“A joke?” Rachel frowned impatiently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The name on that ticket,” he replied and sipped at his drink, looking at her over the rim. There was a delving quality about his look that seemed to probe into sensitive areas.
Rachel felt a prickling along her defenses. She glanced at the ticket, then back to him. “It’s my name—Mrs. Gardner MacKinley. I don’t see anything funny about that,” she retorted stiffly.
“Since I seem to be suffering from a memory blank, maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me just when we were supposed to have been married,” he challenged with a mocking slant to his mouth.
For a second she was too stunned to say anything. “I’m not married to you.” She finally breathed out the shocked denial.
“At least we agree on that point.” He lifted his glass in a mock salute and took another swallow from it.
“Whatever gave you the idea we were?” She stared at him, caught between anger and confusion.
He leaned a hand against the wall near her head, the action bringing him closer to her. There was a tightening of her throat muscles as she became conscious of his physical presence. There was a heightened awareness of her senses that noted the hard smoothness of his cheek and jaw and the crisply fragrant scent of after-shave lotion. The vein in her neck began to throb in agitation.
“The name and address on that ticket—” His glance slid to it again, then swung back to her face, closely watching each nuance in her expression. “If you leave off the Mrs. part, it’s mine.”
It took a second for the implication of his words to sink in. “Yours?” Rachel repeated. “Do you mean your name is—” She couldn’t say it because it was too incredible to be believed.
“Gardner MacKinley,” he confirmed with a slight nod of his head. “My friends call me Gard.”
Rachel sagged against the wall, all the anger and outrage at finding him in her cabin suddenly rushing out of her. It seemed impossible and totally improbable, yet—her thoughts raced wildly, searching for a plausible explanation. Her glance fell on the ticket.
“The address—it’s yours?” She lifted her gaze to his face, seeking confirmation of the claim he’d made earlier.
“Yes.” He watched her, as if absorbed by the changing emotions flitting across her face.
“That must be how it happened,” Rachel murmured absently.
“How what happened?” Gard MacKinley queried, tipping his head to the side.
“Last week my friend went to the offices of the cruise line to find out why I hadn’t received my ticket. They assured her it had been mailed, but I’d never gotten it. They reissued this one,” she explained as the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. “I noticed the address was wrong, but I just thought that was why I hadn’t received the first one. But it was sent to you,” she realized.
“Evidently that’s the way it happened,” he agreed and finished the rest of his drink.
“It sounds so incredible.” Rachel still found it hard to believe that something like this could happen.
“Let’s just say it’s highly coincidental,” Gard suggested. “After all, telephone directories are full of people with the same names. Imagine what it would be like if your surname were Smith, Jones, or Johnson?”
“I suppose that’s true,” she admitted because he made it seem more plausible.
For a moment he studied the ice cubes melting in his glass, then glanced at her. “Where’s your husband?”
Even after all this time the words didn’t come easily to her. “I’m a widow,” Rachel informed him, all her defenses goi
ng up again as she eyed him with a degree of wariness against the expected advance.
But there was no change in his expression, no sudden darkening of sexual interest. There remained that hint of warmth shining through the brown surfaces of his eyes.
“You must have a name other than Mrs. Gardner MacKinley, or is your first name Gardner?” There was a suggestion of a smile about his mouth.
“No, it’s Rachel,” she told him, oddly disturbed by him even though there had been no overt change in his attitude toward her. When he straightened and walked away from her to the wet bar, she was surprised.
“The foul-up must have happened when our two reservations were punched into the computer.” He swung the conversation away from the personal line it had taken and brought it back to its original course. “No one told it differently so it linked the two of us together.” His dark gaze ran back to her, alive with humor as his mouth slanted dryly. “What the computer has joined together, let no man put asunder.”
His paraphrase of a portion of the marriage ceremony seemed to charge the air with a sudden, intimate tension. There was a knotting in the pit of her stomach, a tightness that came from some hidden source. The suggestion that this inadvertent union was in any way permanent sent her pulse to racing. It was a ludicrous thought, but that certainly didn’t explain this sudden stimulation of all her senses.
Chapter Three