The Klone and I: A High-Tech Love Story - By Danielle Steel Page 0,62

do all the things Peter didn't do for me. The gifts, the time he spent with me, his childlike spirit when he played with Charlotte and Sam. The endless tenderness he showed me. He was impossible to resist, harder still not to love. And beneath all the absurdities and inappropriate behavior, he was a very good man. Or should I say, good Klone. Peter had done an extraordinarily fine job when he designed him.

Peter was calling me from California two and three times a day. And he couldn't help asking about Paul. He wanted to know what we were doing, what Paul was saying, what he was charging to him, and if he was driving the Jaguar. I wasn't going to tell him that he was, but in the end I had to, when he had another accident with it on the FDR Drive. It was snowing that afternoon, and the road was icy. And when he told me about it, I was just glad I had forbidden the children to go in the car with him. He had been singing to himself and listening to Peter's CD's, most of which he hated, but he liked the Whitney Houston CD I'd given him, and while he was singing, he sneezed apparently, and drove the car right off the road and onto the snow piled to one side. The car sat poised there for an interminable instant, while Whitney kept singing, and then it slid slowly down the other side and into the shallow water at the edge of the East River. It sat there half-submerged while Paul waited for the AAA for nearly two hours. He said it had been rough on the upholstery and the rugs were soaked when they finally pulled it out. He was afraid it might need a new engine, and hoped that Peter wouldn't mind too much.

I called Peter and told him, and he just groaned, and then whimpered pitifully when I told him what it would cost him to repair it.

“Just don't let him repaint it again,” was all Peter said before he hung up.

“How was he?” Paul asked, looking worried, when I told him what Peter had said about the Jaguar.

“Cranky,” I explained, but I was worried about Paul. After his little dip in the East River, he was catching a terrible cold. “He'll be all right,” I said gently. And then I told him the bad news. “He's coming back tomorrow.”

“So soon? That's two days early.” Paul looked crushed. He'd been planning to spend the rest of the week with me, before Peter got back from California.

“He says he has a board meeting he has to be at.” But I suspected it was more than that, and not just the car either, I had the feeling that he didn't want Paul staying with me anymore. And I could see Paul was upset about it.

We spent a quiet night that night, I wrapped him in blankets for his cold, and served him hot toddies, and every time I kissed him he sneezed, and his nose was red. But as sick as he was about to be, I knew the Jaguar looked much worse. And then, as I climbed into bed with him, he turned to me with an unusually serious air. He looked as though he had a lot on his mind, and he seemed uncharacteristically unhappy.

“What would happen if I stayed here?” he asked, looking worried, and I smiled. Maybe he had hit his head in the Jaguar.

“I seem to recall that you are, or have you forgotten?” I kissed him gently and he set down his glass on the table next to the bed, and then looked at me with concern.

“I mean after Peter gets back. What would happen if we told him I'm staying, and I'm not going back to the shop?” It was the first time he had ever said anything like that.

“Could you do that? Would they let you?” Just looking at the tenderness in his eyes, I was stunned, and a little worried.

“I could try. I can't leave you, Steph. I belong here. I love you … we're happy together. You need me.” I did, more than I had ever planned to, maybe even more than I could admit, but the truth was that I needed Peter too, far more than I loved or needed Paul. I had gotten caught up in the good times we had again, but in the last few days, I had thought