Danielle Steel - Bittersweet

“I'm sorry about what I said today,” he said suddenly, looking at her unhappily, and his unexpected remorse surprised her. “I know he's not your boyfriend.”

“I should hope not,” she said primly, and then she unbended a little bit. “I'm sorry about the things I said too. It sure hasn't been easy lately, has it?” Everything had been so difficult. Every conversation, every exchange, every hour, every contact.

“I guess sometimes marriage is like that,” he said sadly, and then what he said next touched her. “I've missed you.”

“Me too,” she smiled. It had been so lonely without him. During the last few months he'd barely spoken to her, and been so angry at her for suggesting she do a few assignments, it had been as though he'd been away all summer.

They finished their snack and went upstairs. The kids were all in bed, and India gently closed the bedroom door behind them. They both got ready for bed, and Doug turned the TV off, and when she came to bed, he was awake. And this time when he reached out for her tentatively, she didn't turn away or refuse him. He took her gently in his arms, and made love to her, though there wasn't the passion she wished there had been. He seemed awkward with her after so long, and he never told her he loved her. But this was the life they shared, the “deal” they had made, and for better or worse, he was her husband. This was what she had, and what she had to make her peace with.

Chapter 14

INDIA AND Doug limped along for the next two months. They had glued things back together again, but the glue no longer seemed as firm as it once had been. But at least the kids kept her too busy to think about it. And she knew for sure that nothing was going to change now. Doug was who he was, and he had made himself clear about his expectations. All she had to do was continue to live with them. That was the hard part.

She saw a lot of Gail at Sam's soccer games, and at parent meetings and dinners at the high school. They had both those age groups in common. And as she had before, and undoubtedly would again, in October, Gail had confided to India that she was seeing a new man, and as usual, he was someone else's husband. But at least she seemed happy.

“So how's it going?” she asked India late one afternoon, as they sat freezing in the bleachers. “Has Doug finally calmed down?”

“Pretty much. He's got a lot of new clients, and he's busy. We haven't talked about any of the sensitive subjects since the summer.” Their sex life wasn't what it had once been, but every now and then they made whatever attempts they could to revive it. There were parts of their relationship that just hadn't recovered from the blows it had been dealt over the summer. But India had resigned herself to what she had, rather than fighting for what she wanted.

“Has Paul Ward ever called again?”

“No, I think he's in Europe.” It was the first time she had ever lied to Gail, but it was something she didn't want to share with anyone, and the information was so potentially explosive if it fell into the wrong hands that she had decided not to confide in her. But he had called, though not often.

He had called her in September again, and twice in October so far. He always called at odd hours, usually when she was home alone, around dinnertime for him, and when he correctly assumed Doug would be at the office. He never said anything inappropriate, and so far he had always sounded desperately lonely. He had even sounded a little drunk once, but Serena hadn't even been gone for two months, and India knew better than anyone how hard it was for him. The boat had been in Yugoslavia the last time he had called her, and he didn't sound as though he was having much fun, but he wasn't ready to come home yet either.

He never said anything about seeing her, or about when he'd be back, though she wondered if he would return to the States around the holidays to see his son and grandchildren. Or maybe that would just be too painful. He had told her before that he and Serena had usually gone skiing in Switzerland for Christmas, and he had already vowed never to go to Saint Moritz again. He never wanted to see again the places he had been with her, never wanted to tread the same paths, or remember the dreams he had shared with her.

“That rules out a lot of places,” India had teased him, and he had laughed a little. He was having a very hard time readjusting. He always asked how things were going for her, and she was honest with him. She had made her peace with her situation, although she was no longer very happy. But she still refused to try rocking the boat again. She was satisfied, she claimed, taking pictures of her children, and Paul scolded her for it. He thought she should allow herself to be braver, but she wasn't. She was very different from Serena. But he seemed to love talking to her, and derived a lot of comfort from it.

India never asked what he was going to do next, if he was going to go back to work, she never asked him for anything, or pressed him in any way. She was just there when he called, with her soothing voice and gentle ways, and it was exactly what he wanted. There was no promise that they would meet again, no allusions to an affair. He was extremely circumspect with her, but always warm, always kind, always interested in what she was doing, and whenever she explained her feelings to him, unlike Doug, he always got it. He was a gift in her life in many ways, and she no longer told Doug when he called her. She didn't want to deal with his accusations that Paul wanted to be, or was, her boyfriend. She was not Gail. She was an entirely other kind of woman, and Paul knew that. She was honorable in every way, and had a great deal of integrity, more so, in his eyes, than her husband, who had blackmailed her into what he wanted.

India hadn't heard from Paid in two weeks when the phone rang one afternoon, shortly after noon, in her kitchen. She thought Paul was back in Italy by then, and it would have been six o'clock at night for him, which was usually when he called her.

She answered the phone with a smile, expecting to hear his voice, and was surprised instead to hear Raoul Lopez's. She hadn't heard from him in six months, since she'd turned down the job in Korea.

“What are you up to these days, India? Are you getting tired of your kids yet?”

“Nope,” she said firmly, feeling stupid now for leaving her name on their roster. It was just going to make him mad at her when she refused another assignment. Doug was right. She should have taken herself off it.

“I was hoping for a different answer. I have a proposition for you,” he said, sounding excited. The call had just come in, and she'd been the first one he'd thought of. It was perfect for her.

“I'm not sure I should even let you tell me, Raoul. My husband was pretty upset about Korea.”

“What about Korea? You didn't do it.” He was right, of course, but in the end it had provoked three months of discussions and a near revolution. And she didn't want that to happen now, no matter how good the offer. “Just listen to me for a minute.”

“There's a royal wedding in England. Dignified, safe, all the crowned heads of Europe will be there. The magazine that called us on this wants someone who knows how to behave. They don't want one of their sloppy staffers. As they put it to me ten minutes ago, ‘they want a real lady’ to just blend in with all the fancy people. It's in London, you wouldn't be risking your life for once. And while you're there, I have another story for you. It's some kind of underground prostitution ring, somewhere in the West End, involving ten-to fourteen-year-olds. It's an acute form of child abuse. And you'd be working with the police there. Whatever you get on it will run in all the international press, syndicated obviously. It could be a fabulous story. And you could wrap up the whole thing in a week, both the wedding and the kiddies.”