It told her a lot, his asking, not What are you doing here? Or How did you get aboard? but What are you doing with those?
“Putting them away,” she said evenly. “I was looking for a T-shirt. I’d hate to ruin a silk blouse kicking around on a sailboat.”
He crouched and gathered up several books, not meeting her eyes, a bright flush over his high cheekbones. “You were looking at my books.”
“Yes.” It pleased her for some obscure reason that he didn’t try to pretend to her that they were someone else’s books. “I haven’t had a chance to read that one yet.” She pointed to the last one he had picked up. “May I?”
He put the book into her outstretched hand, set the stack back into the locker and then collected more. Setting her book aside, Marian helped him then closed the lid on the locker, pushing the seat cushion back into place.
Rolph got to his feet. He could just stand in the cabin. His blond curls brushed the roof. His eyes were dark green and fathomless. His mouth was a taut line, and pale. The flush had faded from his cheeks. He looked suddenly dangerous, faintly threatening, eyes glittering with a light that told her passion was about to erupt. In one form or another. It thrilled and excited her even while something primitive in her cringed and curled back, seeking safety.
Marian arose. She felt better standing, though there was no place to run. She frowned slightly. This was the first time she’d ever once considered that maybe she’d need, or want, to run from Rolph. She licked her dry lips and tilted her head back, book tapping gently against her thigh but before she could speak, he said, “You’ll find a T-shirt over there,” and gestured to a starboard locker. With that, he turned and lifted himself back out into the cockpit, leaving the hatch slid back for light and air.
When she appeared on deck, one of his T-shirts covering the swim trunks she wore, he sat looking at her silently for several moments. Then: “I’m waiting.”
The wind played through his hair. “What for?”
He squinted against the sun. “For the laugh.”
“Laugh?”
He lifted his brows. “Aren’t you going to laugh at me? I mean, how often is it that you find out a guy you know is a closet romance reader?”
She wanted, very badly, to be one of the heroines in one of those books, someone who would know what to say, what to do, how to help him over what had to be an extremely awkward moment. But she wasn’t. She was just a real woman, a sorry woman, one who wished she were at the bottom of the Strait, or at least back on the other side of it, wished she hadn’t embarrassed him this way, made him feel exposed and humiliated.
Holding up the book she’d borrowed, she said, “I didn’t see any notations in this one.”
He nodded. “I haven’t bothered making notations for a long time, or analyzing. I just read them because I like them.”
“Okay, then,” she said, sliding onto the stern bench beside him, curling her legs up so her knees touched his thighs and her shoulder rested against his chest. “Share the best parts of this one with me.”
“Marian …” His voice was heavy.
“What?” She tilted her head back, squinting against the sun in her eyes.
“I wish …” His arm shifted, came around her shoulder. He fell silent.
“Rolph …” She gulped, said his name again on a whisper and added, “I wish too.”
He looked at her, his mouth twisted to one side. His hand tightened over the point of her shoulder. The other one cradled her chin. He gazed down at her, muttered, “Oh, hell, what am I supposed to do?” Then he bent and took her mouth in a hard, thrusting kiss that held not one hint of gentleness, yet was the kind of kiss she both wanted and needed then, a kiss in which she participated whole-heartedly.
She slid her arms around his solid, warm torso, fingers digging into his muscular back. He made a sound deep in his chest and tilted her head farther back, moving his mouth from hers, down under her chin, to her throat, murmuring things she couldn’t make out over the sound of blood rushing through her veins, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t need to hear him, she could feel him, feel his straining muscles as he turned her, swung her half around and across his thighs.
His legs were bare, the hair on his thighs prickled her back where her T-shirt hitched up. His skin was warmed by the sun, and by a heat that was generated deep within. His shoulder under her cheek was hard, rippling as he moved, and the other one, where her hand roamed, was covered by warm, satiny skin that kept her palm stroking, just to feel more of it, down over his biceps, up to the side of his neck, back around to his nape then curving down over his collarbone, lower, to the crisp hair on his chest. Her fingers tangled there, stroking, and she discovered a nipple, hard, distended, growing harder at her touch.
He buried his hands in her curls, tilting her head so he could have her mouth again and against her closed lids the sun was a hot, red blanket. He tasted incredible, of salt spray and man. His lips were hard, purposeful, his tongue probed deeply, his fists clenched in her hair and then relaxed, one sliding down her arm, the other encircling her nape while his mouth on hers gentled, softened, the tip of his tongue just touching her upper lip, then her lower, then the inside. When his hand slid down her back, under the T-shirt and caressed her waist, she trembled. Her stomach muscles convulsed as he stroked his palm over them, and she gasped in pleasure when he cupped a hand over a breast.
Arching her back, she pressed herself into his palm, her nipple aching for his touch, but he denied her silent demand, pulling his hand out from under her clothing.
“Rolph, please,” she sighed, but he groaned and gripped the back of her head, pressing her cheek to his bare, heaving chest, holding her in a way that permitted no movement at all.
Tentatively, she trailed her hand down his arm, laid her fingers against his waist and slid them under the band of his jockey-shorts.
He sucked in a harsh, unsteady breath and captured her hand. “No. Stay still. Don’t move. Don’t say anything. Please.”
She didn’t, and he didn’t. They sat there, holding each other, his trembling hand stroking her back, her shoulder, touching her hair now and then, until their breathing was back under control.
“Oh, God,” he said presently, and then said nothing more, not for a long time, not until a piercing ship’s whistle split the silence and he set her back into the corner, adjusting the tiller so that Sunrise would slip by the freighter’s stern unharmed. Marian glanced at his face. He was pale. His mouth was set in a taut line. His gaze slid away from hers, sickly.
She bent, picked up the book she had dropped and held it on her knees, opened to the first page, eyes fixed on the print, pretending to read. It was easier that way. She didn’t want to look at him again. She didn’t want to see that terrible regret on his face. She hated it when he reached over and tousled her hair, saying, “Hey, kid. I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
She shrugged. What good would it do to tell him that, by her lights, the only wrong he’d committed was in stopping? He didn’t want to know that. He was sick with remorse for having kissed her, for having given into the primitive need they’d both shared. If she didn’t ease the situation for him somehow, he was likely to abandon ship at the first uninhabited island they sailed near enough to swim to. From somewhere in her depths, she conjured up a cheeky smile, and the strength to aim it at him.
“I’ve read the books, Rolph. I know what happens to stowaways, the kind of punishment meted out by the chief buccaneer. You make a darned good pirate.”
He shot her a disgusted look. “That wasn’t what I was doing. I didn’t mean to ‘punish’ you. I’m sorry if you felt that I did.”
She became instantly serious. “Then what did you mean, Rolph?”
“Nothing, dammit. Not one, damned thing! It was a mistake, all right? I shouldn’t have kissed you. I won’t kiss you again. Now keep your head down while we come about. I’d better get you home.�
�� He glanced at his watch. “I might still make my flight if the tide doesn’t turn before we get into the harbor.”
Visions of his following the Mastersons to Australia in order to get away from her flooded her mind. “Flight?”
“I was going to fly down to Seattle today, but when I— At the last minute, I decided to sail down.” He scowled at her as if suddenly realizing there were questions he should have asked earlier, and hadn’t. “How did you get aboard, anyway, and why?”
She explained about the briefcases, about her flying leap, and didn’t bother with the lie that she’d considered using. She didn’t even mention that she’d bumped her head.
“And you didn’t see fit to tell me when there was still plenty of time for me to set you ashore?”
“No,” she said. “I wanted to come too. It looked like a great day for a sail.”
“Sure,” he said, “that’s our girl, our flibberty-gibbet Marian. What’s the matter? Getting tired of the job, are you? No problem. You can quit any time. And I just gave you the perfect excuse. Sexual harassment, isn’t that what they call it when the boss forces unwelcome embraces on his female employees?”
She got to her feet and stood with one hand on the boom, anger giving her voice the power and strength his kisses had robbed her of. “I’m not tired of the job. I have no intention of quitting. And your embrace was not unwelcome. I did not feel sexually harassed. But if you did, then I can only apologize.” She felt her throat fill and swallowed hard before going on. “Suddenly, Rolph, a day’s sail doesn’t sound so appealing. So if you’re going to turn this bucket around, go ahead and do it. Even if the boss can take the day off to go cruising down to Puget Sound, his assistant cannot.”
She ducked into the cabin and slid the hatch home, then slammed the half-door.
The boat did not come about.
“Marian?”
She didn’t look up from where she sat at the galley table, pretending to read.
“You could come to Seattle with me. After all, we’re more than halfway there. And as my assistant, maybe you should be in on the decisions that I’ll have to make today.”
She flicked a glance at him. “Whatever you say. You’re the boss. You’re the skipper. I’ll sail to Seattle with you, but whatever business you need to conduct there, you’ll have to do it alone. I’ll stay aboard the boat.”
His anger flared. Gripping the edge of the hatch, he said, his voice grating, “As you pointed out, I’m the boss. You’ll come with me if I say you will, and help me conduct my business.”
“Fine,” she said, sticking one bare foot out toward him. “And let everyone think you don’t pay me enough to buy shoes. After all, what people think is of paramount importance to you, isn’t it?”
Chapter Six
HE TOOK A STEP closer, looking dangerous again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Marian was not to be intimidated. “The words are quite plain, aren’t they? What other people think is more important to you than what I think, even more important than what you think. Pleasing strangers takes precedence over pleasing yourself.”
Rolph jammed a hand through his hair, shoving the crisp curls up into peaks. “What strangers? You’re not making any sense.”
“Robin Ames, for one. Other people at Estevan’s Friday night. People in the marina ever since I’ve been there, people who might have thought that because you tend to treat me like a slightly deranged six-year-old who can’t look after herself, because we have—had—the same coloring, because we go back a long way, that we were related. That’s what all this is about isn’t it? That’s why you’re having such a hard time dealing with what even I, as stupid and juvenile and uninformed as I apparently am, can tell is a genuine, physical attraction.”
She stood, reached up with both hands and fluffed her bright curls out. “Well, do we look alike now, Rolph?” She blinked her turquoise-blue eyes. “Now that I’m no longer a green-eyed blonde, but a blue-eyed redhead, exactly what I was originally, do you still think the general public might think I’m your sister?”
God, she was so different, so far from the blue-eyed redhead she’d been as a girl, that he couldn’t believe she thought she’d recreated nature’s intentions. And she was no girl, however much he might want to tell himself she was still the girl-next-door, and hence, taboo. He looked at her, wondering what was so very different, what had changed between Friday night and Monday morning. The fact was, he had changed and the changes hadn’t come only over the past weekend. They’d been creeping up on him in the three weeks since she’d strolled into his marina and his life, regardless of the fact she’d been a part of his life since she was a toddler.
He hadn’t been aware of being aware of her in that way. Well, except for the odd time, and he preferred not to think of those times. He hated guilt.
But now, now he had held her, kissed, tasted her, cupped her naked breast in his hand and suddenly it didn’t matter what color her hair was, or her eyes, or if she looked sixteen or thirty-six, his reactions, his responses, were different and they were responses he had no business having. He could screw up his entire life over a woman like her. “Marian—”
She didn’t allow him to finish. She didn’t even allow him to begin. Stepping close, she glared at him, hands on hips. “I did this for you!” she said, fluffing her hair again. “And for me, and for all those strangers you worry about so damned much! Look at me! Nobody’s going to think I’m your sister, so you didn’t have to be ashamed of kissing me out there in the cockpit.”
Suddenly, he was as angry as she was. She was so damned unfair! Didn’t she know he was trying to protect her as well as himself? Couldn’t she understand that? Hell’s bells, it was never like this in those damned romance novels. In them, the women knew how to behave. In them, chances were, the woman would have called a halt or the telephone would have rung or … If he hadn’t stopped kissing her, he’d have lost control of himself and made love to her right out there on deck. He’d have scared her out of her mind with the intensity of his desire, sickened her, disgusted her.
“I wasn’t ashamed of it for that reason,” he said, struggling to keep his voice down; romantic heroes didn’t yell at women. “I don’t care what other people think!”
“No? You were holding me, Rolph, kissing me, touching me, and we were both very much wrapped up in it, enjoying it, when that freighter blew its whistle and you realized somebody else might become aware of what we were doing. And that made it bad for you. I don’t like having you ashamed of kissing me, Rolph. I don’t like having you disgusted with yourself for wanting me. It makes me feel cheap and unworthy.”
“Dammit,” he shouted, losing it completely. “I’m not ashamed of kissing you! At least, not for any of those reasons. I don’t think you’re cheap and unworthy.”
She shouted, “Then what is your problem?”
Oh, hell! Rolph wiped his forehead with the back of a hand. How could he tell her what his problem was when he didn’t fully understand it himself? “I want you,” he said in a strangled tone.
She looked young and bewildered and hurt and he hated himself for doing this to her. He saw her throat work as she swallowed before speaking. “I know,” she said quietly. Then, just as quietly, with a slight movement that could have been a shrug, “I want you too.”
Wham! Something slammed into his chest, so that when he said “Marian!” it came out all in pieces, jerky, as if her name had been yanked from him. Hearing her say those words so casually sent a grinding fire through his guts. How could she possibly know what she was saying? If she had the faintest inkling, she wouldn’t have told him that, not in such an off-hand manner, like saying she wanted a hamburger, or a drink of water. Clenching his fists so that he wouldn’t snatch her into his arms and show her what that phrase really meant, he said, “Dammit, you can’t just come right out and say something like that to a guy! It’s dangerous and stupid and not something a woman says just like that. If she says it at all, sh
e does so in the throes of passion.”
“Maybe in the books you read,” she said, with another of those little half-shrugs. “But this isn’t fiction. I said it because I want you to know. I said it because it’s true.” Her voice wobbled and her chin quivered. She firmed both quickly. “I do want you. I want to go to bed with you. I want to make love with you. I want to feel all of you naked against all of me.” She laid one hand on his chest, fingers splayed, palm hot against his burning skin. He felt a tremor in it. She looked straight into his eyes. “I want to know what it’s like to have you inside me.”
Her words, accompanied by that gentle touch, nearly stopped the breath in his chest. He groaned, clenched his fists tighter. “Marian, don’t do this!”
“Why not? Like I said, it’s true. And it’s not as though you’re a stranger I met on a bus five minutes ago.” She let her hand trail off him, her fingertips tracking down toward the waistband of his shorts, and then leaving him, leaving him feeling branded. “It’s been building in me a long time, Rolph. I wasn’t going to tell you. I was just going to show you. But I tried to Friday night, only you weren’t looking.”
“I was … looking.” His words came slow and hoarse.
“Sure. Looking. Not touching. Not … taking.”
“I … no, not taking. I … can’t do that, Marian. I … You …” He broke off, shaking his head, moving a halting step back from her, another, another until he came up against the steep stairs leading to the deck.
Marian smiled at him then, a small, sad smile that got to him in a way even her bright, sassy, sexy smile never had. Was there any end to the ways this girl could affect him? Almost, he said to hell with scruples, to hell with not starting another affair with another completely incompatible woman, to hell with right-and-wrong, and went back to her. But she lifted a hand and spoke. “It’s all right, Rolph. We don’t need to talk about it now. I just wanted you to know, so you could think about it, think about me. About … us. It’s not safe, not having someone on watch here among the islands. Do you want me to take the tiller?”
Sharing Sunrise Page 8
