Lone Eagle

by Danielle Steel

  All Joe wanted now was to get Andy out of his office, and to be alone. He had never felt as unhappy in his life, not even when she left New Jersey. This was far, far worse. He had been so sure he was going to marry Kate, and that in time Andy would step aside. But he could see now that it was better for Kate if she stayed with him. It was safer for her, and best for their child. There really was no choice. And to signal that the battle was over, he stood up and looked dour as he shook Andy's hand.

  “Thank you for coming here,” Joe said somberly, “I think you did the right thing for Kate.” He loved her too much to put her in jeopardy, and the fear of her committing suicide was too great a risk to take, not to mention the terrors Andy had awakened in him as well.

  “So did you,” Andy said, as Joe showed him to the door of his office, and Andy left. And as the door closed, Joe went to sit at his desk again, and stare at the view. All he could think of was Kate as tears rolled slowly down his cheeks. He had lost her again.

  Kate never knew what had happened between Joe and Andy that day. She never even knew that they had met. Andy came home quietly that afternoon and said nothing to her. But there was an air of victory about him that made her feel sick. Her jailer, who had once been her husband, was pleased with himself. And she hated him all the more. Any hint of love had vanished between them, and for her at least was forever gone.

  Two days later, Joe asked her to lunch. They met at a small dark restaurant where they had gone to lunch before, and neither of them touched their food. He told her simply that he had thought about it, and knew that he could not drag her out of her marriage, at the risk of her losing her son. It was something he could not do. And listening to him, she could see the guilt in his eyes. He was in great pain. Far greater than she knew. All he'd been able to think of since seeing Andy was her attempted suicide three years before, and all because of him supposedly. It was more than he could stand. And so he was leaving her. It was an agonizing lunch for both of them, and afterward Kate cried all the way home in the cab. Joe had told her that they had to let each other go, had to forget each other. The pain had to end for both of them. He was afraid to say too much to her, for fear of driving her to suicide again.

  And as she lay on her bed and cried after she got home, she knew she'd never see Joe again. She wished she were dead, but not enough so to take the matter into her own hands. The thought never even crossed her mind.

  And Joe did what he knew best. He ran. He flew to California that night. And when Andy saw her when he came home from the office that afternoon, he knew that the deed was done. He had won, whatever the price.

  18

  THE ATMOSPHERE BETWEEN Andy and Kate was tense for months. They barely spoke to each other, she was obviously depressed, and she lost a shocking amount of weight. They hadn't made love with each other since he got home. She stayed as far away from Andy as she could. She talked to Joe from time to time. But just as he knew it would, the time and space between them began to force them apart, no matter how deeply they still felt for each other. Andy had executed his plan brilliantly. The fatal damage had been done. But Kate knew that no matter how long he kept her prisoner, he would never change what was in her heart. He lost her forever the moment he had forced her to stay with him, and blackmailed her with her son. She had stopped feeling anything, even sympathy for him. For Kate, it was over from that moment on. She hated him, and would have hated him more if she'd known what he'd said to Joe.

  Things improved slightly after Reed's first birthday in March. Andy had been home from Germany for eight months by then, and it had been a very rough time.

  Her parents had commented on it, but this time neither of them dared ask what was going on. Whatever it was that had happened to them, it had taken a tremendous toll.

  They went to Cape Cod that summer, as they always did, and this time Kate and Andy slept in separate rooms. Andy could force Kate to stay married to him, but he couldn't force her to make love. Their life had become a nightmare, their marriage an empty shell. And Kate looked like a ghost as she walked around the house.

  Kate stayed home from the barbecue that year, and when her parents came back, her father commented that Joe Allbright hadn't been there that year. As he said the words, Andy looked at Kate, and the look of hatred between them was so strong that Clarke was stunned. Her parents were in despair over what they'd seen after Kate and Andy went home.

  Reed was walking by then, and when they got home, she called Joe, as she did from time to time, just to see how he was. Hazel said he was in California, doing test flights again, and Kate asked her to send him her love when he called. All she heard from him by then were cryptic postcards once in a while. They hadn't talked in a long time.

  It was nearly Thanksgiving when Andy looked at her one night. The nightmare that their marriage had become had gone on for a year. “Is there any chance we could at least become friends again? I miss talking to you, Kate.” They had lost everything between them when he had refused to let her out. He had won an empty victory, all that was left of Kate now was a shell. “Why don't we at least try to be friends?” But even as he said the words, he saw in her eyes that there was no hope. She was gone. He had been her enemy for too long.

  “I don't know,” she said to him honestly. In the past year, she had felt nothing for him. The only man she still cared about was Joe, and he was out of her life and back to his own, and his other love. His airplanes had become his passion again, and had always been. It was only for a brief time that he had finally understood he could have both. And now that she was gone, they were all he wanted, and all he had. There had been no other woman in his life.

  They went to Andy's parents for the holidays that year, and after that, out of sheer loneliness, she at least began talking to him again. But that was all. She hadn't slept with him, or made love to him in eighteen months. She had moved into the second bedroom with Reed. They spent New Year's Eve with friends, and actually danced with each other, and Kate drank an inordinate amount of champagne. He actually heard her laugh that night, and she was so drunk she flirted with him on the way home. It was the most fun he'd had with her in a year and a half, and it almost reminded him of old times. He helped her out of her coat when they got home, and the strap of her dress slipped off her shoulder, and revealed parts of her he hadn't seen in far too long. He'd had a fair amount to drink himself, and suddenly found himself kissing her, and fondling her, and was amazed to feel her respond.

  “Kate?…” He didn't want to take advantage of her when she was drunk, but the temptation was far too great, for both of them. They were married after all, and living a celibate life. She was twenty-eight years old, and he had turned thirty that month, and they had just spent one of the loneliest years of both their lives.

  She followed him into the bedroom they no longer shared. She was still living in the bedroom next to his, and Reed was still sleeping in a crib next to her. He was twenty-one months old, and sound asleep when the sitter left that night.

  “Would you like to sleep with me tonight, Kate?” Andy offered tentatively, and without a word, she took off her dress and slipped into his bed. He had no illusions that she was in love with him. They were two drowning people lost in a stormy sea, clutching at anything they could to survive. Each other, if all else failed.

  Afterward, she hardly remembered making love to him that night. All she knew was that she'd woken up in his bed, and then scurried back to her own. When he woke up on New Year's Day, she was gone.

  They both had fearsome hangovers and said very little that day. She was profoundly upset by what had happened the night before. She had vowed to herself fourteen months before that she would never sleep with him again. And she hadn't, until then. But she was so lonely, the champagne had unleashed a torrent of desire that had gone unquenched for too long.

  They made no mention of it and went back to their separate solitude, and it was only at the end of January that she told him the news. She had been devastated when s
he found out. It was yet another bond to him, but she had long since given up hope of getting out. Andy had made it perfectly clear to her. He owned her for the rest of her life. And now, she was expecting another child.

  He hoped it would bring them closer to each other, but it drove them even further apart. She was constantly sick, day and night. She took to her bed and stayed there most of the time. She was in bed all through the spring, and only got up briefly in the afternoons to take Reed to the park. Her illness was yet another way of shutting Andy out.

  They dined in silence at night, and the only sounds in the apartment once Andy got home, were Reed's chatterings. Andy and Kate rarely spoke to each other anymore. And in June, Kate saw in the newspaper that Joe had gotten engaged. She called to congratulate him, and found he was in Paris. He never called her anymore. At twenty-nine, she felt as though her life was over. She was married to a man she felt nothing for, was having a child she didn't want, and had lost the only man she'd ever loved. The baby was due in September, and Kate didn't seem to care. The only joys in her life were her son, and her memories of Joe.

  It was Andy who finally came to her, just before their second child was born. She was lying on her bed, reading late at night, Reed was in bed next to her, sound asleep. He had turned two in March, and was a beautiful, loving child. She looked up when she saw Andy come into the room. Looking at him now was like seeing a stranger. It was hard to imagine they'd ever been close or thought they were in love, or were even friends.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, sitting next to her on the bed. It was the closest they'd been to each other in eight months. It was hard to believe it had been that way between them for almost two years. The only decent time they'd ever shared was their first year of marriage, before he left for Germany and Joe came back.

  “I feel large,” she smiled. Talking to him was like talking to a distant friend, someone you had met years before and hadn't seen in a long time.

  “I thought you'd like to know. I'm moving out after the baby comes.” He had made the decision weeks before, and rented an apartment that afternoon. He couldn't live that way anymore. Anything they'd ever shared or dreamed had long since died. And he knew now that he could no longer keep her like a bird in a cage. Her spirit had long since flown. The victory he had won over Joe was meaningless, he knew now. Kate had never been Andy's to lose. She was always Joe's.

  “Why are you moving out?” she asked quietly, putting her book down.

  “Why stay? You were right. It was a mistake. I'm sorry I got you pregnant on New Year's Eve. This complicates things for you.”

  “Destiny, I guess. That word again.” It was the thing that made people come and go, or stay, or wish they could, and not make the right decision when they should. Chance. “The baby will be good for Reed,” she said quietly. “Where are you going?” It was like asking a fellow traveler on a train, not a man she had once loved. She was no longer sure she ever had. Probably not. They had been better as friends. She had just been so heartbroken after she left Joe. But they had both paid a high price for what they'd done.

  “I should have listened to you two years ago,” he said. She nodded and said nothing. The two years he'd taken to agree to a divorce had cost her Joe. She wondered if he was married yet. The papers hadn't said, only that he'd gotten engaged several months before. And she had to respect that now. It was too late for them. And certainly for her, she felt. Andy had wasted her life, and destroyed her dreams. They belonged now to the woman who was going to marry Joe. And Kate had none.

  “You were probably right to try,” she said to Andy, trying to be fair. But she had been too much in love with Joe to even consider it. The marriage to Andy had ended the moment she saw Joe again.

  “Go back to him, Kate,” he said softly, looking like the friend he had once been as she watched his eyes. “I've never understood what you two had, or why, but whatever it is, it's powerful for both of you, you deserve to have it, if you want it that much.” She had all but died when he left. There was nothing left. She felt dead inside. “Tell him you're free now. He has a right to know.” Andy had spent two years feeling guilty over the lies he'd told Joe, particularly once he saw that Kate had closed all doors to him. But he had no idea how to undo the damage he had done to her, in Joe's eyes. And he didn't have the courage to tell Kate. But as much as she and Joe loved each other, or had, Andy suspected Joe would forgive her anything.

  “He's engaged to someone else,” she said with somber eyes.

  “So what?” Andy smiled. “We were married when he came back. If he loves you, he'll want you now, no matter what.”

  “Is that how it works?” She smiled back at Andy for the first time in a long time. For two years, he had been her jailer and nothing more. Maybe now, in freeing her, they could at least be friends again. It was what he had hoped when he had decided to let her go. Even he wanted more. “It's too late for us.” Andy knew she was talking about Joe. “Our timing is pretty grim. He's engaged.”

  “I remember when everyone thought he was dead, and you still believed he was alive. You've been dead for two years, Kate. You need a life again. All you've ever wanted was to be with him.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “Crazy, isn't it? I always did. The first time I met him, I was hooked. It was the damnedest thing. Like some giant fishhook in my gut. We never seem to be able to cut the line.”

  “Then don't. Swim back to him. Do whatever you have to do, but follow your dream.” He had, but the dream he had followed had belonged to someone else, and he knew it always would. She had always been Joe's and never his.

  “Thank you,” she said, and he bent down to kiss her cheek.

  “Get some sleep,” he said, and left her room.

  She lay in bed thinking about Andy after he left her room that night. It was strange how little she felt, not sadness, not relief. She felt nothing at all, and hadn't for two years. She had been numb. She thought of what he'd said to her about Joe, and wondered if it was even possible anymore. Follow your dream… swim … fly… go to him… She smiled as she turned over and went to sleep. It was hard to believe that the dream would ever be hers. It had always been just out of reach. And it was again. He was engaged, or maybe even married by then. She felt she had no right to turn his life upside down again. Whatever he had now, he had a right to it. And it was odd to realize that in the end she had lost them both, Andy and Joe. Whatever Andy said now, out of guilt, she knew it was too late to call Joe. Her gift to him this time was to let him go.

  Andy took her to the hospital when the baby came. It was a little girl this time. They named her Stephanie. And two weeks later, Andy moved out. It was surprisingly unemotional. Everything between them had been dead for so long that neither of them felt anything but relief.

  Kate left for Reno with both children and a nurse when Stephanie was four weeks old. She stayed for six weeks, and came back on the train, divorced, on December 15th. She had been legally married to Andy for three and a half years, and in reality only for one. She heard from a friend that Andy was going out with someone else by then, and supposedly madly in love. She hoped he was. They had both been lonely for long enough. She wished for him that he would marry again and have more kids. He deserved a lot better than she'd given him, although they both loved Stephanie and Reed. He was going to see them every Wednesday afternoon, and alternate weekends. It had all been so neatly and quietly done, as though it had never happened at all. Now that it was over, it seemed like a dream. Her parents mourned the marriage far more than either she or Andy did. They had never fully accepted or understood why it died.

  A week after they got back from Reno, she took Reed to buy a Christmas tree, and she felt like herself for the first time in years. They sang Christmas carols as they walked along, and when they got to the lot on the corner, Reed picked an enormous Christmas tree. She was telling the men where to deliver it, as Reed jumped up and down clapping his hands, when she saw someone get out of a car with his hea
d down in the cold. It had just started to snow. He was wearing a hat and a dark coat, and she knew it was him even before he turned around, and as soon as he did, he saw her. It was Joe. He stopped and then smiled at her. They hadn't talked on the phone in months, or seen each other in two years.

  As he walked toward her, she smiled in spite of herself. Destiny. There he was. Just seeing him reminded her of the magic they had always shared. Their paths crossed and then disappeared again, separately, and then suddenly there he would be. At the barbecue, on the ship, at the ball when she was seventeen. It had been twelve years since then. And just seeing him brought back the dream.

  “Hello, Kate.” He had come to buy a Christmas tree. She didn't even know where he was anymore. California, New York. Somewhere else. She hadn't called or written to him. They had put each other through enough two years before. It was done, she had told herself. If nothing else, she owed him peace. But some power or force had intervened, and brought him back to cross her path yet again.

  “Hello, Joe.” She smiled at him. It was so good to see him in spite of everything. He looked the same. And her heart ached at the sight of him.

  “How's your life these days?” There was a lot he wanted to know, but it seemed awkward to ask with a lot of people milling around, and Reed standing next to her. He was old enough to understand what they said.

  Kate laughed, remembering Andy's words before he left. Tell him. Call him. Find him. He had found her. She decided to jump in. “I'm divorced.”

  “When did that happen?” He looked startled, but pleased.

  “We got back from Reno last week. I took the kids with me.”

  “Kids?” he seemed surprised.

  “Stephanie. She's three months old. I got drunk last New Year's Eve.” It was a lot of information to share over a Christmas tree, after two years, and Joe looked amused. “What about you?”