“Your brother is not a tattler,” she assured him. “And my eyesight’s twenty-twenty.” She gave him a measuring look. “What are you scared of, Mack?”
“I think we both know the answer to that one. I also suspect it’s the same thing that brought you to my office. What sort of devious scheme do you have up your sleeve, Destiny? And before you answer, let’s get one thing straight, my social life is off-limits. I’m handling it very well on my own.”
Destiny rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’ve seen how well you’re handling it in every gossip column in town. It’s unseemly, Mack. You may not be directly affiliated with Carlton Industries, but the family does have a certain social standing in the community. You need to be mindful of that, especially with Richard entering politics any day now.”
The family respectability card was a familiar one. He was surprised she’d tried the tactic again, since it had failed abysmally in the past. “Most people are capable of separating me from my brother. Besides that, I’m an adult,” he recited as he had so often in the past. “So are the women I date. No harm, no foul.”
“And you’re content with that?” Destiny asked, her skepticism plain.
“Absolutely,” he insisted. “Couldn’t be happier.”
She nodded slowly. “Well, that’s that then. Your happiness is all that’s ever mattered to me, you know. Yours and your brothers’.”
Mack studied her with a narrowed gaze. Surely she wasn’t giving up that easily. Destiny was constitutionally incapable of surrendering before she’d even had a first skirmish. If she were so easily put off, Richard wouldn’t be married right now. Mack needed to remember that.
“We appreciate that you love us,” he said carefully. “And I’m glad you’re willing to let me choose my own dates. It’s a real relief, in fact.”
She fought a smile. “Yes, I imagine it is, since the kind of woman I see you with is not the sort of mental and emotional lightweight you tend to choose.”
He ignored the slap at his taste in women. He’d heard it before. “Anything else I can do for you while you’re here?” he asked politely. “Do you need any team souvenirs for one of your charity auctions?”
“Not really. I just wanted to drop by and catch up,” she claimed with a perfectly straight face. “Will you come to dinner soon?”
“Now that I know you’ve given up meddling in my social life, yes,” he told her, deciding to give her the benefit of the doubt for the moment. “Is everyone coming for Sunday dinner?”
“Of course.”
“Then I’ll be there,” he promised. At least there was some safety in numbers, in case Destiny had a change of heart between now and Sunday.
She stood up. “I’ll be on my way, then.”
Mack walked with her down the hall to the elevator, struck anew by how small she was. She barely reached his shoulder. She’d always seemed to be such a giant force to be reckoned with that it gave the illusion she was bigger. Then, again, he was six-two, so Destiny was probably a perfectly average-size woman. Add in her dynamic personality, and she had few equals of any size among Washington’s most powerful women.
She was about to step into the elevator when she gave him her most winning smile, the one reserved for suckering big bucks from an unwitting corporate CEO. Seeing that smile immediately put Mack right back on guard.
“Oh, darling, I almost forgot,” she claimed, reaching into her purse and pulling out a note written on a sheet of her pretty floral stationery. “Could you drop by the hospital this afternoon? A Dr. Browning spoke to me earlier and said one of the young patients in the oncology unit has a very poor outlook. The boy is a huge fan of yours, and the doctor feels certain that a visit from you might boost his morale.”
Despite the clamor of alarm bells ringing in his head, Mack took the note. Whatever Destiny was really up to, it was not the kind of request he could ignore. She knew that, too. She’d instilled a strong sense of responsibility in all of her nephews. His football celebrity had made fulfilling requests of this type a commonplace part of his life.
He glanced at his watch. “I have a business meeting in a couple of hours, but I can swing by there on my way.”
“Thank you, darling. I knew I could count on you. I told Dr. Browning you’d be by, that the other requests must have gotten lost.”
Mack felt his stomach twist into a knot. “There were other requests?”
“Several of them, I believe. I was a last resort.”
He nodded grimly, his initial suspicions about his aunt’s scheming vanishing. “I’ll look into that. The staff around here knows that I do this kind of visit whenever possible, especially if there’s a kid involved.”