Coast Road by Barbara Delinsky Page B

wife panicked. He was rear-ended on the way home, then tripped and fell down a flight of stairs with the child in his arms. It's a miracle neither of them was killed. The little girl is fine. Michael thinks he broke his ankle. It's swollen. He's going for X rays." The buzz in Jack's head grew louder. "Where's everyone else? " "They're working, but it's slow. When Michael ran out, he implied that he was nearly done, but he wasn't. Alex and Brynna are on it." Jack took a tired breath. He should have been irate. His name would be the one tarnished if Buffalo was upset. His reputation was the one at stake.
    But he felt numb. "What else? " "Boca. Regulations and committees.
    Back to the drawing board." The project in Boca was a combined office building and shopping mall.
    He had already revised the design not once, not twice, but three times to satisfy the quirks of one vocal member of one crucial committee.
    With preliminary approval of that revised design, he had put two draftsmen to the task of producing working drawings. He had already compromised to the limit, not to mention swallowed wasted hours for which he had to pay his draftsmen without reimbursement. Was the money worth it?
    Tina was right. He didn't want to be there.
    "Shall I cancel you out for tomorrow? " she asked.
    "Yeah."
    "You look done in. Did you sleep? " "Some." Dropping his head back, he eyed the ceiling. He couldn't focus on Buffalo, couldn't focus on Boca. But he was the leader of the firm, and morale was low.
    So he walked down the hall and stopped at one cubicle after another, making his presence felt in the barest way�a question here, a suggestion there�wading through the static in his head for relevance.
    He was singly responsible for three-quarters of the design work the firm did. It was good work, increasingly important work. Metropolitan Home had photographed his museum in Omaha, Architectural Digest was doing a piece on his library in Memphis. He was getting invitations to bid on some of the most exciting projects�that, and repeat clients.
    Every architect dreamed of tying himself to a conklomerate with ongoing projects, and the dream was coming true for Sung and McGill. Still, Jack felt detached, felt angry to be in the office.
    Mercifully, David was on-site in Seattle. Jack wasn't up for explaining himself. How could he explain what he didn't understand?
    His own office was in a far corner of the suite. Like his studio at home, it harbored more business than art. Oh, there were pictures on the wall, lots of black-and-white under glass, elegant renderings of his favorite projects, reprints of magazine pieces�and for a minute, looking at them, he felt that old glory and the glow. There had been nothing, absolutely nothing, like the high of seeing his first design turned into a home. And there were other highs�the high of designing something bigger, more complex, more expensive, the high of winning an award or being solicited for work by a client so powerful that Jack was stunned.
    He felt pride. Yes, he did. But it was distant.
    He needed a break. Maybe that was it. He had been working nonstop for too long. He and Rachel used to take vacations, trekking through remote areas of Canada or South America, always with pads and pencils, often with the girls. Since the divorce, he hadn't taken more than an occasional long weekend to himself, and then always for something more lazy and posh. Jill wasn't a trekker. She was a skier, so they did that together. But it didn't clear his head the way vacations with Rachel had.
    Maybe he was burning out. There had to be an explanation for the revulsion he felt.
    Then again, the revulsion could be from fatigue. Or worry. Any normal person would feel shell-shocked given the recent turn of events. Any normal person would feel the need to decide what was most urgent and focus solely on that.
    Rachel called it prioritizing. This time, at least, she was right.
    Pocketing a pile of telephone messages, he