Coast Road (48 page)

The guy hasn't left your side. Help him out a little here."

"Help him with what? " Rachel cried. "Maybe I don't want him moving here.

Fine, the girls are attached to him, but maybe I don't want to have to see him all the time. Big Sur is mine. Why does he think he can just barge right in? " "He loves you, Rachel." Rachel closed her eyes and turned away.

"Tell him you love him back, " Katherine said.

Rachel's heart was aching. It was a veteran at that, where Jack McGill was concerned. "I don't know if I can, " she said. She had precious little energy when her heart ached. It had been aching so long.

"What are you afraid of? " "Depending on him and being abandoned again."

"You'd rather live the rest of your life without? " Rachel opened her eyes and looked at Katherine hard. She could understand that her daughters would have conflicting loyalties, but her best friend should be on her side. "He hasn't said he loves me either, y'know, and don't say he's shown it, because it's not the same. If he loves me, let him say it. Let him go out on a limb and take a risk that I'll say no.

Wouldn't you do that, if you wanted something bad enough? " Katherine looked at her a minute longer, then headed for the door.

Rachel wanted to ask where she was going, but didn't have the strength.

KATHERINE kept her head down and scowled as she walked. She was angry at Rachel for being stubborn, angry at Steve for being persistent, angry at herself for being afraid to take the kind of risk she just told her best friend to take. She was angry at Jack. And then, there he was at the bank of phones.

JACK had made his call and didn't know what to do next. His life was in a limbo�professionally, personally. The phone booth seemed as good a way station as any.

"What are you doing? " Katherine asked, looking and sounding again like the woman who had thought him lower than low several weeks before.

He was feeling raw. He didn't need prodding from her. Pushing away from the booth, he held up a hand and set off for the elevator. "Not now, Katherine."

"If not now, when? " she asked, keeping up with his stride easily.

"You told me you loved her and wanted back into the marriage. Why don't you tell her? " He put a hand over his ear. "Not now, Katherine? " "Then when? What's with you and silence? What's this whole thing been about? Haven't you lost enough time? Jesus, Jack, haven't you learned anything? " He stopped short and put his face in hers. "Have you? " That got her fast. She swallowed, blinked, pulled back. She frowned in the direction of the nurses' station, then lowered her eyes.

"Yeah, " she said, suddenly humble, "I want to think I have. I took a good look at myself, and you were right. What I have isn't so bad. " Flattening a hand on her chest, she seemed to be speaking more to herself than to him. "Am I pleased with these? No. But I can live with them. I can live with them." She dropped her hand, straightened her spine, raised her eyes to his, and said with determination, "I'm gonna give it a shot, risk that ole rejection, because maybe there's something that's worth it." She smiled, becoming the friend he wanted, needed. "So what's with you? Can't you just do it, too? " She made it sound easy. He started walking again. "You're talking apples and oranges."

"I'm talking trust, " she said, beside him still.

"Christ, Katherine, where's hers? She knows I'm done with the firm.

She knows I'm done with San Francisco. She knows I've been here taking care of her." He stopped at the elevator and faced her. "She hasn't said a goddamned word about any of it." Katherine stared at him, stared deep. He felt genuine caring�from her, from him�when she put a hand on his arm. "Three weeks ago, I'd have said you were a guy thtough and through. Guys don't think, they don't analyze, they don't understand. They just do�whatever, whenever, however. But you can be more than a guy, Jack." She squeezed his arm.

"Why isn't she talking? " She tapped her head. "Think." She looked at him a minute longer, took a deep breath that he could have sworn reverberated with courage, did an about-face, and started back down the hall.

BY THE TIME she reached the nurses station, Katherine was starting to tremble. She consciously laced her fingers and kept them low when she asked if Steve was around. There was some confusion and consulting of one another behind the desk. Katherine was starting to wonder if her bravado would hold over for another day when he emerged from a door far down the hall. He spotted her. His blue eyes smiled and closed in fast.

The shaking inside her went deeper.

He was still smiling when he reached her. His hands were in his pockets, pushing back the lapels of his lab coat. He raised his brows.

"Can you take a break? " Katherine whispered.

He spoke briefly with the nurse at the desk, walked Katherine to the elevator, pushed the buttons both outside and inside. The ride was short, and they were alone. He leaned against one wall, she leaned against the other. She spent the entire time running through all the things she had seen and learned that suggested he was worthy of trust, but it was thinking about Jack and Rachel that kept her on track. If she expected them to risk something of themselves, she had to be willing to do it herself.

The elevator took them to the lowest level. Steve stuck a finger toward outside, then a thumb toward a long corridor. "Is this about Rachel? " he asked. When she shook her head, he followed the thumb.

Holding her hand, he led her down the corridor, around a corner, and into a room that was small and dark. He leaned against the door to shut it, at the same time pushing his fingers deep into her hair.

"This is so gorgeous, " he whispered, using the leverage to bring her in for a kiss. His mouth was as willfill as it had been on Sunday, but no stick shift stood between them now. They were in full body contact.

A deep breath caused an undulation. Katherine didn't know whose breath it was, but the shaking in her belly grew worse.

It was a while before he dragged his mouth away. When he wrapped his arms around her, her head had nowhere to go but his shoulder. She smelled the starch of his lab coat, and something male beneath it.

Her chest was flush to his. She wondered if he felt anything strange.

"Where are we? " she asked. Beyond the sound of their own heavy breathing, she heard the hum of a machine in the wall.

"Broom closet, " he murmured into her hair. "I've always wanted to do it in a broom closet. If a doctor is worth his salt, he's done it in a broom closet, right? " "On TV she chided, but the darkness helped.

"We have to talk, Steve.

I have to talk. You need to know certain things about me before this relationship goes any further." He made a humming sound, leaned down a little, and lifted her closer.

He felt like a man in ecstasy.

"The thing is, " she began, wanting to give in and melt, but fearing disaster, "there are never guarantees in any relationship, because no one knows what the future holds. I mean, look at Rachel, perfectly healthy one day and comatose another through no single fault of her own. We think we'll be here next week, but we don't know for sure. I mean, you could be running down the street and be hit by a car, and zap, you're gone, just like that�God forbid, I don't want that to happen . .

. Steve, I have breast cancer." There should have been an abrupt silence with her announcement. But life hadn't stopped. There were heartbeats, ongoing breaths, and the hum of that machine in the wall.

He drew her closer. His voice was deep and sure. "Wrong tense. You had breast cancer. It's gone." She caught her breath. "Excuse me?

" "Past tense. You're cured." She drew her head back, unable to see him but needing the distance.

"You know? " "You looked familiar when I saw you after Rachel's accident, and you kept bumping into hospital personnel who knew you, too. I put two and two together and checked our database."

"So much for my privacy! " she cried and would have pushed him away if he hadn't had his hands locked at the small of her back. "That's a breach of ethics, Steve."

"Probably, but I was desperate. You were special, and you didn't want any part of me. I had to know why." She had agonized over this. "Why didn't you tell me you knew? " "I couldn't.

It had to be this way. I had to know you cared enough about me to share it."

"Well, I do, " she complained. She swallowed, feeling close to tears.

"It's been a long time since I cared enough." Her breasts were flush as ever against his chest. "Last time I did, he dumped me as soon as he learned."

"Does it feel like I will? " Not only was he still holding her, but he was hard. She wanted to believe, oh, she did.

"Maybe it's a perversion, " she muttered.

"No. It's just not as big a thing as you think, Katherine. We all have something."

"What do you have? " "Me, personally, now?

Nothing. But my dad died at forty-two ofprostate cancer, and his dad died at forty-eight of lung cancer, so there's part of me that feels like I'm living on borrowed time, which is maybe why I want that time to be good. I bought the CJ-7 when I turned fifty. I always wanted a car like that. I figured that if I wasn't already dead, a topless car wouldn't kill me, and�want to know something? �I love that car. It's probably the cheapest one I've ever owned, but I've never enjoyed driving another as much. It's just plain fun. You fit in it well. " "I had reconstruction, " she blurted out, because he seemed too cheery to have gotten the whole picture. "Have you ever made love to a woman with reconstructed breasts? " "No, but they don't feel so bad right now. There's more to you than your breasts, " he said, just as Jack had. "I can appreciate that. I've seen enough in my line of work to know about putting the emphasis on the right syl-la-ble."

Priorities.

Rachel was going to love him. "My husband couldn't hack it.

He couldn't look, couldn't touch. He couldn't get an erection."

"I don't have that problem." No. He didn't. At least, not right then.

"Talking's different from doing." He cupped her face in the dark.

"Want to try now? I'll do it now." She had to laugh. She half-believed that he would.

"I have a feeling your breasts bother you more than they'll bother me, " he said with such gentleness that her hackles couldn't rise.

It struck her that he might be right.

"We can work with it, " he said. "If my touching them turns you off, I'll wait. I could kiss you all night and get pleasure enough from that." He cleared a thick throat and said through a smile, "Well, almost. There's"�he swallowed�"a kind of pressure down low, but I can wait, I can wait." He took a deep, shaky breath. "There's pleasure to he had from an erection alone. Enjoyment of the process." He ducked his head and caught her lips in a kiss that started innocently enough but quickly escalated.

Katherine didn't know how he managed to do it. He had her as into the thing as he was, using her tongue and teeth with an enthusiasm she shouldn't have been able to feel, given the circumstances, but he did taste divine.

Her breasts would have loved him. She was dreadfully sorry they weren't there.

But she was there. She was alive and well, and she had found a caring man who claimed to be willing to live with saline. Granted, the proof of the pudding was in the eating. But she had never gotten this far before.

Maybe, just maybe, things were looking up.

CO $ ru . S)/ cfiiapter twenty-jour JACK WAS MORE than a guy. He thought, he analyzed, he understood. He was waiting for Rachel to talk. Rachel was waiting for him to talk. Whoever talked first took the greater risk.

The thing was that if he didn't take any risk, he was sure as hell going to end up with the kind of life he had just had. That life was gray, foggy, muzzy, damp. It was flat.

Rachel's life had depth. It had color and warmth. She could afford to wait for him to speak. She had less to lose if they never did.

So it was up to him.

That was what his brain said. His heart said that he couldn't bare all with the girls there, and when the girls weren't there, Katherine was, or Charlie, or Faye, and then the girls were back.

Evening came. He drove them home. The coast road was bathe in the amber of a setting sun that gilded wildflowers, granite boulders, layer after layer of greening hills. There was a poignance to its beauty, a soft whisper from the surf. Tell her, ask her, beg her, it said, repeating its message with the rush of the waves.

At the bank of mailboxes, he turned off the highway and started up the hill. If the message hadn't already been ingrained in him, the canyon would have done it. There wasn't a sound from the woods when he climbed from the car, just that nagging whisper all around. Tell her, ask her, beg her.

z l "Uh . . . " He stopped on the front porch. Samantha and Hope were already inside. "Hey . . . uh." Hope came back to the door.

"What's wrong? " He pushed his hands into his hair, feeling a sudden dire need. "Where'd Sam go? Sam? " Samantha came up behind Hope.

"Listen, can you two look out for yourselves for a while? " "We're not babies, " Samantha said, but kindly. "Where are you going? " He was already heading back to the car. "I, uh, need to talk with your mom.