Sharing Sunrise (2 page)

Angrily, Rolph stood, too, driving his hand through his hair. “Max doesn’t know the first thing about it! He had no right to send you.”

“He didn’t! Jeanie sent me, because you asked her to find someone for the position. You need me, Rolph. Max knows it. I know it. Jeanie knows it. Why can’t you face it? You can’t go on the way you are. Look at you!”

Grabbing his arm, she tugged him around until he faced the mirrored wall. Together, they gazed at his reflection and hers between two large potted palms. “You’re getting old before your time. Your face is drawn, your cheeks hollow, your skin is pale except for the dark circles under your eyes. You look as if you haven’t slept in a week and you need a haircut. When’s the last time you had a date? When’s the last time you had dinner with your family? When’s the last time you took a day off and went sailing just for fun?”

He smoothed his spiky hair and looked away from his reflection. She could see he didn’t want to listen. “I’m all right, Marian. It’s been a lot of work getting this place built, worming my way through a maze of zoning restrictions, making sure the contractors did what I wanted when I wanted, and running two businesses at the same time. But now that I’ve got my office and home right here on the job-site, the pressures will ease off. Besides, I’m interviewing a bunch of fully qualified women today.”

“Qualified for what? How do you know my qualifications aren’t as good or better?”

He smiled then, gently, almost sadly, and took her arm, leading her back to the sofa where he sat beside her, holding her hand between his. He glanced at his gold watch then met her gaze. “I need a secretary and a receptionist. To my knowledge, you failed typing in high school. Twice. And without that, you didn’t have the prerequisite to get into elementary shorthand, so as a secretary, I think you’d be a washout, don’t you?”

Without waiting for a reply, he went on. “And receptionist? Your phone manner isn’t too bad, I grant you that, but my receptionist is going to have to be junior office clerk as well. Can you file?”

“I’ve never been a file-clerk.”

“I know you haven’t,” he said kindly. “So you see, it just wouldn’t work; you lack even the most basic office skills. Hell, you can’t even make a decent cup of coffee!” He smiled again as if to let her know it was a joke.

“I know I have no office skills,” she said. “I’m not here for either of those positions. You also need someone to help you run this brokerage.”

He stared at her, disbelief warring with consternation in his eyes. She knew she had his full attention now.

“I need a—” he began, but she cut in swiftly.

“You need a knowledgeable person who can take over when you’re out of town, one who can make decisions, one who can even make some of those out-of-town trips either with you or for you as the occasion arises. Right?”

He frowned. She knew she had just described exactly what he needed, but could see that the idea she could be that person was absurd to him. Before he could recover from his shock she continued.

“You also need someone who can deal with customers all over the world, often in languages other than English, someone capable of buying, of selling, of putting the right boat into the right hands at the right time. Someone with social connections not just here, which you have yourself, but overseas as well, to learn about up-market sales before they’re advertised. We both know that’s the way it works. The best properties seldom make it into classified ads. Transactions are made through grapevine advertising.”

Pausing, she drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I also know I am that person, Rolph. I have come for that job.”

He stared at her for several more seconds, then to her chagrin, burst out laughing and reached over to tousle her carefully constructed hairdo. “You? Oh, sweetie, that’s cute. You? A boat broker? Come on, get serious and quit wasting my time.” Getting to his feet, he strode to the desk he’d installed for his yet un-hired receptionist, took a notebook from the top drawer and printed a few neat words on it. Adding a piece of tape, he stuck it to the outside of the door.

“Now,” he said, holding out his hand, “come on, squirt. I’ll walk you up to your car.”

Marian didn’t move.

He waited, tapping the toe of his neat cordovan impatiently. “Marian, I’m not fooling. You have to leave.”

“I believe you have a contract with Jeanie Leslie and Associates, Career Consultants?” she asked politely.

Rolph snorted angrily. “You go back and tell my dear sister-in-law that our contract is for her to find me office staff and a competent candidate for the position of assistant manager for Sunrise Brokerage and Marina, a person I might have a reasonable expectation of training to do the job, not some ditzy dame who doesn’t know a halyard from a half-hitch!” As if for emphasis, the wind blew the door shut with a bang.

Marian snapped to her feet. “I resent that, Rolph. I have more and better qualifications than anybody you’ve agreed to interview to date.”

“Ah,” he said. “Now there’s a key phrase, isn’t it? Agreed to interview. I did not agree to interview you. And why? Because I was not informed that you were coming. Why wasn’t I informed? Because you knew, and Jeanie knew, that if I’d known, you wouldn’t have made it down the gangplank, much less the full length of the wharf.”

She snapped open her purse and pulled out a folded sheaf of papers, slapping them on the back of the sofa before handing them to him. “My resume,” she said. “I suggest you read it before you make a decision.”

With a long-suffering sigh and another glance at his watch, he opened the folds in the papers and stared at the printed words. As she watched, a frown wrinkled his brow, his mouth twisted wryly, then he bit his lip. At length, he shook his head. He sat again, heavily, and finally looked at her. “Business degree?”

“That’s right.” Perching on the arm of the sofa, she smiled. “Achieved on one of those little college junkets this ‘professional student’ enjoyed. The same story for the sociology degree.” He winced.

“Languages?”

“They’re all down there.” Even so, she listed them. “Swedish, French, German, Italian and Japanese. A smattering of Cantonese, Danish, Greek and Korean.”

“When did you do all that?” His voice was hoarse.

“Remember our German cook? I learned that language from her, then took it in school for a couple of years. Same with French. I crewed one summer on a Swedish sailboat. Japanese, Chinese and Korean I took because it seemed like the thing to do when I was working on my business degree. A lot of business is trans-Pacific now. I learned Italian when I was studying art in Florence. I have a knack for languages and after the second or third, the others come easier. And for some reason, I never forget them, or they come back so quickly when I need them it’s as good as not forgetting.” She shrugged negligently. “It was sort of a parlor trick at first, then when I opened up that little boutique down near the ferry dock shortly after I came home last year, having different languages came in handy, what with all the tourists who came in.”

“God,” he said, shaking his head. “And I thought you’d been goofing off all those years. You’re, well, phenomenal, I guess is the only word. By the way, what happened to that boutique? Did you go broke?”

“Oh, no! I sold it at a profit when Mom got worse and needed me at home all day. But I was ready to let it go. No challenge once it was on its feet.” She frowned. “Though I did enjoy the selling aspect. I like selling things to people.” She fixed an intent gaze on his stunned face. “I could do that, here. I know I could, Rolph.”

“I sell boats,” he said. “You know nothing about boats in spite of those summers crewing. I buy boats. I find boats for clients who trust my judgment. My assistant would have to do the same. What if I were over in Europe somewhere checking out a boat with a client and someone came in with one they wanted me to market for them? You’d be lost. You wouldn’t recognize dryrot if it was in your shin.”

She smiled again. “I can read a surveyor’s report,” she said, “and if I can’t do it to your satisfaction, you could teach me to.”

He chewed the inside of his lip and she could see he was considering it. Her heart beat faster, her palms grew damp, her mouth dry. She wanted this so much …

“All right, maybe you could learn to do that. But there’s more to the job than surveyors’ reports.”

“I know.” She leaned forward, ready to plead now. “You can teach me. A willingness to learn is half the battle, and I certainly have that. Give me a chance, Rolph. That’s all I ask. Three months. Give me that long to prove myself.”

Still with his brows drawn down, he looked at her for a long moment, then shook his head. “No. I can’t.”

Something in her snapped. “Dammit, why not? Is it because I’m a woman and you have some kind of built-in prejudice against hiring a woman?”

“Honey, you’re not a woman,” he said, then, as if warned by her stormy gasp of indignation, he pulled a face and laughed. “I mean, of course you’re a woman, a … female, but you’re … you’re, well, Marian. My friend. Hell, I taught you how to ride your bike. I taught you how to roller skate. I even scratched the chicken pox you couldn’t reach in the middle of your back. And I have no prejudice against women. If you’re wondering why I’m still single at my advanced age, it’s because women seem to have some kind of prejudice against me. And if I can’t get along with one socially for more than a few minutes, how could I ever work successfully with one?”

He looked away, spoke as if to himself, musingly. “I don’t understand women, though I’ve tried. Lord, how I’ve tried. I can’t figure out what they want.”

At his preposterous statement, she felt her anger cool and laughed. Who was he trying to kid? She’d spent a lifetime watching girls and women revolve through the lives of the McKenzie boys. “I understand Freud had that same problem. Tell you what,” she added mischievously, going along with his game. “You hire me, give me a three-month training period, and I’ll teach you what women want.”

His chuckle was warm, his smile merely friendly as he said, “Forget it, kitten. Even if I don’t have a real, deep-seated prejudice against hiring a woman, I do have one against hiring you. I need someone who’ll stick to the job. I need someone who won’t decide day after tomorrow that she’s bored and wants to go to Japan and learn how to make silk kites, or to Paris to the Cordon Bleu School, or whatever fancy would strike your little butterfly heart some moment when I happened to need you desperately to perform some vital function in the business. Assuming,” he added with a sly, teasing grin calculated to rile her, “that you’d be capable of performing a function that could be considered vital.”

His careless words brought her back to her feet on a swift, stinging lash of hurt. She’d had more than enough of his teasing. If this was the way he treated all women, maybe he hadn’t been fooling when he said he couldn’t get along with them socially.

It was obvious he didn’t have a glimmer of understanding. She’d come to him, been as serious as she knew how, had laid out in a clear, concise, businesslike manner a sound proposition that would benefit them both, and had expected him to respect it and her. Since he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, there was nothing more for her to do here.

“Fine,” she said, tilting her chin up as she spun away from him. “Suit yourself. It’s your loss, McKenzie.”

At the door, she paused, turned back and said, “And I’ll even give you lesson number one free: No woman likes to hear a man say she has a ‘little butterfly heart’. No woman likes to have a man assume she’s incapable of performing a vital function. And no woman will accept that kind of gratuitous insult anymore, Rolph McKenzie, least of all this one. I wish you teredoes in your keelson and mildew in your spinnaker. Goodbye!”

With that, she swung away from him, opened the door and banged it behind her, hoping she’d escaped before Rolph saw the tears that stung so hotly in her eyes.

“Damn him, damn him!” Marian muttered now, and jumped when Jeanie touched her shoulder.

“Hey, don’t talk like that in front of my son. I want him to grow up to be a gentleman.”

Marian looked up. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, then. This child’s going to grow up to be a McKenzie.” Again, tears filled her eyes and she lowered her head to Christopher’s warmth. “Poor little guy.”

Jeanie put her arm around her friend. “Ah, Marian … Things have a way of working out.”

“Not for me they don’t. Never for me.”

That was the scene Rolph walked in on.

W
ITH A PAINED, HELPLESS
glance at Jeanie, Rolph crouched before Marian, reached out and tucked a strand of her hair back behind one of her ears. “Hey,” he said, when she lifted her head, startled. “I came to tell you I’m sorry. I acted like a jerk, and what I said was insulting, though I didn’t mean it to be. I thought I was being funny. Forgive me?”

Shaking his hand off her, she shrugged. “Of course,” she said in a frigid tone. Half turning from him, she continued to rock Christopher, her hair curtaining her face again.

He stood erect, backing away. “You look good with a baby in your arms,” he said, the words popping out before he could stop them. “Why don’t you forget finding a job and find some nice boy to marry instead?”

With a strangled sound, Jeanie got up and slipped out of the office, unnoticed by the other two.

Marian lifted her head and gave Rolph a level look. “Any woman looks good with a baby in her arms. At least to a chauvinistic male. And if you think some ‘nice boy’ would hold my interest for long, think again.” She stood and handed Christopher to him. “Here, take your nephew. I’ll leave you and Jeanie to discuss strategy for the continued search for Rolph McKenzie’s perfect assistant, should he even exist.” She glanced around for her friend, surprised to discover she wasn’t there.

Rolph took the baby, holding him expertly as Christopher squirmed and tried to get down. He followed Marian as she walked back across the room, and moved to keep himself between her and the door. “The search is over,” he said. “At least for office staff. I hired the first secretary who came this morning and told her to choose an aide for herself out of the ones who came after.”