Nine Lives - Danielle Steel Page 0,83

though he recognized her, but she wasn’t sure. He blinked but couldn’t speak. He didn’t have the strength to move, and after he saw her, he sighed and closed his eyes. She thought he had died, but the monitor showed that he was still breathing. She sat next to him while he slept and willed him to live. Two days later, he opened his eyes and spoke to her in a croak.

“Love you…” was all he said, and went back to sleep, as tears ran down her cheeks. He was still in critical condition, and all she could do was pray that his ninth life hadn’t run out. She sat beside him day and night, and slept on a cot next to him, and the following day he spoke to her in a whisper.

“Last time,” he said, and she nodded.

“I’ll kill you if you do this again,” she whispered back, and he smiled through his badly cracked lips. “I think this was your ninth life.” He nodded and when he could speak more clearly, he told her that he had thought of her constantly and it had kept him alive for the four days they were lost. He knew it was the last time for him. She had changed everything. He knew she loved him, and he loved her. He hadn’t had children so he could be free to do what he wanted, but now he had Maggie, and he knew when he saw her face that he couldn’t do this to her again. She looked ravaged.

“Last time,” he said again.

She called Aden and told him how Paul was doing. After a week they took him off the critical list, and miraculously his hands and feet had thawed out and had blood flow again. He wasn’t going to lose them unless complications set in.

He had told her that half of his group had been able to dig out with their avalanche tools. The others were already dead by then. The survivors had taken refuge as best they could, huddled together, but couldn’t have held out much longer. Surviving four days had been a miracle.

They released him from the hospital after the second week. They had her walk him slowly down the halls, using canes to get him moving again. The toll on his body had been brutal, but he was recovering. They said it was incredible he had survived, and she thought so too.

The Lady Luck was on her way to the Caribbean when Paul was ready to leave the hospital, and Maggie told him what they were going to do. She didn’t ask him what he wanted, and he didn’t argue with her.

“I’m taking you home to Lake Forest to take care of you,” she said, and he smiled at her.

“That sounds perfect to me.”

“And I’m tying you to the bed if you try to go anywhere,” she warned him. Aden was coming home and he could help her take care of him, if Paul needed help getting to the shower, or was unsteady on his feet. He was still having trouble walking, but getting better rapidly. He said his feet still felt like blocks of wood or bricks, and the doctors said it would take a while for them to move normally again.

When the hospital released him, he had his plane pick them up and fly them to Chicago, and a car and driver take them back to Lake Forest. The driver helped Maggie get him inside and up the stairs when they got to her house, and Paul looked like he had gone to heaven when he got there. He stopped for a moment before heading up the stairs and gazed at Maggie.

“I kept thinking of you here. I never thought I’d see you or this house or Aden again.”

“Neither did I,” she said softly. It really was a miracle that he had survived, more than she had dared to hope for, after two avalanches and four days in the freezing snow.

He walked up to her bedroom then, with the limo driver behind him to make sure he didn’t fall. Maggie thanked the driver, and after he left, she put Paul to bed, and he sank into the pillows like a man who knew he had no right to be alive but was grateful he was. He glanced around the room. She had already realized that Brad’s second anniversary date had come and gone while she was nursing Paul, and she had a feeling he