Nine Lives - Danielle Steel Page 0,47

reserve, and could hold him close in her heart and mind, but she could never touch him again. Being with Paul was an alluring possibility, a choice she could make if she wished to, and a road she knew would be fraught with danger at every turn. Her mind shrieked Run! while her heart longed for his return. The last days of the trip when she was with him were a double-edged sword. The thought of it sliced through her again and again on the flight home.

* * *

—

She had been gone for four weeks in all, and was returning three weeks before Thanksgiving. She couldn’t wait for Aden to come home. She needed to see him. He was the present and the future, where her responsibilities lay, and her strongest link to Brad. She wanted to hang on to the present, and all that was real in her life to keep the past at bay. She’d started having nightmares again in London, which she hadn’t had on the earlier part of the trip. She thought it was guilt tormenting her again, this time for being attracted to another man. She had mixed feelings about that too. She didn’t want to be with anyone after Brad, out of loyalty to him. And even if she would feel different one day, it was still too soon. The first anniversary of his death was looming in six weeks, which she thought might be causing the nightmares too.

In fact, the decision about Paul had been made thirty years before, and she knew she had made the right one. With the life choices he had made, Paul hadn’t changed. If anything, he was more addicted to risk than before.

She hoped that Paul wouldn’t call her or try to get in touch with her in some other way. She was shocked by how easily she had melted into his arms and wanted to be there. It took all her resolve not to send him a message before she left. He hadn’t called her that morning before her flight either. She was ready to put him back into ancient history, but each time she did, he popped into her mind again, like a jack-in-the-box she couldn’t close. He refused to disappear from her thoughts, and she could still feel his lips on hers.

She was exhausted when she got off the plane, claimed her bags, and went through customs in Chicago. She’d booked a car to take her home. She was shocked by how cold it was. Winter had already begun to creep in, which suited her mood as she rode home to her empty house. But this was her turf now, not Paul’s. She had given him all her contact information in Monaco, and hoped now that she wouldn’t hear from him. She didn’t want loneliness or grief, or the upcoming anniversary date, to color her decision or weaken her resolve not to see him again.

The house looked empty and bleak when she got there and let herself in. The woman who came to clean twice a week had left everything in order and put food in the refrigerator for her, but the house felt abandoned. You could tell that no one had been there. Aden’s sports equipment wasn’t lying in the front hall. There were no clothes scattered anywhere. Her mail was stacked neatly in the hall, but being there was like prying her heart open again, remembering that Brad was gone forever and Aden no longer lived there. It put her face-to-face in sharp relief with the reality that she was alone. Even Paul seemed like a dim memory when she walked in.

She dragged her suitcases upstairs to her bedroom and wandered around the house feeling lost. She texted Aden that she was safely home, but she didn’t call anyone. She was no longer in a rush to see Helen. She would want to hear all about Paul, and Maggie didn’t want to talk about him and stir the embers again. They needed to die now. She had been stunned by how easy it was to revive them, as though his memory had remained closer than she thought. Thirty years had vanished like mist as soon as she saw him.

She didn’t bother to eat dinner, and it was a long sleepless night. She told herself it was jet lag, but she knew it was more than that. It was Paul, and her guilt about Brad had gotten stronger again the moment she