Danielle Steel - Full circle

He came up to San Francisco to spend the weekend with her before he left, and they lay on the rug in front of the fire for hours on his last night, talking, thinking aloud, saying almost anything that came to mind, and she realized again how deeply she was falling in love with him.

“Would you ever consider marriage, Tan?” He looked pensively at her and she smiled in the firelight. She looked exquisite in the soft glow, her delicate features seeming to be carved in a pale peach marble, her eyes dancing like emeralds.

“I never have before.” She touched his lips with her fingertips and he kissed her hands and then her mouth.

“Do you think you could be happy with me, Tan?”

“Is that a proposal, sir?” He seemed to be beating around the bush and she smiled at him. “You don't have to marry me, you know, I'm happy like this.”

“You are, aren't you?” He looked at her strangely and she nodded her head.

“Aren't you?”

“Not entirely.” His hair looked even more silvery, his eyes a bright topaz blue, and she never again wanted to love any man but him. “I want more than this, Tan … I want you all the time.…”

“So do I.…” She whispered the words to him, and he took her in his arms and made love to her ever so gently in front of the fire, and afterwards he lay for a long, long time and looked at her, and then finally he spoke, his mouth nestled in her hair, his hands still stroking the body he loved so much.

“Will you marry me when I'm free?”

“Yes.” She said the word almost breathlessly. She had never said it to anyone, but she meant it now, and suddenly she understood what people felt when they promised … for better or worse … until death do us part. She never wanted to be without him again, and when she took him to the airport the next day, she was still a little overwhelmed by what she felt, and she looked at him searchingly. “Did you mean what you said last night, Drew?”

“How can you ask me something like that?” He looked horrified, and instantly crushed her against his chest as they stood in the terminal. “Of course I did.”

She grinned at him, looking more like his thirteen-year-old child than the Assistant D.A. “I guess that means we're engaged then, huh?” And suddenly he laughed, and he felt as happy as a boy as he looked at her.

“It sure does. I'll have to see what kind of ring I can find in Washington.”

“Never mind that. Just come back safe and sound.” It was going to be an endless ten days of waiting for him. And the only thing that would help was her enormous case.

He called her two and three times a day for the first few days, and told her everything he did from morning till night, but when things began to get rough with Eileen, he called once a day and she could hear how uptight he was, but they had started jury selection by then, and she was totally engrossed in that, and by the time he got back to Los Angeles, she realized that they hadn't spoken to each other in more than two days. He had stayed longer than he had expected to, but it was for a “worthy cause,” he said, and she agreed with him, and she could barely think straight anymore by then. She was too worried about the jury that was being picked, and the tack the defense was going to take, the evidence that had just turned up, the judge to whom they had been assigned. She had plenty on her mind, and one of Drew's rare litigation situations had occurred. Almost everything he did settled before it went to court, and this was a rare exception for him, and it kept him away from her for almost another week, and when they both finally met, they almost felt like strangers again. He teased her about it, asked if she had fallen in love with anyone else, and made passionate love to her all night long.

“I want you to be so bleary eyed all day in court that everyone wonders what the hell went on last night.” And he got his wish. She was half asleep and she couldn't get him out of her mind she was so hungry for him. She never seemed to get enough of him anymore, and all through the trial, she was lonely for him, but it was too important to screw up and she kept her nose to the grindstone constantly. It went on till late May, and finally, in the first week in June, the verdict came in. It went just the way she had wanted it to, and the press gave her high praise as usual. Over the years, she had earned a reputation for being rigid, tough, conservative, merciless in court, and brilliant at the cases she tried. They were nice reviews to have, and it often made Harry smile when he read about her.

“I'd never recognize the liberal I knew and loved in this, Tan.” He grinned broadly at her.

“We all have to grow up sometime, don't we? I'm thirty-one this year.”

“That's no excuse to be as tough as you are.”

“I'm not tough, Harry, I'm good.” And she was right, but he knew it too. “Those people killed nine women and a child. You can't let people get away with something like that. Our whole society will fall apart. Someone has to do what I do.”

“I'm glad it's you and not me, Tan.” He patted her hand. “I'd lie awake at night, worrying that they'd get me eventually.” He hated even saying it, and he worried about it sometimes for her, but it didn't seem to bother her at all. “By the way, how's Drew?”

“Fine. He's going to New York on business next week, and he's bringing the girls back with him.”

“When are you getting married?”

“Relax.” She smiled. “We haven't even talked about it since I started this case. In fact, I've hardly talked to him.” And when she told him about her success before it hit the press, he sounded strange.

“That's nice.”

“Well, don't get too excited. It might be bad for your heart.”

He laughed at her. “All right, all right, I'm sorry. I had something else on my mind.”

“What?”

“Nothing important.” But he was that way until he left, and he sounded worse from the East, and when he got back to Los Angeles, he didn't call her at all. She almost wondered if something was wrong, or if she should fly down to surprise him and get everything on the right track again. All they needed was a little time alone to sort things out, they'd both been working too hard, and she knew all the signs. She looked at her watch late one night, trying to decide if she should catch the last plane down, and decided to call him instead. She could always go down the next day, and they had a lot of catching up to do after her two months of grueling work. She dialed the phone number she knew by heart, heard it ring three times, and smiled when it was picked up, but not for long. A woman's voice answered it.

“Hello?” Tana felt her heart stop, and she sat there endlessly staring into the night, and then hurriedly she put down the phone.

Her heart was pounding hideously, she felt dizzy, awkward, disoriented, strange. She couldn't believe what she had heard. She had to have dialed the wrong number, she told herself, but before she could compose herself to try again, the phone rang, and she heard Drew's voice, and suddenly she knew. He must have known she'd called and now he was panicking. She felt as though her whole life had just come to an end.

“Who was that?” She sounded half hysterical, and he sounded nervous too.

“What?”

“The woman who answered your phone.” She fought for composure but her voice was totally out of control.

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Drew! … answer me … ! Please…” She was half crying, half shouting at him.

“We have to talk.”

“Oh, my God … goddammit, what have you done to me?”

“Don't be so melodramatic for chrissake…” She cut him off with a shriek.

“Melodramatic? I call you at eleven o'clock at night and a woman answers your phone, and you tell me I'm being melodramatic? How would you like to have a man answer you when you call me here?”