Separate Cabins (3 page)

The unhurried action served as a misdirection while his partially lidded gaze made a slow sweep of the people on the walk outside. It paused to linger on Rachel with mild interest. There was a deliberateness about him, making no apologies for the good, long look he was taking. She had the sensation that his mind was absorbing her image, measuring her attributes against other women he’d known, but offering no judgment. She stiffened slightly, disturbed in some small way she couldn’t define.

A pulsebeat later his gaze moved on as casually as it had paused. The match flame was shaken out while he exhaled the smoke he had dragged from the burning cigarette.

Fan’s blonde head changed its angle, tipping a degree toward Rachel. “I don’t know who he is,” she murmured in an aside, “but he’s one hunk of a man.”

Silently Rachel agreed with that assessment of the man’s potently attractive male looks. There seemed to be some magnetic pull that kept her gaze riveted
to him even when she felt that her staring was bordering on rudeness.

Again that lazy smile spread across his face as he shook hands with the chauffeur, taking his leave of the man. A hint of it remained when he turned to the baggage handler and discreetly passed the man a folded bill with the ease of one accustomed to tipping. Then his easy-flowing stride was carrying him to the entrance of the terminal building. As Rachel followed him her gaze encountered John Kemper’s frowning expression.

“His face is familiar,” John said with a puzzled shake of his head. “But I can’t think why I should know him.”

“It’s obvious he’s going on the cruise,” Fan said and slowly turned her head to look at Rachel. A light of scheming speculation gleamed in her eyes. “He’s just the kind of man you need to meet.”

“Fan, don’t be silly,” Rachel protested, her lips lying together in a patiently amused line.

“I’m serious,” her friend insisted.

“Well, I’m not interested in getting involved with any man,” Rachel asserted when she realized Fan wasn’t teasing. “I’m going on this cruise to relax. I have no intention of being caught up in some shipboard affair.”

“Who said anything about getting involved?” Fan lifted upturned palms in a blameless gesture. “But you are traveling on the
Love Boat.”

“Don’t remind me.” Rachel sighed with mild exasperation at the reference to the long-running television series, which had filmed its location shots aboard the
Pacific Princess.

“Someone needs to remind you if you haven’t thought about it.” Fan’s look was faintly skeptical.

“Let’s just say that I haven’t given it
much
thought,” she replied. “And if I take any moonlight strolls around the deck, it will probably be alone. There’s no percentage in becoming romantically entangled with a stranger for a week.”

“I’m not suggesting romance,” Fan corrected that impression.

“Then what are you suggesting?” Rachel demanded, becoming a little impatient with the subject.

Instead of immediately answering her, Fan threw a glance at her husband. “John, close your ears. A husband shouldn’t hear the advice his wife gives to single women.”

An indulgently amused smile twitched the corners of his mouth. “I’m as deaf as a mouse in a bell tower,” he promised and looked in another direction, pretending an interest elsewhere.

Fan turned back to Rachel. “What I’m talking about is something a little more basic than romance,” she said. “What you really need is a little sex; something to start the fires burning again. And that man looks like he’s got what it takes to deliver the goods.”

Advice like that had been offered before, but it was usually given by the man interested in becoming her sexual partner. If anyone else but her best friend had said that to her, Rachel would probably have thrown the orange drink in their face. Instead she set the container on the ledge and stiffly stood up, waiting as Fan rose also.

“My fires are burning nicely.” At the moment most of the inner heat came from suppressed anger. She had never considered herself to be a prude. Lonely though she sometimes was, Rachel hadn’t become so desperate for love that she resorted to casual sex.

Struggling against her rising agitation, she turned a cold shoulder to Fan. Her forward-facing gaze looked into the glass front of the terminal building. The shaded interior produced a mirrorlike backing for the glass, causing it to reflect a faint image of her own white-suited figure and obscuring the building’s many occupants but not to the extent that she failed to recognize the tall, broad-shouldered man talking to one of the cruise staff.

The sight of him, posed so nonchalantly with one hand casually thrust in the side pocket of his slacks, seemed to add to the seething fury that heated her blood. Unquestionably he was sexy but not in any overt kind of way. It was much more subtle than that. Rachel recognized that and was impatient with herself because she did.

While she unwillingly watched him, he was taken over and introduced to another staff member, who greeted him familiarly. Then he was personally escorted past the roped-off boarding area around the open doorway. Her last glimpse of him was his tapering silhouette outlined briefly in the rectangular patch of light marking the doorway. While all the other passengers had to wait until the appointed boarding time, he was being escorted onto the ship. She supposed it meant he had friends in high places.

“I know I probably sounded crude,” Fan continued,
slightly defensive and apologetic. “But it seems to me that the longer you abstain from taking a lover, the more difficult it becomes. Rather like losing your virginity all over.”

“Let’s just forget it.” Severely controlling her voice, Rachel was aware that her friend’s advice was well intentioned. She was just personally uncomfortable with it.

There was a stirring of activity inside the terminal building. The crowd was beginning to bunch closer together and press forward against the ropes. It appeared that the boarding process would commence shortly.

Afraid that if she stayed Fan would continue on the same subject, Rachel decided that it would be better if she joined the other passengers inside before she lost her temper. She didn’t want to start out on this vacation arguing with her best friend. And somewhere she seemed to have lost her sense of humor. She couldn’t turn aside the conversation with a joke that would make light of it, even though she knew it was the best and the most diplomatic way to handle it.

“They’ve started boarding,” she said. “They aren’t admitting visitors until all the passengers are on the ship, so you two might as well wait here. I’ll meet you later on the ship—by the gangway.”

“We’ll be there.” John patted his breast pocket, where he had put their visitor passes.

With that agreement voiced, Rachel left them and walked briskly to the entrance, her white reflection in the glass following and merging as she passed through the open doors. It would be a slow
process to board the hundreds of waiting passengers, but this was one time when Rachel didn’t mind the long wait in line. It would give her a chance to simmer down. At the moment she was too tense, her nerves strung out like high-tension wires.

Voices ran together, creating a low din as Rachel reduced her pace and approached the pressing crowd of passengers. She found a place in the main flow and let it sweep her along to the gate that funneled them into a single line to the door.

Shining pristine white, the ship loomed beside the terminal building, tied to the pier only a few feet from the building’s outside walls. Its massive size and sleek, pure lines demanded attention as Rachel followed the slow-moving string of passengers traveling along the raised walk to the gangway.

On the bow of the ship, high blue letters spelled out her name—
Pacific Princess.
The blue and green emblem of the cruise line, a maiden’s head with long hair streaming out in waves, was painted on the black-ringed smokestack. Rows of portholes and deck railings marked off her many levels. Rachel was slightly awed by her size and stately majesty.

Ahead photographers were snapping pictures of passengers next to signboards welcoming them aboard the
Pacific Princess.
Usually they took photos
of a couple; sometimes two couples wanted their picture taken together; sometimes it was a family shot.

But Rachel was traveling alone. It was the first time she’d gone on a pleasure trip without Mac or some member of her family or even a friend. The point was brought home to her as she stepped forward to take her turn in front of the camera. She thought she had become used to her solitary state, but she felt awkward and self-conscious. It was an unexpected reaction to something she thought she had accepted.

“How about a big smile?” the photographer coaxed with the camera to his face so his eye could frame her in the lens.

Rachel tried to oblige, but the forced movement was stiff and strained. The click of the camera captured it on film. Then the photographer was nodding to her that it was over, smiling at her with a hint in his glance of male appreciation for her striking looks.

An absent smile touched the corners of her mouth in return, but it faded quickly on an inner sigh as she stepped forward to make room for the couple behind her. She blamed her raw sensitivity on the strain of overwork and quickened her steps to close on the line of passengers progressing slowly up the gangway. After a couple of days rest she’d be her old self again.

Members of the ship’s crew were on hand to receive the boarding passengers and direct them to their assigned staterooms. Rachel walked onto the rich blue carpet of the foyer and paused beside the
white-uniformed officer, who inclined his head in greeting to her.

“Welcome aboard the
Pacific Princess.
Your cabin, madam?” His voice carried a British accent, reminding Rachel that the ship was of British registry.

“Mrs. MacKinley. Promenade 347.” She had the number memorized after writing it so many times on her luggage tags.

He turned to a young, blond-haired man in a steward’s uniform and motioned him forward. “Promenade 347,” he repeated to the steward, then turned to Rachel, smiling warmly. “Hanson will guide you to your stateroom suite, Mrs. MacKinley.”

“Thank you.” Her mouth curved in an automatic response, then Rachel moved past him to follow the young steward across the wide foyer to the stairwell flanked by elevators.

The decision to reserve a suite instead of a simple stateroom had been an impulsive one and admittedly extravagant, since she was traveling alone. Part of it had been prompted by Fan’s urging that Rachel should do this vacation up right and travel in style, and part of it had been motivated by a desire to have uncramped quarters where she could lounge in comfortable privacy.

A landing divided the stairs halfway between each deck and split it into flanking arms that turned back on itself to rise to the next deck. The landings, the turns, the lookalike foyers on each deck, began to confuse Rachel as she followed the steward. Already cognizant of the size of the ship, she
quickly realized that it would be easy to become turned around with so many decks and the maze of passageways.

Instead of relying solely on her guide, Rachel began to look for identifying signs so she would learn her route to the stateroom and not become lost when she had to find it again. The striding steward didn’t give her much time to dawdle and still keep him in sight.

When they stopped climbing stairs, the steward crossed the foyer and started down a long passageway. The level was identified as the Promenade Deck. Rachel stopped for a second to read the small sign indicating the range of cabin numbers located in the direction of its pointing arrow.

Her gaze was still clinging to the sign when she hurriedly started forward to catch up with the steward before she lost track of him. She didn’t see the person approaching from the opposite direction until the very last second. Rachel tried to stop abruptly and avoid the collision, but she had been hurrying too fast to completely succeed.

Her forward impetus almost carried her headlong into the man. She cringed slightly in anticipation of the impact, but a pair of hands caught her by the arms and reduced the collision to a mere bump. She’d been holding her breath and now released it in a rushed apology.

“I’m sorry.” Her head came back to lift her gaze upward.

A half-formed smile of vague embarrassment froze on her face as Rachel recognized the man from the limousine. Only now his face was mere
inches from hers. The detail of his solid features was before her—the sun wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the angled plane of his jaw and chin, and the smooth, well-defined strength of his mouth.

Her pulse rate shot up as her glance flicked to his lazy brown eyes. A smiling knowledge seemed to perpetually lurk behind their dry brown surfaces. She felt it licking over her as his gaze absorbed her features from the tip of her nose to the curved bow of her lips and the midnight blackness of her hair, then finally to the silver brilliance of her widened gray eyes.

This flash of mutual recognition and close assessment lasted mere seconds. On the heels of it came the recollection of Fan’s advice concerning this very man whose hands were steadying her. Rachel went hot at the memory, her glance falling before his as if she thought he might be able to read her thoughts. She began to feel very stiff and awkward.

His hands loosened their hold on her arms and came away. Belatedly Rachel noticed that he was holding his tan jacket, which he swung over his white-shirted shoulder, casually hooking it on a forefinger. His shirt collar was open, exposing the tanned column of his throat.

“I’m sorry,” she said stiffly, repeating her apology for bumping into him, trying to distract her thoughts from the tingling sensation on her arms where his hands had been. “I’m afraid I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

There was a lazy glitter in his eyes as his mouth quirked. “That was my good fortune.”

She didn’t want him to come back with a remark
like that, not with echoes of Fan’s advice ringing in her ears. It only added to her discomfort in the whole situation. Unable to respond to the casual advice, Rachel chose to ignore it.