Fighting Destiny Read Free Page A

meeting.
    As he signed the many documents, he found himself watching her fluid movements discreetly from under his eyelashes. She was so calm, aloof and business-like, but beneath all of that radiated warmth which was both magnetic and calming to him. Just being in her presence set him at ease and on fire all at the same time.
    Miss Candasee Maxwell was about five foot eight and had a slender, shapely body that not even her tailored, black business suit could hide. Her skin was the dark, smooth, deep even tone of rich Arabica coffee grounds. Long straight hair that clearly reached way past her shoulders was parted in the centre of her forehead and pulled back into a neat ponytail. A pair of rimless glasses was perched on her pert nose. She had the fullest, softest honey-coloured lips he had ever seen and thought should ever be legal on a woman’s face covered in only a thin sheen of clear gloss.
    But nothing could have prepared him for t he beauty of her slanting slate-grey eyes, which the lenses of her spectacles couldn’t hide as she looked up at him from under a fan of long jet-black eyelashes when she sat.  It still amazed him till this day that her eyes were the exact same colour as his and from that moment forward he considered them to be his long-lost matching pair.
    She was all business that day , but he was a mess of hidden emotions. Over the years, he had learned how to conceal them quite well and he was at least thankful for that skill. While she went through the finer details of the contract, he listened and enjoyed the almost musical sound of her voice and her accent. By the time the meeting was over and the papers were signed, he’d already decided that before he left the island he would return to her office, not as a client but to get to know her better.
    He remembered with a smile his clever ruse to leave his monogrammed gold pen in the boardroom and how well it worked when he returned after work hours, to retrieve it claiming it had much sentimental value for him. It worked like a charm and soon with a little small talk Candasee was smiling and talking to him. Taking the chance on her good mood, he’d nonchalantly asked, “Will you have a drink with me later to celebrate the signing of the contract?”
    He remembered how her eyes narrowed as she considered the appropriateness of his invitation and could almost read her mind as she debated within herself as to whether or not her associates would consider it to be the proper thing to do. She’d always had those kinds of internal conflicts throughout the years he’d gotten to know her. Maybe that was why she didn’t have the stomach to continue working as an attorney-at-law. Her idealistic way of viewing the world often got in the way in his opinion, of making decisions based on the cold hard facts of reality. But they discovered just how different they were on that score much, much later.
    That day he reminded her with a coaxing smile that they had concluded their business and he was no longer her client so she didn’t have to worry about it affecting their working relationship.
    “Just a drink, to celebrate before I leave tomorrow!” he’d coaxed gently till finally she’d relented.
    He’d taken her to a waterfront tapas bar and restaurant and b y the end of the first drink, he’d convinced her to stay longer and to have dinner with him. At no point during the night did they even discuss the contract. Instead he got to know more about her and he found himself opening up and sharing details about himself that he had never told another soul. It was as though her eyes were just part of the indicator that she was his other half. Usually for him, women came and went due to his singular focus on developing his businesses. Truly, until that point no woman meant anything to him except for his mother and aunts. But in that moment, he could see that Candasee was the woman who would change all of that for him.
    He talked and she shared and together they