Rushing Waters Read online

  Rushing Waters is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Danielle Steel

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DELACORTE PRESS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Steel, Danielle, author.

  Title: Rushing waters : a novel / Danielle Steel.

  Description: New York : Delacorte Press, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016000630 (print) | LCCN 2016004967 (ebook) | ISBN 9780345531094 (hardcover: acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780425285374 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Interpersonal relations—Fiction. | Disaster victims—Fiction. | Hurricanes—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Sagas. | FICTION / Romance / Contemporary.

  Classification: LCC PS3569.T33828 R87 2016 (print) | LCC PS3569.T33828 R87 2016 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/​2016000630

  ebook ISBN 9780425285374

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Virginia Norey, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Diane Luger

  Cover photographs: Songquan Deng/123RF (skyline), ILYA AKINSHIN/Dollar Photo Club (water), Fredrik Wissink/Offset (sky)

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Dedication

  By Danielle Steel

  About the Author

  Sorrow has its reward.

  It never leaves us where it found us.

  —MARY BAKER EDDY

  Chapter 1

  Ellen Wharton was pensive as she studied the clothes she had hung on a rolling rack, and the folded items she had laid out on the bed for her trip to New York. Organized, impeccable, meticulous, she was a woman who planned everything and left nothing to chance—her business, her menus, her wardrobe, her social life. She was consummately careful and precise about everything she did. It made for a smooth, orderly life, with few surprises, but also very little opportunity for things to go awry. She had been planning this trip to New York since June, as she did every year, to see her mother. She also went on Thanksgiving every other year, and she usually went once in spring. She intended to do some shopping for two of her clients, and she had an additional purpose to her trip this time.

  Ellen ran a successful interior design business, with three assistants, a color specialist, and clients in several cities in Europe who loved her work. She created beautiful environments for them, which they couldn’t have put together themselves, with the best fabrics, handsome furniture that suited their lifestyles and needs, and unusual and inviting color schemes. She wasn’t shy about her fees, but she didn’t need to be—she was well known in the business, had won several awards for her work, and had been published in the most important decorating magazines. She had learned at the feet of the master, she liked to say. Her mother was a greatly respected architect in New York, who had studied at Yale, begun her career working for I. M. Pei, and gone out on her own years before, designing houses mostly in New York, Connecticut, Palm Beach, Houston, Dallas, and anywhere her clients wanted to build a remarkable home.

  At thirty-eight, Ellen still loved spending time with her mother and gave her credit for most of what she knew about interior design. She learned something from her mother every time she saw her, and occasionally her mother sent her a client—in Europe or, like the current one whose home Ellen was working on, in Palm Beach. She had decorated the client’s yacht the year before. Her jobs always came in right on budget and on time, which was remarkable in her field and had helped to make her as successful as she was. She had a good solid business and had done well.

  Ellen and her mother were very different but respected each other, and Ellen liked working on jobs with her. She loved her mother’s open, airy, clean lines and style of architecture. It was a pleasure doing the interiors of a house her mother had designed, and she often sought her advice about other clients too. They had solved more than one knotty problem together, and at seventy-four, her mother was still full of great and innovative ideas. Grace Madison frequently said that the right answer was always the simplest one. She didn’t like complicated things or cluttering up the houses she designed with gimmicky tricks, a concept Ellen espoused too.

  Ellen tried to foresee potential problems and ran a tight ship. Her mother was more spontaneous and open to new ideas, to the point of being thought eccentric at times, but Ellen loved that about her too. Grace was a talented, strong woman, who had survived breast cancer ten years before and hardly missed a day of work while undergoing chemo and radiation. She had been cancer-free ever since, but Ellen worried about her anyway. Her mother didn’t look or act her age, but nonetheless she was gathering years, despite her seemingly limitless energy and youthful looks. Ellen was sorry they didn’t live in the same city, but she had lived in London for nearly eleven years, ten of them since she had married George Wharton, a barrister, and British to his core in every possible way. He had gone to Oxford, and Eton before that. His family was in Burke’s Peerage and typically British in all their history, habits, and traditions. She had made every effort to fit into his life, and learn his very English ways, although she was American, and originally had her own ideas about how to do things. But she respected his, although it wasn’t easy at first.

  Ellen ran their home precisely the way George liked it and expected her to. She had enjoyed learning about British customs from him and had adopted many of them herself. But she missed the ease of New York at times, and the familiar ways she had grown up with. She had given up her world for his, and had been young enough to want to do so to please him when they married. And in the ten years since, his preferences had become comfortable for her too.

  Her parents had seemed to get along but startled her by getting divorced as soon as she left for college, which her mother said they had been planning quietly for several years. They didn’t hate each other, they just had nothing in common anymore. Her mother described it by saying they had “run out of gas.” Her father had worked for a Wall Street investment banking firm and had been ten years older than her mother and died shortly after Ellen married George. Neither of her parents had ever remarried, and they had stayed close and on good terms, but they both seemed satisfied with the divorce, said they had no regrets, and seemed happier on their own. Ellen was grateful that, whatever their differences, they had remained married while she was growing up. They were the kind of people who did things nicely, never spoke ill of each other, and kept their disagreements to themselves, which was what had made the divorce such a surprise. But the fallout from it for Ellen had been minimal, and they had both been happy for her when she married George, although her mother had asked Ellen pointedly before the wedding if she found him a little rigid and set in his ways. He was so emphatically English, but Ellen said she found it charming, and in some ways he reminded her of her fat
her. George was a quiet, competent, responsible man, all virtues she felt sure would make him a good husband even if not an exciting one. George was the kind of man you could count on. He was solid, which Ellen found reassuring. She wanted a well-ordered life without surprises.

  The only disappointment in their marriage, one that Ellen hadn’t expected or been able to control, had been Ellen’s inability to have a baby, despite considerable efforts to make it happen, with full cooperation from George. He had undergone all the necessary tests to determine the problem, and they had discovered very quickly that it wasn’t due to him. Ellen had a battery of exams as well, and they had attempted in vitro fertilization ten times in four years, with heartbreaking results. They had changed specialists four times, each time they heard of a new and supposedly better one. She had been pregnant six times, but each time it ended rapidly in miscarriage, no matter how careful she was in the weeks after IVF, during the first trimester. Their current doctor’s conclusion was that her eggs were prematurely old. They had started the process when she was thirty-four. She had been too busy building her business before that, and they thought they had time, but apparently they didn’t. Neither of them wanted to consider adoption. George was adamant about it, and they agreed on that. Ellen didn’t want to use a donor egg instead of her own, and they liked the idea of surrogacy even less, since they would have no control over how responsible a surrogate might be about carrying their baby, and what unhealthy behaviors she might indulge in and conceal from them. They were determined to have their own baby or none at all, which was looking more and more likely with every passing month.

  Ellen couldn’t imagine what their future would be like with no children to surround them in their old age, and they were determined to try again. And between IVF attempts and the hormone shots George had to give her, Ellen had put them on an ardent schedule of “natural attempts,” which required George rushing home from his office at a moment’s notice, and Ellen leaving hers, when her home kit told her she was ovulating. She had gotten pregnant a few times that way, and lost the baby just as quickly as she did with IVF. They had taken a break for the past few months—it had become too stressful, and something of an obsession for her. Some of the romance had gone out of their marriage with their scheduled attempts to get pregnant, but Ellen was sure their efforts would bear fruit in the end and be worth four years of stress.

  She had an appointment in New York with a fertility expert she’d heard of, and wanted to get another opinion about new procedures they might try. She wasn’t ready to accept defeat yet, although her hormone levels hadn’t been good for the past year, which supported their London doctor’s theory that it wasn’t going to work. Ellen couldn’t accept that, and George had been a good sport about going along with their dogged efforts to try again, no matter how depressing the results were. It wasn’t fun, but if they got a baby, Ellen thought it would be worth it, and George agreed with her. He didn’t want to break her heart by giving up, although he wasn’t optimistic about their chances for success anymore. He was trying to accept it with grace, and hoped she would do the same in time. Their determined efforts and repeated defeats were so hard on her, and not easy for him either, although he never complained.

  Despite more than ten years in England, Ellen still looked totally American—tall, thin, with well-cut blond shoulder-length hair, and something about her had the look of an all-American girl. She was casually well dressed in cashmere sweaters, slim skirts, and high heels, and jeans on the weekend, when they visited friends’ country houses, or went to shooting weekends, which were an important part of George’s traditions. They hadn’t bought a country home of their own yet. They had promised themselves they would when they had children, and that hadn’t happened.

  George was forty-four years old, as tall and lanky and fair as she was, though he looked European, and he was a very handsome man. People always said they would have beautiful children, with no idea what they had gone through for four years to have them. The only people Ellen had confided their efforts to were her mother and her closest friend in London, Mireille, a French woman, also married to a Brit, who had four children, and agonized with Ellen over every failed attempt. Mireille was a talented artist, although with four young children, she no longer had time to paint. Her husband was a barrister like George, and the Whartons often visited them at their country home on weekends, along with all of George’s longtime friends, who invited them almost every weekend.

  Ellen squinted intently at the clothes on the rack, made a final selection, and put them in her suitcase, with some summer clothes as well. In mid-September, it was liable to still be hot in New York. She had just zipped up her suitcase and set it on the floor when George walked in.

  “Have you heard about the hurricane?” he asked, worried, and then he smiled and kissed the top of her head. He wasn’t passionate, but loving, and even if not demonstrative, she knew he’d always be there for her. He was the kind of person you could count on.

  “Vaguely. They always have hurricanes in the East this time of year.” She looked unconcerned as she said it, and set her briefcase down next to her suitcase. She had notes and floor plans, color samples, and fabric swatches with her, for her clients.

  “That’s a little cavalier, after Sandy, don’t you think?” he said seriously, remembering the monster hurricane that had hit New York five years before.

  “That’s a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.” She smiled, looking relaxed and happy to see him. “The year before Hurricane Sandy, they had one called Irene,” she reminded him, “which all the forecasters said would level New York, and it turned into an ordinary storm when it hit land. You can’t panic every time they announce a hurricane this time of year. It’s not a big deal,” she assured him. “Sandy was just a convergence of unusual events. It probably won’t ever happen again,” she said confidently. Hurricanes were not something she worried about. She had enough other things to think about that seemed far more real, like when they would do IVF again, and how her mother’s next mammogram would turn out, although she had just had a clean one two weeks before. Hurricanes were not on Ellen’s radar screen.

  “Well, it better not, while you’re there at least,” he said, with a warm look in his eyes as he put his arms around her and held her for a moment. “I’m going to miss you,” he said, noticing her suitcase. “I’d better pack too. I’m going to the Turnbridges’ for the weekend. They’re having quite a big house party, and a shoot.” It was the kind of very British weekend he loved, an English tradition that hadn’t changed in centuries, and she was sorry to miss it. The weekend parties they went to were an important part of their social life, with old friends and new ones, and people George had grown up with and gone to school with. Even ten years later, Ellen was considered the newcomer in the group, but they were nice to her.

  “You won’t even miss me,” she teased him. “You’ll be having too much fun.” He smiled sheepishly—they both knew it was somewhat true. He spent his time talking to the men about business, while the women talked about their children, who were all at boarding school.

  “Well, don’t stay away too long,” he said as he left to pack his bag for the weekend. But he knew she enjoyed spending time with her mother, and he liked Grace too. She was a lively, intelligent woman, full of creative ideas and outspoken opinions that amused him. He loved talking politics and architecture with her. She was the ideal mother-in-law—she was busy and independent, had her own life, was still going full speed, and never interfered. And she was still quite beautiful, even at seventy-four. He was sure that Ellen would be that way too, although her character wasn’t as determined as her mother’s and she wasn’t as bold in the way she expressed her ideas. Ellen’s gentler style suited him, as did her willingness to adapt to him. Her mother was never afraid to voice her opinions, whether others agreed with her or not. She was exceptionally bright, fun to be with and to talk to. Her daughter was quieter and more discreet—and probably easier to live with, he
assumed.

  When they went downstairs to get something to eat, Ellen pulled a large salad out of the fridge that their housekeeper had prepared, and she reminded George that there would be meals left for him every day, and he should let the housekeeper know if he was going to be out for dinner. He usually went out a lot when she was away, and didn’t like being home alone. Or sometimes he stopped at his club on the way home and ate there.

  “Don’t worry, I think I can manage for ten days,” he said, as they sat down at the round table that had been set for them, looking out at the garden, in the big comfortable kitchen Ellen had redesigned for them the year before. The house was too big for them, with five bedrooms they didn’t need yet. She used one as a home office, had done another as a study for him, and they had two guest rooms, and a gym and home cinema downstairs. They had spread out in the large house they’d bought five years before when they had decided to get pregnant, before they knew how arduous a task it would become, and how elusive their dream.

  They chatted through dinner about the two important cases he was currently working on, and the clients she would be shopping for in New York and what she hoped to find. She had just been called by a client to do a house in the South of France and was looking forward to it. It would give them an excuse to spend a weekend there from time to time.

  After dinner, Ellen went to put more papers and color swatches in her briefcase. George turned the television to CNN before they went to bed, to check on the hurricane again, which was still making its way across the Caribbean toward the East Coast, and he looked worried. But no dire warnings had been issued yet for New York.

  “I wish they didn’t have those damn things there, or that you went to see your mother at some other time of year.” He looked mildly annoyed, and Ellen ignored him. Until the monster hurricane that had hit the city five years before, no one in New York had given the annual hurricanes a second thought, and even now, most people weren’t overly concerned it would happen again. But George didn’t like it anyway and wasn’t nearly as casual as his wife about it. It seemed foolish to him to go to New York in August or September.