Sharing Sunrise Read Online Free PDF Page A

knew we were seeing them that night. They thought the meeting was for the next evening—with you alone—and were on their way out when we arrived.”
    “All right, so I made a mistake about the date. It saved you from making a worse one. Talk about someone too old for you! Kevin Durano is forty-five years old, thrice-married and likes to think of himself as a playboy.”
    She could have said that what was true for a girl at the age of twenty was not necessarily so for a woman of twenty-eight. Then, eight years had been close to half a lifetime. Now, even the seventeen years separating her from the “thrice-married playboy” didn’t seem such a great gap. Not that she would be the slightest bit interested in Kevin Durano, whether he was two, eight, or all those seventeen years her senior, except in a casual way. But Rolph certainly took him seriously. Maybe that was good. At least Kevin had made him aware that other men were aware of her as a woman.
    “I don’t know if he’s my type or not, but he did say that when he got back from the business trip he’s on he’d like to take me to Estevan’s.”
    Rolph’s green eyes flared. “The hell he did!”
    “Why shouldn’t he? It’s reportedly the top place in town for seafood and, as a private club, it’s hard to get into. The waiting list for memberships is a mile long; even with his membership, Kevin told me, he sometimes has to wait days for a table. I’m looking forward to dinner there.”
    “Fine. Then that’s where we’ll take the Mastersons when they’re in town tomorrow. I hold a membership. A charter membership,” he added pointedly, “so I can get reservations with only a day’s notice.”
    Marian’s heart did strange things in her chest. This was the first time he’d asked her to attend a business meeting other than the one with the Levines, which she liked to believe he’d dreamed up on the spur of the moment out of pure jealousy. “The Mastersons?”
    “Clients. They’re flying in from Barbados to look at a couple of boats we have listed. I think Windrider will be the one they prefer, but I’m going to show them Neo Cleo as well. It’ll be too late when they arrive to show them around, so I plan to wine and dine them, tell them about the boats, let them sleep on the information then take them over both boats in the morning when they’re feeling well-rested.”
    “And when the tide’s high,” she murmured.
    “You have been paying attention, haven’t you?”
    “Of course. I have an excellent teacher who makes every aspect of the business interesting. Paying attention to you is no hardship, Rolph.”
    Rolph gazed at her thoughtfully for a moment before he smiled slowly. “Thank you,” he said, and reached out to run the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “That’s … nice to hear.”
    While her heart went still in her chest, Rolph went to his desk and sat with his back to her, his feet on the windowsill. He seemed, she thought, to be doing nothing but stare out the window at the ever-present wheeling seagulls and the sunlit cityscape. Presently, he put his feet on the floor, swiveled his chair back around and bent over some work on his desk.
    Marian, her chin on a fist, gazed at his quarter-profile. It must have been with her all her life, this need for Rolph, though she hadn’t been aware of it, anymore than she’d been aware of her biological clock, until Max and Jeanie’s wedding. Then, seeing Rolph so tall and straight and, well, the only word for it was “solid”, not to mention “gorgeous” in his superbly fitting tuxedo, had triggered a response in her that couldn’t be denied. Though she’d tried to tell herself that weddings arouse those kinds of feelings in people, and none more than Max and Jeanie’s, considering how close the couple had come to death in that coal mine, she knew deep inside that what she felt for Rolph was more than wedding-induced sentiment. She thought, the way he danced with her that