Nine Lives - Danielle Steel Page 0,86
It was six weeks after his dramatic rescue. He had no traces left of his days buried in the snow after the avalanche, except a few barely pink patches on his face that were rapidly fading, and nothing else. Maggie still looked tired and worried at times. She still had headaches, but didn’t tell him. She knew why. The terror of losing him had brought the PTSD back with a vengeance, but it was slowly fading now. The boat was good for her too.
Their plan was to stay on the boat for most of the month. Paul was working at getting back in shape again, and she could tell he was getting strong. He worked out in the gym every day. No one would have guessed what he’d been through. It all seemed like a bad dream now. As she watched him stride across the deck or dive into the water, he looked like the old Paul, or the Paul before Canada. There was nothing old about him now. He looked young and strong again, and not even fifty. She was still quiet but seemed peaceful, and she kept her eye on him for any sign of a problem, but there were none. He had escaped unscathed, again. She hoped he remembered the lesson in spite of it, and his promise to her that it was the last time he would risk his life again.
After the boat, they were going to spend two days in New York. Paul had meetings with his tax lawyers, and wanted to make sure that the changes they had implemented were on track. They had been through that too, and come out of it.
After New York, he said he had to get back to London for serious business, and then meetings in Zurich. “I’ve got to work all of February, Maggie. I have a lot to catch up on. I feel like Rip Van Winkle waking up.” She smiled when he said it. He was already working by phone from the boat for several hours a day. “And I have a race at the end of the month.” He said it as though it was an ordinary occurrence, and she stared at him, too shocked to speak for a minute.
“You what?” She thought she must have heard wrong. It couldn’t be.
“In Spain, at the end of February. And one in Italy in March.”
“Are you serious? You nearly died six weeks ago.”
“I have a contract, Maggie. I’ve got two races left before we renegotiate. They’ll sue the hell out of me if I don’t honor it.”
“Almost dying isn’t a valid reason to let you off the hook?”
“There are millions of dollars involved. You know that. And I have no excuse. It was an accident. I’ve been through worse driving. And I’m perfectly healthy now. I can’t drop out of the races. My sponsors would kill me.”
“I thought we agreed that you’d used up your ninth life.”
“I may have. But I have contractual commitments. I meant it was the last time I’d go helicopter skiing. I’m done with that. But I can’t retire yet.” And he didn’t want to. It was his life, but so was she.
“And the racing?”
“It’s my job,” he said calmly.
“It’s your drug. Risking your life, tempting fate, taunting death. How often are you going to do that?”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “All I know is that right now, I have a contract with two races left. Fortunately, I got hit by the avalanche when I didn’t have a race scheduled,” he said with a touch of irony, but she didn’t smile. He was still Paul. She should have known, but she had believed him.
She didn’t argue with him. She knew there was no point. It was crystal clear to her now. There was always going to be one more race, one more ski trip, one more adventure, one more mountain to climb, one more harrowing, death-defying experience while he beat the odds. And one day, he wouldn’t win. She didn’t want to be there to see it. Her mother had been right about him at eighteen. Brad had been her safe haven for nearly twenty years, and Paul never would be. He didn’t have it in him. He needed danger the way other people needed air.
He had a conference call then, and she went to their cabin and looked in the mirror, and saw who she would become if she stayed with him. She would become her mother,