Danielle Steel - Bittersweet

“I think so. You can call me during the day.” The time difference would work well for them, as long as he was still in Europe. And then she sighed, thinking of Doug, and what she owed him. “I guess I should feel guilty about talking to you. I wouldn't want Doug doing the same thing …talking to some woman….”

“But you wouldn't treat him the way he's treated you either, would you?” In fact, they both knew she hadn't.She had always been loving, supportive, kind, reasonable, and understanding. She had more than lived up to her half of the bargain, the “deal” Doug constantly spoke of. It was Doug who had let her down, by refusing to meet her needs or understand her feelings, and giving her so little warmth and comfort.

“He's not a bad man, Paul. … I was very happy for a long time. Maybe I just grew up or something. We were so busy for so long, with all the kids, or at least I was, I guess I stopped paying attention to what he was giving me, or wasn't. It never occurred to me to say, ‘Hey …wait … I need more than this … or ask him if he loved me. And now, it feels like it's too late. He's gotten away with giving me so little for so long, that he doesn't understand that I want more, for myself, and from him. He thinks I'm crazy.”

“You're not crazy, India. Far from it,” Paul reassured her. “Do you think you can get it back, to get what you want out of it again?”

“I don't know.” It was what she had asked herself over and over. “I just don't know. I don't think he hears me.

“He's a fool if he doesn't.” Paul knew that very clearly. She was a woman well worth keeping.

“Did you and Serena ever have problems like this?” He said funny things about her sometimes, about how demanding and difficult she had been, but he didn't seem to mind it.

“Not really. She didn't put up with much. When I stepped on her toes, she let me have it. And when I didn't give her enough, she told me. Serena made her needs very clear, and her expectations, and she set very clear limits. I guess that made it easy. I always knew where I stood with her. She taught me a lot about relationships. I made a real mess of it the first time. Kind of like Doug, probably even a little worse. I was so busy establishing myself and making money, I let the relationship go right down the tubes and never saw it. And I walked all over my wife while I did it. I told you, she still hates me. And I'm not so sure I blame her.” And then he laughed into the phone, thinking about it. “I think Serena trained me. I was pretty dumb before that.”

But if he had been, he no longer was. India knew by then that he was not only extremely sensitive, but also unusually perceptive and able to express his perceptions. And no matter what she explained to him, he always seemed to “get it.”

“The only trouble is,” he went on, “I can't imagine doing all that again, without Serena. It wasn't generic. It worked because of her, because of who she was, her powers and her magic. I don't think I could ever love another woman.” They were hard words to hear, but India believed him. “There will never be another person in my life like her.” Nor would he try to find one. He had decided that on the Sea Star.

“That may be true right now,” India said cautiously, thinking of him as he lay in his cabin, “but you don't know what the future will bring. You're not old enough to give all that up. Maybe in time, you'll feel differently and someone will come along who is important to you.” She wasn't pleading her own case, so much as pleading for him. It was impossible to think that, at fifty-seven, that aspect of his life was over. He was too young, too vital, too decent, and at the moment much too lonely.

“I know I couldn't do it,” he said firmly. But she knew that time might tell a different story.

“You don't have to think about that now,” India said gently. It was too soon for him to even think about another woman. And yet he was calling India every day, and they had become fast friends. And always somewhere, in the time they spent talking to each other, there was a hint of something else, something more, and despite the neutrality they claimed, they nonetheless reacted to each other as man and woman. But Paul insisted to himself, when he thought about it, that he wasn't in love with India, or pursuing her as a woman. They were friends, and he wanted to help her out of a difficult situation. He never said it quite so bluntly to her, but he thought her marriage was a disaster, and Doug a bastard. She was being exploited and ignored and used, and he was convinced that Doug didn't even care about her. If he did, he would have let her pursue her career, even helped her to do it. He would have cherished her, and supported her, and at least told her he loved her. Instead, he blackmailed and threatened her, and locked her up in an airless little box, for his own convenience. Paul had nothing but contempt for him. But in spite of that, he didn't want to put India in jeopardy when she went back, and he promised to be cautious when he called her.

“Can't you just tell him we're friends? That I'm sort of an adopted, self-appointed older brother?” She laughed at the suggestion, and Paul's naïveté. What man would understand that? And she knew that Doug viewed her as his possession. He didn't want another man using what was his, even if only for conversation and comfort.

“I know he wouldn't understand it.” And neither did she, because the undercurrent of what she felt from Paul was not what she knew she would have felt from a brother. There was far more to it than that, and she knew it. But Paul was in no way ready to face that. If nothing else, out of loyalty to Serena.

He had told her that week that he'd been having dreams about his wife, about being on the plane with her, crashing with her, and saving himself. And she was accusing him, in the dreams, of not trying to help her, and surviving when she hadn't. She blamed him, he said, for not going down with her. The psychological implications of the dreams were easy to decipher.

“Is that how you feel?” India had asked him. “That it's your fault she died?”

“I blame myself for not dying with her,” he said in a choked voice, and India knew he was crying.

“It's not your fault, Paul. You know that. It wasn't meant to happen.” He had a massive case of survivor guilt, for outliving her, which was part of why he was hiding on the Sea Star. But India knew, as he did, that sooner or later Paul would have to face it. Sooner or later, he'd have to go back to the world. But it was still too soon. She had only been gone for three months, and he just wasn't ready. But eventually he'd have to go back. He couldn't hide forever. “Give it time,” she always said gently.

“I'm never going to get over this, India,” he said stubbornly. “I know it.”

“You will, if you want to. What do you think Serena would say?”

“She'd kick my ass.” He laughed as he said it. “If she were in my shoes, she'd have sold the boat by now, bought a flat in London, a house in Paris, and be giving parties. She always told me not to count on her playing the grieving widow, if I died, so not to bother having a heart attack because I worked too hard. She said she would find it incredibly boring. I know she didn't mean all that, but she would have handled this much better than I have. I think she was probably stronger than I am.

But India knew he was strong too, he was just deeply attached to his wife, and the bonds were not easy to sever, not that he had to. She kept trying to tell him to take Serena with him, the good parts of her, the memories, the joys, the wit, the wisdom, the excitement they had shared, the happiness she'd given him. But he had not yet found a way to do that. And in the meantime, with India, he could find a warm place to hide, a hand to hold, and a gentle soul to give him comfort. In the past week alone, he had come to need her more than he would have admitted. And the thought of not being able to call her whenever he wanted to now was beginning to upset him. And knowing she was in enemy territory, he was going to be worried about her. But the enemy he feared for her was, in fact, her husband. And Paul was nothing. A voice on the phone. A man she had met a few times the previous summer. He was in no way prepared to be more than that to her. But whatever it was they had, or had found together, he wanted.