Children of Dynasty Read Online Free

the apartment she rented in a Marina District Victorian. After stacking the same magazines for the fourth time, she sank onto her new wicker sofa. Though she stared at the ivory and green swirls in the matching rug, she saw a long-ago June morning …
    Eighteen-year-old Mariah discovered from the Sunday morning
Chronicle
that John’s rival Davis Campbell kept his racing boat on a Sausalito pier. A photo showed him holding aloft a silver cup, not even the newsprint blurring the sharp intensity of the man. He looked at his trophy with the same expression he’d used over the years to examine Mariah, an avarice that always made her uneasy.
    Studying the photo, she caught sight of a younger man beside Davis, a fit and slimmer version of the yacht’s captain. She had never formally met Rory Campbell. Nonetheless, despite the lack of introduction, she was utterly smitten with him. Two years ago, she had watched this bronzed youth with flashing limbs destroy an opponent at a tennis party. In the milling aftermath, while she waited at courtside to attract his attention her father had announced abruptly that they were leaving.
    Mariah set aside the newspaper, and, tiptoeing so as not to wake her father, left a noncommittal note. Then she drove his Pontiac across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito.
    When she arrived at the marina, an unforecast squall played an eerie piping chime, beating the sailboat halyards against their masts. Fog streamed into the harbor, pleasure boats sat idle at the piers, and the houseboat community was battened down. For a moment she hesitated, but with this weather, she should be able to look over the yacht without being discovered.
    Once on the pier, she had no trouble locating the knifelike vessel
Privateer.
A towering mast stretched up into the mist, and at least fifty feet of sleek hull shone bright even in the gray light. Water drops beaded the rich teak deck trim.
    “Come in out of the rain,” said a male voice from aboard.
    Even with her tennis shoes’ traction, Mariah nearly lost her footing on the slippery boardwalk. Steadying herself on the boat’s wet aluminum rail, she turned to see who had spoken.
    A tall, narrow-faced man stood in the shadowed companionway. Dark eyes peered at her from beneath the brim of his ball cap.
    Instinctively, she pulled her damp denim shirt tighter around her. Caught flat-footed on the owner’s pier, she steeled herself and hoped Davis Campbell would not recognize her since she’d grown up. “I was just admiring your boat.” She tried to smooth her wind-tangled hair.
    “Privateer
is my Dad’s,” confessed a voice she now recognized as far less commanding than Davis Campbell’s.
    Mariah nearly sagged with relief, but her heart began to race. Hadn’t she hoped to run into him, without daring to admit it?
    “I’m Rory Campbell,” he said. A rough blue cotton shirt over loose khaki shorts complimented his taut body.
    When he reached a hand to help her aboard, his skin felt callused against hers, a suggestion he knew his way around the yacht’s winches and lines. Reluctant to break the spell by telling him she was a Grant, she tempered with, “Mariah.” The rain came down harder, blowing beneath the canvas bimini over the broad cockpit.
    “Come below,” he urged.
    Though she compromised by taking a seat on the ladder down to the cabin, drops still splattered her. Rory reached to close the Lexan hatch, his chest only inches from her face. She caught his scent, a pleasant aroma like geranium petals warmed by the sun. Strung tight at his nearness, Mariah was nonetheless disappointed when he turned away.
    In the spacious galley, he lighted a brass lantern and suspended it from a hook over the table. Thus illuminated, the teak-lined cabin was as large as her father’s living room. Rory filled a kettle and put it on the stove, ferreted out teabags, and set out mugs with
Privateer
on them in gold letters. Waiting for the water to boil, he leaned against the