Separate Cabins by Janet Dailey Read Free Book Online

and corded muscle.
    The upward-pulled corners of his mouth hinted at a smile while the warm light in his brown eyes wandered over her. Rachel was immediately conscious of her less than presentable appearance. Thestatic cling of her robe’s silk material shaped itself to her body and outlined every curve. Her face had been scrubbed clean of all makeup the night before, and she hadn’t even brushed her sleep-rumpled hair, its tousled thickness curling in disorder against her face and neck.
    Before she could check the impulse, she lifted a hand and smoothed a part of the tangle, then kept her hand there to grip the back of her neck. The suggestion of a smile on his mouth deepened at her action, a light dancing in his look.
    “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Gard advised her with a lazy intonation of his voice. “You look beautiful.”
    With that, he straightened, drawing his arm away from the frame and moving forward. Her instinctive response was to move out of his way and maintain a distance between herself and his blatantly male form. Too late, Rachel realized that she should have attempted to close the door to her cabin instead of stepping back to admit him. By then his smooth strides had already carried him past her into the sitting room. It was this lapse on her part that made her face him so stiffly.
    “What do you want?” she demanded.
    There was an interested and measuring flicker of light in his eyes as he idly scanned her face. He seemed to stand back a little, in that silent way he had of observing people and their reactions.
    “I made a mistake yesterday evening when I said I hadn’t unpacked,” Gard replied evenly. “I’d forgotten that I’d taken out my shaving kit so Icould clean up before going to dinner. I didn’t discover it until late last night. Somehow”—a hint of a mocking twinkle entered his eyes—“I had the feeling you’d get the wrong idea if I had come knocking on your door around midnight.”
    “You’re mistaken about the shaving kit.” Rachel ignored his comments and dealt directly with the issue. “You didn’t leave it here. I unpacked all my things last night and I didn’t find anything of yours while I was putting mine away.”
    “You must not have looked everywhere because I left it in the bathroom.” He was unconvinced by her denial that it wasn’t in the cabin.
    “Well, you didn’t—” But Rachel didn’t have a chance to continue her assertion because Gard was already walking to the bathroom door. She hurried after him, irritated that he should take it upon himself to search for it. “You have no right to go in there.”
    “I know you won’t be shocked if I tell you that I’ve probably seen the full range of feminine toiletries in my time,” he murmured dryly and paid no attention to her protests, walking right into the bathroom.
    Rachel stopped outside the door, her fingers gripping the edge of the frame, and looked in. The bathroom was comfortably spacious, but she still didn’t intend to find herself in such close quarters with him.
    “You look for yourself,” she challenged, since he intended to do just that anyway. “You’ll see it’s not here.”
    He cast her a smiling look, then reached down and pulled open a drawer by the sink. It was a drawer she hadn’t opened because she hadn’t needed the space. When she looked inside, there was a man’s brown shaving kit.
    “Here it is—just where I left it,” he announced, dark brows arching over his amused glance.
    “So it is.” Rachel was forced to admit it, a resentful gray look in her eyes. “I guess I never looked in that drawer.”
    “I guess you didn’t,” Gard agreed smoothly—so smoothly it was almost mocking.
    He half turned and leaned a hip against the sink, shifting his weight to one foot. A quiver of vague alarm went through Rachel as she realized that he showed no signs of leaving either her cabin or her bathroom. There was a slow, assessing travel of his gaze over her.
    “How