Danielle Steel - Five Days in Paris

“Hot, isn't it?” Peter asked on the way into town, and the driver nodded. He could hear from the accent in his French that he was American, but he spoke it adequately, and the driver answered him in French, speaking slowly, so Peter could understand him.

“It's been nice for a week. Did you come from America?” the driver asked with interest. People responded to Peter that way, they were drawn to him, even if they normally wouldn't have been. But the fact that he spoke French to him impressed the driver.

“I came from Geneva,” Peter explained, and they fell silent again, as he smiled to himself, thinking of Katie. He always wished that she would travel with him, but she never did. At first, the children were young, and later she was too caught up in her own world and her myriad obligations. She hadn't taken more than one or two business trips with him over the years. Once to London, and the other time to Switzerland, and never to Paris.

Paris was special to him, it was the culmination of everything he had always dreamed, and never even knew he wanted. He had worked so hard for what he had, over the years, even if some of it seemed to have come easily to him. He knew better than anyone, it hadn't. There were no freebies in life. You worked for what you got, or you wound up with nothing.

He had gone out with Katie for two years, once he'd found her again. She stayed in Chicago after she graduated, and she got a job in an art gallery, just so she could be near Peter. She was crazy about him, but he was adamant that they would never be married. And he kept insisting that eventually they'd have to stop seeing each other and she should go back to New York and start dating other men. But he could never bring himself to break off with her and actually make her do it. They were too attached by then, and even Katie knew he really loved her. And ultimately, her father stepped in. He was a smart man. He said nothing about their relationship to Peter, only about his business. He sensed instinctively that it was the one way to get Peter to let down his guard. Frank Donovan wanted Peter and his daughter back in New York, and he did what he could to help Katie woo him.

Like Peter, Frank Donovan was a marketing man, and a great one. He talked to Peter about his career, his life's plan, his future, and liking what he heard, he offered him a job at Wilson-Donovan. He said nothing about Katie. In fact, he insisted the job had nothing to do with her whatsoever. He reassured Peter that working for Wilson-Donovan would do wonders for his career, and promised him no one would ever think it had anything to do with Katie. Their relationship, according to Frank, was an entirely separate issue. But it was a job worth thinking about, and Peter knew it. In spite of all his fears at the time, a job with a major corporation in New York was exactly what he wanted, and so was Katie.

He agonized over it, debated endlessly, and even his father thought it was a good move when Peter called him to discuss it. Peter went home to Wisconsin to talk to him about it over a long weekend. His father wanted the moon for him, and encouraged him to take Donovan's offer. He saw something in Peter that even Peter himself hadn't yet understood. He had qualities of leadership that few men had, a quiet strength, and an unusual courage. His father knew that whatever Peter did, he would be good at. And he sensed that the job with Wilson-Donovan was only the beginning for him. He used to tease Peter's mother when Peter was only a small boy, and tell her that he would be president one day, or at least governor of Wisconsin. And sometimes, she believed him. It was easy to believe great things about Peter.

His sister Muriel said the same things about him too. To her, her brother Peter had always been a hero, long before Chicago or Vietnam, or even before he went off to college. There was something special about him. Everyone knew it. And she told him the same thing as their father: Go to New York, reach for the brass ring. She even asked him if he thought he'd marry Katie, but he insisted he wouldn't, and she seemed sorry to hear it. She thought Katie sounded glamorous and exciting, and Muriel thought Katie looked beautiful in the pictures Peter carried with him.

Peter's father had invited him to bring her home long since, but Peter always insisted that he didn't want to give her false hopes about their future. She'd probably make herself right at home and learn to milk cows from Muriel, and then what? It was all he had to give her, and there was no way in the world he was going to drag Katie into the hard life he had grown up with. As far as he was concerned, it had killed his mother. She had died of cancer, without proper medical care, or the money to pay for it. His father didn't even have insurance. He always thought his mother had died of poverty and fatigue, and too much hardship in her lifetime. And even with Katie's money to back her up, he loved her too much to condemn her to this existence, or even let her see it too closely. At twenty-two, his sister already looked exhausted. She had married right out of high school while he was in Vietnam, and had three kids in three years with the boy who had been her high school sweetheart. By the time she was twenty-one, she looked beaten and dreary. There was so much more that he wanted for her too, but just looking at her, he knew she'd never have it. She'd never get out. She had never even gone to college. And she was trapped now. Peter knew, just as his sister did, that she and her husband would work at her father's dairy farm for their lifetimes, unless he lost the farm, or they died. There was no other way out. Except for Peter. And Muriel didn't even resent that. She was happy for him. The seas had parted for him, and all he had to do was set off on the path Frank Donovan had offered.

“Do it, Peter,” Muriel whispered to him when he came to the farm to talk to them. “Go to New York. Papa wants you to,” she said generously. “We all do.” It was as though they were all telling him to save himself, to go for it, swim free of the life that would drown him, if he let it. They wanted him to go to New York and try for the big time.

There was a lump in his throat the size of a rock when he drove away from the farm that weekend. His father and Muriel stood watching him go, and they waved until his car disappeared completely. It was as though all three of them knew this was an important moment in his life. More than college. More than Vietnam. In his heart, and his soul, he was cutting his bond to the farm.

When Peter got back to Chicago, he spent the night alone. He didn't call Katie. But he called her father the next morning. And he accepted his offer, as he felt his hands shake while he held the phone.

Peter started at Wilson-Donovan two weeks later, to the day, and once he got to New York, he woke up every morning feeling as though he had won the Kentucky Derby.

Katie had been working at an art gallery in Chicago, as a receptionist, and she quit her job the same day he did, and moved back to New York to live with her father. Frank Donovan was delighted. His plan had worked. His little girl was home. And he had found a brilliant new marketing man in the bargain. For all concerned, the arrangement was a good one.

And for the next several months, Peter concentrated more on business than romance. It annoyed Katie at first, but when she complained to her father about it, he wisely told her to be patient. And eventually, Peter relaxed and became less anxious about whatever unfinished projects he had at the office. But generally, he wanted to do everything perfectly, to justify Frank's faith in him, and show him how grateful he was to be there.

He didn't even go home to Wisconsin anymore, he never had time to. But in time, much to Katie's relief, he began to make more room in his schedule for some diversion. They went to parties, and plays, she introduced him to all her friends. And Peter was surprised to realize how much he liked them, and how at ease he felt in her life.