Sharing Sunrise (8 page)

The lights were low, the crowd thinning, and “one more dance” turned into several, then half a dozen, and Marian lost count. Between sets, they wandered back to their table, sipped wine, talked softly, or simply sat and said nothing, just looked at each other, or around the room, but always, when the music started again, there was no question that they would dance, and dance, and dance …

“We should go,” Rolph said presently, lifting his cheek from where it had been resting on top of her head. “Look, they’re stacking up the chairs.”

Reluctantly, Marian looked, then glanced at the stage, blinking. “Where’s the band?”

“They left an hour ago.”

She tilted her head back and smiled at him, continuing to move slowly with him, against him, feeling the response he tried to deny by turning partly away from her. His thigh was hot against hers.

“Funny,” she said with a slow smile, “I can still hear music.” But it was the kind of music that sang in the heart as much as in the ears.

“Tapes,” he murmured, drawing his fingers from her temple to the soft skin under her chin.

“Oh. I hope they have … lots.”

“We have to leave,” he said, hearing the reluctance in his tone. He didn’t want this night to end any more than she did. But he knew what would happen if he didn’t end it.

She felt the heat of his gaze, felt his arms tighten, felt his heat rise. He moistened his lips. She moistened hers. He bent his head. She lifted her face. And waited.

Then: “Marian … don’t look at me like that.”

Disappointment stung her like acid. “Like what?”

“Like you want … to be kissed.”

She wet her lips with her tongue again. “I do,” she said, and held her breath. “I do want to be kissed.”

His eyes glittered like green glass, gaze pinned to her mouth. She could feel it like a caress. It was almost as good as a kiss. Almost. She saw his throat work as he swallowed. “But … not by me.” His voice was hoarse. In his words she thought she head a plea.

He sounded almost as scared as she felt. Oh, God, was that it? Was he afraid to make a move? Was he as fearful of rejection as she was? Gathering up her courage, she murmured, “Oh, yes, Rolph. By you.” Her voice was soft and breathless. Her heart was in her throat. She moistened her lips once more, and watched his eyes flicker, his mouth harden. His hands moved restlessly on her back, then encircled her waist, lightly, as he set her back from him.

He swallowed hard again and smiled, spoke, also lightly. “Honey, it’s the music, the atmosphere, the dancing. Anyone would do.”

“Rolph …” She moved in closer again, slipped one hand behind his neck, filtered her fingers into the soft, tightly curled hair there and sighed. “Do you really believe that?”

He drew in a deep, unsteady breath. “Baby, I have to believe that.”

“Why?”

God! The soft question was enough to stop him in his tracks. Good question, that one. He’d thought he knew the answer, but looking at her, he found the substance of it slipping away. Her eyes were deep pools of rich green. Tendrils of her golden hair hung loose because he’d toyed with it once too often, flicked one too many pin onto the floor. One thin strap of her green dress hung down over her shoulder. Her scent enfolded him with a heady haze of desire that was rapidly becoming rampant need, and that need would be obvious to her if he couldn’t find a way to move apart from her. But those lips were plump, full, tempting, moist and ready. Her eyes were wide and expectant. Her fingers tightened in his hair. Her round breasts moved against his chest as she breathed. Why not kiss her? Why not taste her? Why not accept what she offered so sweetly, so innocently? Why—

“Why?” she said again, hardly more than a whisper, but her breath was warm and sweet and tinged with wine as it came, carrying the word. It fanned across his face and he suppressed a groan as he firmly set her back from him.

“Because you’ve had too much wine. We both have. It would be wrong. And I like you. I … respect you. I don’t want to do the wrong thing with you. To you. We’ve been friends for a long time. We work together. And I’m older than you are, more experienced. I know what … ambience can do to create a mood, elicit feelings. And I know how false those feelings can be.”

As false as the color of those eyes I’m staring into. As false as the shade of the soft hair that persists in drawing my fingers into it. He made himself notice those things, made himself remember, though it was hard. Across the room, he saw the Englishman, Robin Ames, heading toward the exit door. Robin, a man she’d met in Hong Kong. How many men would come tapping her on the shoulder over the years, reminding her of times past, of places visited? Far away places with strange-sounding names …

“What makes you so sure those feelings are false?”

He didn’t know, he just knew they had to be. False and transient. As transient as everything else in her life. “False feelings, a created mood, a brief, bright light that would flicker and die, however beautiful it might be while it burned,” he said. “That’s not what I’m looking for, Marian. That’s not what I want out of life. I want reality. Stability.”

Hurt welled up inside her but she’d had years of practice hiding things like that. She arched her brows and smiled. “And I’m not real?” She inched closer. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“What I’m saying is that you’re wasting your time flirting with me, little girl, because I have no intention of wasting my time playing your kind of games.”

“What if I weren’t playing games? What if I could be as serious as you?”

He laughed. “What if the moon really was made of green cheese? The astronauts would have come back covered with mold.”

“My,” she said. “That’s serious.”

He had to smile at the tone of her voice. “And so am I,” he said gravely, grazing her cheekbone with one bent knuckle. “So let’s get out of this ambience that seems to be giving you such outrageous ideas.”

She didn’t move away from him. “Wanting to be kissed is outrageous?” she asked, eyes wide and long lashes fluttering.

“Not under ordinary circumstances.”

She cocked her head to one side. “What’s so extraordinary about these circumstances?”

“I’ve always thought of you as a somewhat tiresome, troublesome little sister, Marian, and I have no intention of changing. Now, I’m even more tired than I was before, and that was nearly three hours ago, so I’m taking you home.” But also because what I’m feeling has very little to do with slow, sweet music or ambience or your scent or your big green eyes that I know for a fact are supposed to be blue, and your soft golden hair that was as red as autumn leaves when you were born! I don’t want false. I don’t want fake. I don’t want phony. But dammit, I want you!”

As he took her elbow in one hand and steered her back to their table, where their two chairs were the only ones still standing square on the floor, he wondered who was the fake one, who was the phony, her with her frequently recolored hair and her seemingly unending supply of tinted contact lenses, her butterfly existence, or him, with his insistence that what she offered was not what he wanted out of life. Because, even if her feelings were false, even if they had been engendered by the romantic music and the seductive atmosphere, the wine, even if they were as temporary as everything else in her life had been, if they were directed at him, he wanted them, dammit. He wanted them far too much.

For that reason, after he unlocked her door for her, he let her go with a chaste, brotherly kiss on her forehead and an admonition not to forget to go to Southland Marina first thing Monday morning to see those two boats that were coming on the market.

 “That’s it?” Marian stared at the door after Rolph closed it. She heard his feet walking away down the corridor, heard the elevator doors hiss shut. She knew he was gone.

“That’s it?” she said again moments later as she stared at her image in the mirror, then glanced at the framed photograph on her dresser. Normally, it resided deep in a drawer, but she’d taken it out tonight to make a comparison. Robin Ames’ words echoed in her mind repeatedly.
That blonde hair and those green eyes, I thought you were brother and sister
… And Rolph’s, at the end of the evening,
Because I’ve always thought of you as a somewhat tiresome, troublesome little sister
. It hadn’t escaped her notice that Rolph’s attitude had changed immediately after they’d both seen Robin leaving the club. It bothered him, didn’t it, that they looked alike enough to be mistake for brother and sister? Did he care so much what strangers thought?

Obviously, he did.

Again, she looked from her own image to the photograph of Rolph that she’d had ever since Max and Jeanie’s wedding. Dammit, they did look alike. Why had she never seen it before?

There was no answer to that, but one thing she could ensure was that neither she or Rolph nor anybody else would ever see such a resemblance again.

With a nod to her own reflection, Marian came to a swift decision. Luckily, she was in good with her hairdresser and fairly confident of getting a Saturday morning appointment if she declared an emergency.

Come Monday, no one would mistake Marian Crane for Rolph McKenzie’s little sister.

Rolph lay on his bed wondering why he was there instead of in … He refused to permit the thought to form. His head still buzzed lightly from the champagne, his mind was unready for sleep. Marian’s bed. The thought formed anyway. Oh, God! It was partly Slim Masterson’s fault, all that talk about making love in a gimbaled berth.

But the idea of making love with Marian, in or out of a shipboard berth, had plagued him all night and would have without those words he knew. Those late dances they’d shared had left him tense and restless. The scent of her lingered in his mind, the sound of her laughter, the feel of her in his arms.

A honeymoon aboard a newly refitted
Catriona
. The idea had possibilities, all right. He groaned and rolled over, burying his face in a hot pillow.

Dammit, he already had his honeymoon planned. He was going to spend it aboard
Sunrise VII
. And he was going to spend it and the rest of his life with somebody who wouldn’t be dreaming secretly of faraway places. He didn’t want a woman who, like Marian, like his own mother for heaven’s sake, would have to keep wandering until she had searched out all those places.

He’d resented his parents’ peripatetic lifestyle even though they’d left him and Max in the kind and loving care of Freda Coin. And while the resentment had been shared equally between his marine biologist mother and his civil engineer father, it was always her presence he missed the most.

The childhood pique had long since faded, but the deep need for stability in his life remained. He wanted a home. He wanted a family. And he wanted his children to have two full-time parents. He needed someone he could trust to stay by his side.

But if that was the case, why then, did he ache so badly for Marian with a need he could no longer deny, and how was he going to make himself stop?

 
“YES?” KAITLIN, THE RECEPTIONIST
, glanced up then did a double-take when Marian set her briefcase on the front office coffee table. “Marian! Wow, do you look different!”

“Thanks.” Marian grinned and turned in slow circle, showing off her new hairstyle. She blinked her bright turquoise blue eyes and said, “Like it?”

“I sure do!” Kaitlin continued to gaze at Marian in amazement. “I wonder what the boss’s reaction will be.”

Something fluttered inside Marian. Ever since she’d come out of her hairdresser’s salon at three o’clock Saturday afternoon she’d been wondering about the same thing. Would Rolph like the way she looked? Or not. It had been all she could do not to find some reason to come to the marina during the weekend so she could “casually” bump into Rolph, but she’d kept herself busy and stayed away. Now, she couldn’t wait for Rolph to see her new look today. She loved her new appearance and a little voice inside her said that he’d do the same. Oh, he wouldn’t admit it, not right away, but given time he’d succumb.

“Is he in the office yet?”

Kaitlin rolled her eyes. “Nope. He came out of his apartment twenty minutes ago, unshaven and only half dressed, eyes looking like pickled beets, and barked something I didn’t quite get. When I asked him to repeat it, he told me to never mind and left again, muttering something about coffee, and lots of it, fast. Then he disappeared back inside. To make his own coffee, I presume, since he locked the door. He’s in a mood, let me tell you. This was not the morning for you or Andy to be late, and she only got in ten minutes ago.”

Marian glanced through the door to where Andrea now sat busy at her computer, then looked down at her watch. “I’m not late. I’ve been at work for an hour already. I was over at Southland putting in bids on two properties we have clients interested in.” And collecting some heartwarming whistles and comments and a few right-to-her-face compliments, she could have added. They’d done a lot for her ego and self-confidence, as much as the new hair color and different contacts had done, as much as the slim-cut slacks and matching jacket she wore, in a shade just darker than her turquoise eyes.

“And I gave Andy permission to be late. She had to take her baby for his six-months shots this morning. Rolph knew about it.”

At that moment, Rolph came out of the door that led to his apartment, and all the earlier unimportant compliments, the whistles, the comments faded from her mind under the impact of the pure appreciation that jumped into his green eyes as they swept over her.

“Oh.” Rolph heard his own voice come, husky, cracking over the single word as he came to an abrupt halt. He felt his breath leave his lungs in a whoosh. My God, what had she done to herself? She was a redhead again. Not the same shade Mother Nature had endowed her with, but a close approximation. And her hair was cut short. It bounced around her head in a wealth of copper-colored curls that caught the light and flung it to the far corners of the room. She turned her eyes on him as he entered the outer office and seemed to be … waiting. Waiting, gazing at him from eyes the color of a robin’s eggs. Those eyes, that hair, the combination took his breath away completely. She looked … enchanting.