Coast Road

by Barbara Delinsky

  “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 of prostate 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 be 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.

  chapter twenty-four

  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 bathed 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.

  “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.”

  The drive back to Carmel wasn’t as easy. The sun set. The road grew darker. He turned on his headlights, but they didn’t show him what he needed to do. It wasn’t until he passed the Highlands and saw the lights of Carmel across the bay that he had a clue.

  RACHEL hovered on the brink of tears. With each hour that passed, the reality of the accident, the coma, and the blood clot sank in deeper. She had never been one to dwell on her own mortality, but it was hard not to now. She was vulnerable. She was human. She thought about Katherine and about Faith. Just picturing them gave her strength.

  So there was that, and the girls, and her work, and Jack. And Jack. And more Jack. She was trying to process all she had been told about him, trying to figure out what was what and where it went. She liked putting things in piles. She didn’t care if there was a mess within a pile, as long as there was a semblance of order, pile to pile.

  Since the divorce, she had kept Jack in a pile of his own. It wasn’t a neat pile. Dozens of thoughts and emotions were stacked randomly and high. For the most part, she managed to keep them separate from the rest of her life. The occasional spillover was quickly contained. That was how she survived.

  Now, though, Jack was scattered everywhere. He touched the girls. He touched Katherine. He touched friends in Carmel, touched the house in Big Sur, touched Duncan and Faith. He touched her work.

  She wanted to sort and separate, but her heart kept messing things up. She couldn’t unwind Jack from those other people and things.

  Then he appeared at the door to her room and her heart moved right up to her throat. She swallowed, but it didn’t budge.

  “Hi,” he said. After several seconds on the threshold, he came inside. “I dropped the girls back home.” He put his hands on his hips and looked around the room. Then his eyes returned to hers.

  Say something, she told herself, but her throat was closed and her eyes moist. Say something, she cried, directing the plea to him.

  “I thought maybe—” he began and cleared his throat. “I know it’s late—well, there’s—” He took a breath and asked straight out, “Do you want to take a ride?”

  She hadn’t expected that. The tears hung on her lids. Something more than her throat squeezed her heart. Standing there, all six two of him—with his sport shirt rolled to the elbow, faded jeans, his weathering hair, and unsureness—he looked so dear.

  “You haven’t been out of this place in two and a half weeks,” he went on. “
I have the new car downstairs. I won’t keep you out long—unless you’re nervous being in a car, after the accident.”

  “I don’t remember the accident.”

  “If you’re too tired—”

  “I’m not,” she said. She pushed herself up, carefully easing her casted leg over the side. Her nightgown fell to her ankles. She reached for her crutches.

  “If I carry you, you won’t wear yourself out,” he said with such gentleness that the tears returned. She brushed them away with the heels of her hands and nodded. It wouldn’t be the first time that he had carried her, but it would be the first time since well before the divorce. It would be the first time in six long years that their bodies had been so close.

  “I’ve been doing this for seventeen days,” he corrected as he slipped his arms under her. He lifted her with the same exquisite gentleness that had been in his voice.

  She held herself stiffly at first.

  “Not comfortable?” he asked as he headed for the door.

  “Awkward.” She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck, bury her face against his throat, and hang on, but she was frightened. Giving in to a want could mean trouble if the want was taken away again. “Is this allowed?”

  He strode to the nurses’ station and said to two nurses and a resident, “I’m taking my wife for a ride. We’ll be gone an hour. Is there any reason we shouldn’t?”

  The nurses looked at each other, then at the resident, who was nonplussed. “It isn’t normally done.”

  “That’s not a good reason,” Jack said. “Medically, any problem?”

  He reached for the phone. “I’ll check with Dr. Bauer.”

  Jack took that as permission and set off down the hall.

  I’m not your wife, Rachel thought, but didn’t say it. She didn’t want to argue over words, not when being carried felt so nice. She settled in a little and thought about seeing the car. She thought about smelling fresh air, rather than hospital sterility. She thought about feeling alive.

  The night was warm and clear. It no sooner enveloped her when her eyes filled with tears again. She took a deep breath, then gasped when she saw where Jack was headed. A tall halogen light lit the car well. “It’s red!” she cried. “The girls didn’t tell me it was red! I haven’t had a red car since–”

  “Since the VW. I thought it was time.” He freed a hand enough to open the door and carefully settled her inside. He adjusted the seat to make more room for her cast and fastened the seat belt before she could do it herself.

  “Why?” Rachel asked when he slid behind the wheel.

  He started the car. “Why what?”

  “Why did you think it was time?”

  He left the parking lot and drove several blocks before he said, “Because you loved that car. I shouldn’t have sold it the way I did.”

  Rachel was startled by the admission so long after the fact, but there was too much to see and do to dwell on it. She rolled down her window and put her face to the warm breeze that blew in as he drove. Her lungs came alive, hungry for more. “Where are we going?”

  “P. Emmet’s.”

  The show! Exciting! Her paintings were like her children, now all dressed up in their new frames and on display. She had seen Samantha and Hope. She wanted to see her work. But, “At this hour?”

  “It’s Friday night. They’re open late.”

  “It’s nearly ten.”

  “No, it’s not,” Jack said. But it was. He looked at the clock and swore. “Well, we’re going anyway. I want you to see the paintings.”

  “We won’t be able to get in.”

  “We’ll get in.”

  She didn’t argue, didn’t have the strength. Jack was determined. It was all in his hands.

  Laying her head against the headrest, she said, “I haven’t thanked you for doing the framing. I’m grateful.”

  “You had everything there. The girls helped.”

  She rolled her head to look at him. Six years hadn’t changed his profile. His hair remained thick and too long in the back. His nose was straight, his mouth strong, his chin and neck firm. She had always thought him beautiful. That hadn’t changed.

  “Thank you for staying with them,” she said.

  He nodded, but didn’t speak.

  When tears pricked her lids, she looked forward again. They used to talk, used to go on and on about whatever they wanted, or keep utterly still, but there was an ease. She felt no ease now, only a dull ache inside. It hurt to be with Jack like this, locked out as surely as she had been at the end. It hurt. She had warned Katherine.

  “There’s no point in this,” she said, feeling tired and weak. Her paintings could wait. What she wanted most in that instant was to bury her head in a pillow and cry.

  “We’re almost there.”

  “Jack, they’re closed.”

  He didn’t answer, simply drove on through the back streets of Carmel and pulled up in front of the gallery. The place looked dark and deserted. Swearing, he left the car and peered in the front window. Using his hands as blinders, he tried to see more. He knocked on the glass, went to the door and knocked harder.

  “Custodian,” he called to Rachel. He knocked again, studied the door, jabbed his thumb on the bell. He cupped his hands on the glass and peered inside again. He hit the bell several more times.

  Rachel was picturing a person wearing headphones to blunt the noise of a vacuum when Jack turned to her and raised a victorious fist. Seconds later, a man was on the inside of the door, waving a hand no, shaking his head.

  Jack spoke loudly. “My wife is the artist whose show is about to open. She’s been in the hospital in a coma. I stole her out to show her this. Two minutes. That’s all we’ll need.”

  The man opened his hands in a helpless gesture.

  Jack held up a finger, telling him to wait. In two long steps, he was at the car, lifting Rachel out, carrying her to the door.

  “See her cast?” he yelled through the glass. “This is legitimate, bud.”

  “Show him ID,” Rachel tried, because, having come this far, being this close, she wanted in.

  Her arms were around his neck. He looked at her, so close, so tender. “My name, not yours,” he said with regret. She watched the little line come and go between his eyes. Gently lowering her to her good foot, he anchored her to his side while he removed his watch and held it up. “It’s a Tag. Want it? It’s yours.”

  “Jack!”

  “I don’t need it,” Jack said as the man opened the door.

  Rachel saw that he was an older man. His head had a constant shake. “I don’t want your watch,” he mumbled, barely opening his mouth. “I want my job. Place is closed. No one’s s’posed to be here but me.”

  “This is the artist.”

  “Could be a thief.”

  “Does she look like a thief? Her name’s Rachel Keats. Look.” He thumbed the window. “See this notice. Rachel Keats.” To Rachel, he said, “Was Ben putting your picture on a flyer?” Before she could say she didn’t think so, he told the man, “Go inside and look for a flyer. Check out the picture. It’s her face.”

  The man scratched his nose. His head continued to wag. “I don’t know.”

  Jack lifted Rachel again, shouldered the door open, and entered the gallery. Rachel felt a little naughty, but excited, very excited.

  “Mr. Wolfe won’t like this,” came a complaint from behind, but Jack went right on through to the room where shows were hung, the room where Rachel had previously only dreamed of seeing her things.

  It was dark, almost eerily silent. She held her breath there in his arms, catching it when he suddenly turned and went back to the wall. She held on tighter when he angled himself to snag the lights with an elbow. When they came on, he carried her to the center of the room and carefully lowered her. Standing behind, he slipped his arms around her waist and put his chin on her head. The familiarity of the pose alone would have made her cry, except that she was distracted—and not by the voice f
rom behind that said, again, “Mr. Wolfe won’t like this.” She barely breathed. Her eye ran around the room, not knowing where to settle, wanting to see everything at once. She felt surrounded, overwhelmed. These were her babies, but more in content, more in style, more in numbers. When tears blurred her vision, she pushed both hands against her eyes to stem them. Leaving her hands over her mouth, she began with the bobcats. That canvas was her favorite. She had already seen it framed and hung, likewise the two that flanked it, but then came the butterflies … and the rattlesnake. And the gray whale. And the sheep. And her Arctic wolf, her lone Arctic wolf, with the sun making a full-length halo of its white fur.

  She gasped. She hadn’t finished the Arctic wolf. “Omigod.” She hadn’t finished the quail … or the deer … or the great egret, either. “Omigod.” The loons. The loons, sitting on that mirrored surface of a lake at dusk, with the island in the center and the sky lit by the aurora borealis. Jack had done this. No one else could have. He had done it for her so beautifully, so beautifully. He might as well have put her on a pedestal and draped that plain stone pillar with variations of the softest, richest, most exquisite velvet.

  There was no stopping her tears this time. They came hard and fast along with huge, wrenching sobs. She was touched and lonely and needy and wanting and afraid, so afraid that those paintings were as good as it got.

  When Jack turned her into his chest, she coiled her arms around his neck and clung. “Don’t cry, angel,” he begged, “please don’t cry. I only want you to be happy.”

  She wanted to say that what he had done was so beautiful that she was more happy than she would ever, ever be again. She wanted to say that she missed the days when they painted together and that she wanted to do it again. She wanted to say she loved him, only she couldn’t stop crying.

  She had never cried like this. She had never cared like this.

  She felt his arms around her, felt movement, and the next thing she knew they were sitting on the floor. He cradled her close, absorbing the spasms of her weeping with a soft rocking.