Sharing Sunrise Read Online Free PDF Page B

accused him. Marching back to her desk, she flopped down in her chair. “If you merely want someone to dance with, someone to sit and look pretty and maybe talk recipes and fashion with Mrs. Masterson, while the big-shot businessmen discuss the important stuff, I suggest you look elsewhere. I’ll wait and go to Estevan’s with Kevin.” She glared at him. “There now. I’ve given you ample reason to fire me. So go ahead.”
    Rolph fixed her with an injured look. “Hey, come on! What’s got your back arched? I invited you out for dinner at a place you said you wanted to visit. I didn’t make it a term of your continued employment.”
    “I know that!” She glared. “And I resent being invited along simply because you find it difficult to get a date when you need somebody to dance with.”
    “Suit yourself,” he snapped and swung back to his desk.
    “Rolph?” He looked over at her. Several quiet hours had passed since they’d spoken last. She looked tired, her face drawn, her mouth drooped at the corners. She’d taken her hair down so it tumbled around her shoulders and she sat rubbing the back of her neck as if it hurt. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was a lousy thing for me to say. I know you can get all the dates you want.”
    “I’m sorry too,” he said, getting to his feet and coming up behind her, pushing her hand away, parting her hair as he massaged her neck. Her muscles were tight. He prodded them with his thumbs, making small circles on her skin. Lord, but it was silky! He shouldn’t do this, but hell, he’d given her massages before. Yeah, said a voice inside him. When she was a skinny twelve-year-old killing herself to make the swim team. She wasn’t skinny, and she wasn’t twelve, and a lot of things had changed. But for all that, he didn’t stop touching her skin.
    “I wasn’t treating you fairly,” he continued. “Of course you need to be able to discuss the boats intelligently and I know you’ll be an asset at the dinner; maybe even clinch the sale. You take the paperwork on the boats home tonight and go over it, then we’ll have a look at them together in the morning.”
    “Okay.” She swallowed. “And I really would like to go with you and the Mastersons tomorrow night if you mean it.”
    “I mean it. I want you to,” he said, “but because I’d like you to be there with me, not only because I find it difficult to get a date.”
    “I know you don’t.”
    “But I do. Or, maybe I should say, if I can get a woman to go out with me, I can’t hold her interest for more than five minutes. Like I said before, I don’t know what women want.”
    While his thumbs worked on the taut muscles at the back of her neck and on top of her shoulders, his fingers circled over her collarbone, doing incredible things to other parts of her anatomy far removed from the places he touched.
    “You offered to teach me,” he said presently. “Did you mean it?”
    Marian tried to breathe. It was nearly impossible, but she managed to suck in air enough to speak. “If you gave every woman you dated a … massage like this,” she said faintly, “you’d never get rid of them. You’d have them stacked up in your closets.”
    “You think so?” He didn’t sound convinced. He spread his hands wide and worked farther down her back. She wished she weren’t wearing a blouse. She wished she weren’t wearing anything. She wished she knew how to help him and that in doing so, she could help him see that she, for one, wouldn’t leave after “five minutes” if only he’d give her a chance.
    She sighed. “Why do you think they don’t stay interested for very long?”
    “Oh, sometimes they do,” he said. “I was exaggerating when I said that. But it’s finding a woman willing to make a commitment I’m having trouble with.”
    “What … kind of commitment?” Dammit, her voice was too squeaky!
    “The usual kind. You know, marriage, home, family.”
    “Oh. You … want that?” Oh,