Destiny's Hand

Still, did she dare trust him?

Throw caution to the wind for once in your life. Take a chance.

But she’d just done that by trying to seduce Adam, and look how miserably that impulse had played out.

Yes, but her gut had told her that going to the Grand Duchess was wrong. She had acted on Cass’s advice, not her own instinct. She had to ask herself this question: did she truly believe Renouf had the White Star?

In her mind’s eye she could see Egmath and Batu, meeting clandestinely in the cypress grove, their love for each other eternal and pure. The story that had held her spellbound for months would not let go of her.

She couldn’t help comparing the legendary lovers to her relationship. Morgan sighed with longing and cast her mind back to her courtship days with Adam.

They’d been in a study group together in college and after the group ended they just kept meeting for coffee every Thursday night. She liked him from the very beginning, their eyes meeting across the table, their smiles lingering on each other. They’d gotten the best grades in the class. Two high achievers in a mutual admiration society.

Their goals had been so closely aligned back then, their values so similar it was little wonder that they got along so well. It was breezy being with him, light and fun and hopeful. When he asked her to the symphony to hear her favorite composer she’d eagerly accepted his invitation. It turned out that they liked the same music, read the same books and enjoyed the same kind of movies.

“Cut from the same cloth,” was what their friends said about them.

When she met Adam’s family, his mother told her it was as if they’d just been waiting for her to walk through the door—the bond was that instant, that right. It was the same with Adam and her family. Her dad called him the son he’d never had.

The more she knew about Adam, the more she admired and respected him. He was thoughtful and gentle. He opened the car door for her, helped her on with her coat, pulled out her chair when they dined in restaurants. He bought her little gifts and never forgot important dates. He got along with her friends, and she with his. He was even-tempered and goal-oriented. And just like Morgan, he had a plan for his life and was busily on the path to success. His kisses curled her toes and when they eventually made love it felt nice and warm and safe.

Like coming home after a long journey.

Everyone thought they were the perfect match.

But it had been almost too easy. There had been no big dramas, no major conflicts to overcome, no challenges to hurdle.

Sometimes Morgan couldn’t help wondering if Adam had married her simply because their relationship had been so easy. At some point had he felt trapped by the niceness of it all and drifted into the union because it was expected?

She thought quitting her job and taking on the less stressful role of shop owner would strengthen their marriage, but it had not. She’d changed, while Adam had stayed the same. Safe and nice and warm were no longer enough. In her marriage, she ached for the same kind of red hot energy, the throbbing intensity of passion that fable claimed Egmath and Batu had shared.

Weird as is seemed, Morgan felt that if she did not get to see inside that box, she would never know for sure how Adam truly felt about her. The notion was purely emotional. She knew it, yet she could not shake the irrational impulse.

For her peace of mind, she had to find out what was in that box.

Dear Monsieur Renouf, she tapped out on the keyboard. It just so happens I have plans to visit France within the following week….

IN A LAVISH VILLA IN the south of France, Henri Renouf sat back in his plush leather chair in front of his state-of-the-art computer, a sinister smile playing across his sun-weathered face.

The foolish woman had taken the bait.

She was so easy. It was like being a chess champion and condemned to play with a rabbit. But she had brought to his attention a new conquest to add to his collection, and for that he was grateful.

This new discovery of a mysterious box linked with the White Star was exhilarating and only served to fuel his obsession with the amulet and its legend of star-crossed lovers.

He had to possess that box. At all costs. He would risk everything just to get his hands on it. Nothing mattered more to him.

Renouf rubbed his palms together in a quick, excited gesture and caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirrored tile of the wet bar across the room. He was nearly bald, and what hair he had left he vainly dyed jet-black.

Frowning, he pushed back from the chair and tramped to the mirror for a closer look. His eyes were his most striking feature—intense black pupils emphasized by remarkably clear whites. A lover had once told him that his eyes didn’t seem quite human. He’d taken the comment as a compliment, not for the frightened insult the woman had intended.

Henri traced stubby fingers over the lines embedded in his forehead, the furrows running beside his nose to the corners of his mouth. They suggest experience, command, impatience with fools. But he was vain enough to hate the wrinkles and yet he loved the sun too much to stay out of it.

He had other vices, as well. Cigars and cognac and rich food. His indulgences had thickened his waist. Even so, most people thought he was in his fifties, but Henri was nearing seventy. He didn’t have much time left.

He wanted the box and whatever Henri wanted, Henri got. And he didn’t care who had to die in the process. He’d killed before and, if necessary, he would kill again.

Anticipation watered his mouth. It was all he could do to keep from calling up his pilot, telling him to ready the plane and jetting off to Connecticut to take the box away from the woman immediately. But he could not risk such a bold maneuver. Not when the authorities were looking for him.

But he wanted the box so badly because it represented what he’d never been able to have in real life—true love—that it was almost worth the gamble.

Patience, he cautioned himself. Patience.

Knowing when to attack and when to wait in ambush was what had earned him his privileged life. He would wait. Lure her in. She must come to him, on his turf.

And then he would strike.

3

ADAM SAT IN THE BACKSEAT of the mustard-yellow cab, clutching a bouquet of wilting flowers he’d bought at an all-night grocer’s outside the Grand Duchess. Given that it was two o’clock in the morning, the bedraggled combination of roses, daisies, carnations and baby’s breath was the best he had to offer. And he wasn’t happy about it.

The taxi driver pulled to a stop outside his home on Rosemont Circle. Adam paid the fare and got out, swaying a little in the darkness. He had matched Jacobbi scotch for scotch, keeping up with his client in order to seal their new deal.

As the taxi pulled away from the curb, Adam stared up at his house.

The place was everything he’d ever dreamed of when he was a boy. A rambling four-bedroom perched stately on a two-acre lot kept well manicured by a team of pricey landscapers. In their garage sat a late-model top-of-the-line BMW, and stored at the local marina was his latest toy, Plentiful Bounty, a sleek eighteen-foot catamaran that he’d only taken out once.

He was a lucky man and he knew it, but at the back of his mind he couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t enough. That he needed more. That Morgan needed more. He would simply have to work harder. She deserved the very best he could give her.

Staring at the house, thinking of how he fell short as a man, Adam realized he couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t measuring his intrinsic value in terms of something tangible that other people could see.

There was the used Corvette he’d bought himself when he was seventeen with money earned working two jobs after school and on weekends. With his own hands he’d lovingly restored the car to pristine condition.

Then he had sold it at a huge profit, bought a rundown shack in a neighborhood on the verge of urban renewal in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. He’d repaired it, flipped it and used that money to pay his parents back for putting him through college.

He was always pushing himself to do better, go higher and achieve more. It came in part, he recognized, from having parents who encouraged their four children to reach for the stars. His oldest sister, Meredith, was a renowned pediatric specialist. Of his two younger sisters, Yvonne was a concert pianist who’d played Carnegie Hall, and Brittany, at age twenty-five, was a mathematical genius on the fast track to a Nobel prize in physics.

Other than that, he’d had a conventional middle-class upbringing, where there had been a lot of talk about love but not much physical contact. He simply didn’t come from a family of huggers and touchers. Achieving became like a horse race, with a limited amount of recognition for him as being special or different from everyone else in the family.

Adam focused on what he could accomplish, because if he didn’t, if he ever got mentally quiet, even for a little bit, the nagging doubts began whispering. You’re not working hard enough. You’re just skating by. You’ve got everyone fooled. You’re a fraud, a fake, a poser. You’re worthless.

A sudden feeling of bleakness washed over him, surprising Adam with the sharpness of its pang. He shook his head. Snap out of it.

Clutching the flowers, he concentrated on negotiating his way up the flagstone path. The autumn night breeze blew cool against his face. He thought of Morgan and how good she’d looked in that sexy little outfit and how much he’d wanted to kiss her right in front of everyone at the Grand Duchess. But he was not the kind of guy who acted on such impulses. He’d spent a lifetime perfecting his image. Unfortunately, what served him well in his public life was the very thing that seemed to trip him up in private.

Tonight his wife had made a bold and daring gesture, communicating to him quite concretely what she desired. And he had let her down. He was home to make amends and he intended on spending the rest of the night showing her exactly how much she meant to him.

He pulled his key chain from his pocket and punched the button that sent the garage door rolling up. The BMW sat in one corner, a gathering of Morgan’s antiques that she was waiting for him to help her haul over to her shop crouched in the other. The overhead light was burned out. Another task he’d been putting off.