Free Sharing Sunrise by Judy Griffith Gill Page B

playing your kind of games.”
    “What if I weren’t playing games? What if I could be as serious as you?”
    He laughed. “What if the moon really was made of green cheese? The astronauts would have come back covered with mold.”
    “My,” she said. “That’s serious.”
    He had to smile at the tone of her voice. “And so am I,” he said gravely, grazing her cheekbone with one bent knuckle. “So let’s get out of this ambience that seems to be giving you such outrageous ideas.”
    She didn’t move away from him. “Wanting to be kissed is outrageous?” she asked, eyes wide and long lashes fluttering.
    “Not under ordinary circumstances.”
    She cocked her head to one side. “What’s so extraordinary about these circumstances?”
    “I’ve always thought of you as a somewhat tiresome, troublesome little sister, Marian, and I have no intention of changing. Now, I’m even more tired than I was before, and that was nearly three hours ago, so I’m taking you home.” But also because what I’m feeling has very little to do with slow, sweet music or ambience or your scent or your big green eyes that I know for a fact are supposed to be blue, and your soft golden hair that was as red as autumn leaves when you were born! I don’t want false. I don’t want fake. I don’t want phony. But dammit, I want you!”
    As he took her elbow in one hand and steered her back to their table, where their two chairs were the only ones still standing square on the floor, he wondered who was the fake one, who was the phony, her with her frequently recolored hair and her seemingly unending supply of tinted contact lenses, her butterfly existence, or him, with his insistence that what she offered was not what he wanted out of life. Because, even if her feelings were false, even if they had been engendered by the romantic music and the seductive atmosphere, the wine, even if they were as temporary as everything else in her life had been, if they were directed at him, he wanted them, dammit. He wanted them far too much.
    For that reason, after he unlocked her door for her, he let her go with a chaste, brotherly kiss on her forehead and an admonition not to forget to go to Southland Marina first thing Monday morning to see those two boats that were coming on the market.
     “That’s it?” Marian stared at the door after Rolph closed it. She heard his feet walking away down the corridor, heard the elevator doors hiss shut. She knew he was gone.
    “That’s it?” she said again moments later as she stared at her image in the mirror, then glanced at the framed photograph on her dresser. Normally, it resided deep in a drawer, but she’d taken it out tonight to make a comparison. Robin Ames’ words echoed in her mind repeatedly. That blonde hair and those green eyes, I thought you were brother and sister … And Rolph’s, at the end of the evening, Because I’ve always thought of you as a somewhat tiresome, troublesome little sister . It hadn’t escaped her notice that Rolph’s attitude had changed immediately after they’d both seen Robin leaving the club. It bothered him, didn’t it, that they looked alike enough to be mistake for brother and sister? Did he care so much what strangers thought?
    Obviously, he did.
    Again, she looked from her own image to the photograph of Rolph that she’d had ever since Max and Jeanie’s wedding. Dammit, they did look alike. Why had she never seen it before?
    There was no answer to that, but one thing she could ensure was that neither she or Rolph nor anybody else would ever see such a resemblance again.
    With a nod to her own reflection, Marian came to a swift decision. Luckily, she was in good with her hairdresser and fairly confident of getting a Saturday morning appointment if she declared an emergency.
    Come Monday, no one would mistake Marian Crane for Rolph McKenzie’s little sister.
    Rolph lay on his bed wondering why he was there instead of in … He refused to permit the