Coast Road by Barbara Delinsky Read Free Book Online Page B

usually waiting for him at the bank of mailboxes. He could count on one hand the number of times he had been to the cabin, and then, only to the door.
    From there he'd had glimpses of color. Now the glimpse became a blur of natural wood, furniture that was green and lilac, purple planters, wild colors framed on the wall. The living room opened into a kitchen, but the back wall of both rooms was a window on the forest. The view here was simpler, more gentle to his eye. Pale shafts of sun broke through the redwoods, a bar code of rays slanting toward the forest floor.
    Soundlessly mounting several steps to the left of the living room, he went down a hall and peered into the first room. Between the guy posters on the wall and a general sense of chaos, it had Samantha's name written all over it. The bed was mussed but empty.
    Up several more steps and on down the hall, another door was ajar.
    This room had watercolors on the wall and a softer feel entirely. Both girls were asleep in Hope's double bed, two heads of blond hair as wild as their mother's. Hope was in a ball, Samantha was sprawled. In a gulley between them was a puff of orange fur that had to be the cat.
    When none of the three showed sign of waking, Jack returned to the main room and sank into the sofa. Slipping lower, he rested his head against its back. His eyes closed, his body begging for sleep, but his mind kept going. Within minutes he was back on his feet and lifting the kitchen phone.
    He called the hospital first and, speaking quietly with the I.C.U nurse, learned that Rachel's condition hadn't changed.
    Next he called his partner at home. In response to a breathless greeting, he said, "Working out? " "Treadmill, " David Sung gasped, and Jack pictured him in the dining room that had been filled with exercise equipment after David's last wife had taken offwith the Chippendale table and chairs.
    "Sorry to interrupt, " he said, "but I have a problem. Rachel was in a car crash last night. I'm down here with the girls."
    "Down where?
    In Big Sur? " The beat on the treadmill slowed. "Not Big Sur. Ess Eg We have a big meeting here in two hours. What kinda car crash? " "A bad one." Jack kept his voice low and an eye on the far end of the living room so that he would know if one of the girls appeared. "She's in a coma."
    "Jesus."
    "I stopped at the hospital on my way down, but I need to bring the girls back there. We'll have to cancel the meeting."
    "A coma, " David repeated, still breathless. "Bad? " "Any coma's bad."
    "You know what I mean. Is she on life support? " "No.
    But I can't get to that meeting." There was a pause, then the blowing out of air and an exasperated "We can't cancel. We've already rescheduled twice." Another pause, another exhalation. "You're not ready for the presentation, are you? " "Oh, I'm ready, " Jack said, and it all rushed back, what had kept him tossing and turning before Katherine had called, "but they won't like what I have this time any more than they did last time." He had been hired to design a luxury resort in Montana. The client wanted something with reflective surfaces that would disappear under that big open sky, but Jack had been to Montana. Glass and steel were all wrong. Even stone was pushing it. He wanted wood.
    When his first design was rejected, he incorporated granite with the wood. When that was rejected also, he had tried fieldstone and torn itup, glass and torn it up, steel and torn it up. He had gone back to 7v wood and made the design more dramaticj but even he wasn't wild about it. The best rendition was the very first.
    Only, that was beside the point. "Look, " he told David. "I need your backup here. That's what this partnership is about. I can't be there.
    This is a family emergency."
    "There's one hitch. You're divorced."
    "Not from my kids."
    "Okay. I get that. I do get it, Jack, but these guys have been waiting, and there's many millions at stake. If I tell them you can't be there because you have to be with