Sharing Sunrise (18 page)

“What’s this about a new secretary?” Rolph demanded, not liking the tone of this conversation. Underlying the joking texture of it, he thought he sensed a hint of seriousness.

“Oh, nothing,” said Marian. “We’re kidding. Go and take your call.”

He did, but when he brought the matter up again later over dinner, Marian didn’t shrug it off quite as easily. “Andrea’s very quick to pick things up,” she said. “And she’s interested in the business. I think she’s worth training as another assistant. She does well on the reports I’ve been giving her to write up. Another week or two, and we could even hand over some of the actual research to her.”

He gave her a sharp look, feeling a coldness creep in on him. “And why would we want to?”

Marian blinked at his tone. “Maybe we wouldn’t. Or maybe you wouldn’t. It was nothing more than a suggestion, Rolph. And not one I’ve put to her, either, except as a joke, like you heard today. I know it’s your place to make those decisions, not mine. It would be premature to talk with her about that until I’d discussed it with you.”

“You didn’t discuss with me her writing up the reports from your research notes.”

“Well, no. I’m sorry. I guess I should have. But … you were out of the office the first time I did it. I had to see someone in Sooke and the report was due on a client’s desk by five that afternoon, so I didn’t have a choice. She did such a good job, I’ve asked her to do it since then if I have too much to do. She does it well. And enjoys doing it.” Marian reached across the table and touched the back of his hand. “Why not think about it, Rolph? Give her a chance. Maybe she’s wasted as a secretary.”

He turned his hand over and captured her fingers. “I have an assistant,” he said, his eyes searching hers closely. “Why would I want another one?”

Marian was silent, dropping her gaze to their linked hands. What was she supposed to say,
You’ll need another assistant when we’re married and I’m home having your babies?
She couldn’t say that, of course. Rolph had never asked her to marry him.

“It was simply an … idea,” she said, sliding her hand out of his clasp. She looked up at him. “The more inside work she does, the more it frees me up for the field stuff. More coffee?”

Rolph nodded. She was, he had to admit, at her best doing field work, out there on the boats and the docks and in the offices of clients, talking to them, dealing with them, making sales and persuading people that Sunrise Brokerage was the company best suited to selling their boats, Sunrise Marina the best place to moor them and protect them in the owner’s absence.

Yet he couldn’t help wondering if that were the real reason she wanted to train Andrea as another assistant for him. What if, even subconsciously, she was preparing to leave?

What, Marian asked herself, had happened to “I’m not going away without you again?” And what had happened to the nightly phone calls she’d learned to expect when Rolph was away on that short trip to Sweden? This time, he was only in San Francisco, a place much easier to call from, and he expected to be away nearly two weeks. So far, he’d been gone six days and not a personal word out of him. Twice, he’d called and spoken to Andrea, but not to her.

Here it was midnight and he wasn’t in his hotel room. She hated herself for calling, for acting like a suspicious wife, a jealous, suspicious wife. He was having dinner with clients, contacts, business friends. That was all. Or maybe he’d even left San Francisco temporarily, gone somewhere else for a day or two to track down one of the boats he’d gone to check out for a couple of clients.

There could be many adequate reasons for his not being in his hotel room at this time of night, reasons far beyond the one that kept recurring in her sick, crazy mind. Dammit, there was no reason to think he was out with a woman and even if he were, there was no reason to think that the woman was any threat to her. She simply had to be sensible and lie down and go to sleep. Maybe Rolph hadn’t called her because it made him too lonely to talk to her knowing he wouldn’t be seeing her for many more days.

The phone rang some time after she had finally taken her own advice and gone to sleep and she leapt up, awake, alert instantly, the one reason for his silence that she had refused to entertain now at the forefront of her mind. Rolph was hurt or ill.

“Yes, yes? What is it?”

“Hi, Ms. Crane. This is Brewster, down at the marina. I hate to disturb you, but Mr. McKenzie’s away and I didn’t know what else to do. We got a boat sinking down here and the pump’s not working. I need authorization to call in someone with another one.”

“Call in anybody you have to, Brewster and I’ll sign whatever’s necessary when I get there. I’m on my way,” she said, already peeling her nightshirt off over her head as she set the phone down.

There was little traffic at three-thirty in the morning, and Marian arrived at the marina in minutes to find several people milling around the wharf beside
Shennandoah
, a forty-five foot cruiser showing a bad list. Her hull had been badly ripped up just a day or so ago; she’d been patched and towed in and her owner was supposed to be arranging for repairs.

“Did you get a pump?” she asked Brewster, after fighting through the crowd to his side.

The look of relief on his face was almost comical. She thought he might burst into tears. “It’s on its way,” he said. “They’re bringing us one from Southland, but it took a while to get somebody awake over there. I don’t know what happened to ours, Ms. Crane,” the boy added worriedly. “It worked okay the last time we tested it, but when that patch went on
Shennendoah
’s hull, and her own pumps couldn’t keep up, we found ours was useless. Then, she got lower and lower in the water until her batteries were submerged and her pumps cut out. That’s when I called you.”

“It’s okay, Brewster.” She patted his hand. “I’m sure it’s not your fault, but we’re going to lose her if we don’t do something right now. There’s no time to wait for pumps.” Spotting a man she knew in the growing crowd on the dock, she said, “Kevin, can you bring your boat around and raft up to her? We’ll sling ropes under, fore and aft. That should hold her until we get some pumps going. Has her owner been contacted?”

The boy shook his head. “There’s no answer at his house. One of the other boat owners said something about a golf tournament but he doesn’t remember where.”

“Then I’ll have to make arrangements to get her out of the water at once. You get those slings rigged with Kevin Durano as soon as his boat’s in position. I’ll be in the office on the phone for the next few minutes trying to get an emergency dry-dock berth for this guy. As soon as she’s pumped dry enough to be moved, I want her out of this marina.”

As she ran up the ramp to the office, she wondered at the intelligence of a man who not only put his expensive toy on the rocks, but then went out of town without seeing her fixed up first, and didn’t even leave so much as a phone number in case something like this happened. Yet if she let his damn boat go down while it was in the care of Sunrise Marina, he’d probably start hollering negligence and bring lawsuits to bear.

With the help of the pump from Southland Marina, and another from a rental shop whose owner Marian got out of bed as she had the manager of a dry-dock facility,
Shennandoah
was finally stabilized and pumped as dry as possible. Her patch was reattached by a diver who arrived at daybreak and she was towed gently to a boat yard several miles away where she would be put up on blocks on dry land to await her owner’s instructions.

Marian checked carefully the contract the boat’s owner had with the marina, decided she’d done what she was legally bound to do and had not done anything that could cause the company grief. She yawned, stood, and nearly staggered back to her car. She needed a shower and a change of clothing before she’d be fit to work. That and a couple of quarts of coffee.

She was back at work when the light on her phone blinked and she picked it up, expecting to hear a client’s voice, not Rolph’s. For a moment love and relief flooded up in her in such vast proportions that she couldn’t begin to form words.

“Are you there?” Rolph asked. “Marian?”

“Hi,” she managed to whisper. “I’m here. How are you?”

“Just fine,” he said impatiently. “I heard what happened last night. I want you to take the rest of the day off and get some rest.”

“I don’t need to do that.”

“Yes, you do, and that’s an order. Andrea says you’re half out of it. Did you manage to get hold of the owner yet?”

“No. His office says he can’t be reached.”

“Great. Nice guy. Well, never mind. You’ve done what you could and you did it well, from what I hear. Thanks, Marian. It would have looked bad for the marina if that boat had gone down while it was in our care.”

“All part of the job description,” she said easily, but pleased with the praise.

“Getting out of bed at three
A.M
. doesn’t appear in your contract as far as I know, so do like I said, go home and get some rest. If you don’t want to go home, go climb into my bed.”

“Rolph, really, I can’t. I have things to do, things that can’t wait. I’ll be fine. I’ll go to bed early tonight.” She laughed. “Think of the number of nights when neither of us has gotten much sleep. We both managed to function during the day, didn’t we?”

He was silent for a moment then agreed quietly. “Sure. Well, do whatever you think best. See you in few days. Bye.”

Marian stared at the phone. That was all? No tender words? Nothing about how he missed those nights when they’d gotten little sleep? Not a word to suggest that when he came back there’d be more nights like that?

What was going on with Rolph? What was going on with them?

He’s lonely, she told herself. He misses me. He doesn’t want to talk about it because it will only make things worse, make the days and nights apart seem longer. It’ll be fine when he’s home again, she promised herself.

Just wait and see. Everything will be great.

Everything, though, was not great when Rolph came home. Oh, he held her tightly, kissed her deeply, and made slow, sweet tender love with her long into the night. He brought her a big box of Ghirardelli chocolate, a stuffed baby seal with huge, pitiful eyes and a gold nugget that would have made a forty-niner rich for a lifetime. But something was different. Something was wrong. Something was missing.

Rolph was missing from beside her.

Marian awoke as dawn was beginning to tinge the harbor waters with silver light and saw Rolph sitting by the window, not looking out, but profiled there in a pose of despair, his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees.

Slipping out of bed, she knelt before him, wrapping her hands around his wrists. “What is it?” she asked, fearing the answer, but knowing she had to hear it, whatever it was. “What’s wrong, Rolph?”

He looked at her for a moment as if he didn’t know what to say, then he denied it. “Nothing. What could be wrong? I’m home again. With you again.” He smiled at her. “I couldn’t sleep, that’s all.” He rubbed his hands over her shoulders and down her arms to her fingertips then stood, drawing her up with him. “Let’s go back to bed. You’re cold. I’ll warm you.”

But though he made love to her and slept again with her cuddled close to him, she did not feel warm inside and when, over the course of the next several days, she found him giving more and more of her tasks to Andrea, the chill grew even more intense. Two months of her trial period had passed. With only one month left to go, was he thinking already of replacing her? He hadn’t promised her a job forever, she reminded herself. He’d hired her for three months.

Trying to keep it light, she said one afternoon when he’d handed Andrea a stack of listings, “Has my position been usurped, Mr. McKenzie? Those were the papers I was planning to do first thing tomorrow morning.”

“You seem to have plenty to keep you busy,” he said with a shrug. “And as you yourself pointed out, Andy’s bright and quick and likes the work. Why not let her get used to doing it?” He turned away then and followed Andrea out to her office where he stood leaning over her desk with a highlighter in one hand, showing her the kinds of features to watch for as she scanned the listings.

Marian sat watching for several minutes then turned back to her own work. Rolph was right. She did have plenty to do. She only wished it were enough to keep her so busy she didn’t have time to think.

“YOU’RE GOING AWAY AGAIN
?” Marian swallowed her disappointment and forced a smile. “You seem to be doing a lot of that since I came to work for you.”

He shrugged. “I know. Don’t forget, that was the idea of my having an assistant, so I could leave the business in good hands when I had to make trips out of town.”

She remembered a time when he had vowed he wasn’t going away without her ever again. Obviously, that had been passion speaking and he’d come to his senses. Of course, he was right. He had hired her to take over when he needed to go away. Therefore, she had to stay here and do exactly that.

“Where to this time?”

He glanced down at the papers in his briefcase, riffled through them as if searching for something and replied without looking at her. “San Francisco.”

A slow sickness began to grow inside her. This was the third time in as many weeks. She knew the second trip had been a follow-up of the first, but the deal had been closed, hadn’t it? She kept her tone casual, fiddling with a pencil while she watched his set profile. “For long?”

His jaw tensed for a second, but he shook his head and glanced up, smiling, before he snapped his briefcase closed. “Just a couple of days.

“I’ll miss you,” she whispered.

He stood six feet away, his gaze on her face, his own face hard and without expression, then, with a low curse, he dropped his briefcase back on his desk and crossed the space between them, snatching her up out of her chair and into his arms.

“I’ll miss you too!” He strained her closer, closer, holding her so tightly she could scarcely draw breath. “Oh, baby, I—” He broke off and kissed her hard and deep, not a kiss for good-bye, but a kiss that should have carried them into bed and kept them there for the rest of the day. His body hardened against her and Marian surged into it, wanting him so desperately she thought she might scream. But it wasn’t merely a physical union she craved, it was the closeness, the emotional, spiritual intimacy she’d felt so cut off from these past weeks. She tore her mouth from his, caught his face between her hands and stared at him through a mist of tears she couldn’t hide.