Separate Cabins

“Conceited?” His response threw her.

“You inferred my invitation was a ruse to get you alone in my cabin. That is presuming that I want to get you alone in my cabin. Don’t you think you’re jumping to premature conclusions?”

“I ...” Rachel was too flustered to answer, suddenly caught by the thought that she might have misjudged him. An inner heat stained her cheeks with a high color.

An ashtray was attached to the railing post and Gard snubbed out the cigarette and dropped the dead butt into it. When he looked at Rachel, she was still struggling for an answer.

“I admit the idea is not without a definite appeal, but it isn’t behind the reason I invited you to my suite,” he assured her. “I am having a few of my friends on board in for cocktails—Hank and the purser among others. I thought you might like to join us—especially since you expressed an interest in the suite at dinner this evening.”

“That was for Helen’s benefit.” Rachel admitted the reason behind her inquiry.

“Why?” he asked with a quizzical look.

“Because she found our names on the passenger list posted in the Purser’s Lobby, with the same cabin number.” She paused to lend emphasis to the last phrase. “She remembered I had said we weren’t married. She put two and two together and came up with a wanton answer. So I tried to make it clear to her that we weren’t sharing a cabin.”

A low chuckle came from his throat, not improving the situation at all. Her brief spate of embarrassment fled, chased by a sudden rush of anger.

“I don’t think it’s funny,” Rachel said thinly.

“It’s obvious you don’t.” Gard controlled his laughter, but it continued to lace through his voice. “It wouldn’t be the first time an unmarried couple shared the same cabin on a ship. Why do you care what that woman thinks? You know it isn’t true and that should be good enough.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have expected you to understand.” It was a muttered accusal as Rachel made to walk past him rather than waste any more of her time trying to make him see her side of it.

A black-sleeved arm shot out in front of her and blocked the way, catching her by the arm and swinging her back to face him. Both hands held her when she would have twisted away. A slate-colored turbulence darkened her eyes as Rachel glared up at him.

“Why should it upset you so much because a bunch of strangers might think we’re having an affair?” There was a narrowed curiosity in his probing look. “I’m beginning to think the lady protests too much,” Gard suggested lazily.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” But Rachel strongly suspected that she had become too sensitive about any involvement with him, thanks to Fan’s advice. It had put her thoughts toward him on a sexual basis right from the start.

The grip of his hands was burning into her flesh, spreading the sensation of his touch through her body. In defense of being brought any closer to him, her hands had lifted and braced themselves against the flatness of his hard stomach.

“What is it you’re fighting, Rachel?” he asked with a quizzical look. “It isn’t me. So it must be yourself.”

“I simply find it awkward being alone with you when so many people have made the mistake of thinking we’re married,” she insisted, her pulse flaring at this contact with him. “It’s bound to put ideas in your head.”

“And yours?” Gard suggested knowingly.

There was a split-second hesitation before Rachel slowly nodded. “Yes, and mine, too.”

“And these ideas,” he continued in a conversational tone while his hands began absently rubbing her arms and edging closer to her shoulder blades in back, s

lowly enclosing the circle, “you don’t want anything to come of them.”

“Nothing would,” she insisted because the cruise only lasted seven days. And at the end of it they would also part. That was always the way of it. These sensations she was feeling now would leave, too, when the freshness of them faded.

“How can you be so sure?” Gard questioned her certainty.

“I’m not a starry-eyed girl anymore.” She was a mature woman with certain adult needs that were beginning to be brought home to her as she started to feel the warmth of his body heat through the thin fabric of her gown. “I know all things have a beginning and an end.”

“But it’s what’s in between that counts,” he told her and lowered his head to fasten his mouth onto her lips.

The searching intimacy of his kiss unleashed all the restless yearnings to sweep through her veins and heat her with their rawness. Her hands slid inside the warmth of his jacket and around the black satin cummerbund to spread across the corded muscles of his back, glorying in the feel of the hard, vital flesh beneath her fingers.

There was sensual expertise in his easy parting of her lips and the devastating mingling of their mouths. Her senses were aswim with the stimulating scent of him, male and musky. The beat of her heart was a roar in her ears, deafening her to any lingering note of caution. His shaping hands moved at random over her spine and hips, pressing her to his driving length.

A raw shudder went through her as his mouth grazed across her cheek to nibble at her ear, his breath fanning the sensitive opening and sending quivers of excitement over her skin. Rachel turned her head to the side when he continued his intimate trail down the cord in her neck and nuzzled at the point where it joined her shoulder. She could hear the roughened edge of his breathing. There was a measure of satisfaction in knowing she wasn’t the only one aroused.

Then he was drawing back slightly to rest his hard cheekbone against her temple, his lips barely brushing the silken texture of her black hair. While his hands were curved to the hollow of her back, Rachel slipped her arms from around him so she could glide them around his neck.