Nine Lives - Danielle Steel Page 0,89

car waiting for them. Hers wasn’t.

“I’m not,” she said quietly, looking deep into his eyes. “This is where I leave the circus. I’m going home. I’m not going to watch you try to kill yourself again, Paul. Canada did it for me. I thought it did it for you too, but I was wrong. Nothing is ever going to do it for you. It’s never going to be enough. There’s always going to be one more race, one more death-defying act you think you can pull off. One day, you’re going to lose, next race, next time, someday, and I don’t want to be there to see it. I can’t.” And from the look on her face, he knew she meant it. She wasn’t crying, but the sorrow in her eyes was worse than tears. He suddenly understood why she hadn’t argued with him on the boat about the race. She must have made her decision then, or in the days since, without telling him. He knew her well but had missed all the signs.

“Maggie, please…” he pleaded with her. “Just let me finish out this contract. I’m getting too old for it anyway. We’ll talk about it after Spain.” He was begging her and she didn’t move.

“No, we won’t. There’s nothing to talk about. You know what you want and so do I. You’re not too old. You’ll never be too old to want danger and risk your life.” She smiled sadly at him. “But I am. I can’t watch you do this again. I don’t want to be there when you finally lose the bet.”

“I’m not going to,” he said with the certainty of a gambler, sure he would win.

“You will lose one day. I don’t want to see it. And I can’t do this to Aden either. He loves you. So do I. He doesn’t deserve to lose another man in his life. Neither do I.”

Tears filled her eyes as she opened the door of the cab then and got in. The doorman put her suitcase in the trunk as Paul gazed at her in disbelief. “You’re leaving me?”

She glanced out the open cab window and nodded. “Call me when you’re too old to race. I’ll probably be dead by then.” She told the driver to take her to LaGuardia, and they pulled away and drove off with Paul staring after them. He could barely get into the town car after she left. He was distraught.

An hour later, he was at Teterboro airport in New Jersey, and boarded his plane. He barely spoke to the steward and settled into his seat. There were tears sliding down his cheeks when they took off for London. Maggie had just gotten on her flight to Chicago. She had a text from Paul but didn’t read it. It didn’t matter what he said now. She was done. She had seen him through races and an avalanche and his life-and-death battle with the IRS. Her mother had told her at seventeen that he’d be trouble, and she was right. And no matter how much she loved him, she couldn’t let him destroy her life, and she knew he would. She erased his text without reading it, and turned off her phone. She closed her eyes, and could feel the pain of peeling him away from her soul. But whatever it took, she was finished. Paul would have to do his dance with death on his own. She couldn’t watch it anymore, or live it with him.

She picked up her bag in Chicago and hailed a cab at the curb. When she got home, she turned her phone on. She had four more messages from Paul and erased them all without reading them. She had heard everything he had to say. She was done.

Chapter 17

Maggie felt empty when she got home. She didn’t want to talk to anyone or see anyone. She didn’t want to tell Helen she was there. She needed time to herself, to heal and come back. She knew she had to do it herself this time, without help. Nobody could do this except she herself. She had to bury him now. He was dead to her, as he had been for thirty years before she’d found him again.

She sent Aden a text so he’d know where she was, but she didn’t tell him what she’d done. She knew he’d be devastated that she’d left Paul, but she had done it to save her own life, and even