Sharing Sunrise (12 page)

She jumped to her feet, planted her hands on the overhead coaming to balance herself against the gentle bobbing of the boat and said, “Excuse me, but when it came to my marriage, I was the responsible one! I was the one who tried to make it work! I was the one who went through hell when it was breaking up.” Her voice broke.

“Marian, don’t. Don’t talk about it. I’m sure you tried as hard as you could, but what depth can there have been to your commitment if you only tried for a few weeks?”

“You don’t know a damned thing about it, Rolph McKenzie! Well, maybe that’s my fault because I’ve refused to talk about it. So fine, listen then, and I’ll give you the gory details!”

“No.” Her marriage, as brief as it had been, was the last thing he wanted her to talk about. It made his insides crawl even to think of it. “I don’t need to know about it,” he said harshly. “I don’t want to know about it. A marriage that lasted a month and a half doesn’t even merit discussion!”

“Oh yes it does! And you’re the one who brought it up. You’re the one who called me irresponsible because of its short duration. What you don’t know is that I did work at it! I tried to save it! I would have done anything to save it. I did everything. Even after I knew Wendell didn’t love me, didn’t even want me once he knew I wasn’t a good meal ticket, I tried to work things out, because that was what was right. I begged him to go to a marriage counselor with me and when he refused, I went on my own, searching for ways I could change to make myself right for him.”

A spasm of pain crossed her face as she looked into a past that held frustration and anguish Rolph was only beginning to suspect. “Meal ticket?” he asked hollowly.

“Yes. That was what I was to him, but I didn’t know it. I was stupidly, naively convinced a man couldn’t fake those kinds of feelings. I believed that since he wanted me physically, he must also love me and when he asked me to marry him, it never occurred to me that he wanted me for something other than my so-called beautiful body and the love I thought we shared. Then, when mom and dad cut off my allowance, Wendell told me the rules. A guy could get just as horny over a fat bankbook as he could over a cute tush, and it was my bankbook he’d really loved.”

She pulled a wry face. “I didn’t believe him. I stripped naked, both physically and … emotionally. I spread my innermost feelings, my hopes and dreams, all over the place along with my clothes. The only thing I bared that stirred him in the least was my body; that, he couldn’t hide, but he still managed to walk away leaving me feeling humiliated and cheap and unworthy.” She fixed him with a straight gaze. “And stupid. The way I felt when you rejected me. I know you want me, but I know, too, that there’s something else you want more. With him, it was money. With you, I don’t know what it is.”

Guilt was a physical pain in him. “I wasn’t rejecting you. If you’re equating that scene with Wendell with what just happened between us, then stop. There is no comparison.”

“No? I think there is. I threw myself at a man who was forced to decline, just as I did with Wendell, but then I could be excused due to lack of experience and extreme youth. So I was pretty stupid, setting myself up for that again, wouldn’t you say?”

“Marian—” he began, but she cut him off with a wave of her hand.

“I may be stupid. I may still lack judgment, but I am not irresponsible when it comes to my relationships. I never have been, so you have no right to call me capricious and irresponsible and inconstant because my marriage failed after only six weeks. You weren’t there, Rolph. You have no way of knowing what it was like for me and it’s grossly unfair of you to judge me.”

“You’re right, and I apologize.”

She stared. “What?”

“I said, you’re right and I apologize. But I still think that in our relationship, I’m going to have to be the one to take responsibility, to make … sensible decisions.” He looked into her questioning eyes. “To cool things when they get overheated because it would be wrong for us to go ahead with it until we’re certain it’s going to work. For all time.”

“You’re asking for promises.”

He looked at her. “Yes. I guess I am. And you can’t make promises, can you?”

She thought about it, bit her lip. “What I can promise is that I will never, ever, set out to hurt you. I can promise that I believe right now, with all my heart, that you are what I want. I can promise that if I ever do, as you believe I will, want to go away again, I’ll come back to you. That is,” she added in a rough whisper, “if you refuse to come with me when I go.”

He was silent for a long time. When he spoke, there was grief in his voice. “I don’t know if that’s good enough, Marian.”

She turned from him, from the pain in his face. Hot tears squeezed past her tightly shut lids. “And so you won’t take a chance on me because I might, someday, want to do something else, be somewhere else, even temporarily?”

He caught her hand and pulled her back, seating her on the berth beside him. “I’m not saying that. I’m just saying I think we should exercise a little … caution here, Marian. Lord knows I don’t want to hurt you. But I don’t want you to hurt me, either, and I don’t want our relationship to give our families any pain. The potential for any of that is so great it scares me to death.”

She glared, tension radiating from her body, her chin high, color staining her face, her eyes filled with anger. She’d have flown had he not held her with both hands on her arms. “Rolph, dammit, life doesn’t come with guarantees!”

He stared at her, knowing she was right, but knowing, too, that from her he wanted guarantees, promises, assurances. That she wasn’t giving them only showed him how right he was to be wary of this building desire between them. He’d known all along that she didn’t give him the promises he wanted because she couldn’t. She truly did not know what the future held.

Yet, a small part of him kept asking, what if she had changed? What if she could be as constant and faithful as he needed a woman to be? What if her feelings for him were as strong as his for her, or could become so? She claimed to want a commitment. God, but he wanted to believe that! Why was it so hard to believe?

Was this the love he’d been searching for? Had he found it in Marian? If he didn’t reach out now and take it, was he at risk of throwing away everything he’d ever dreamed of? Merely because he had doubts? Didn’t every lover have doubts?

“How sure of this are you?” he asked finally, searching her eyes for the truth. “About what you feel for me.”

She met his gaze squarely. “As sure as I’ve ever been of anything.”

“No doubts?”

“Rolph … yes. I have doubts. It’s normal to have them. I sometimes doubt my ability to make you happy. I doubt my sanity in wanting this so much, when I know that at any time you could turn from me, find someone else, someone who has all the characteristics you want in a woman. But I know that to get the gold, you sometimes have to dig through an awful lot of dirt.” She touched his face with the flat of her hand. “What I do not doubt, though, is that being with you is what I want and need at this moment more than I’ve ever wanted or needed anything else. I believe that whatever potential our relationship—assuming we have one—has for pain, the possibilities are equally as great for joy. I guess you have to be something of a gambler to fall in love. I am.”

Rolph continued to search her face for several seconds, then shuddered and gathered her close again, drawing in great breaths of her scent, feeling her heat against his body, her trembling need under his hands. It echoed everything he felt. “I’ll take a chance on you, sweetheart, if you’ll take a chance on me.”

Gently, he tilted her back so they both lay on the triangular bunk, crosswise of the boat. “I’ve wanted this since the day you came down to the marina and demanded a job.”

She lifted a shaking hand and brushed it through his hair. “I’ve wanted this since Max and Jeanie’s wedding. I think I’ve wanted it for a lot longer than that, but didn’t know what it was I ached for. Now I know. Make love with me, Rolph.”

“Oh, yes, I’ll make love with you,” he said, his face fierce with desire and resolution. “I have to make love to you.” He captured her hands and held them together over her head. “I have to have you now, and again and again, but that’s all it is, Marian. Believe that. Because I am not going to fall in love with you.” If he’d had the breath to spare, he might have laughed at the outrageous lie, but his breath stopped in his lungs as Marian kissed him slowly and very, very thoroughly with his full cooperation.

“I’m not going to ask you for a commitment,” he said moments later. He slid the hem of her T-shirt up over her slender abdomen, bent and fluttered soft kisses up along the undersides of her breast. “When this … whatever it is, burns itself out, you’ll be free to go.”

She gasped as his mouth fit over her nipple. “It won’t … burn itself out!” She arched her back. “I won’t ever ask to be free to go, I promise, oh Rolph, do that some more!”

Briefly, he lifted his head, his palm fitting over one breast, rubbing gently on its distended tip. “Hush,” he whispered. “Don’t talk now. Don’t make any promises. Just kiss me like that again, and let me love you.”

What was the point in arguing with him, trying to convince him with words? There were other ways. Other ways, and she was willing to use every sweet one of them.

“Yes,” she murmured. “Love me.”

T
HE FEEL OF HIS
body against her, the taste of his mouth on hers, the scent of him in her nostrils combined to create a heady rush of desire and Marian parted her lips for Rolph’s kisses. He kissed her and held her as if starved for her touch, but gently, softly, with an infinite tenderness that made her ache deep inside like she’d never ached before. She let her head fall back over his upper arm as he continued to hold her hands, reveling in the feel of the hard muscles under her neck, and opened herself more fully to him, feeling his tongue, the roughness of it, the hardness, as searched out every sensitive spot within her mouth.

Moments later, he reluctantly lifted his mouth from her, met her gaze with his slumberous one, and smiled. “Beautiful,” he whispered.

“Rolph …”

“What, sweetheart? Tell me what you want.”

“Don’t stop … touching me.”

“I won’t. I can’t. I want … this … so much,” he said, kissing her throat, her shoulder, her arm, then laying a heavy palm on her lower abdomen, making circles against her quivering muscles. Then, in response to her soft-voiced, wordless pleading, he curved his fingers in between her thighs, lifting her slightly as her legs fell apart and she murmured his name again, her eyes wide and dazed on his face.

“Touch me,” he ordered raggedly, at last letting her hands go, giving her the freedom to return his caresses, a freedom she took gladly, greedily. Her hands traveled over his chest as she tested the texture of his skin, down his sides, across his back and inside the band at the waist of his blue shorts, creating convulsive tremors in each muscle she discovered.

Rolling apart from her, he lifted the T-shirt off over her head, removed the rest of her clothing and then propped himself on one elbow, tracing the shapes of her breasts, the long, slender arc of her waist and the curve of her hip. His hand trembled as he parted the soft red hair between her legs and his fingers found the slick moisture there. “You are so beautiful,” he said, and his voice trembled, too. He bent and kissed her breasts, drawing each of her nipples deep into his mouth and sucking hard, then softly, flicking each one with the tip of his tongue before lifting his head again to smile at her. “And you taste so sweet, feel like satin.” Suddenly, he snatched her close, squashing her against his chest, rocking her back and forth, his moving fingers on her back, he waist, her buttocks, driving her wild with need. “I can’t get enough of you!” he cried. “There will never be enough.”

She held him, with arms and legs and clinging lips and the power of the love surging through her, and they ignited one another like a forest fire blazing up a windswept mountainside. “Rolph, now, hurry!” she cried, fighting to strip him as naked as she was, her hands getting in his way, his interfering with what she needed to do until it was done almost in spite of them, and she sank back, drawing him down with her, her one hand curved around his hardness, stroking, loving, massaging, the other clasping the back of his head, holding his mouth to hers. He tore her hand away from his flesh, and parted her legs with his, surging toward her entrance in an urgent thrust. Knees lifted, her head flung back, her breath sucking in on a sharp, startled gasp before she released it on a long, pleasure-filled sigh, Marian took Rolph into herself, wrapping him with her arms and legs, clinging as they both held poised on the brink. She opened her eyes, stared up at him, caught his gaze with her own and said softly, “I love you, Rolph McKenzie.”

With a groan, he buried his face against her and cried out, “I want so much to believe that!” and then there was no more time for talking as the fire raged and consumed and then slowly, beautifully, burned itself out until only occasional wisps of heat arose to let them know that embers remained within.

“Marian?”

“Right here,” she murmured, nuzzling her parted lips against the warmth of his throat.

“I just had a thought.”

She kissed his collarbone. “Me too. Was yours as good as mine?”

“Probably not, babe.” He sounded unhappy, the last way she wanted him to feel, considering what had just happened between them. She propped herself on an elbow and looked down at him, concerned.

“There I was,” he said, frowning, “talking all sorts of big-shot male stuff about responsibility and taking care of you, saying you needed protection, and all that, and then I forgot to take care of the most important kind of protection of all. I’m sorry, honey.”

She smiled. “And I told you I’ve been responsible in all my relationships. It’s taken care of, Rolph. Don’t worry.”

He pulled her head back down to his shoulder and stroked her hair. “What did I do to deserve you?”

“Nothing,” she said. “All in all, I think you’ve probably led a very sin-free life. I guess getting me is just the luck of the draw. Bad luck, of course.”