccessful one in
the Shaw family tree?”

He thought of his father, his
grandfather, his sister, even his own miserable track record. It would be all too
easy to blame the hardwired irresponsibility of most of the
Shaws
on something as impersonal and random as a curse.

In reality, he believed they’d gained
their reputations through generations of selfishness, abandoning the ones who
cared about them and deserting the ones who needed them the most. “Not by a
long shot, but not because of any curse.”

“Then what do you blame it on?”

He’d never given it any thought before.
“Genetics? Most of the male
Shaws
are like
Jebediah
—irresponsible schemers with big dreams. They enjoy
life on a grand scale, and don’t bother with trivialities like the women and
children in their lives, or responsibility and dependability.”

Their eyes met, their gazes connected,
and he felt like she was seeing deep inside him. “You’re not like that.”

He liked it that she thought so, even on
such short acquaintance, although her assumption wasn’t entirely correct. He
entertained more potential for irresponsibility then most people realized. But
that was his dirty little secret, and he wasn’t about to share it with her.

“I’m trying to make damned sure the
flawed gene skips this generation.” He’d worked too hard, for too long, and he
wasn’t going to let anyone under his protection sink. There were too many of
them depending on him.

He intended to drag the current
generation of Shaw men into line, kicking and screaming, if it killed him.
Uncle Harold. Lenny. Terry. Dominic. They were borderline, but all of them had
potential. Except maybe for Harold.

And Gabe wouldn’t let any stupid curse
prove otherwise. With a surge of determination, he closed his laptop. “Are we
done here? What do you want to do now?”

“I want to go explain to my mother why
her marriage broke up.”  Molly closed a thick volume on the table with a
snap. “And tell her not to plan any ocean cruises.”

“I’ll go with you,” Gabe heard himself
say.

It spoke volumes about her state of mind
that she didn’t object.