Summer Mahogany by Janet Dailey Read Free Book Online

everyone at the harbor. Instead of one chaperon, Pete, they would have a dozen or more.
    She obeyed his edict and dutifully carried the mugs on deck when the coffee was done. Gina had half expected Rhyder to continue his work and ignore her. It was a pleasant surprise when he set down his polishing rag to take the coffee.
    While it cooled to a drinkable temperature, they talked about sailing, the coast of Maine, the weather, and various other inconsequential things. His air of friendliness enveloped Gina in a warm feeling of pleasure. All her earlier resentment was gone.
    "It's going to be a warm night tonight," Rhyder commented.
    She gazed skyward, noting the high cirrus clouds moving in. Mare's tails, she thought, meant rain tomorrow, but she didn't say that.
    "Yes," she agreed with his remark, redirecting her gaze to his strong, carved profile. "It will be a perfect night for a moonlight swim."
    His gaze sliced to her, then shifted to his brown mug. There was a subtle change in his manner. "It probably will be," he conceded noncommittally.
    "Are you doing anything special tonight?" Gina asked boldly.
    "No, nothing special." There was a visible hardness to the line of his jaw.
    "Well?" Gina tipped her head to one side in a flash of impatience. "Do I have to ask you to take me on a moonlight swim?"
    "Gina," Rhyder began, breathing in her name with vague irritation, "why don't you invite some nice boy your own age? Someone who'll stroll along the beach with you and hold your hand, maybe steal a kiss or two while he shows you the stars. What you want is a harmless little flirtation." He looked at her long and hard. "I'm a man, Gina; I don't play those innocent roles anymore. You should be seeing someone who doesn't want to make love to you every time he takes you in his arms."
    "Maybe that's what I want you to do," she breathed in helpless longing.
    "Don't be deliberately provocative, Gina," Rhyder ordered sharply, but the smoldering darkness of his blue eyes was involuntarily running over her curved figure, belying the adult indifference he was trying to project. "If you had any brains in that beautiful head of yours, you would avoid me like the plague," he finished grimly.
    "Do you really think I'm beautiful?" Gina murmured. Only his backhanded compliment registered in her mind.
    "You know you are." His gaze locked onto hers, almost unwillingly, as if compelled by a force he fiercely resented. "Those eyes of yours, like the emerald depths of the ocean, luring a man on until…"
    He broke off in midsentence, taking a step away from her toward the railing. He stood there with his legs slightly apart, braced to the gentle roll of the boat, and gazed at the limitless stretch of ocean.
    Rhyder's words thrilled Gina to the very marrow of her being because they were so reluctantly issued and had ended the instant he realized what he was revealing.
    Confident now of her attraction, Gina moved to his side. She stood at a right angle to him. "No one has ever said anything like that to me before," she commented artlessly.
    Nothing in the carved mahogany of his features indicated he had heard her. He seemed like a statue of some mythological sun god. Gina was overwhelmed by an urge to touch him and make sure he was flesh and blood, not some figment of her imagination.
    This compulsion carried her hand to his sun-browned arm. The muscles contracted at the touch of her fingers, rippling in reaction. His head jerked downward to stare at the hand lightly resting on his arm. Finally his gaze lifted to her face.
    An impenetrable mask covered his features, but the blazing passion in his eyes jolted through her. Rhyder turned slowly to face her and Gina's hand dropped to her side. He towered above her, vitally masculine, so close that she had to tip her head back to see his face. Scant inches separated their bodies, yet neither of them attempted to bridge the short distance.
    A wild pagan song was drumming through her pulse. Flames of passion