Mr Destiny (2 page)

“I'd say ridiculous is a fair description of this whole situation,” Kate said, and Alex quickly shushed her.

He said, “Twenty years ago my grandmother read
my
tea leaves. She predicted I wouldn't marry until I was thirty-six years old. That I would marry a beautiful blonde with green
eyes. And…”

“Oh, please,” Kate said, and “pop” went her fantasy bubble again.

“
And
,” he repeated, “my grandmother said I would meet this woman in Central Park, standing beside the Virgin Mary.”

Alex gasped.

All three of them automatically looked at the painting sitting on the easel directly beside Kate.

“Unlike the rest of my crazy family,” he said, “I've never had a superstitious bone in my body. Tony, I told myself, a blonde
with green eyes? Maybe. But the Virgin Mary hanging out in Central Park? Forgetaboutit.”

“Until today,” Alex spoke up. “When you came riding through Central Park and saw Kate standing beside this painting.”

“Exactly,” he said. “And since I just turned thirty-six a few weeks ago and I'm still not married, the
Twilight Zone
music definitely kicked in for a second.”

“And who could blame you?” Alex said. “Right, Kate?”

All Kate said was, “Wrong blonde.” She held her left hand up, hoping the sizable bling bling on her finger would snap both
of them back to reality. “I'm already engaged. I'm getting married in two months.”

Alex nodded—sadly, Kate noticed—confirming everything she'd just said.

She felt like slapping Alex. And she definitely didn't like the way
he
was staring at her now—searching her face—as if he sensed that whether she was getting married in two months or not, she'd
been fantasizing about the naughty things she'd like to do to him from the moment he'd come trotting up the trail.

“Well, there you go,” he finally said, impaling her with one last look. “So much for destiny.”

“And such a pity,” Alex said.

This time Kate gave
Alex
an elbow-to-the-ribs punch.

He snapped on his helmet. “Thank you, ladies. For listening to my story.”

“Our pleasure,” Alex said with a wistful sigh.

“And thank you, Kate, for finally putting my grand-mother's prediction to rest.”

Kate's nod was cordial.

Almost.

She wanted him gone. On his way and out of her face. She was an engaged woman. Soon to be married. The last thing she needed
was some gorgeous and overly congenial hunk like this one showing up to remind her that if she did marry reserved and marginally
stuffy Harold, she might be getting the short end of the stick—in more ways than one.

Good. He's leaving.

He sent both of them a friendly salute, then turned and walked back to his horse. After slipping a boot into the stirrup,
he pulled himself effortlessly up on the back of his horse, rode off down the path, and never looked back.

Alex immediately sent her the perturbed look Kate was expecting. “You dummy. He was gorgeous. He had a great sense of humor.
He even got a little misty-eyed talking about his grandmother, for Christ's sake. How could you let a romantic guy like him
ride out of your life like that?”

Kate rolled her eyes. “You tell me, Alex. Why do
you
think I wasn't interested in some misty-eyed cop with a crazy story about his tea-leaf-reading grandmother? Aside from the
fact that I'm already engaged. Because I
am
going to marry Harold, Alex. You can boycott my wedding. You can even keep pulling stunts like the one you pulled just now,
trying to fix me up with random guys on the street. But it isn't going to work. I'm interested in Harold. And
only
Harold.”

Alex snorted. “Oh, come on, Kate. The only reason you've ever been interested in Harold is because you've always been a sucker
for a sad story.”

“A sad story?” Kate shook her head in protest. “Harold doesn't have a sad story. He's smart. He's successful. He…”

“He has a gherkin instead of a dill?” Alex said. “And that's pretty damn sad if you ask me.”

Kate frowned. “I never should have told you his ex-girlfriend made some ego-shattering comment that Harold's still trying
to overcome.”

“And I still can't believe Harold told
you
his french fry was a tad short of a Happy Meal. What kind of a man would admit that? Unless, like I said, he was trying to
play on your sympathy?”

“He didn't just walk up to me and say, ‘Hi, I'm Harold Wellington, and I have a small penis,’ Alex. Harold's intimacy problem
is a mental issue, and you know it. You were the one who suggested we should see a couple's therapist so Harold could get
his confidence back in the bedroom.”

“And how's that going for you?”

When Kate frowned again, Alex said, “I'm boycotting your wedding because I don't trust him, Kate. You're my dearest and closest
friend. It worries me that Harold has been rushing you to the altar from the first night he met you. What's the big hurry?
You've only known him six months.”

“Eight months,” Kate corrected. “Long enough to know Harold is the most charming man I've ever met. Plus he adores me. Tell
me how being married to a successful and charming man who adores you can be a bad thing.”

“He's nauseatingly charming to you, Kate,” Alex said, “but he's an arrogant prick to everyone else.” She thought for a second,
and said, “No, make that an arrogant
unresponsive
prick, since that's more appropriate for Harold and his limp Wellington.”

“Alex!” Kate scolded, looking around them. “Clean up your language, or at least keep your voice down.”

Alex grinned, leaned forward, and whispered, “I bet there's nothing
limp
about Officer Petrocelli. And from the way he was looking at you earlier, I'd say he'd be more than willing to prove it to
you.”

“Not interested,” Kate said, and it was true, now that temptation had finally ridden off down the path and out of her sight.

“Liar,” Alex said with a smirk. “I saw the way you were ogling the guy before he even stopped to talk to you. Admit it. Why
do you think you didn't even realize I was here?”

Kate's cheeks flushed. “Okay! I admit it. I was attracted to the guy the second I saw him. It was all I could do to keep from
dragging him into the bushes and demanding that he frisk me. But that still doesn't change a thing.”

“How do you know? If he'd frisked your brains out, you might have come to your senses and called off the wedding.”

“See!” Kate said. “There's just no winning with you, Alex.”

Alex reached out and put a supportive arm around Kate's shoulder. “Hey, there's no reason to feel guilty about being attracted
to a good-looking guy. Especially with your hopeless celibacy situation. What bothers me is that I've never once seen you
look at Harold the way I just saw you look at the man who could very well be your Mr. Destiny.”

Again, Kate blushed at the truth.

She pushed Alex away, and said, “I'd be worrying about my own celibacy situation, if I were you.”

There.

She could give back as good as Alex could send.

Alex only sent her a sympathetic look. “At least I know my celibacy situation is only because I'm being too stubborn to go
home right now.”

“Don't lecture me, Alex.”

“Don't mess with destiny, Kate.”

Alex's warning made her shiver.

She'd had her own premonition moments earlier as she'd watched him ride away. Something told Kate she hadn't seen the last
of Officer Anthony Petrocelli.

“Well, I just took stupidity to a whole new level,” Tony said aloud, when he was safely out of hearing range of the two women
who had just witnessed him making a complete fool of himself.

Skyscraper shook his head up and down several times, pulling his bridle from Tony's hand. “Hey!” Tony said. “That wasn't a
cue for you to agree with me.”

The horse's ears pricked for a second, then relaxed, signaling to Tony that even his horse wasn't going to argue that moot
point. Except
stupidity
didn't accurately describe the stunt he'd just pulled.

Insanity
would be a better word.

Only a crazy person would have walked up to a total stranger and spent five full minutes telling her about the idiotic marriage
prediction his grandmother had made twenty years earlier—especially when she'd told him up front that she wasn't interested
in anything he had to say.

Of course, then her take-charge best friend had butted in and opened the door so he could prove without a doubt that he really
was too stupid to live.

Tony shook his head disgustedly.

Skyscraper did the same.

He shifted in the saddle slightly, making Skyscraper's ears twitch impatiently at his restlessness. But even after he'd settled
back into a comfortable riding position, he couldn't stop thinking about how Kate Anderson had looked when he rounded the
curve and saw her standing there on the path.

The late-afternoon sun had been at her back, shining through the flimsy material of her free-flowing dress, and giving him
a silhouette peek at luscious curves he wouldn't have had the privilege of seeing otherwise. The sexiness of her stance alone
had set his head reeling.

His gaze had drifted up from her shapely legs to her beautiful face. High cheekbones. Perfect mouth. The sexy way she was
nibbling at her bottom lip. That's when his heart had picked up more than a few extra beats.

And the real clincher?

Without a doubt, that long straight hair of hers, shining like spun gold against her slender shoulders.

He'd been awestruck at the mere sight of her.

That had been before he'd even noticed the painting of the Blessed Virgin sitting on the easel beside her.
Or
before he'd gotten close enough to determine the color of her eyes.

Yet once he did get closer, those moss green eyes had drawn him in like a magnet. For one brief second, he'd even had the
audacity to think,
This woman is my destiny.

“
Idiot,
“ Tony said aloud, and Skyscraper came to an abrupt halt. Tony nudged the horse gently in the sides with his knees. “I meant
me, dammit. Not you.”

Skyscraper snorted, then moved forward again.

A green-eyed blonde standing beside the Virgin Mary.

He still couldn't believe it.

Nonna's twenty-year-old prediction had come back to haunt him for real.

In fact, Nonna's prediction had been all everyone in his large family—from his parents to his tongue-in-cheek brothers-in-law—had
been talking about since his thirty-sixth birthday party a few weeks ago. Crazy people. All of them. Even crazier was the
family legend that Nonna had never been wrong about one of her sainted marriage predictions.

Not that he hadn't voiced his own unpopular opinion on the subject the night of his birthday party, because he had. He'd patiently
pointed out that it had been the generic nature of Nonna's predictions, not destiny, that had fulfilled the marriage prophecy
for the four Petrocelli men preceding him. His own father's tea-leaf prediction being one of them—whether his mother wanted
to believe it or not.

So maybe his parents had met on the subway. What New Yorker didn't ride the subway? And maybe his mother had been wearing
a coat with a fur collar and a pair of red high heels. There had to be thousands of women in the city, even today, who had
fur-collar coats and red high heels in their closets. Believing his grandmother could actually predict the future was nothing
short of ludicrous.

Almost as ludicrous as finding a green-eyed blonde standing beside the Virgin Mary in Central Park.

Tony let out a deep sigh.

Skyscraper responded with a horse-type version of the same, forcing air though his muzzle so it came out in a long, loud pfffffft.

“Would you just focus on the trail?” Tony said, which was another stupid thing to say because Skyscraper knew their routine
as well, if not better, than Tony did himself.

As proof, Skyscraper left the path without even being prompted. Heading, Tony knew, for one of their first favorite afternoon
stops. A particular shaded park bench located at this end of the park near the Met. A park bench where summer days like this
one would find Solomon Stein, a rather stooped elderly Jewish man, working the daily crossword puzzle in the
New York Times
and feeding the pigeons.

Sol looked over the top of his wire-rimmed reading glasses when Skyscraper came to an automatic stop by his park bench. “I'm
stumped again,” he said, reaching out to give the horse a fond rub down the full length of his nose. “Ten-letter word that
means carefree. Begins with ‘i.’ ”

Tony thought for a second. “Insouciant.”

Sol penciled in the word with a frown on his face.

“You're welcome,” Tony said.

Sol only grunted. “I say this every time you give me a split-second answer to a word that's had me stumped for hours. What
a waste of a good Princeton education.”

Tony laughed. “And every time you say that, I remind you that
no
education is a waste.
And
, that after spending two miserable years sitting behind a desk on Wall Street, I finally pulled my head out of my MBA ass
and headed straight for the Police Academy.”