Separate Cabins (15 page)

“I can’t think of anything.” She held the glass in both hands, the ice cubes transmitting some coolness to her moist palms.

That impatience became more pronounced as he stopped abruptly and swung around to face her. “It’s no good, Rachel. I’m not interested in eating anything—unless it’s you.” The probing intensity of his dark gaze searched her face, hotly disturbing her. “You know why I asked you to my cabin. Now I want to know why you came.”

The weighty silence didn’t last long, but when Rachel finally spoke, her voice throbbed on a husky pitch, too emotionally charged to sound calm.

“For the same reason you asked me—because I wanted to pick up where we left off at the rock
pool.” But something went wrong with her certainty when she saw the unmasked flare of dark desire in his expression. As Gard took a step toward her a rush of anxiety made her half-turn away from him.

He immediately came to a halt. “What’s wrong, Rachel?” It was a low, insistent demand.

Her throat worked convulsively, trying to give voice to her fears. She turned her head to look at him and forced out a nervous laugh. “I’m afraid,” she admitted while trying to make light of it.

“Afraid of what?” His forehead became creased with a puzzled frown while his narrowed gaze continued to search out her face.

“I guess I’m afraid that it won’t be as wonderful as I think it will,” Rachel explained with a wry smile.

“Of all the—!” His stunned reaction was blatant evidence that he had expected some other explanation. The tension went out of him like an uncoiling spring. “My God, I thought it was something serious,” he muttered under an expelling breath.

“I know it sounds silly—” she began.

“No, it isn’t silly.” In two long strides Gard was at her side, taking the glass out of her hands and setting it on a table. Then he lifted Rachel off her feet and cradled her against his chest. “It’s beautiful,” he said huskily as he looked down at her.

When he carried her to the bedroom door, he was so much the image of the conquering male that Rachel couldn’t help smiling a little. Yet the thought was soon lost in the thrilling rush of anticipation sweeping through her veins.

Once inside the room Gard let her feet settle onto
the floor, his gaze never leaving her face, locking with her eyes in a disturbing fashion. Conscious of the tripping rhythm of her pulse, she slowly dragged her gaze from his face to glance at the double bed that occupied the room.

“As soon as I saw that,” Gard murmured, following her glance, “I knew I’d much rather share this cabin with you than the one we were both assigned to originally.”

A comment wasn’t required. Any thought of one flew away at the touch of his fingers on the front zipper of her dress. While he opened it, Rachel unfastened the belt around her waist and let it fall somewhere to the side. Gard undressed her slowly, taking her in with his eyes.

Moments later they were lying naked on the soft comfort of the double bed, facing each other. His hand made a leisurely trace of the soft, flowing lines of her breast, stomach, and hips while her fingertips made their own intimate search of his hard male contours as they loved with their eyes.

As his hand shifted to the small of her back, he applied slight pressure to gently arch her toward him. With a beginning point on her shoulder he trailed a rough pattern of nibbling kisses to the base of her throat. Rachel quivered with the wondrous sensations dancing over her skin.

“It doesn’t bother me, Rachel, that I’m not the first man to love you,” Gard murmured thickly into the curve of her neck. “But I’m damned well going to be the last.”

Her heart seemed to leap into her throat, releasing the admission that she’d been telling him in
everything but words. “I love you, Gard,” she whispered achingly and turned her head to meet the lips seeking hers.

In a relatively short period of time it became apparent to Rachel that she had not underestimated how wonderful it would be in his arms. His hands and his mouth searched out every pleasure point on her body, discovering everything that excited her.

The union of their flesh came after they had become intimately familiar with each other. Nothing existed but pleasing the other, moving in rhythmic harmony, the tempo gradually increasing. It was a glorious spiraling ascent that exploded in a golden shower of sensation, unequaled in its blazing brilliance.

With her head pillowed comfortably in the hollow of Gard’s shoulder, Rachel dreamily watched the lazy trail of smoke rising from his cigarette. The bedsheet was drawn up around their hips, cool against their skin. The contentment she felt was almost a feline purring. She had no desire to move for a thousand years.

“Well?” His voice rumbled under her ear. “No comment?”

Reluctant to move, she finally tipped her head back to send him a vaguely confused glance. “About what?”

His hooded eyes looked down at her. “Did you worry for nothing?”

A sudden smile touched the corners of her mouth as Rachel realized what he was talking about. She
had long ago abandoned the conern that her expectations were too high. Her head came down again.

“You know I enjoyed it,” she murmured, being deliberately casual.

“Enjoyed it?” Gard taunted her mockingly. “You only
enjoyed
it? I must be losing my touch.”

Her laughter was a soft sound. “Was I supposed to say I was devastated?”

“Something like that,” he agreed, this time with the humor obvious in his voice, teasing her.

There was a small lull during which Gard took a last drag on his cigarette and ground out the butt in the ashtray on the stand by the bed. In that short interim Rachel’s thoughts had taken her down a serious and thoughtful path.

“You know that I loved Mac,” she mused aloud, sharing her thoughts with Gard. “A part of me always will. There were times, just recently, when I wondered if I would ever care so strongly for a man again. I never guessed I would love anyone like this—so totally, so—” She broke off the sentence, not finding the words to adequately express how very much she loved him.

“Don’t stop,” Gard chided. “Tell me more.”

“You’re already too conceited,” Rachel accused.

“You think so?” He shifted his position, turning onto his side and taking away his shoulder as her pillow. His hand caressed her jaw and cheek as he faced her. “If I am, it’s because you’ve made me so damned happy.”

Leaning to her, he kissed her with long, drugging force. When it was over, it just added to the overall
glow she felt. Her gray eyes were as soft as velvet as she gazed at him, happy and warm inside.

“Do you realize they’re serving dinner, and neither one of us has had anything to eat all day?” she reminded him reluctantly, loathe to leave the bed.

“Yes,” Gard said on a heavy sigh, then smiled crookedly. “But I can’t say that I like the idea of sitting across the table from nosy Helen and her husband.” Rachel made a little face of agreement. “I’d rather keep you all to myself. Why don’t we have dinner in the cabin?”

“I’d much prefer that,” she agreed huskily.

“As a matter of fact,” he went further with the thought, “I can’t think of any reason to leave this cabin for the next two days, until the ship puts in at Acapulco.”

“I can think of one,” Rachel smiled. “All my things are in my cabin. I won’t have anything to wear.”

“I know,” he murmured with a complacently amused gleam in his eye. “It would be terrible if you had to lounge around the cabin stark naked for two days.”

The thought brought a little shiver of wicked excitement. “I’m sure you’d hate that,” she retorted with a playfully accusing look.

“Like a poor man hates money,” Gard mocked. “But—since I don’t like to share my toothbrush, I’ll let you fetch some of your things tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Rachel murmured with false docility.

“In the meantime”—he flipped the sheet aside
and swung out of the bed—“I’ll see if I can’t get the steward to rustle us up something to eat.”

Rachel lay in bed a minute longer, watching him pull on his pants before walking out to the sitting room to phone. With a reluctant sigh she climbed out of bed and made use of his bathroom to wash and freshen up.

When she returned to the bedroom, instead of putting on her grape-colored shift, Rachel picked up his shirt. Its long tails reached nearly to her knees and the shoulder seams fell three inches below the point of her shoulders. The smell of him clung to the material and she hugged it tightly around her, then began to roll up the long sleeves.

There were sounds of his moving about in the sitting room. Rachel walked to the door and posed provocatively in its frame. Gard was standing in the far corner of the room by the drink cabinet.

“How do you like my robe?” she asked, drawing the rake of his glance.

“Nice.” But the look in his eyes was more eloquent with approval. “I told you that you didn’t need clothes.”

She laughed softly and came gliding silently across the room in her bare feet to watch while he finished mixing them fresh drinks. In truth, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so happy—or even when she’d ever been this happy. She gazed at him, so sure of her love. If she ever lost him, she thought she’d die. The possibility suddenly brought a run of stark terror to her eyes.

“Dinner is on its way, so I thought we’d have
those drinks we never got around to having.” He capped the bottle of tonic water and turned to hand Rachel her glass. An alertness flared in his eyes at her stricken expression. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I—” She started to shake her head in a vague denial, but the fear that gripped her wouldn’t go away. She looked back at him. “I just have this feeling that ... I’d better grab at all the happiness I can today. Tomorrow it might not be here.”

A searing gentleness came into his features. He put an arm around her and brought her close against him, as if reassuring her of the hard vitality of his body. His head was bent close to her downcast face.

“Rachel, I’m not your . . . I’m not Mac.” He corrected himself in mid-sentence, making it seem significant that he hadn’t said “your husband” as he had been about to say. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

“I know.” She stared at the scattering of silken-fine hairs on his chest, but the tightness in her throat didn’t ease.

He tucked a finger under her chin and forced it up. “Do you always worry so much?” he teased to lighten her mood.

“No.”

When he kissed her, she almost forgot that odd feeling, but it stayed in the back of her mind throughout the evening. It lent an urgency to her lovemaking when they went to bed that night. While Gard slept, she lay awake for a long time with the heat of his body warming her skin. In the darkness the feeling came back. It seemed like a
premonition of some unknown trouble to come. Try as she might, Rachel couldn’t shake it off.

Stirring, Rachel struggled against the drugged feeling and forced her sleep-heavy eyes to open. A shaft of sunlight was coming through the drawn curtains and laying a narrow beam on the paneled wall. There was an instant of unfamiliarity with her surroundings until she remembered that she was in Gard’s cabin. Her head turned on the pillow, but the bed was empty. Unreasoning alarm shot through her, driving out the heavy thickness of unrestful sleep.

She bolted from the bed, dragging the sheet with her and wrapping it around her nude body, her hand clutching it together above a breast. She rushed to the sitting room door and pulled it open. Before she’d taken a full step inside, she halted at the sight of Hank Scarborough standing next to Gard.

Both men had turned to look when the door had been yanked open. Hank had been twirling his hat on the end of his finger, but he stopped when he saw Rachel in the door with the sheet swaddled around her. Self-consciously she lifted a hand to push at the sleep-tangle of her hair, knowing that Hank had a crystal-clear picture of the situation. Rachel hitched the sheet a little higher.

“Good morning.” She broke the silence.

“Being an officer and a gentleman, I should keep my mouth shut,” Hank declared with a wry shake of his head. “But if I were Gard, I’d be thinking it’s a
helluva good morning. And I hope I haven’t embarrassed you by saying so.”

“You haven’t.” In fact, his frankness had relaxed her. “I shouldn’t have come barging in like this, but I didn’t know anyone was here.”

“Did you want something?” Gard asked, then slid a quick aside to his friend. “And you’re right about the kind of morning it is.”

“No, I—” She couldn’t comfortably admit that she’d been worried that something had happened when she hadn’t found Gard in bed with her—not with Hank standing there. “I just wondered what time it is.”

“It’s nearly ten o’clock,” Gard told her.

“That late?” Her eyes widened.

“You were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t have the heart to wake you,” he said. “I’ll order some coffee and juice.”

“All right,” Rachel agreed, still slightly stunned that she had slept so late. Her glance darted to Hank. “Excuse me. I think I’d better get cleaned up.”

“You’ve missed breakfast, but we’re lying off the Las Hardas Hotel,” Hank informed her. “You’ll be able to get breakfast at the hotel.”

“Thank you.” She cast him a quick smile, then moved out of the doorway and closed the door.

Her clothes were draped across a chair in the room. After she had untangled herself from the length of the sheet, Rachel hurriedly dressed. For the time being she had to be satisfied with combing her hair, because all her makeup was in her own cabin, but at least she looked presentable.

Hank had left when she returned to the sitting room. Within seconds she found herself in Gard’s arms, receiving the good morning kiss he hadn’t given her earlier. His stroking hands rubbed over her body when he finally drew his mouth from her clinging lips. The premonition that had troubled her so much the night before was gone, chased away by the deep glow from his searing kiss.

“You shouldn’t have let me sleep so late,” Rachel murmured while her fingers busied themselves in a womanly gesture of straightening the collar of his shirt.