Millionaires' Destinies

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Millionaires' Destinies Page 18

by Sherryl Woods


  Resisting the urge to find out, he poked his head into the refrigerator instead and retrieved the makings for a chicken and avocado sandwich. He checked the freezer and found a container of Destiny’s homemade vegetable soup he could zap in the microwave.

  Melanie remained perfectly still as he worked, not twitching so much as a muscle until he put the food down in front of her. Then as if drawn by the spicy scent of the hot soup, she sniffed delicately and lifted her head.

  “Oh, my,” she whispered. “Tell me this is homemade.”

  He laughed. “It is, but I can’t take the credit. Destiny always leaves some in the freezer.”

  “It smells heavenly.” She took a spoonful, blew on it to cool it, then put it in her mouth. “Tastes heavenly, too.” Wide-awake now, she glanced at the sandwich. “Chicken and avocado on a baguette? Very fancy.”

  “I will take credit for that,” he said, amused by her enthusiasm. “Do you really not cook anything?”

  “I’ll have you know I’ve never ruined a frozen dinner.”

  “Now there’s a culinary claim to be proud of,” he said, laughing, his earlier cares forgotten for the moment.

  “Fortunately, I am not in your life because of my skill in the kitchen,” she said. “If I were, you would be doomed to disappointment.”

  “You could never disappoint me,” he said. Unless she went through with the breakup. That would tear him apart.

  She caught his gaze, studied him intently. “You sure about that?” she asked. “You looked kind of funny there for a second, as if there was something you weren’t saying.”

  Now, he thought, now would be the perfect time to open it all up, to tell her that everything had changed. He wanted to do it. He should do it. He even opened his mouth to speak, but in the end, he remained silent, a prisoner to his longstanding doubts and fears.

  And as he saw Melanie’s expression close down, saw the light in her eyes die at his silence, he knew that he’d lost what might have been his best chance for getting what he wanted for the rest of his life.

  Melanie knew that something significant had happened during their late-night meal in the kitchen. She even guessed that Richard had wrestled with his demons and lost, but she had no idea what to do about it. Though she was assertive about so many things in her life, confident of her professional skills, even assured about most of her relationships, she’d lost that self-assurance when it came to matters of the heart.

  Truthfully, she had been praying that allowing herself to be open and vulnerable would be enough, that she would never have to actually risk putting her feelings into words that could be thrown back into her face. She knew the power of words better than anyone. They could heal or wound, but once spoken they could never be undone.

  Not entirely daunted by Richard’s silence, she left herself open to what might transpire between now and whenever they went back to Alexandria. She could do that much. She’d come down here hoping for a chance to make this work. They’d made so much progress, achieved a whole new level of intimacy. It was too soon to give up on getting more.

  In the morning, it seemed that Richard had reached a similar conclusion. He greeted her with a smile and a breakfast worthy of a gourmet chef in a country inn.

  “You know I might reconsider marrying you for real if you promised me a meal like this every morning,” she teased lightly.

  “You’ve got it,” he said just as lightly. “Of course, we’ll both be waddling into the doctor’s office with high cholesterol and high blood pressure before we hit forty.”

  She sighed as she took another bite of a fluffy omelette made with goat cheese and chives. “It might be worth it.”

  He gave her a once-over that told her he appreciated the way she looked right now. “So, what are we going to do to work off these calories?” he asked, an unmistakably hopeful note in his voice.

  “Not that,” she said decisively. She needed to reclaim a bit of distance this morning, gain some perspective on the night before.

  “Too bad.”

  She grinned. “I’ll give you a rain check. I want to go sight-seeing.”

  He regarded her with surprise. “You do?”

  “I glanced through some of those brochures in the living room last time I was here. There’s George Washington’s birthplace, Robert E. Lee’s birthplace, a winery. This could be fun.”

  “The winery holds a certain appeal. I’m not so sure about the rest. Destiny considered all that history to be part of our summer experience.”

  “You didn’t enjoy it?”

  “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear,” he said. “We went every summer.”

  “Ah.” She grinned. “Then we won’t need a guide, will we? You can tell me everything.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’ve blocked all the details.”

  “I’ll get a book and test you,” she responded, refusing to relent. “Now let’s get moving.”

  “Now who’s acting like an activities director?” he grumbled, but he did get up and stack the dishes in the dishwasher.

  Melanie grinned at his attitude. She patted his cheek. “Don’t pout. When we get home you can test me.”

  “On the history?”

  “No, on my responsiveness to other commands.”

  His expression brightened at that. “Put on your walking shoes, darling. These are going to be lightning-fast tours.”

  Richard found to his amazement that he could put last night’s disappointment and worries behind him and fall in with Melanie’s playful mood. She soaked up the history lessons with astonishing attention, making him sift through years of tidbits for the most fascinating ones in his memory. He loved that she listened so intently, her expression as rapt as if he were divulging bits of current gossip about still-living neighbors.

  “I know as a Yankee from Ohio, I shouldn’t be so caught up with Robert E. Lee’s family home,” she said as they left Stratford Hall, “but the place is so beautiful and so fascinating. I wish I’d lived back then. Imagine having his family and the Washingtons for neighbors. Just think what the dinner conversations must have been like.”

  Richard grinned at her. “Not unlike the conversation at one of Destiny’s dinner parties when she invites half of the power brokers in D.C. I’ll have to make sure you’re at the next one. Destiny likes to throw off a controversial spark and see what it ignites.”

  “Yes, I imagine that would delight her. She told me about the incredibly lively and intellectual gatherings she used to have in her studio in France.”

  Richard regarded her with surprise. “She did? She never talks about France with us.”

  “Really?” Melanie’s expression turned thoughtful. “Maybe she doesn’t want to sound as if she misses it.”

  “Why on earth would she be afraid to let us see that she had a life before she came home to us?” he asked, then sighed as the answer came to him. “Because she doesn’t want us to think for a second that she made a sacrifice.”

  “I suspect that’s it,” Melanie said. “Maybe you should ask her about it sometime.”

  “I probably should,” he admitted. “I wonder if she and Ben ever talk about it. That’s when she was painting. It’s what they have in common. They both love art. She nurtured his talent unselfishly, but I sometimes wondered if she missed painting herself.” He felt oddly left out to think that there was a part of Destiny she had kept from him, a part she might have shared with at least one of his brothers, a part she had definitely shared with Melanie, a comparative stranger at the time.

  Melanie seemed to guess the direction of his thoughts. “If she kept silent, it was because she didn’t think you were ready to hear about the life she had in France, not because she loved you less.”

  “I know that,” he snapped impatiently.

  “Do you really?” Melanie asked quietly. “I think what she did was one of the most unselfish acts I’ve ever heard about. She had a wonderful life, Richard. She was living a charmed life in a place she loved. She was ma
dly in love. Her paintings were selling in Paris and along the French Riviera. She had friends. She was even a bit famous in her world. But when you, Mack and Ben needed her, she never gave any of it a second thought. She was here for you. For her, family came first. That’s the only thing that really matters.”

  It was true. Richard had always known that his aunt had made sacrifices for them, but he’d never guessed how many. Or maybe as a child he hadn’t wanted to know. And as an adult, her presence was a given, something he no longer questioned. How astonishing that it had taken Melanie to make him see a whole other side to Destiny. For the first time he was seeing her as a remarkable woman, not just as his aunt.

  “You’re amazing,” he said, pressing a kiss to Melanie’s cheek, grateful to her for making him put Destiny’s sacrifices into perspective.

  “Thank you, but what did I do?”

  “Opened my eyes.” And his heart, he added silently.

  The brief vacation from the world passed in a blissful haze. If it hadn’t been for the one thing Richard hadn’t said—that he loved her—Melanie would have been totally content and rapturously happy.

  They stayed up late, watched movies and ate popcorn. They danced to oldies on the radio. They made love in front of the fire time and again. Each time was a revelation, showing her new insights into everything but his heart. She despaired of that ever changing.

  On New Year’s Eve at the stroke of midnight, she was cradled in his arms, spent but filled with contentment, when he gazed into her eyes, “There’s something we need to discuss before we go home tomorrow,” he said. “It’s a new year, time for new beginnings.”

  There was hope to be found in his words, but his tone filled Melanie with a sense of dread. “What?”

  He looked away from her. “The very public breakup I promised you.”

  “You’ve been thinking about that?” she asked dully. She’d dared to envision happily-ever-after, and he’d been focused on extricating himself from the lie, starting the new year fresh without her and all of the complications she represented.

  “Haven’t you?” he asked. “You said all along it was something we should do sooner rather than later. I think you were right. After what happened with Destiny the other day, all the shopping and planning, we can’t let this continue.”

  “This is it, then,” she said bravely, refusing to allow one single traitorous tear to fall. “What do you have in mind?”

  He met her gaze then, searching her face for something, but she was determined not to let him see the hurt ripping her apart. Instead, she fought to keep her gaze neutral.

  “I thought you should decide,” he said, his voice suddenly flat and emotionless.

  Melanie nodded, because she didn’t trust herself to speak.

  “You’ll think about it?” he prodded. “You’ll let me know? I’ll go along with whatever you want.”

  “Do you want to do this very soon?” she asked when she could keep her voice steady.

  “I think that’s best,” he said, his gaze averted.

  “So do I,” she said. Then she could get on with the business of mending her broken heart.

  Suddenly chilled to the bone, she reached for the chenille throw on the sofa, stood up and wrapped herself in it. “I’m going to bed,” she said in a voice so choked she barely recognized it as her own.

  Richard didn’t reach for her, said nothing to stop her. Only when she was at the foot of the stairs did he call out softly.

  “Happy new year, Melanie.”

  “Happy new year,” she replied automatically, but her heart wasn’t in it. If anything, this new year was off to the worst start ever.

  Upstairs, she barely resisted the desire to throw things. Unless something hit Richard in the head and knocked some sense into him, what would be the point?

  Couldn’t he see what she saw? They could be happy together. She knew it. She could help him get wherever he wanted to go in life. She’d be the perfect match for a man who needed some balance for all the demands he put on himself. She’d keep him from being stodgy.

  But her hope of any future had died the instant he’d brought up the great breakup scene. Despite the emotional and physical connection she’d experienced over the past few days, they were obviously in very different places. To him this had apparently been nothing more than an interlude, something inevitable that had been building between them, something neither of them could have ignored forever. It hadn’t meant anything, at least not to Richard.

  Melanie knew better than most that it was impossible to make someone fall in love. It was equally impossible to make them admit to love when they were too afraid to recognize the emotion. When it came to that, she was as cowardly as Richard.

  So to protect her stupid pride and her heart, she would go back to Alexandria and throw herself into planning the party at which she would throw that damnable ring back in his face. She would make the scene so believable, so memorable, that it would haunt him forever. Richard might be willing to toss away what they’d had, but he’d never forget her.

  Sadly, she wasn’t likely to forget him, either.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Melanie hated the fact that she was deliberately going to ruin Destiny’s engagement party for them by creating a scene, but Richard’s aunt had virtually given her no choice. With her usual impulsiveness, Destiny had already been well into planning the event when Richard and Melanie returned from their getaway. With invitations already at the printer’s, it had been too late to turn back.

  Since Melanie and Richard had concluded it was best to end the charade before it went on too much longer, the party was the most public way of accomplishing that. This way everyone would find out at once that she and Richard were no longer together. She’d even invited Pete Forsythe so he could witness the end of the romance his sleazy reporting—albeit at Destiny’s instigation—had triggered in the first place.

  “Are you absolutely certain you don’t want your parents to fly over for the party?” Destiny asked as they were doing one final check of the guest list. “I’m sure Richard would be happy to send the company jet for them.”

  And have them here for this debacle? No way, Melanie thought. It was bad enough that they were likely to read about it in some wire service tidbit in their morning paper.

  She had, however, insisted on having Becky at the party. She was going to need at least one friendly face in the crowd when things blew up.

  “My parents hate flying,” she told Destiny truthfully. It was just about the only honest thing to cross her lips lately. “And Dad can’t get off work in the middle of the week to drive over. I’m sure they’ll want to throw their own party in Ohio sometime down the road.”

  Probably when she was forced to move back home because her career here had gone up in flames, she thought despondently.

  “Melanie, is everything all right?” Destiny asked, regarding her worriedly. “For a bride-to-be, you don’t seem very happy. You’ve looked sad ever since you and Richard got back from your little romantic getaway.”

  “I’m just tired,” she assured Destiny. “We did too much and my desk was piled high when I got back, so I’ve been working a lot of late hours.”

  Destiny seemed to accept the explanation. “Once you and Richard are married, you could stop working,” she said carefully. “I know that’s not a very modern attitude, but you certainly could afford to quit.”

  “I love what I do,” Melanie told her. And soon it was going to be the most important thing in her life.

  “I know and you’re good at it, but sometimes life forces us to prioritize. At some point your family might need to come first.”

  “The way it did for you?”

  Destiny’s expression remained neutral. “Yes,” she said quietly. “The way it did for me.”

  “Have you ever regretted it?”

  Destiny looked shocked. “How could I? Richard, Mack and Ben are like sons to me. They needed me,” she said fiercely. “I could never
have lived with any other choice.”

  Melanie heard the total conviction in her voice, even though she also thought she heard a faint note of wistfulness, something Destiny would never voice aloud. If there were regrets, she would clearly take them to her grave. It was not a burden she would place on her nephews.

  “How do you know when the choice is right?” Melanie asked, her own wistfulness far more evident.

  Destiny smiled at her. “You ask your heart. It will never lie to you, not about anything important.” Then she added wryly, “Of course, sometimes you have to listen carefully to hear it through all the clatter going on around you.”

  Melanie wondered about that. Her heart seemed to have quite a track record of getting it wrong. Before she could pursue that thought, Richard came into the very feminine office that Destiny maintained at Carlton Industries. It was a stark contrast to the clean, modern lines in the other offices.

  He came over and gave Destiny an absentminded peck on the cheek, then dropped an equally impersonal kiss on Melanie’s lips to maintain the charade for the moment. Even knowing it meant nothing, Melanie still felt the touch curl her toes.

  “What are you two up to?” he asked.

  “Finalizing plans for the engagement party,” Destiny said. “The invitations are going out this afternoon.”

  He met Melanie’s gaze, his expression guarded. “Has Destiny roped you into inviting a cast of thousands?”

  “Only hundreds,” Melanie said. “I cut her off when we hit three hundred and fifty.”

  “A nice round number,” he said wryly. “Any media?”

  “Pete Forsythe,” Melanie told him. “And his photographer.”

  Destiny shook her head. “Why you want to invite Forsythe is beyond me.”

  Richard regarded her with amusement. “I thought you were rather fond of Mr. Forsythe.”

  Destiny looked suitably appalled. Melanie was impressed by her ability to feign indignation.

 

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