Coast Road Read Online Free PDF

trusted her instinctively. She seemed to trust him the same way right back.
    As simply as that, they became inseparable. They ate together, studied together, sketched together. They went to movies. They hiked. They huddled before class and staked out their favorite campus benches, but it was a full week before they made love.
    In theory, a week was no time at all. In practice, in an age of free sex with two people deeply attracted to each other, it was an eternity, and they were definitely attracted to each other. No doubt about that.
    Jack was hit pretty fast by the lure of an artist's slender fingers and graceful arms. He didn't miss the way her shorts curved around her butt or the enticing flash of midriff when she leaned a certain way.
    The breasts under her tank tops were small but exquisitely formed. At least, that was the picture he pieced together from the shadow of shapes and the occasional nob of a nipple. The fact that he didn't know for sure kept him looking.
    Was she attracted to him? Well, there was that nipple, tightest when he was closest. There was the way she leaned into him, so subtle, when they went to a campus concert, and the way her breath caught when he came close to whisper something in her ear. All that, even without her eyes, which turned warm to hot at all the appropriate times. Oh, yes, she wanted him. He could have taken her two days after the laundromat.
    He didn't because he was afraid. He had never had a relationship like this with a woman before. Physical, yes. But not emotional, not psychological, not heart-to-heart. Rachel made him feel comfortable enough to say what he thought and felt. Not knowing how sex would mix with that, he avoided taking her to his apartment or going to her apartment, avoided even kissing her.
    A week of that was more than an eternity. He'd had it with avoidance by the time she invited him over for dinner, and apparently she had, too.
    He was barely inside the door when that first kiss came. It was a scorcher, purity in flames, hotter and hotter as they slid along the wall to her room and fell on the bed. There was a mad scramble to get clothes off and be close and inside�and it was heaven for Jack, the deepest, most overwhelming lovemaking he had ever in his life dreamed could take place.
    When it was done, she sat on the bed with pencil and paper and drew him, and what emerged said it all. With her hands, her mind, her heart she made him into something finer than he had ever been before. She was his angel, and he was in love.
    chapter two.
    I THE SURGICAL WAITING ROOM was on the second floor at the end of a very long hall. Dropping into a seat there, Jack folded his arms on his chest and focused on the door. His eyes were tired. Fear alone kept them open.
    It was a full five minutes before he realized that he wasn't alone. A woman was watching him from the end of a nearby sofa. She looked wary, but she didn't blink when he stared.
    "Are you Katherine? " he finally asked, and saw the ghost of a crooked smile.
    "Why the surprise? " He would have liked to be diplomatic, but he was too tired, too tense. "Because you don't look like my wife's type, " he said, staring still. Rachel was all natural�hair, face, nails.
    This woman was groomed, from dark lashes to painted nails to hair that was a dozen different shades of beige and moussed into fashionably long curls.
    "It's ex-wgfe, " Katherine said, "and looks can deceive. So, you're Jack? " He barely had time to nod when the door opened and a doctor emerged. His scrubs were wrinkled. Short, brownish gray hair stuck up in damp spikes.
    Jack was on his feet and approaching before the door had swung shut.
    "Jack McGill, " he said, extending a hand. "How is she? " The doctor met his grip. "Steve Bauer, and she's in the Recovery Room. The surgery went well. Her vital signs are good. She's breathing on her own. But she still hasn't regained consciousness."
    "Coma, " Jack said. The word had been hovering in the periphery of