Separate Cabins

His chest expanded on a deep, almost angry breath that was heavily released. Gard looked away from her for an instant, then slid his glance back.

“I won’t ask why you thought it was possible. I’m liable to lose my temper and break that pretty neck of yours,” he muttered, his jaw tightly clenched. “Is it fair to say that you understand why I haven’t called you before now?”

“Yes.” Rachel nodded.

“Good.” Unfolding his arms, he straightened from the desk. “Now, let’s see if we can’t clear up this matter about Brenda.”

“I’d rather just forget it,” she insisted, her breath running deep and agitated. “It’s none of my business.”

“To a point, you’re absolutely right. And if you hadn’t insulted Brenda by the implication of your accusations against me, I wouldn’t explain a damned thing to you,” he informed her roughly. “She buried her husband last week. She puts up a good front, but she’s hurting and lonely. Damnit, you should know the feeling! There are times when it helps her to have people around her who were close to Bud. He was my friend as well as my law partner.”

“I’m sorry.” Rachel felt bad about the thoughts she’d had when she’d seen Gard with that attractive woman—and the things she’d said, out of hurt, when he had explained who the woman was. “I jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

“You couldn’t have jumped to that conclusion if you hadn’t already decided that I didn’t care about seeing you again,” he countered.

“I hadn’t decided that,” she denied.

“I’d forgotten,” Gard eyed her lazily. “You were prepared to give me the benefit of reasonable doubt. That’s why you came to see me, isn’t it?”

“Something like that, yes!” Rachel snapped, not liking the feeling of being on the witness stand. “You could have lost my number and I had to know!”

“Yet you were also willing to believe that I had just been stringing you along during the cruise, and that I didn’t have any feelings toward you.”

“It was possible,” she insisted. “How could I be sure what kind of man you are? I haven’t known you that long.”

“How long do you have to know someone before you can love them?” Gard demanded, coming over to stand in front of her. “Two weeks? Two months? Two years? I recall distinctly that you said you loved me. Didn’t you mean it?”

“Yes.” Reluctantly she pushed the angry word out.

“Then why is it so hard for you to accept that I love you?” he challenged.

She flashed him a resentful look. “Because you never said you did.”

He stared at her for a long minute. “I must have said it at least a thousand times—every time I looked at you and touched you and held you.” The insistence of his voice became intimately low.

“You never said it,” Rachel repeated with considerably less force. “Not in so many words.”

His eyes lightened with warm bemusement as a smile curved his lips. “Rachel, I love you,” he said as if repeating it by rote. “There you have it ‘in so many words.’”

It hurt almost as much for him to say the words without any feeling. She started to turn away. A low chuckle came from his throat as his arms went around her and gathered her into their tightening circle. She started to elude his mouth but it closed on her lips too quickly.

The persuasive ardor of his warm, possessive kiss melted away her stiffness. Her hands went around his neck as she let the urgency of loving him sweep through her. With wildly sweet certainty Rachel knew she had come home. She lived in the love he gave her, which completed her as a person the same w

ay her love completed him.

“You crazy little fool,” he muttered near her ear while he kept her crushed in his arms. “I was half in love with you from the beginning. It didn’t take much of a push to make me fall the rest of the way.”

“You knew even then?” She pulled back a little to see his face because she found it incredible that he could have been so sure of his feelings almost from the start.

“Admit it,” he chided her. “We were attracted to each other from the beginning. You saw me when I arrived, just the same way I noticed you sitting there outside the terminal.”

“That’s true,” Rachel conceded.

“When you came strolling into what I thought was my cabin and claimed to be Mrs. Gardner MacKinley, I thought it was some practical joke of Hank’s and he’d put you up to the charade. Despite your convincing talk about the reissued ticket, I still didn’t believe you until you became so indignant at the thought of sharing the cabin with me. I could tell that wasn’t an act.”

“And I couldn’t understand how you could take it all so lightly,” she remembered.

“That’s just about the time I started to tumble,” Gard informed her, brushing his mouth over her cheek and temple as if he didn’t want to break contact with her even to talk. “I was intrigued by the idea of sharing a cabin with you and fascinated by the thought that you were Mrs. Gardner MacKinley. I didn’t even want to correct people when they mistook you for my wife.”