Destiny's Hand

“Because you asked for a late meeting.”

“Ever consider telling me to shove it and meet at a time that didn’t disrupt your family life?”

“Would you be my client if I did?”

“Maybe not. The point is that you have to make choices in this world, Shaw. And it’s clear you’ve chosen business over family. Nothing wrong with that. Just make no mistake—you’ll pay top dollar for your sacrifices.”

“Speaking from experience, Jacobbi?”

“I’m on wife number three, my kids won’t speak to me, but I’m a millionaire several times over. You figure it out.”

“Two scotches for the gentlemen,” the waitress said and settled their drinks in front of them.

Adam signed the drinks to his hotel room. Pensively he sipped from his glass. Was Jacobbi right? Was he paying too high of a price for success?

But I’m doing it for Morgan, so she can have her antique shop. For our home. For the kids we don’t yet have.

He looked across the table at the older man and suddenly flashed fifteen years in the future. Would he still be doing this job at Jacobbi’s age—accommodating big-fish clients by meeting them late at night, even when it wasn’t conducive to his home life, simply to make more money?

The thought unsettled him.

So do something about it.

Now?

Adam glanced around as if someone was watching him, gauging his response, critiquing his choices.

His heart urged him to make his excuses to Jacobbi, reschedule their meeting and go home to his wife. But he was so very close to being made vice president. If he pissed off Jacobbi, he could jeopardize the promotion he had been working his entire life to snag. If he was going to distinguish himself above the other VP candidates, he had to go above and beyond the call of duty, not wimp out at the last moment.

Not even for the sake of your marriage?

Come on. His marriage was fine. No matter what Jacobbi had said. Sure, maybe their sex life had slowed down over the years, but hell, he and Morgan had been married a decade. It was normal and natural for the excitement to wax and wane.

Yet no matter how much Adam tried to convince himself that things were perfectly fine at home, he couldn’t stop remembering the look in Morgan’s eyes when he’d asked her what she was doing there. He’d hurt her feelings, and that had not been his intention.

Should he stay or should he go?

“Let’s get down to business,” Jacobbi said, rubbing his palms together and launching into details about his plans for taking his company public.

The next thing Adam knew, he was caught up in the minutiae, talking shop. But in the back of his head he made a decision. He wouldn’t stay at the Grand Duchess tonight as he’d planned. Even if the meeting ran so late that he missed the last train out of the city, he would spring for taxi fare to Connecticut. One way or the other, he was going to make love to his wife tonight.

He was determined to prove to them both that their marriage was one hundred percent okay.

2

MORGAN ARRIVED HOME TO find the green light on the answering machine blinking provocatively. Could it be Adam calling to say that he’d changed his mind and was coming home tonight after all? Her heart cartwheeled with hope.

Please let it be him, she prayed.

Unzipping Cass’s slut-puppy boots, Morgan kicked them across the entryway floor. She stripped off the itchy red wig, tossed it onto the foyer table and ran her fingers through her damp hair. She still wore Adam’s jacket, the sleeves dangling past her fingertips.

While pulling up one sleeve, she reached over to press the play button on the machine. Blood drained from her legs and pooled throbbing into her toes. Whether from anticipation of the message on the machine or from spending several hours in those unaccustomed high-heeled boots, she did not know for sure, but probably it was a bit of both.

“Hello, Morgan, this is Sam Mason returning your call.”

Her hopes took a sucker punch.

Detective Sergeant Sam Mason was Cass’s new boyfriend. Down-to-earth Sam was good for her flighty baby sister, and for that fact alone Morgan adored him. It was the first serious relationship Cass had ever had, and whenever Morgan saw the two of them together, she couldn’t help longing for the kind of fire-blazing passion they shared.

“In answer to your inquiry, no, I’m afraid the White Star amulet is no longer in the possession of the NYPD,” Sam’s voice spun out into the room.

Morgan had telephoned Sam that afternoon, before heading over to the Grand Duchess, in response to information she had received the previous morning from an archaeologist named Cate Wells. Several months ago Morgan had found an intriguing antique box in the basement of her antique shop, along with an ancient French text about an amulet that had belonged to star-crossed lovers.

At first, Morgan had found the box merely intriguing, but as time passed and she unearthed bits and pieces of the legend, she had become obsessed with finding out the truth about the box, the book and the White Star amulet, which had been stolen last April from the Stanhope auction house.

Sam had been assigned to the case and that was how he’d gotten involved with her sister. Cass had taken the book to him when she and Morgan had realized the stolen amulet was the same one pictured in the book. Morgan had found the tome among the antiques she’d purchased in a lot along with her shop.

Pieces of the puzzle had slowly started to come together, revealing a fascinating legend of star-crossed lovers and the magical power of true love.

Cate Wells had taken photos of the box and then shown them to an expert in the field. He had confirmed the connection, speculating that indeed the star-shaped design on the box correlated with a star-shaped key.

It was in that moment it occurred to Morgan that the White Star amulet was probably the key that opened the box. The key, that last Morgan had heard, was locked up in the evidence room at the Thirty-ninth Precinct, where Sam worked.

“No one knows where the amulet is,” Sam’s taped message continued. “There’s an investigation under way, but it’s looking like a dirty cop took a bribe to steal it for someone else. That’s all I can tell you right now. The station is in an uproar.”

Darn it. Morgan sighed and swallowed her second big disappointment of the day. Another dead end.

Still, she wasn’t a quitter. Once she sank her teeth into something, she hung on until there was absolutely no possibility of victory.

She belonged to an online message board for antique dealers, and there was a thread about stolen antiquities. What would it hurt to make a few discreet inquiries? She’d already posted about the box once before when she was trying to learn precisely what it might be and who its previous owners could have been.

All she would have to do was leave a message saying she’d discovered that a very unique key opened the box. She would try dangling the box as bait for the person who now possessed the amulet.

It was a long shot and she knew it, but Morgan was glad to have something to focus on besides her failed seduction.

She stripped off her sexy clothes—which seemed particularly pathetic in light of what had not happened at the Grand Duchess—scrubbed the heavy makeup off her face and slipped into her favorite pair of silk pajamas. Feeling more like herself again, she poured herself a glass of wine, padded into her home office and booted up her computer.

Logging on to the message board took a few minutes. Then she spent a long while getting the wording of her e-mail just right before she was satisfied enough to post it to the group.

She signed the missive Curious in Connecticut and entered “Special Gem” in the subject line. Satisfied, she depressed the send button, leaned back in her plush leather chair and took a long sip of Pinot Grigio. The slightly sweet liquid flowed warmly through her body, easing her tension.

A few minutes later her post popped up on the message board.

“It’ll probably be months before I get a response,” she muttered gloomily.

She searched through other threads, looking for posts of interest, but found nothing related to ancient amulets or long-lost boxes. Melancholy weighted her shoulders. She wrapped her sadness around her like a cloak, drank it in with the wine until her body pulsed, encompassed by the feeling.

Here it was again, the blue funk that whispered darkly to her in moments of doubt and shame. These feelings did not express who she thought she should be. What was wrong with her? She adored her husband. Why this desperate wish for something deeper?