AFTERGLOW by Catherine Coulter Read Free Book Online Page B

any appetite for her beloved Mexican food. "I've been a jerk," she said. "His wife laughed at him?"
    "So sad," George said, shaking her head as she cut enthusiastically into her burrito.
    Chelsea said in a glum voice, "I'll just bet he doesn't call me again."
    "Well," George said brightly, "perhaps it's just as well. Maybe it's true that opposites don't attract, or shouldn't, in any case. Hand me the hot sauce, please, Chels."
    Chelsea frowned at her, wondering how she could be so utterly insensitive. They weren't really opposites, after all.
    "Hello. Chelsea?"
    She gripped the phone tightly. "Yes. David?"
    "Yes. I was wondering if maybe you were finished with your deadline."
    "As a matter of fact I sent the manuscript off just this morning," she said with great untruth. "How are you, David?"
    David blinked at the phone. He heard a man shouting at an intern in the emergency room and quickly kicked the door to the small lunchroom shut with his foot. She sounded happy to hear from him. "I, uh, would you like to have dinner with me? Now that you're not under any more pressure from your publisher."
    "When?"
    "Uh, well, how about tomorrow night? Do you have a favorite place?"
    Elsa opened the door at that moment. "Dr. Winter, we've got a motorcycle accident."
    "I'll be right there." To Chelsea, he said quickly, "Emergency, I'm sorry. I'll pick you up at seven o'clock, all right?"
    "That would be grand," Chelsea said, and smiled, a sweet, tender, understanding smile, as she gently replaced the receiver. Poor man, she thought, looking with a bemused smile at the now silent phone. She'd been insensitive to him with all her joking around. But she had been nervous. She sighed. To be honest with herself, for once, her thinking continued on a rueful smile, she hadn't had that much experience with men, and the little experience she'd had, had left her lukewarm, if not cold. Only heroines in her novels enjoyed sex. Only heroes, spun from her optimistic imagination, were perfect lovers. And how was she to deal with a man whose wife had laughed at him when he couldn't "perform," as George had put it? She shuddered. Even her heroines—although never faced with such a circumstance—certainly wouldn't laugh! No, her heroines would be loving and caring and full of tender concern.
    Oh, hell! Reality simply wasn't like what went on in her novels. David was right about that. But for that matter, reality wasn't what was portrayed in his damned Westerns. Stupid, pigheaded man!
    Chelsea rose and walked out the front door, yelling back to Sarah, who was making a salad, that she was going for a walk. She crossed Bridgeway and walked down the road that led to the sailboat docks on Richardson Bay. San Francisco and Marin were the most beautiful spots in the United States, she decided. The day was perfectly clear, and when she walked out on the farthest dock she could see Alcatraz and San Francisco in all their glory. She wondered where David's sailboat was berthed.
    After a few moments of indulging in the scenery Chelsea began to plot, something as natural to her as breathing. Why not, she thought, consider writing a follow-up trilogy using the children of her current heroes and heroines? She wasn't usually big on sequels because of all their pitfalls—such as heroines now in their forties or fifties still with eighteen-inch waists—but it was something to think about. She remembered how the trilogy had gotten started, all from the fan mail she'd received for one novel, touting the hero's brother. And he, bless his heart, was now the hero in the first of the trilogy.
    Chelsea continued wandering, thinking about the young heroine in her current novel. Her name was Juliana—Jules, for short—and she was in for a tough time. Now what should I do once I have her married to the hero? How will he act toward her? Paternal? Benevolent? Yes, of course, that's obvious, but next she …
    The blast of a car horn brought her out of her plotting fog.
    "Watch where