My Destiny by Adrianne Byrd Page A

didn’t know what to say. Answers like “We all have to deal with such cases” or “Hey, don’t let the job get you down” seemed too crass and unsympathetic. So instead, he said nothing.
    “I don’t know. Maybe I need to take a break. I’ve yet to take a vacation since I’ve been with Phillips, Anderson and Brown.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, astonished.
    “I wish I was.” She shrugged again and emitted a low laugh. “What can I say? I’m your typical workaholic.”
    “Workaholic?” He held his fingers up in shape of a cross and shuddered. “Sounds like a horrible disease. It’s not contagious, is it?”
    Destiny laughed. “I think you’re safe. Besides, you have quite a level of discipline yourself.”
    Perplexed, he asked, “Me?”
    “Yes, you. What are you—some kind of health freak?” She laughed, but noticed that he didn’t.
    “What?” she asked baffled. When he didn’t readily respond, she laughed. “You are, aren’t you?”
    He shrugged and tried not to laugh at her amused expression. “Well, let’s just say it’s a long story.”
    “Like you said earlier, I’m not about to go anywhere anytime soon.”
    Miles shook his head. “You’ll laugh.”
    “Probably—but try me anyway.”
    He hesitated. The last thing he needed was for someone else telling him how silly it was to believe in curses. He drained what was left in his glass and looked at her. “Odds are, I don’t have much time left to live.”
    A long silence stretched between them before Destiny reared her head back and released a hearty laugh.
    Miles rolled his eyes. “I told you you would laugh.”
    Destiny couldn’t respond. She was too busy wiping her eyes and trying to catch her breath.
    Miles clenched his jaw and regretted his confession. Hell, he wasn’t quite sure why he told her.
    “So, is this the story you tell your girlfriends, the old ‘make love to me because I only have six months to live’ routine?”
    Insulted, he snapped, “No.”
    It took a moment for her laughter to die, but when it did, she paused and studied him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
    “Yes,” he said, maintaining eye contact. He then watched a sudden cloud of concern come over her.
    “Are you sick?”
    His uneasiness ebbed away as he read genuine interest in her face. “No. I’m not sick, per se.”
    Concern morphed into doubt again. “If you’re not sick then how to you know that you’re going to die? You haven’t been calling Warwick’s Psychic Hotline, have you?”
    He smiled. “Let’s just say that it’s a family curse.”
    “A curse?”
    “For seven generations no man in my family has lived to see his forty-six birthday. And on Wednesday, I’ll turn forty.”
    She said nothing as he watched her teeter on whether to believe him.
    “I don’t know what to say,” she said guilelessly. “Are you sure? Well, of course you’re sure, but...”
    He nodded. “Don’t get me wrong. There are people, like my mother, who think the curse is utter nonsense, but it’s hard to overlook the facts.”
    “Seven generations?”
    “That I’m aware of.”
    She shook her head, seeming to be fascinated. “What do they do—just drop dead on their forty-fifth birthday?” When he flinched, she added apologetically, “I mean, is it a case of heart problems or something like that?”
    “Most of them were heart-related problems—but my father died in a car accident a week before turning forty-six.”
    “No,” she drew back in a startled surprised.
    “I know it sounds weird to believe in such things in this day and age, but it’s hard to put a label like ‘coincidence’ on something like this.”
    She fell silent again with her reservations clearly written in her expression. But he was used to getting that reaction from most of his friends.
    “It’s got to be hard for you,” she finally said, lost in thought. “I mean, it’s one thing to go through life with everything being unknown, trying