Sharing Sunrise

by Judy Griffith Gill

  With a soft sigh, he watched Marian pack material into her briefcase and give him a wave as she went out the door on her way to her first appointment.

  As soon as he was off the phone, he went back into his apartment and dressed, casually this morning, because he had no appointments. He did, however, have plenty of paperwork to catch up on, but for all that, he sat at his desk, feet on the windowsill and stared out unseeingly.

  Couldn’t Marian have kept the morning clear, knowing he’d be back? If she’d been away, he’d have done that. Or would he? He thought about it. No, probably not. It wouldn’t have been … He grimaced. It wouldn’t have been professional.

  Marian was right. The rule he’d just broken was his rule. He’d set it and he shouldn’t have ignored it. But he hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he’d missed her. And he had meant it from the bottom of his heart when he said that he wasn’t going away without her again.

  He swung his feet to the floor, planted his elbows on his desk and buried his face in his hands. God, what was he saying? What was he doing? And more to the point, what was he going to do? He didn’t know, but, for the first time, he thought he could begin to understand his parents’ decision not to travel without each other. He understood, but did that make what they’d done right? If he and Marian married, had children, would he still want her to travel with him when he had to go away?

  He knew he would. However much he might want it to be otherwise, he realized that her presence had become an absolute necessity to him. He wanted her to be wherever he was. He wanted her with him all the time. He’d hated seeing her walk out that door this morning, almost to the point where he’d gone after her and begged her to cancel whatever it was she had to do. And if he could be driven to break his self-imposed rules of office behavior, would he also lower his standards when it came to the raising of his children, assuming Marian was their mother?

  He didn’t know that, either. Maybe, if there were children involved, he’d be able to be sensible. Maybe? Just maybe? What had happened to all his firm convictions on the way his life was going to be run? What had happened to his plans, his decisions, his certainty that he could find exactly the right woman, live his life to exactly the right tenets?

  Marian had happened, that was what. Marian had come along and turned things upside down, made him doubt his righteousness, doubt his own principles, his belief that there was only one way for him to plot out his future. And he hated having doubts. For so long, he had known exactly how it would be. He’d find the right woman, marry her, build a strong, solid house in which to make his strong, stable home, and then he’d raise strong, secure children, girls and boys who would never doubt their importance in the scheme of their parents’ lives.

  And was Marian that woman? No. He’d known that from day one, but it hadn’t stopped his feelings for raging out of control. But then, neither was he the man he’d tried to be, if he could let his feelings for her overpower his own conscience to the point that he was ready to give up everything he thought was right in order to have her by his side.

  Oh, God! What was he going to do?

  “Victory!” Marian came into the office the following Monday at two o’clock in the afternoon. “Jefferson McQuade has just signed a purchase agreement for Stephanie-Jayne, and a contract to moor her here in one of the boathouses, berth E-twelve, for at least the next year. I’m going to change then go help him bring her over from Ambrose Bay.”

  “Good for you,” said Rolph getting up from his desk and following her as she went into his apartment where she kept boating clothes for times such as this. He watched her slip out of her skirt and tug on a pair of jeans. He loved to look at her, especially when she’d been out in the fresh air and wind. It made her cheeks glow, her eyes shine and tossed her glorious hair into an abandoned tangle that reminded him of the way she looked in the morning. Marian was not an indoor person. She needed the wind and the sea and the brightness of sunshine. “What was the final selling price?”

  “Two-fifty,” she said from inside a sweatshirt. Her tousled head appeared as she continued. “The Alderlings wanted two-seventy-five, but they knew they were being unrealistic and were willing to come down after I had a quiet talk with them.”

  Rolph raised one brow as he shouldered himself up from his slumped position against the bedroom doorway. “I had several ‘quiet’ talks with them about their unrealistic idea of the value of Stephanie-Jayne, from the very first day they listed her with us. How come you succeeded where I failed?”

  She gave him a wide-eyed, innocent smile as she sat on the edge of his bed and stuffed her feet into deck shoes. “Just smarter, I guess.” She cocked her head sideways, looking at him while she bent to tie her shoes. “Want some lessons?”

  He checked to see that the door leading to the corridor was closed and came to her, pulling her to her feet, sliding his hands around the back of her neck and drawing her in close. “Yeah,” he said. “What have you got to teach me today?”

  Moments later, he lifted his head and said, “I’ll come with you and help you move that boat around.” He didn’t like the idea of her being in charge of a sixty-foot cabin cruiser, even though he knew she’d handled larger boats and often under sail, not power. Still, he didn’t want her doing it alone.

  She smiled. “Thanks. Jefferson McQuade is a pain in the … left heel. He knows nothing about boats except that he wants one. And now that he has one, he also wants me to give him lessons on handling it.”

  “I hope you told him to get lost.”

  “I told him to join the Power Squadron.”

  As they went through the outer office, Kaitlin held up a hand. “Just a sec, Rolph. Somebody wants to talk to you.”

  “Sorry,” he said, taking Marian’s hand and heading for the door. “Take a message. I’ll be out for the rest of the afternoon.”

  “But …”

  “Kaitlin. A message.”

  “Yessir.”

  “I can do this alone,” Marian said, holding the door closed so he couldn’t open it. “Go and take that call. It might be important.”

  “Nothing’s more important to me than being with you,” he said. “Now, let’s go. We mustn’t keep your client waiting.”

  Marian heard the edge in his voice. He wouldn’t be acting this way if her client were a nice old lady wanting to put her late husband’s boat on the market. “Rolph,” she said softly, “he’s my client and I can deal with him. That person on the phone is your client. How can you keep him waiting?”

  He glowered at her for a moment, then nodded. “All right, all right. Sometimes I wonder who’s the businessman here, you or me. Seems you’ve got a better handle on things than I have most of the time.”

  “That’s because she has,” said Andrea, rushing forward with a smile and a sheaf of papers. “Marian, sign these before you go, will you? Or do you want to read them over first?”

  “No,” said Marian, using the corner of Kaitlin’s desk to sign the letters. “You’re getting so good at writing up my reports I’m thinking of turning the whole job over to you on a fulltime basis.”

  “Oh, good.” Andrea grinned. “Then I’d get to share the new secretary with you and Rolph?”

  “What’s this about a new secretary?” Rolph demanded, not liking the tone of this conversation. Underlying the joking texture of it, he thought he sensed a hint of seriousness.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Marian. “We’re kidding. Go and take your call.”

  He did, but when he brought the matter up again later over dinner, Marian didn’t shrug it off quite as easily. “Andrea’s very quick to pick things up,” she said. “And she’s interested in the business. I think she’s worth training as another assistant. She does well on the reports I’ve been giving her to write up. Another week or two, and we could even hand over some of the actual research to her.”

  He gave her a sharp look, feeling a coldness creep in on him. “And why would we want to?”

  Marian b
linked at his tone. “Maybe we wouldn’t. Or maybe you wouldn’t. It was nothing more than a suggestion, Rolph. And not one I’ve put to her, either, except as a joke, like you heard today. I know it’s your place to make those decisions, not mine. It would be premature to talk with her about that until I’d discussed it with you.”

  “You didn’t discuss with me her writing up the reports from your research notes.”

  “Well, no. I’m sorry. I guess I should have. But … you were out of the office the first time I did it. I had to see someone in Sooke and the report was due on a client’s desk by five that afternoon, so I didn’t have a choice. She did such a good job, I’ve asked her to do it since then if I have too much to do. She does it well. And enjoys doing it.” Marian reached across the table and touched the back of his hand. “Why not think about it, Rolph? Give her a chance. Maybe she’s wasted as a secretary.”

  He turned his hand over and captured her fingers. “I have an assistant,” he said, his eyes searching hers closely. “Why would I want another one?”

  Marian was silent, dropping her gaze to their linked hands. What was she supposed to say, You’ll need another assistant when we’re married and I’m home having your babies? She couldn’t say that, of course. Rolph had never asked her to marry him.

  “It was simply an … idea,” she said, sliding her hand out of his clasp. She looked up at him. “The more inside work she does, the more it frees me up for the field stuff. More coffee?”

  Rolph nodded. She was, he had to admit, at her best doing field work, out there on the boats and the docks and in the offices of clients, talking to them, dealing with them, making sales and persuading people that Sunrise Brokerage was the company best suited to selling their boats, Sunrise Marina the best place to moor them and protect them in the owner’s absence.

  Yet he couldn’t help wondering if that were the real reason she wanted to train Andrea as another assistant for him. What if, even subconsciously, she was preparing to leave?

  What, Marian asked herself, had happened to “I’m not going away without you again?” And what had happened to the nightly phone calls she’d learned to expect when Rolph was away on that short trip to Sweden? This time, he was only in San Francisco, a place much easier to call from, and he expected to be away nearly two weeks. So far, he’d been gone six days and not a personal word out of him. Twice, he’d called and spoken to Andrea, but not to her.

  Here it was midnight and he wasn’t in his hotel room. She hated herself for calling, for acting like a suspicious wife, a jealous, suspicious wife. He was having dinner with clients, contacts, business friends. That was all. Or maybe he’d even left San Francisco temporarily, gone somewhere else for a day or two to track down one of the boats he’d gone to check out for a couple of clients.

  There could be many adequate reasons for his not being in his hotel room at this time of night, reasons far beyond the one that kept recurring in her sick, crazy mind. Dammit, there was no reason to think he was out with a woman and even if he were, there was no reason to think that the woman was any threat to her. She simply had to be sensible and lie down and go to sleep. Maybe Rolph hadn’t called her because it made him too lonely to talk to her knowing he wouldn’t be seeing her for many more days.

  The phone rang some time after she had finally taken her own advice and gone to sleep and she leapt up, awake, alert instantly, the one reason for his silence that she had refused to entertain now at the forefront of her mind. Rolph was hurt or ill.

  “Yes, yes? What is it?”

  “Hi, Ms. Crane. This is Brewster, down at the marina. I hate to disturb you, but Mr. McKenzie’s away and I didn’t know what else to do. We got a boat sinking down here and the pump’s not working. I need authorization to call in someone with another one.”

  “Call in anybody you have to, Brewster and I’ll sign whatever’s necessary when I get there. I’m on my way,” she said, already peeling her nightshirt off over her head as she set the phone down.

  There was little traffic at three-thirty in the morning, and Marian arrived at the marina in minutes to find several people milling around the wharf beside Shennandoah, a forty-five foot cruiser showing a bad list. Her hull had been badly ripped up just a day or so ago; she’d been patched and towed in and her owner was supposed to be arranging for repairs.

  “Did you get a pump?” she asked Brewster, after fighting through the crowd to his side.

  The look of relief on his face was almost comical. She thought he might burst into tears. “It’s on its way,” he said. “They’re bringing us one from Southland, but it took a while to get somebody awake over there. I don’t know what happened to ours, Ms. Crane,” the boy added worriedly. “It worked okay the last time we tested it, but when that patch went on Shennendoah’s hull, and her own pumps couldn’t keep up, we found ours was useless. Then, she got lower and lower in the water until her batteries were submerged and her pumps cut out. That’s when I called you.”

  “It’s okay, Brewster.” She patted his hand. “I’m sure it’s not your fault, but we’re going to lose her if we don’t do something right now. There’s no time to wait for pumps.” Spotting a man she knew in the growing crowd on the dock, she said, “Kevin, can you bring your boat around and raft up to her? We’ll sling ropes under, fore and aft. That should hold her until we get some pumps going. Has her owner been contacted?”

  The boy shook his head. “There’s no answer at his house. One of the other boat owners said something about a golf tournament but he doesn’t remember where.”

  “Then I’ll have to make arrangements to get her out of the water at once. You get those slings rigged with Kevin Durano as soon as his boat’s in position. I’ll be in the office on the phone for the next few minutes trying to get an emergency dry-dock berth for this guy. As soon as she’s pumped dry enough to be moved, I want her out of this marina.”

  As she ran up the ramp to the office, she wondered at the intelligence of a man who not only put his expensive toy on the rocks, but then went out of town without seeing her fixed up first, and didn’t even leave so much as a phone number in case something like this happened. Yet if she let his damn boat go down while it was in the care of Sunrise Marina, he’d probably start hollering negligence and bring lawsuits to bear.

  With the help of the pump from Southland Marina, and another from a rental shop whose owner Marian got out of bed as she had the manager of a dry-dock facility, Shennandoah was finally stabilized and pumped as dry as possible. Her patch was reattached by a diver who arrived at daybreak and she was towed gently to a boat yard several miles away where she would be put up on blocks on dry land to await her owner’s instructions.

  Marian checked carefully the contract the boat’s owner had with the marina, decided she’d done what she was legally bound to do and had not done anything that could cause the company grief. She yawned, stood, and nearly staggered back to her car. She needed a shower and a change of clothing before she’d be fit to work. That and a couple of quarts of coffee.

  She was back at work when the light on her phone blinked and she picked it up, expecting to hear a client’s voice, not Rolph’s. For a moment love and relief flooded up in her in such vast proportions that she couldn’t begin to form words.

  “Are you there?” Rolph asked. “Marian?”

  “Hi,” she managed to whisper. “I’m here. How are you?”

  “Just fine,” he said impatiently. “I heard what happened last night. I want you to take the rest of the day off and get some rest.”

  “I don’t need to do that.”

  “Yes, you do, and that’s an order. Andrea says you’re half out of it. Did you manage to get hold of the owner yet?”

  “No. His office says he can’t be reached.”

  “Great. Nice guy. Well, never mind. You’ve done what you could and you did it well, from what I hear. Thanks, Marian. It would have looked bad for the marina if that boat had gone down while it was in our care.”


  “All part of the job description,” she said easily, but pleased with the praise.

  “Getting out of bed at three A.M. doesn’t appear in your contract as far as I know, so do like I said, go home and get some rest. If you don’t want to go home, go climb into my bed.”

  “Rolph, really, I can’t. I have things to do, things that can’t wait. I’ll be fine. I’ll go to bed early tonight.” She laughed. “Think of the number of nights when neither of us has gotten much sleep. We both managed to function during the day, didn’t we?”

  He was silent for a moment then agreed quietly. “Sure. Well, do whatever you think best. See you in few days. Bye.”

  Marian stared at the phone. That was all? No tender words? Nothing about how he missed those nights when they’d gotten little sleep? Not a word to suggest that when he came back there’d be more nights like that?

  What was going on with Rolph? What was going on with them?

  He’s lonely, she told herself. He misses me. He doesn’t want to talk about it because it will only make things worse, make the days and nights apart seem longer. It’ll be fine when he’s home again, she promised herself.

  Just wait and see. Everything will be great.

  Everything, though, was not great when Rolph came home. Oh, he held her tightly, kissed her deeply, and made slow, sweet tender love with her long into the night. He brought her a big box of Ghirardelli chocolate, a stuffed baby seal with huge, pitiful eyes and a gold nugget that would have made a forty-niner rich for a lifetime. But something was different. Something was wrong. Something was missing.

  Rolph was missing from beside her.

  Marian awoke as dawn was beginning to tinge the harbor waters with silver light and saw Rolph sitting by the window, not looking out, but profiled there in a pose of despair, his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees.