Shocked by the blasé announcement, he stared at her. “Now I know there’s something wrong. What aren’t you telling me? You always swore you would never sell that house, that you wanted to know it was there for your old age.”
She shrugged. “Times change. I was young and impetuous back then. While you boys were growing up, so was I. I have new dreams now.”
Richard regarded her skeptically. “And one of those dreams is to run our European division?”
“Yes,” she declared flatly, her gaze unblinking.
Truthfully, he didn’t doubt for a second that she could do it. Destiny was an amazing woman. She had a huge and generous heart, an astounding zest for life, and a mind that could grasp the details of a business merger even more quickly than his.
In her fifties, she was still a beautiful woman, trim and lithe with a cloud of soft brown hair framing a face that time had treated kindly. Her generous mouth was usually curved in a brilliant smile and laugh lines fanned out from eyes that sparkled.
There was no shortage of available men to fill her evenings, and yet she kept most of them at arm’s length. His wife said it was because Destiny still longed for the love of her life, whoever the hell that was, the man she’d left behind when she’d come home to take charge of her nephews. Maybe that was true, though Richard didn’t like thinking that she’d sacrificed someone so irreplaceable that she’d spent the last twenty years yearning for him. It would be even worse if that man turned out to be William Harcourt, as he once suspected. Harcourt was the very man who’d become the bane of Richard’s existence by mucking about in every deal Carlton Industries tried to make in Europe.
He pushed all of that from his mind and tried to view this request from Destiny’s perspective. In all these years she had never asked for anything for herself. She’d thrown herself into sudden and unexpected motherhood with complete abandon, mastering it with her own unorthodox style. After all she’d done for him and his brothers, if she wanted this one thing from him now, how could he deny her?
Still, the decision seemed so impulsive, so out of character, he had to be sure it wasn’t a whim. Carlton Industries wasn’t some playground for a woman who was simply bored with her life.
“Destiny, have you really thought this through?” he asked. “There are downsides. Serious downsides, in fact. Tackling such a huge job will mean long days in an office. There will be a lot of stress involved.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Are you suggesting I’m not physically or mentally up to it?” she asked, her tone suddenly icy.
Richard knew better than to say any such thing. “Of course not.”
“Well then, why are you hesitating?”
“Because this is so unlike you. In fact, every time I’ve brought up the European division and the problems it was having, you’ve told me to deal with it myself.”
She regarded him blandly. “But you haven’t, have you?”
Richard sighed. She had him there. William Harcourt was still insinuating himself into every single negotiation Carlton Industries was involved in. Richard had managed to thwart most of Harcourt’s attempts to steal business, but he hadn’t really dealt the man a final, knockout blow that would end the nonsense.
He couldn’t help wondering yet again if there was a link between Harcourt and Destiny he didn’t know about. He’d asked Destiny before if she had known the man years ago, but she’d avoided giving him a direct answer. Ben had managed to finagle an admission that she’d known Harcourt, but had gotten nothing more. That rather incomplete acknowledgment had raised Richard’s suspicions that there was more going on with Harcourt than business, but without proof he hadn’t been able to call her on it. He needed to try again.
“Does this have something to do with Harcourt?” he asked her.
“No, it has to do with me,” she insisted, regarding him with an unblinking gaze that gave away nothing. “It’s time to find out what I’m made of.”
“You’re an incredible woman!” Richard said impatiently. “Why are you questioning that now? Don’t start spouting some nonsense about low self-esteem to me. I’ll laugh you right out of here.”
“Darling, it’s not that I don’t think I did a good job raising you and your brothers or that I haven’t made a contribution to the community, but I don’t know who I am, not really. I don’t paint anymore. I’m not your surrogate mother. I’m bored by running events. Somewhere along the way I’ve lost myself.”
Richard was completely bewildered by her claim. “That’s crazy.”
“Is it? I was very young when I first went to Europe. I had plenty of money and virtually no responsibilities. I painted because I enjoyed it, not because I was passionate about it. I was surrounded by people who were as irresponsible as I was.”
“Including William Harcourt?” he asked again, wondering if she would finally give him an honest answer.
She gave him a sour look. “Yes, if you must know, including William.”
When Richard began to press her on that, she held up her hand. “The point I’m trying to make is that when your parents died, I came back here and had the responsibility of a family thrust on me. I think I lived up to that responsibility reasonably well—”
“Of course you did.”
“But,” she added with a trace of impatience, “those years were a gift, something unexpected, that shaped my life for a time, but now I’m ready to move on. I need to find out who Destiny Carlton really is.”
“And you think you could be a successful businesswoman?”
“Why not?” she asked. “It is in my genes, after all.” She gave him a hard look. “I honestly don’t know why you’re making such a fuss or why you’re so surprised by this. I’ve been talking about it for months now, ever since Ben’s wedding. I’ve been
