Absolutely Captivated (8 page)

Kinneally stayed by the
door, snicking it shut after his companions entered.

“She is lying,” said the blond woman.
“This is Zoe Sinclair.”

Zoe frowned slightly. She had met this
woman, but she couldn’t place her. And that was unusual for Zoe,
who usually recalled everyone she had come across.

The woman had delicate features. She
wore a diaphanous pink sundress that fell to her knees, and she
looked as cool as a woman at an ice hockey game.

The other two women also looked
comfortable. The one in the middle was a redhead without the
freckled skin. She was big-boned and solid, like the Greek
sculptures of the gods on display at the Louvre. Her dress was a
solid emerald green that made her skin glow.

The third woman was tall and so
slender that she looked like she might break in half if grabbed
wrong. Her black hair had brown highlights, and her strong features
made her look exotic. Her dress was white, showing off her dark
skin, and reminded Zoe of a toga.

A sense of the women’s identity rose,
and then faded as the second woman said, “See? She does not deny
it.”

“Deny what?” Zoe said, wondering how
she had already lost the thread of the conversation.

“That you are Zoe Sinclair,” said the
third woman.

“I
am
Zoe Sinclair,” Zoe
said, wondering whether
Candid
Camera
had been revived for the fourth
time. “I never denied that.”

“I said she couldn’t be,”
Kinneally said from his post near the door. “She’s too
young.”

“Posh,” the first woman said, grabbing
the nearest chair and sitting down. “Ignore him. He knows
nothing.”

The woman acted as if she and Zoe were
old friends. The redhead took the other chair, and the black-haired
woman stood behind them.

The three of them were clearly a
set.

The boy stood near
Kinneally. They looked like brothers. When he got contacts and lost
some of his baby fat, the boy would look just like the man beside
him.

“What’s this about?” Zoe asked, trying
to regain control of her office.

“Dear, I don’t suppose you’ve been
tied into the politics at Mount Olympus lately,” the redhead
said.

Zoe blinked, looked at
Kinneally, and then back at the women. There were a hundred ways
she could play this and none of them made sense. Technically, she
was supposed to deny the existence of the mage ruling council, but
Mount Olympus did have some meaning to mortals as well.

And for all Zoe knew,
Mount Olympus could be a new casino concept from the desk of the
ubiquitous Steve Wynn, who had come up with the Mirage and half the
other “wonders” of Las Vegas Boulevard.

“Um, no, I haven’t,” Zoe said,
deciding that letting her visitors talk was the best
policy.

“Oh, by the Powers, where do we
start?” the brunette asked.

But as she said “Powers,”
all three women bowed their heads and spread their arms out in
obeisance.

Zoe hadn’t seen anyone do that since
the last time she visited the Fates, nearly a hundred years
ago.

Then she leaned back in her chair, so
shocked that she gasped. These women looked like the Fates. Only
they couldn’t be. The Fates had more magical ability than all the
other mages combined. And these women had none.

They had walked in. They looked like
normal people and they weren’t toying with their appearance all the
time the way they used to.

And
they had walked in
. To
Zoe’s office. In Las Vegas. In Modern America. On
Earth.

The Fates never
appeared outside the magical realm. Hell, Zoe wasn’t even sure they
left their little judicial post near Mount Olympus. Sure, they
changed its appearance all the time, but they had stayed in the
same place—somewhere near Greece, but not
in
Greece or anywhere else in the
mortal realm—since the heyday of Athens, thousands of years
ago.

“No,” Zoe whispered.

“No?” Kinneally asked. He
had been watching her. She had felt that blue gaze as if it were
fingers on her shoulder. “No what?”

“Is this some kind of joke?” Zoe
asked.

The blond smiled. “Finally, some
recognition.”

“We were beginning to think we looked
too normal,” the redhead said.

“Yes,” said the brunette, “like Real
People.”

She said that with just enough of a
mixture of contempt and amusement that Zoe felt the sense of
recognition grow even more. Still, she held her breath.

“I think,” said the blond.

“We were all worried,” continued the
redhead.

“That you had forgotten us,” finished
the brunette.

Zoe shook her head.
No one forgot the Fates. Especially not when the Fates had treated
that person with a mixture of fondness (
Really, darling, you are such an iconoclast—even for a
mage
) and fury (
We make rules for a reason, child. Order must be
kept
).

“It’s not possible,” Zoe
said.

“What’s not?” Kinneally
asked. She met that startling blue gaze. He truly seemed
confused—not just by her, but by everything. She hadn’t noticed
before how he hung back, stayed away from the three women, and
simply observed.

And what had he
said?
You’re not the one we’re looking
for. She’s a detective. Has to be in her—gosh, I don’t
know—eighties by now
.

He had come into his magic within the
last few years, judging by the look of him. How could he not know
that mages were long-lived?

Zoe crossed her arms and looked away
from him, studying the three women. Zoe wasn’t going to say whom
she thought they were. They would have to admit it. If this was
some sort of magical scam, she wanted them to get it
underway.

She wasn’t going to be an easy mark,
someone who gave away too much information just by making
assumptions.

“Ma’am?” The little boy stepped
forward.

His fair skin was sunburned on the
right side only—obviously he’d been in a car too long, under the
sun—and his round glasses had slid to the edge of his nose, making
him look much more bookish than his athletic brother.

“I know you don’t trust us,” the boy
said, “but these ladies, they need your help. My dad doesn’t know
how much trouble they’re in. They haven’t told any of us except my
Aunt Vivian, who never told us either, but I know. This is pretty
serious, and these ladies, they’re scared.”

All three women turned in unison and
stared at the child. If they had stared at Zoe like that, she would
have been afraid of turning into stone.

But the child seemed
unfazed.

Then Zoe realized that she wasn’t
unfazed. She was fazed. That kid had called the man next to him his
dad.

“You’re this boy’s
father?” Zoe asked Kinneally.

The man raised his eyebrows. “Is that
a problem?”

“Yes,” Zoe said. “No. I mean, I
thought you were brothers.”

Kinneally smiled. It was a
devastating, brighten-the-room-with-a-thousand-suns kind of smile,
and Zoe felt herself melt.

“He’s my son,” Kinneally
said. “His name is Kyle, and I’m Travers.”

Zoe had to concentrate
again to hear his words. She’d often read about women who were so
overwhelmed by the men they met that they couldn’t concentrate, but
she’d never had it happen to her. She’d always believed it to be a
fictional contrivance, just like she felt love at first sight was
the same thing, and happily-ever-after came from children’s
stories.

“Travers,” Zoe found
herself saying before she could stop herself. The name was unusual,
just like he was, and it suited him. “Travers
Kinneally.”

He nodded. “You know it?”

She had to shake her head, which made
her feel like a dork. And she hadn’t felt like a dork since she had
gone through puberty too many years ago to count. She wasn’t even
sure if there had been such a word back then. Dork. Imbecile,
maybe, but not dork.

“Ma’am?” the boy said again in that
tentative voice. “I know you think my dad’s cute and all, but can
we focus on the problem here?”

Zoe blushed. Her cheeks
grew so hot she was sure steam was rising from the top of her
head.

She hadn’t blushed since she was a
child—at least that she could remember.

“Kyle!” Travers said. He sounded
shocked and embarrassed.

“Yes, dear,” said the blond, turning
around in her chair so that she faced Zoe.

The redhead turned too. “We have a
problem.”

The brunette’s turn was perfectly
orchestrated to make the entire maneuver look like a shtick from a
Broadway musical. “And we believe you’re the only one who can solve
it.”

Travers put his hands on
Kyle’s shoulders and pulled his son back toward the door. Travers
was going to tell Kyle that this was no longer their concern, that
his son was getting too personal, and that it was time to leave,
but the shock on Zoe Sinclair’s face was too much.

Travers couldn’t tell if the shock
came from Kyle’s comment about Zoe’s attraction to Travers or if it
came from the weird way the Wyrd Sisters were speaking to
her.

Kyle dipped his knees and slipped out
of Travers’ grasp. That kid always seemed to know what Travers was
going to do. Kyle moved far enough along the unpainted wall that
Travers would have to leave the door to reach him. And for some
reason, Travers wanted to keep the door at his back.

Part of that reason was Zoe Sinclair
herself. She was stunning. She had chocolate brown hair, stylishly
cut so that it brushed her cheeks. Her skin was ivory, but those
cheeks had a reddish tinge even when she wasn’t
blushing.

She had kissable lips (he hadn’t been
able to stop thinking about them since he walked into the room),
and the most startling eyes he had ever seen. They were large, with
heavily fringed lashes that made them seem even more dramatic than
they already were. Her brows, arched along the perfect bone above
her stunning eyes, also added to the drama.

But the thing about her eyes that he
liked best was that their color perfectly matched her hair. Right
down to the highlights. Her hair had golden highlights and her
chocolate brown eyes had golden flecks.

Flecks he couldn’t stop staring
at.

Good thing Kyle hadn’t mentioned
Travers’ attraction to Zoe. Although hearing that Zoe was attracted
to Travers did make his heart rise, just a little. It rose even
more when Zoe blushed.

She didn’t look like the
kind of woman who blushed. Although she had a blusher’s skin—that
soft, luminescent color—her body language, her black skirt and
t-shirt (worn despite the day’s heat), and that hard glint in her
eyes made it obvious that she didn’t like the softer emotions in
herself or in anyone else.

He wondered about her past. Obviously,
she came from a long line of female detectives. Had her grandmother
opened this place? Then had her mother followed or had the Sinclair
Detective Agency skipped a generation?

And why did he care? He wasn’t ever
going to see her again, no matter how beautiful she was.

“We should go,” Travers said to
Kyle.

Kyle looked at Travers as if Travers
had committed the social gaffe of the century. It took a moment for
Travers to realize he had interrupted one of the Wyrd
Sisters.

“I mean,” Travers said to his son,
“we’ve done what we came to do. We should let them get on to their
private business.”

“Da-ad,” Kyle said, stretching the
word out. “We can’t leave. Not now.”

“I’m confused,” Zoe said.
Her voice was husky and low, a smoky alto—the kind that always sent
a shiver down Travers’ spine. Like a blues’ singer, only richer,
with a little less cigarette-and-alcohol rasp and a bit more
warmth. “Aren’t you part of this group?”

“I’m just the delivery boy,” Travers
said.

“Daaad!” Kyle stepped farther away
from Travers’ grasp.

“Come on, Kyle,” Travers said.
“Meetings with private detectives are confidential.”

Travers didn’t know that for certain,
but he assumed it. Besides, in his own business, he didn’t let
strangers in the same room as his clients. Certified Public
Accounting wasn’t psychotherapy, but it did have its own sets of
rules. He was sure detecting was the same.

Zoe’s gaze met his. There was a
question in those interesting eyes, and a challenge. He wasn’t sure
what the question or the challenge was, and he doubted he would
ever get the chance to find out.

His fingers found the doorknob. He
needed to leave before his interest in this woman got the better of
him.