"Woods, Stuart - White Cargo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Woods Stuart)

Jinx came up the companionway ladder with orange juice and coffee on a
tray and sat beside him, bracing her feet on the cockpit seat opposite.

She seemed to be wearing only a T-shirt; the girl rarely bothered with
underwear, and it made Cat nervous. Never mind that he had powdered her
bottom and changed her a thousand times; at eighteen, she was tall,
slender, and full-breasted, just like her mother, and even more
beautiful--heart-stoppingly beautiful. Cat was afraid that some movie
agent was going to capture her out of a university theater production
and whisk her off to be a starlet. Cat had a theory that beautiful women
were at a disadvantage in the world, that once their looks opened a few
doors, they would be exploited and used up while they were young and
left with no better alternative than marriage to the richest and least
unattractive man available. He had seen these women in bars and around
hotel swimming pools, worrying about the sag of their breasts and the
wrinkles at the corners of their eyes, contemplating the latest cosmetic
surgery. Jinx was a smart kid, and he wanted her to have a career that
would give her some independence and self-esteem. When she had graduated
from high school, he'd taken her aside. She had laughed aloud at his
concerns.

"Me a cheerleader, entering beauty contests? Come on, Cat, you know me
better than that!"

He was glad to postpone her college for a couple of years and show her
some of the world. More than that, he was glad to have her close to him
for a little while longer before she flew the coop entirely. Cat didn't
know whether she was still a virgin, and he wasn't about to ask her, but
he thought the chances were good that she was. They'd always kept a
tight rein on her, and she had usually accepted their judgment with good
grace. Not that she had been unduly sheltered; she'd had a full social
life in high school, but none of the weekend house parties with
fraternity boys three and four years older, none of the drinking and
drug use. She expressed contempt for all that. There was a quiet wisdom
about Jinx that contrasted sharply with her line of bright patter and
her extraordinary, dark beauty.

There was also a naivete--Cat thought she was still not fully aware of
the effect her bun-revealing shorts and tiny bikinis had on the opposite
sex, not excluding himself. For all her native intelligence, she was
still very much the child-woman. These two years of sailing were going
to be precious to him--die rare gift of an extension of what had always
been a remarkably close father-daughter relationship.

They sailed along quietly for a couple of minutes, then, without any
warning, she said, "Daddy, what about Dell?"

Cat's stomach knotted at the sound of his son's name.

"What about him?"