Destiny Unleashed by Sherryl Woods Read Free Book Online

money that spoke volumes. Only the very rich had that careless air.
    He shrugged. “And then some, I suppose.”
    “Then why not spend a bit of it on art?” she challenged. “Would it cut into the funds available for polo ponies?”
    “I have enough for both, but this art?” he asked with a shudder. “Too saccharine. There’s talent there, of course, but it’s being wasted.”
    Destiny’s temper stirred. “Is that so?”
    He gave her a sharp look. “You like it, I imagine.I suppose it does suit a woman’s romantic sensibilities.”
    “It certainly suits mine,” she said. She gave him her most chillingly polite smile and held out her hand. “Destiny Carlton.”
    He blinked and a dull red flush crept up his neck. “The artist,” he said.
    “Indeed.”
    “Though I probably should slink away without admitting it, I’m William Harcourt,” he said, giving her an abashed look even as he took her hand and held it long enough for her blood to stir as heatedly as her temper had moments before. “And I’m dreadfully sorry. I usually don’t set out to jam my foot in my mouth so quickly.”
    Destiny hid her hurt pride. He had taken only a tiny nip, after all. “Why be sorry? You were being honest. And art is subjective, isn’t it? There are very few, I imagine, who fall in love with both Monet and Jackson Pollock.” She surveyed him. “I would guess Pollock is more to your taste.”
    When he realized that she hadn’t taken serious offense, that she could talk calmly and reasonably about the pros and cons of various works of art—including her own—he gave her a considering look that made her pulse hum.
    “Perhaps Violetta wasn’t so far off the mark when she said she wanted to introduce us,” he said with a quiet intensity that shook her. “Would you care for coffee after this affair is over? I imagine we can find any number of topics to pursue without me tripping all over myself to offend you.”
    Destiny gazed into his fathomless, sea-green eyesand found herself intrigued, too fascinated to write off the encounter and head immediately home as she’d planned. There was more than a simmering attraction she didn’t want to ignore. She liked his directness, even when it came at her expense, and the promise of challenging, witty conversation. He would fit quite nicely into the assortment of friends she’d found since settling in France.
    “Coffee would be lovely,” she said, impulse overruling whatever qualms she might have had. Violetta would never have invited this man here tonight to meet her if she hadn’t believed him to be respectable. And Destiny trusted her own judgment, too. Even as she voiced the mundane words, she knew that the end of the evening was going to be so much better than its start. It was going to be the beginning of something extraordinary.
    Anxious to begin, she smiled up at him. “Why wait?”
    William’s eyes lit up. “No coy games?”
    “I don’t believe in them,” she told him. “Neither, it seems, do you.”
    “No,” he agreed. “When I see something I want, I go after it. Let that be a warning to you.”
    She smiled. “Well taken,” she said. “But just so you know, I’m no amateur at getting what I want, as well.”
    William laughed. “Then it seems we’re a perfect match. We’ll have to thank Violetta one day,”
    “Perhaps we will,” Destiny said. “When we’re much older and spending a holiday in Paris.”
    She was only partially joking. Somewhere deep inher soul she already knew that William was going to be an important part of her life, perhaps the best part.
     
    Twenty-five years later as Destiny walked off the plane in London ready for battle, she looked back on the young, naive woman she had been when she’d first met William with something akin to pity. Back then she had been so certain that William was the man of her dreams, an equal with nothing to prove, nothing to gain from a liaison with a Carlton. She’d thought their love was not