Sharing Sunrise (16 page)

“Yes, of course I like it.” She made herself smile and sat on the new sofa, bouncing lightly. She leaned back. “Very comfortable. And leather is durable, I’m told.”

“That’s what the guy said. They lease a lot of leather stuff.”

Marian stared. “Lease? You’re leasing this furniture?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. It seems better that way. I mean, well, there might come a day when I’ll want a change or something. You know what I mean.”

Yes, she did, and that was what hurt. When his long-term lady showed up, he’d turn this stuff back and buy what she wanted. Marian stroked the soft, buttery skin of the sofa. How in the world was she ever going to persuade Rolph Middle-Name-Stubborn McKenzie that she was his long-term lady?

He sat beside her and drew her into his arms skimming his lips over her face, her ears, her neck, sending little shivers of pleasure down her spine. She breathed in his scent, let herself relax into his warmth, hurt and disappointment fading. He wanted her. He cared for her. It would take time for him to learn to trust her and the best way for her to teach him that was simply to be there for him when he needed her. She clung to him, running her hands up and down his back, angling her neck to give him better access to the sensitive skin of her throat.

“Did you miss me as much as I missed you?” he murmured

“I don’t know. How much did you miss me?”

He kissed her lips hard and long. “That much,” he said. He slid a hand up under her blouse. “And this much.” He flipped the snap on her bra and cupped one breast, brushing its tip with his thumb. “I want you now.”

Marian undid her buttons with shaking fingers. “I want you always,” she whispered, pulling his head to her breasts. He nibbled and licked and she thrust herself upward. “Rolph, please! That’s not enough!”

Quickly, they disposed of their clothing, bodies coming together in a surge of desire, skin on skin, mouth on mouth, legs entwined. She dug her nails into his back, arching up to him.

“Neither is that enough,” she said raggedly moments later as his hands explored her, two fingers entering her, moving seductively, insinuatingly, making her gasp and go rigid with need.

“I know, I know,” he groaned, laying her flat, letting his weight come down over her, one hand holding both of hers above her head. He stared down at her wet, rosy-tipped breasts, watching them heave as she drew in uneven breaths matching his own. “It’s never enough for either of us. Oh, God, baby, but you drive me insane!” He looked at her face, at her eyes only half-open, but shining with desire, at her mouth, slightly parted, damp lips glistening, and wondered if he would survive the wildfire that threatened to consume him each time he saw her like this.

He wondered, too, how he would survive when the fire died in her and left her cold to his touch. He crowded that thought aside because now she was not cold. Now, she was burning, a lovely flush rising up her body, stealing over her breasts and throat and face, and she quivered beneath him, straining for his touch.

“Marian …” he whispered. “Oh, baby, I—” he broke off abruptly, staring into her eyes.

She licked her lips, opened her eyes wider. They were glazed, unfocused. “What?”

He wanted to say it, ached to say it, but if he once did, he knew he could never let her go. Not even when the time came. “Nothing, sweetheart. I just like to say your name. I like to see you like this, wild and abandoned and wanting me.”

“Aching for you,” she corrected him. “Needing you. Rolph, please …”

He eased her ache, filled her need, and held her as the fire burned and burned and burned.

“You,” said Jeanie, turning Marian to the light streaming through a pair of tall French doors, “have a very distinctive glow about you, and I don’t believe it has anything to do with the sunset.” Her eyes flicked over toward Rolph where he stood with his father and Marian’s at the other side of the room. “How goes the new job?” With a sly grin, she added, “And the new boss?”

To her everlasting shame, Marian felt tears well up in her eyes and Jeanie said, “Uh-oh,” and opened the doors. Shoving the younger woman out onto the broad patio, Jeanie steered her toward a group of chairs and chaises under a big, oval umbrella, shielded from the house by massive redwood planters filled with purple geraniums and white petunias. Pushing Marian onto a chaise, and pulling a deck chair close, she proceeded to talk.

“Did I tell you that Christopher has three new teeth and said ‘Mama’ very clearly yesterday?”

Marian shook her head. Tears still threatened. She didn’t dare say a word.

“I tell you, that little guy is doing so well, changing so much, growing up so rapidly, I think we’re going to have to get him a little sister soon,” Jeanie went on, and spent the next fifteen minutes talking non-stop about her son, her business and her wonderful, incomparable husband. By the time she was talked out, Marian had herself back in hand.

With a shaky smile, she sipped at her wine and said, “Thanks, Jeanie. I needed a bit of time out.”

“I could see that. Want to talk about it?”

Marian shrugged. “I don’t suppose it’ll do any good, but why not? You were the fifth person to tell me about that glow, and yes, Rolph is responsible for it.”

“Yet you’re unhappy.”

Marian sighed, set her glass on the table and swung her legs up onto the chaise, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Yes and no. I love him.”

Jeanie smiled. “I suspected as much when you first went to work for him.”

“At that time, I only suspected it myself. I took the job in order to find out what was going on with me and my feelings for him. I thought it might not be more than infatuation.”

“And it is.”

“Oh, yes! So much more. When Rolph and I are together, I wonder if it would be possible ever to be happier. I love him so much, Jeanie!”

“Does he feel the same?”

Marian shook her head. “He’s never said it. He says he, well, he wants me.” She shrugged, embarrassment barely at bay. She’d never had a girlfriend she could discuss intimate things with until Jeanie and it didn’t come easily to her. “I have to believe that. I guy can’t hide it, can he?”

Jeanie laughed and patted Marian’s linked hands. “Not hardly. Maybe he’s like his brother, afraid to use the words. You’ve known them all your life. You must know that their parents being away so much was hard on them when they were kids. Max has a certain sense of insecurity and I’m sure Rolph shares it.”

Marian was taken aback. “No.” She frowned. “Isn’t that odd, as long as I’ve known them both, I never realized that they were anything but completely secure. I relied on them for a lot of my security. They were always there for me, both of them, but mostly Rolph.”

She sat quietly for several moments, deep in thought. “Do you think maybe he’s afraid to trust me?”

“Doesn’t he trust you?”

“No. He keeps talking about how he knows I’ll leave him one day, and that he’ll understand when it happens. He refuses to believe that I’m here for the long haul. He’s quietly anticipating the day I decide it’s time to move on.”

“Why do you suppose he’s so sure you will?”

“From what you’ve just said, possibly because his parents continually left him when he was a child and it’s what he’s come to expect. I know he wants to get married and have a family. Maybe he sees me as the same kind of woman as Aunt Zinnie, someone who won’t be able to resist the wanderlust when it strikes, and for that reason he can’t trust me to be the mother of his kids.”

“Sure, that makes sense, but why would he tar you with the same brush as Zinnie?”

“It’s what he calls my ‘track record’.” At Jeanie’s questioning look, she went on and explained.

“But that’s nuts! I mean, you were what, nineteen, twenty, when you married that dope? And as to the different universities, the different degrees and diplomas, and your variety of jobs, did you explain that it took you half the time to complete your courses as it takes the average person, and that one course of study led to another, and another and another, simply because you have such an active, inquiring mind?”

Marian laughed. “How could I say something like that? It would sound like bragging.”

Jeanie nodded in reluctant agreement. “I guess. And the jobs? I could tell him why none of those lasted very long. Dammit, he’d listen to me.”

Marian laughed again. “Considering what’s happened between the two of us, he’d never believe that I quit every job where a man came on to me and made my compliance a condition of employment. He thinks I just have a very short attention span and nothing I say convinces him.” She sighed bitterly. “I wonder if he wants to be convinced.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Because he still hopes that dream woman of his will come along and be everything he’s ever wanted.”

Jeanie grinned. “Well, I know about dream men, and how rare they are, even though I found mine sort of by accident. Damn, what a stubborn crew the McKenzies are. Max is as bad as his brother! The trouble I had convincing that man he loved me!”

“Really? I thought the two of you came out of that cavern completely committed to one another.”

“Oh, I’m not saying Max was reluctant to marry me, which is just as well, considering the shotgun I was carrying and didn’t know it. He just didn’t want to trust love.” She frowned. “And I didn’t want to trust marriage. I could only see my sister’s first one as an example and I’d sworn off.”

She looked hard at Marian. “So how are we going to get Rolph to trust you enough to see that you are his dream woman?”

“If I thought you had the answer, Jeanie, I’d make you sit here until you gave it to me.”

“The answer to what?”

Marian started and swung her feet to the ground, smoothing the full skirt of her pale yellow sundress over her knees.

“That was rude, little brother,” said Max, lifting Jeanie out of her deck chair and seating himself in it before putting her on his lap. “We interrupted girl-talk. When doing that, a guy is not supposed to ask questions.”

“Right. Yeah. I see. I don’t know as much about girls as you do.”

Rolph sat beside Marian, curled an arm around her and pulled her against his side. She went stiff, flicking him with a startled gaze.

“It’s okay,” he said easily. “Max knows about us.” He grinned at her. “And I assume that ‘girl-talk’ included the subject of relationships in general, yours and mine in particular.”

She gave him a weak smile. He didn’t seem to mind Max and Jeanie knowing. Why, then, had he turned thundercloud dark when his mother laughingly commented on their arriving together for the birthday dinner. “It … came up,” she admitted.

“We were sent to tell you two that dinner will be ready in ten minutes,” said Max, getting up and spilling his wife from his lap. Lithely, she landed on her feet. “Don’t be late,” Max admonished, walking away with Jeanie tucked securely under his arm.

Rolph continued to sit. “Are you angry?”

Marian shook her head. “Of course not.”

“I know we agreed to keep this private from our families, but Max guessed.”

She looked at him. “Everyone’s guessed, Rolph.”

“I suppose so.” He didn’t look happy about it. “But as long as they’re only guessing, as long as we don’t confirm anything, it won’t matter so much when …”

“When it’s over.”

“I don’t want it to be over,” he said, pulling her into a tight, almost desperate embrace.

“Neither do I!”

As they clung together, Marian felt as if they were on the edge of a crumbling precipice and the least little movement from either would send them into an abyss. She wanted something solid, something real, something more tangible than mutual desire to strengthen their relationship, give it substance.

Trust would do, she thought, and pulled herself reluctantly from his embrace. Trust. Nothing more, nothing less. Why was it too much to ask for?

T
HE WARM BREEZE BLEW
in the open windows and sunroof of Marian’s car as she drove to work Tuesday morning. It carried the scent of ocean and beach and, during a lull in traffic, the high, distant hum of the jet liner she could see arising from the east like the sun. The sun caught its underside, turning it to silver and the sound of its straining engines rang a chime in her heart. As it circled westward toward her, then angled eastward again, headed for the mountains and what lay beyond them, a small, yearning spot deep inside Marian ached to be aboard that plane, going, going anywhere.

With Rolph, she told herself. I feel this way only because he might be aboard that plane.

Yet, even as she thought it, she knew that a small spark of wanderlust within her would never completely die, it would always respond to the sight of a plane, the whistle of a train, the billowing sails of a sea-bound boat. She thought of what Jeanie had said about Aunt Zinnie and Uncle Harry’s travels affecting Max and Rolph, possibly coloring their attitudes toward love and commitment. Was Rolph right to mistrust her? What if she did turn out to be like his parents who, though they dearly loved their sons, continued to travel after they were born?

“No,” she said aloud, halting behind a truck full of huge logs, staring at the dirty red rag fluttering on the end of the longest one. “I won’t do that. I won’t want to.” Yet, she knew that as long as the little spark lived on in her, there was a danger of its growing into a bigger need, an uncontrollable one. Was that why she had told Rolph that life didn’t come with guarantees, why she had stopped short of making a solemn promise that she’d never want to wander again? She wondered if Aunt Zinnie had ever promised herself she’d never want to leave her children, even for a few weeks or months while she pursued her career or followed her husband as he pursued his.

Zinnie and Harry McKenzie had always come home to their boys. They never stayed away more than a few months at a time, and as long as they’d cared to do it, Rolph and Max had enjoyed vacations the envy of all their friends. It was when they entered their teens that they refused to join their parents in those exotic locations where either Harry or Zinnie might be working at that given moment.

Rolph’s job took him away at times. Did he think his children would suffer as he himself had because of that? Of course, his absences would never be as long as Harry’s, but the very fact that he would of necessity be absent might make him even more adamant that his children’s mother would not.