Nine Lives - Danielle Steel Page 0,45

boring you?” He seemed crushed, and she laughed at the question.

“No. I love seeing you. But then what? This is no more suitable for either of us than it was thirty years ago. You’re every bit as exciting and fun to be with as you were then, but you said yourself the risk factor in your life makes you ineligible for a serious relationship. I don’t want another heartbreak if something happens to you, and it will, sooner or later. So what are we doing? We’re tempting fate here.”

“Maybe it could be different this time.”

“I married an accountant so I wouldn’t have to deal with someone like you. I never forgot you either,” she said honestly, “but we’re not seventeen anymore. We know how the story ends. And I don’t want to wind up like my mother. You’re the role model for everything I was trying to avoid when I married Brad.”

“You won’t wind up like your mother. You couldn’t. Let’s just slow down a little, and take a breather. I have to go to Switzerland for meetings tomorrow. Have dinner with me when I get back on Saturday, before you leave. I don’t want to lose you again, Maggie.”

“I’m still mourning Brad. It hasn’t even been a year yet. I don’t want a relationship and I can’t afford another risk-taker in my life.” She had been saying it to him all week, but he didn’t want to hear it. She was relieved that she was going home. She agreed to see him on Saturday for her last night, for old times’ sake, but she promised herself that she wouldn’t fall for him again. It was all smoke and mirrors with him, with a keg of dynamite under the mirror, concealed by the smoke. He would blow them sky high if she let him, and her heart and life with it.

She had a peaceful day without him on Friday, and felt back in control again when he picked her up on Saturday night in a silver Ferrari and drove her to a fashionable restaurant, where everyone knew him. She noticed that people recognized him wherever they went. And they were always happy to see him. He was such a nice guy.

“How was Switzerland?” she asked him, looking bright-eyed and cheerful. He was particularly handsome that night. She had worn her plain black dress in order not to entice him. She didn’t want to mislead him. However much she had loved him at seventeen, she didn’t want to love him at forty-eight. She was past being dazzled by someone who would be a colossal mistake. The boat, the plane, and his fabulous penthouse didn’t change that. What she liked about him was who he was and always had been, not the trappings he had picked up along the way.

He told her he was going to Luxembourg the next day and had business there the following week.

“Maybe you are a drug dealer,” she teased him. “You sure move around a lot.”

“I have a lot of corporations. It’s all legal, but it takes a lot of shuffling to avoid losing half of it to taxes.” She wondered if he took risks on that front too, but was sure he had capable tax lawyers to keep him out of trouble. “I’m going to Hong Kong in two weeks. And after that, I have a race in Barcelona.” She felt a little shiver run down her spine then, like a premonition. It was precisely why she didn’t want to fall for him again.

She felt now as though he had been put on her path as a reminder of what she didn’t want, and a challenge to make sure she could resist him. He looked sad as they finished the meal. She had loved seeing him, but he was far more dangerous now than he had been at eighteen, because he was even more appealing. The sophistication he had acquired in the last thirty years made him seem like a grown-up, but she knew he wasn’t. He was still a wild kid, tempting fate and wanting to see how far he could push the limits.

He drove her back to Claridge’s, and he looked at her as she was about to get out of the car.

“It’s been wonderful seeing you,” she said gently. “Take care of yourself. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t,” he promised her, which she knew meant nothing. He would do something stupid again and again until one day his luck ran out.