Rushing Waters by Danielle Steel Read Free Book Online

within two months of when it began, Gina informed Charles that she was leaving him. She said she needed to be free, to experience the last of her youth. They had both cried when she told him, but she insisted she was sure. And Nigel provided too great a lure. He was far more appealing to her than Charles.
    She said she was moving to New York to work with American
Vogue,
who was currently enamored with Nigel, and he had promised her dazzling opportunities if she followed him—possibly even a chance to make a film with producers he knew in L.A. It was all too exciting for Gina to resist, and so was he.
    Charles would have tried to stop her legally, but he knew that the court battle would be public and ugly, and she would resent him forever if he deprived her of her dreams. He knew he had to let her go, and he hated Nigel for stealing her from him. He helped her get an agent in New York, and they were clamoring to book her for shoots with other photographers as well. Her career had finally taken off. All Charles could hope was that she would tire of it one day and come back to him. He was gracious about it—and now regretted it bitterly. After a year, Gina loved New York and was still with Nigel, she was a successful model, and the girls were happy with her. It appeared that he had lost them for good and all. And Nigel and his world seemed to suit her better than Charles ever had. It had all worked out as she had hoped, much to Charles’s dismay. Nigel’s unshaven, unwashed good looks were typical of the milieu Gina had been craving for years. She’d been too young and too ambitious for the ordinary domestic life Charles had offered her. He felt as though his whole life had gone down the drain the year before. The divorce had recently become final, and he wondered if she was going to marry Nigel, or at least have a baby with him. Marriage seemed to mean nothing to anyone in their world. Relationships and alliances appeared to come and go, with children born of their brief unions often trailing in their wake. It bore no resemblance whatsoever to anything in Charles’s life.
    He hadn’t started dating again—every other woman paled in comparison to Gina, despite her betrayal and change of heart about him. She was more beautiful and more exciting than anyone he had ever known, and she was the mother of his children, a role he felt deserved profound respect, although she didn’t feel the same way about him and had left him for another man. Charles had been deeply depressed for the past year since she left, suffering from bouts of anxiety, and all he felt able to do was put one foot in front of the other to get through the days. He lived for his visits with the girls and was trying his best to detach from their mother, so far with little success. Every time he saw a photograph of her, in an ad or on the cover of a magazine, his heart took a leap again. He knew it was pathetic, and he had to get over her, but he hadn’t yet.
    And in her usual casual, haphazard style, she wasn’t returning his calls, as he waited in his hotel room, hoping to see the girls, and finally went for a walk to get some air. He was a strikingly handsome man but seemed unaware of it. Women noticed him as he walked past them on the street. As he always was, he was indifferent to their attention and never thought of himself as attractive, particularly since Gina left. It was obvious why Gina had fallen for him in the beginning, to everyone but him. He was good looking, intelligent, had a good job, did well, came from a good family, and adored her. But compared to Nigel, who didn’t have Charles’s values or attributes, he was serious, conservative, and responsible, none of which seemed sexy to her. And when Charles got nervous, he felt like a bumbler at times. Nigel was so much smoother and more sure of himself, but Charles thought he had no soul, and he questioned how long Nigel would stick around. But he showed no sign of exiting yet.
    For all his