Sharing Sunrise (15 page)

She spun into his arms, pouted her mouth into a kissable shape and said, “Probably not without inducement.”

He stared at her, caught on the cusp between fury and mirth. She stood there, gazing up at him, her eyes filled with mischief, the just-risen sun creating a halo in her hair, and she was as fresh and as new as the morning itself. She had him totally captivated … charmed, enchanted, bemused, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

“My God, but you are a brat!” he growled, then “induced” her to be quiet.

“See?” she said breathlessly several moments later. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

“No,” he said, surprised at exactly how easy it had been to show the world that he wanted this incredible girl. “No,” he said again, and then he was laughing, laughing at her, at himself, but more important, laughing
with
her, leaning against the rail, holding her, overcome with hilarity that welled up out of nowhere and went on and on. “God almighty,” he said, straining her closer. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you!”

She leaned back, her grin total provocation. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

She watched his eyes darken, saw his smile fade, felt his breath hot on her cheek. “I have,” he told her, raggedly. “But it starts with getting you home.”

“Race you,” she said, darting away toward the parking lot. He opened the door of her car, held it while she got in and then shut it, hard. She saw his mouth form the words: “One of these days …”

She rolled down the window. “One of these days, what?”

Cheeks puffed, he blew out a long breath, rolled his eyes heavenward then laughed again as if he couldn’t help himself, shaking his head ruefully. “Just drive, lady. I’ll follow you.”

Marian took the quickest route home, with Rolph’s car close behind.

“We have to get up and go to work,” she said some time later, rolling to a half-sitting position and tickling his ear with a small feather from her pillow. “Besides, I promised the gang at the marina I’d feed you breakfast to put you in a better humor.”

“You put me in a wonderful frame of mind without breakfast.”

“Still, we have to get up.”

“I know.” He glanced at the clock on the bedside table. “But it’s only eight o’clock.”

Marian flopped back down. “God! I can’t believe this! Eight is the time I normally get up and I’ve been awake for three hours.”

He chuckled. “But look how productive those hours have been. You know what they say about the early bird.”

She rolled her head toward him and gave him a slow smile. “I ain’t seen no worms.”

“Thank you kindly for that, ma’am.”

“You know, I always thought it was only in fiction that a man could—” Marian began, then broke off and reached for the ringing phone.

Her eyes went wide as she stared at Rolph in dismay and she pulled the sheet up to her chin. “Oh, uh, hi, Mom. How are you? Who, me? I’m fine. Just … fine. I … uh, no, nothing’s wrong. I do? Really, Mom, I’m fine. Yes, of course I’m alone! I’m sorry. I was away. On business.”

Rolph stretched out an arm and ran his hand up the inside of her thigh. She shifted her leg out of harm’s way. He rolled over and followed her, sliding out on her side of the bed when she got to her feet, turned her back on him, curling in a chair, holding the phone close to her face in a protective, secretive manner.

“Well, yes, with Rolph. Mom, he’s not a man!” She jerked erect as Rolph reached around her and cupped a breast in one hand, his thumb and finger tweaking a nipple. “Ouch!” she muttered.

“I mean, not a man-man. He’s my boss. I have to go on business—” She stared at Rolph for an instant. His eyes were closed, his mouth soft on her breast. He was certainly enjoying himself. “—Trips with him sometimes.” Her voice squeaked. He lifted his head, smiled sweetly and kissed her neck. Her breath caught.

“What? What did you say? Mom! Of course I haven’t forgotten Dad’s birthday dinner next Saturday. Certainly. I’ll remind him this morning when I get to … when I get to … work. What? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound distracted. I just woke up. Well, you know I’m not—” Rolph nuzzled the phone cord aside and nibbled on her shoulder. “—at my best in the … morning. Oh, God …” She covered the phone and hissed, “Stop that!”

“No, Mom, truly, I wasn’t talking to anybody. Well, just my cat. I … yes. Yes, I have a cat. I got it, uh, last week. It’s a kitten, really, and it sometimes chews on my …” She curved her hand around Rolph’s chin, trying to remove him from her breast, but he wasn’t to be swayed from his task. “Uh, my, toes. It … tickles and … Mom, can I call you back? Fluffy needs her litter-box and the bathroom door is shut.”

“Fluffy?” said Rolph, laughing as he flopped back onto the bed, carrying her with him. “Surely you could do better than that?”

“I’m going to kill you,” she said, kneeling astride him. “I’m going to cut you up into little, bitty pieces and … and … Oh!”

“And?” he prompted her, shoulders shaking, white teeth flashing, green eyes glittering.

“And, well, kill you,” she whispered helplessly as he thrust upward with his hips.

“You probably are,” he murmured against her throat. “But what a way to go.”

“Why didn’t you tell your mother I was at your place?” he asked as they walked down from the parking lot toward the marina at half past nine.

She’d been waiting for the question, had known it was coming and knew, in light of her actions in the early morning here in the marina, that it was justified. Trouble was, she didn’t have an adequate answer for him.

“I guess … because if she knew we were, well, seeing one another, she’d get her hopes up, or something.”

“And you don’t want to raise unreal expectations?”

With a sideways glance at him, she nodded. “Something like that.” Then, in a rush, “Rolph, I’m sorry for what I did this morning. I understand now why you wanted to keep our relationship private. I can see that you’re right. Whatever is happening between us should remain just between us. It’s too uncertain, isn’t it, for sharing?”

He put his arm around her, bumping her up against his side a time or two. It was too brotherly a gesture for her liking. “For now, honey,” he said. “At least outside of the marina.” He shrugged. “Here, I’m afraid, our cover is blown.”

“I said I’m sorry.”

He turned her hand inside his, lifted it and kissed the backs of her fingers. “As far as the marina goes, I’m not. In fact, I think it’s best this way. You know I’ve never been comfortable about your wandering around here unprotected. This way, every sea-going wolf knows it’s strictly hands-off, because the lady is Rolph McKenzie’s girl. She said so herself. At the crack of dawn. Very, very publicly.”

He looked, she thought, positively smug. She wasn’t certain she liked that.

“The lady,” she said, slipping her hand free of his clasp, “has been looking after herself in circumstances often more threatening than a nice, public marina for a good many years, and doesn’t really require protection.”

He draped an arm around her shoulder. “Too bad. She’s got it.”

Before entering the outer office, he removed his arm from her and put his hand on her shoulder instead. He was frowning. “Listen,” he said. “I hate to say this, but I have to. About us working together. Once we go through this door, what’s happened between us is forgotten until after hours. It has to be that way. Can you live with that?”

She met his gaze. “Of course. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Professionalism, Rolph. All the way.”

“Good, then. We’re in agreement.”

He let go of her shoulder, reluctantly, she thought, and trailed his touch out to the end of her fingers. His green eyes looked somber, but she smiled at him and his expression lightened. Bending, he kissed her swiftly on the mouth. “Why,” he said, “do I get the feeling you’re going to find this ‘professionalism’ stuff easier than I am?”

Before she could reply, he swung the door open and ushered her through. One look at Kaitlin’s interested face told Marian that what the marina residents knew, the office staff also knew. Andrea poked her head around the corner of the photocopier closet Rolph euphemistically called a room and gave them a wave and a sly grin. “Have a nice trip?” she asked, and received a curt nod from Rolph and a happy smile from Marian.

“I put a bunch of stuff on your desk for your signature, Rolph, and you leave for Seattle this afternoon at three. I got you another appointment with the boat show organizers for four-thirty and Greg Sudrep of Sudrep Marine wants you to have dinner after your appointment. I told him you’d call and confirm. Okay?”

Marian waited for him to tell Andrea to book another ticket, because his assistant would be going with him, but apparently he’d forgotten what he’d said on the boat about Marian’s needing to be part of the decision-making processes because he only nodded and said, “Great. Good work. Did Dinsworthy and Lamb call?”

“On your desk. And Marian, your mother called yesterday. I gave her the message Rolph radioed in, that you were on a business trip. And a Mr. Gunderson wants you to call just as soon as you can. He was on the phone not five minutes ago, and called four times yesterday.”

As she entered the big, sunlit office she shared with Rolph, and saw the stacks of papers on both their desks, the yellow phone message slips, and thought about the work waiting her in her briefcase, Marian didn’t think either she or Rolph were going to have any difficulty attending strictly to business. They weren’t going to have time for anything else.

The only time Rolph broke his own rule was just before he left for the airport. Coming up behind her as she started to lift the phone to make yet another call, he laid his hand on top of hers, stopping her. He tilted her chair back and kissed her long and hard.

“I’ll call you tonight,” he said, looking deep into her eyes. “And I’ll miss you like mad. Plan for a long, leisurely lunch tomorrow.” His green eyes darkened to smolder sexily. “At your place.”

Marian sighed. “I’d love to, but I have a lunch meeting tomorrow with Al Gunderson.”

He came erect. “Cancel it,” he said autocratically. “I don’t want you having lunch with men. There’s no need for it. If he can’t do business during business hours and in this office, then we don’t need him as a client.”

Marian bristled as she came to her feet. “I can’t believe I heard that. This is professionalism? I am having lunch with Al Gunderson, who is a life-long friend of my father. He wants to do business with us, and I refuse to insult him because you’re being irrational. I also refuse to deny myself the commission you’ll owe me if this sale goes through.”

“Al Gunderson, Senior?” he said.

Marian raised an imperious brow. “And if it had been Al Gunderson, Junior?”

“I—” He blew out a long stream of air. “All right. Sure. Professionalism. We don’t cancel lunch dates with clients so we can go and spend an hour or two in your snug little bed, do we?”

“Not if we want to keep our clients, we don’t,” she said, touching his face with the palm of her hand. “Rolph, please trust me. I don’t want any man but you. Now go on. Get out of here or you’ll miss your plane. See you tomorrow.”

As he kissed her again, Rolph wondered if he’d need the wings of an aircraft to get him where he was going. Seemed he could almost fly himself.

He didn’t call her that night, and wasn’t at the office when she arrived in the morning. As the day progressed and he didn’t show up, Marian reluctantly asked Kaitlin if she’d heard from him.

“I don’t know where he is.” Kaitlin said. “He wasn’t here when I arrived, but there was a message on my desk saying he had things to do and would be out of the office most of the day. An hour ago, he talked to Andrea and asked her to meet him.”

Marian fought disappointment. Couldn’t he have taken two minutes to speak to her, since he was phoning the office anyway? No, she reminded herself. In the office, she was his assistant. It was only outside it, after hours, that she was his lover.

“Right,” she said briskly. “Well, it’s not a problem that can’t wait, but if he comes in while I’m out, tell him the report on Greg Ambridge’s power cruiser is on my desk. After he reads it, if he’d make any comments he wants, then Andrea can type it up.”

Marian went back to her desk, gathered up several folders and stuffed them into her briefcase then kept an appointment in Esquimalt, arriving at the restaurant only five minutes late for her luncheon meeting. By the time she was back in the office, Rolph had been and gone and she was nearly ready to leave for the day when he came in, smelling like sunshine and fresh air, his hair tumbled by the wind, a huge, happy smile creasing his face.

Carefully, he shut the door, spun her chair around and scooped her out of it, kissing her then pausing for several moments to nuzzle her throat, his stubble rasping pleasurably on the skin at the top of her chest. “Come with me,” he said, swinging her around in a big circle. “I have something to show you.”

He opened the door to his private apartment and set her down. “There,” he said, clearly pleased with himself. “What do you think?”

Marian looked at the beige leather sofa, the two fabric upholstered chairs, one beige, the other teal blue, a square brass and glass cocktail table and a couple of occasional tables holding lamps with china bases the same shade as the blue chair. There was even a dining room set with four chairs, made of a dark, highly polished wood. On the table stood a crystal vase filled with a bouquet of red dahlias. In front of the stone fireplace was a thick, shaggy fake-fur rug. Two bookcases, empty, flanked it.

He’d gone out and done this all alone? She tried to fight down the disappointment that welled up. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask for her input? No, of course it hadn’t. He wouldn’t think that his furniture was any of her business. In his opinion, she wouldn’t be around long enough for it to matter.

“It’s … very nice,” she said, and he appeared not to notice her lack of enthusiasm.

“You were right,” he said. “A guy who owns his own home should have his own furniture. You like it? Andrea came along and helped me pick it out this morning. I had no idea there was so much to know about colors and fabrics and stuff like that.”