Danielle Steel - Bittersweet

The elevator stopped at nine, and he let her into a large, comfortable room that was handsomely decorated, though nothing like his apartment. It was predictably impersonal, but there were flowers everywhere, and a bar with everything they could have wanted. He poured her some wine, but she didn't drink, since she still had to drive back to Westport. There were fruit and pastries as well, provided by the hotel, but neither of them was hungry after the huge meal they'd just eaten at Daniel.

India sat down on the couch, and Paul sat down next to her. He was still talking about the boat, and then he stopped and looked at her, and she felt the same electricity course through her that she had felt when she first met him. Aside from his obvious good looks, there was something irresistibly attractive about him.

“I can't believe we're sitting here,” he said. “I keep expecting to wake up on the boat, and have someone tell me you're calling.”

“It is funny, isn't it?” She smiled, remembering all the times they'd talked, and all the things they'd said, for so many months, the times she had called him from freezing pay phones before Doug left her. She laughed when she thought about it. “I thought I was going to get frostbite.” She had carried rolls of quarters for months, so she could call him whenever she wanted.

“We've been through some hard times, you and I,”he said quietly, but thinking only of her now, and not the people they had lost, or been at other times. All he could see were her eyes, the gentleness in them, and all he felt was what had grown between them in his months on the Sea Star.

He said nothing more to her then, but leaned over very quietly, took her in his arms, and kissed her. And as she felt his lips on hers, she had the answers to all her questions. It was a long time before they spoke again, and when they did, his voice was soft and hoarse with passion. “I think I've fallen in love with you, India,” he whispered. It was not in any way what he had expected, or what she had thought would happen between them when she saw him. She had long since told herself that this would never happen.

“I tried so hard not to tell you, not to even let myself feel it,” she said, feeling all the same things he did.

“So did I,” he said quietly, holding her close to him, with an arm around her shoulders. “I knew it a long time ago, but I was always afraid it wasn't what you wanted.”

“I thought … I was afraid …” She had been so certain that there was no way she could measure up to Serena in his eyes. She hadn't dared to hope, but she didn't say that to him now. He kissed her again, and he held her with such strength that she felt breathless. And then without a word, he stood up and walked her slowly to his bedroom, and then stopped in the doorway.

“I'll do whatever you want,” he said with a look of sorrow in his eyes. He knew that with that single gesture, he was leaving one life and entering another, if that was what she wanted. He loved her more than he had ever thought possible, and he knew it with perfect clarity at that moment. “If you want to go back to Westport, it's all right…. I'll understand.” But she shook her head as she looked at him. She didn't want to go anywhere now without him. Like him, she had known this for a long time. She had fought it valiantly, she had been there for him, and called him from ice-cold phone booths. But now that was all behind them.

“I love you, Paul,” she said softly.

He turned the lights out then, and laid her on the bed, and lay next to her, holding her and touching her, and reveling in all her warmth and softness and glory. He peeled the black suit away, and everything he found beneath it, and they clung to each other with a hunger neither of them had realized they had for each other. And when she lay naked next to him, he looked down at her with all the love and tenderness he felt for her.

“You're so beautiful, India,” he whispered, as she reached up to him with the smile he had remembered for so long and the arms he had been starving for, and gently she brought him to her.

They met and held and danced in the skies, as together they found what they had been looking for, in the arms of someone whom they not only loved, but who loved them. It was everything neither of them had had before, and only discovered now, with each other. It was like being born again, for both of them, as they clung to life and hope and the dreams they each had forgotten, and long since ceased to believe in. And as she moaned softly in his arms, he brought her to places she had never known, and had only dimly realized she longed for. And when it was over, it was not an end, but a beginning.

They lay quietly side by side for a long time, and then he kissed her again, and after a while she fell asleep beside him. He watched her sleep for a long time, and then he closed his eyes and slept as he hadn't in months, with her love to bring him home again from his agonizing journey to lonely places.

The sun was coming up when they woke, and he made love to her again, and she lay in his arms afterward and sighed and told him she had never known it could be like that.

“It can't,” he said with a smile, still somewhat in awe of her, and what had come to them. She was everything he had so desperately wanted and never allowed himself to realize in all the months he'd called her. “I'm never going to let you go again,” he said happily. “You're going to have to go everywhere with me …work …the boat … I can't live without this.”

“You're going to have to,” she smiled up at him mischievously, “I have to drive back to Westport.” He groaned at the prospect of losing her, even until that evening.

“Can you come back tonight?” he asked, before he let her move from him. He wanted to make love to her again, but they both needed time to recover.

She knew it would be hard to leave the children again for the third night, and she looked at him hopefully. “Can you come out to Westport?”

“What about the children?”

“We'll think of something…. You can sleep with Sam.”

“That would be interesting.” He laughed, and she giggled, and slowly she unwound her body from his, still overwhelmed by everything that had happened.

He watched her walk across the room, and he didn't tell her this time that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. Saying it seemed somehow a disrespect to Serena. But he had found with India something he'd never even had with her. The fascination of Serena had been that she had never given herself to anyone completely, not even him after all those years. She always kept a piece of herself apart, as though to prove to him that he would never own her. The difference between them was that India gave herself to him completely. She opened herself to him, in all her warmth and vulnerability, and he felt as though he could disappear for a thousand years into all she gave him. He felt safe with her, and together they shared an ecstasy that satisfied him completely.

He stood in the shower with her, and then watched her dress, and then he put his own clothes on, as she looked at him, and smiled mysteriously. She was thinking that whoever had said it about him had been right … he was indecently handsome.

He rode down in the elevator with her, thinking of what she meant to him, and when she got in her car, he looked at her, wanting to remember this moment for a lifetime.

“Be careful. … I love you, India.” She leaned out of the car to kiss him, with her long blond hair streaming past her shoulders. He touched it and it felt like silk to him, as she smiled up at him, all innocence and trust and hope and dreams, with the glow of what had happened still in her eyes, as she looked at him with a peaceful expression.