Priceless(60)

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said as he headed for home. Maybe Destiny had gotten it right after all. But given how irritated he was with her at the moment, it would take a stack of snowballs in hell before he told her that.



Mack was still sound asleep when the phone beside the bed jarred him awake. “Yeah, what?” he growled.

“What on earth were you thinking?” Destiny demanded, snapping him awake with the genuine dismay in her voice.

“What?” he asked, sitting up in bed.

“You haven’t seen the morning paper?”

“You woke me out of a sound sleep. What do you think?” he retorted more sharply than he should have. He might be irritated with his aunt, but she didn’t deserve rudeness.

“Get your paper and call me back after you’ve read Pete Forsythe’s column,” she said, and hung up on him.

Mack stared at the phone, then finally returned it to its cradle. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d heard his aunt so furious. Nor could he imagine anything he might have done to set her off.

Yanking on a pair of jeans, he went to the front door and picked up the paper, turning immediately to the gossip column.

“Mack’s back!” screamed the headline, as if he’d been recovered from space aliens.

His heart thudding dully he began to read.

“Maybe reports of Mighty Mack Carlton’s fascination with a prominent lady doctor were premature,” Forsythe had written. “Just last night Mack was spotted by our photographer out on the town with an old flame, supermodel Cassandra Wells.”

Mack stared at the photo accompanying the article. Sure enough, there he was with Cassandra draped all over him. The photographer had managed to shoot from an angle that completely blocked out his brothers. He finally understood Destiny’s indignation. He was pretty damn livid himself, especially since he knew what had gone on last night…and what hadn’t.

He picked up the phone and dialed Destiny. “It’s not what it looks like,” he said at once.

“They doctored the photo?” she asked in a scathing tone. “Please, Mack, don’t even try to suggest such a thing.”

“No, but they managed to take the picture or crop it so that Richard and Ben weren’t in it,” he told her.

She paused then. “Your brothers were there?” she asked in a tone that sounded slightly less irate.

“Yes.”

Instead of sounding relieved, Destiny muttered, “I think I’d better speak to both of them about appropriate behavior in a public place.”

If she hadn’t sounded so serious, Mack might have laughed. “Destiny, I think we’re all a little too old for that particular lecture.”

“Obviously not,” she huffed. “How are you going to explain this to Beth? She must be devastated. You’ve publicly humiliated her. Just yesterday—”

Mack cut her off. “Destiny, you really don’t want to go there. If anyone is responsible for Beth being humiliated, I think we can agree that it’s you. Pete Forsythe wouldn’t know about her at all, if you hadn’t tipped him off.”

She sighed heavily. “You’re right,” she said, giving up the fight gracefully. “It was probably a mistake to try that particular tactic.”

“Probably? It was a mistake,” Mack said emphatically.

“Darling, I’ll ask you again, then. Why are you still seeing her? I was so hopeful that it was getting serious and here you are running around with an old flame.”

“Didn’t you hear a word I just said? I wasn’t running around. Cassandra was at my table for less than a minute, long enough to plant that kiss and get her picture snapped. It had nothing to do with Beth,” Mack insisted. “Though after this debacle, I’ll be lucky if she ever speaks to me again.”

“Can I help?”

“No. I think you’ve done quite enough. I’ll handle this.”

“Mack, before you see Beth, really think about what you want. It’s not fair to lead her on, if you don’t intend to truly open your heart and let her in. She’d be better off if you simply let her go now.”

“You want me to break up with her?”

“No, of course that’s not what I want, but it might be for the best. As for this business last night, I’m sorry if I jumped to the wrong conclusion,” Destiny apologized. “It just made me so angry to see you taking up with that little nobody when you could have a woman of substance like Beth in your life. In the end, though, it is your decision.”

Mack grinned at the dismissal of Cassandra as a “little nobody.” She was on the cover of half the high-fashion magazines in the world.