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Priceless
Sherryl Woods
Return to the heart of the Carlton family in this beloved story of finding love in unexpected places by #1 New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods.Charismatic playboy Mack Carlton lit up a room–even a hospital room–like no one else. Dr. Beth Browning had to admit Mack's visits were a tonic for her young patient, but her own reaction was much more confusing….Although Beth didn't ask for a second opinion on her future with Mack, his aunt Destiny offered her prognosis: marriage. Given Mack's romantic history and her own wariness due to past losses, Beth hesitated to agree–but her symptoms were undeniably love!
Return to the heart of the Carlton family in this beloved story of finding love in unexpected places by #1 New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods
Charismatic playboy Mack Carlton lit up a room—even a hospital room—like no one else. Dr. Beth Browning had to admit Mack’s visits were a tonic for her young patient, but her own reaction was much more confusing…
Although Beth didn’t ask for a second opinion on her future with Mack, his aunt Destiny offered her prognosis: marriage. Given Mack’s romantic history and her own wariness due to past losses, Beth hesitated to agree—but her symptoms were undeniably love!
Praise for the novels of Sherryl Woods (#ulink_f991d7f7-78ae-5add-8fc5-8e9847ca9934)
“Woods’ amazing grasp of human nature and the emotions that lie deep within us make this story universal.”
—RT Book Reviews on Driftwood Cottage
“Woods’ emotionally intense story of loss and love will appeal to a broad range of readers.”
—Booklist on Willow Brook Road
“Once again, Woods proves her expertise in matters of the heart as she gives us characters that we genuinely relate to and care about. A truly delightful read!”
—RT Book Reviews on Moonlight Cove
“Woods employs her signature elements—the southern small-town atmosphere, the supportive network of friends and family, and the heartwarming romance—
to great effect.”
—Booklist on A Slice of Heaven
“Woods…is noted for appealing character-driven stories that are often infused with the flavor and fragrance of the South.”
—Library Journal
“Woods delivers a charming novel…[a] unique blend of sparkling humor and family drama.”
—RT Book Reviews on Midnight Promises
Priceless
Sherryl Woods
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
Dear Friends (#ulink_ce1bad56-bf55-516c-addb-723814bde3a2),
The Perfect Destinies series was originally issued as three Mills & Boon Special Edition books (Million-Dollar Destinies), with a longer follow-up book written for MIRA Books. I’m so pleased to have all of them available in these new editions from MIRA.
As many of you know, I’ve always loved writing about families. And in this case three sexy, very different brothers were raised by their madcap aunt Destiny after the tragic death of their parents. Think Auntie Mame, for those of you old enough to remember that wonderful movie. Or meddling Mick O’Brien, if you’re a fan of my Chesapeake Shores series.
I hope you’ll enjoy revisiting the Carltons if you’ve read these books before. And if you’re new to the series, I hope you’ll welcome the family into your heart as you have so many of my other families.
All best,
CAST OF CHARACTERS (#ulink_ab542aee-c97e-5911-a0e2-ec7dd97896a5)
Mack Carlton—He knows a lot of moves…on the football field and off. He took the game seriously until an injury forced him to the sidelines. Now he sits in the owner’s box, usually with a gorgeous woman close by, and takes very little seriously. It’s way past time for a reality check.
Beth Browning—As a pediatric oncologist, Beth confronts life-and-death struggles every day. She has no patience for frivolities such as football or the grown men who live for games. Beth is a more than even match for a man like Mack, but when it comes to fate, she’s no match at all.
Destiny Carlton—Mack’s aunt knows as well as anyone that life can take a tragic twist, so she’s an ardent believer in living every moment to its fullest. It’s Destiny’s opinion that her beloved nephew Mack understands all about the rules of the game of football but nothing about the game of life. Until he loses his heart, she won’t be satisfied that he’s destined for victory.
One fun-loving man, one woman who’s suffered
too much loss and Destiny’s touch. Touchdown!
Contents
Cover (#ub388c686-5f9e-50d2-bb95-c990cb9de13f)
Back Cover Text (#u09352b2b-c886-5912-b36d-113602e23a2e)
Praise for the novels of Sherryl Woods (#ulink_69ce9156-2f19-5278-9a19-3f3e03a3c4d1)
Title Page (#uc2dc05ea-6d54-5c04-ad07-5cc0a1deb8ff)
Dear Friends (#ulink_308b8e18-46cb-534a-9955-6d4ad8968112)
CAST OF CHARACTERS (#ulink_fa775485-6cd7-59a1-9ed8-6844ad7f7bd9)
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Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
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1 (#ulink_1d56c0a9-c382-5278-bf36-848709d5e1a1)
Mack Carlton, who’d had more quick moves on a football field than any player in Washington, D.C., history, had been dodging his Aunt Destiny for the better part of a month. Unfortunately, Destiny was faster and sneakier than most of the defensive linemen he’d ever faced. She was also more highly motivated. It was a toss-up as to how long it would be before she caught up with him.
Ever since she’d succeeded in getting his older brother, Richard, married a few weeks back, Destiny had set her sights on Mack. She wasn’t even subtle about it. A steady parade of women had been popping up all over the place. Not that that was an unusual occurrence in Mack’s life—he did have a well-deserved reputation as a playboy, after all—but these women were not his type. They had “serious” and “happily ever after” written all over them. Mack didn’t do serious. He didn’t do permanent. Destiny, of all people, should know that.
Not that he had the same issues with love and loss that had kept his big brother off the emotional roller coaster. Mack preferred to think that his hang-ups had more to do with a desire to know lots and lots of women than any fear of eventual abandonment. Why limit himself to one particular dish when there was an entire buffet to be sampled? Sure, he’d been affected by the deaths of his parents in a small plane crash in the Blue Ridge Mountains when he was barely ten, but the trauma hadn’t followed him into adulthood as it had Richard.
Not that Destiny or Richard believed that. Hell, even his younger brother, Ben, was convinced they were all emotionally messed up because of the crash, but Mack knew otherwise, at least in his own case. He just flat-out liked women. He appreciated their minds, their quick wits.
Okay, that was the politically correct thing to say, he conceded, even though there was nobody around who was privy to his private, all-too-male thoughts. Truthfully, what he really appreciated was the way they felt in his arms, their soft skin and passionate responses. While he enjoyed a lively conversation as much as the next man, he truly loved the intimacy of sex, however fleeting and illusional it might be.
Not that he was any kind of sex addict, but a little wholesome rustling of the sheets made a man feel alive. So maybe that was it, he thought with a sudden rush of insight. Maybe what he loved most about sex was that it made him feel alive after being reminded at a very young age that life was short and death was permanent. Maybe he had some emotional scars from that plane crash, after all.
He was still pondering the magnitude of that discovery when Destiny sashayed into his office at team headquarters, where he was now ensconced as part owner of the team for which he’d once played. He was so thoroughly startled by her unexpected appearance in this male bastion, he brought the legs of his chair crashing to the floor with such force it was a wonder the chair didn’t shatter.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Destiny said pleasantly, sitting across from him in her pale-blue suit that mirrored the color of her eyes.
As always, Destiny looked as if she’d just walked out of a beauty salon, which was a far cry from some of the pictures around the house taken during her years as a painter in the south of France. In those she always appeared a bit rumpled and wildly exotic. Mack occasionally allowed himself to wonder if his aunt missed those days, if she missed the life she’d given up to come back to Virginia to care for him and his brothers after the plane crash.
As a child he’d never dared to ask because he’d feared that reminding Destiny of what she’d sacrificed might send her scurrying back to Europe to reclaim it. As he’d gotten older, he’d started taking her presence—and her contentment—for granted.
Now he gave his aunt a cool, unblinking look, determined not to let her see that her arrival had shaken him in any way. With Destiny it was best not to show any signs of weakness at all. “You’re imagining things,” he told her flatly.
Destiny chuckled. “I didn’t imagine that it was your behind I saw scurrying out the back door at Richard and Melanie’s the other night, did I? I saw that backside in too many football huddles to mistake it.”
Damn. He thought he’d made a clean escape. Of course, it was possible that his brother had blabbed. Richard thought Mack had taken a little too much pleasure in Destiny’s successful maneuvering of Richard straight into Melanie’s arms. He was more than capable of going for a little payback to see that Mack met the same fate.
“Did you really spot me, or did Richard rat me out?” he asked suspiciously. “I know he wants me to fall into one of your snares the same way he did.”
“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.”
“I’m sure it was just some sort of oversight or mix-up,” Destiny said. “The important thing is that you’re going now. I’ll say a prayer for the young boy. You can tell me all about your visit on Sunday. Perhaps there’s more we could be doing for him.”
Mack leaned down and kissed her cheek. “You ought to be the one going over there. A dose of your good cheer could improve anyone’s spirits.”
