Suzanne Brockmann - Unstoppable - Love With The Proper Stranger / Letters To Kelly

He had to look away before he could speak.

“It’s not that I don’t want to, because I do,” he told her. “It’s just…”

Miller could feel her moving, straightening her T-shirt, sitting up on the other end of the couch. “It’s all right. You don’t have to explain.”

“I don’t want to rush things,” he said, wishing he could tell her the truth. But what was the truth? That he couldn’t make love to her because he was intending to woo and marry a woman she considered one of her closest friends?

He had to stop thinking like John Miller and start thinking like Jonathan Mills. He had to become Jonathan Mills, and his reality—and the truth—would change, too. But he’d never had so much trouble taking on a different persona before.

“I’m not ready to do more than just be friends with you, Mariah. I just got out of the hospital, my latest test results aren’t even in and…” He broke off, staring out the window at the dawn breaking on the horizon, Jonathan Mills all but forgotten. “It’s morning.”

As Mariah watched, John stood up, transfixed by the smear of color in the eastern sky.

“I slept until morning,” he said, turning to look at her. He smiled—a slight lifting of one side of his mouth, but a smile just the same. “Whoa. How’d that happen?”

She smiled back at him. “I guess you’re going to have to admit that my silly relaxation exercise worked.”

He shook his head in wonder, just gazing at her. She could still see heat in his eyes and she knew he could see the same in hers.

He looked impossibly good with his shirt off and the top button of his jeans still unfastened. He was maybe just a little bit too skinny, but it was clear that before his illness he’d been in exceptionally good shape.

She could guess why he didn’t want to become involved with her. He was just out of the hospital, he’d said. He didn’t even know if he was going to live or die. And if he thought he was going to die…

Another man might have more of a live-for-today attitude. But John refused to take advantage of her. He was trying to keep her from being hurt, to keep her from becoming too involved in what could quite possibly be a dead-end relationship in a very literal sense.

But it was too late. She already was involved.

It was crazy—she should be pushing to keep her distance, not wanting to get closer to him. She didn’t need to fall for some guy who was going to go and die. She should find his shirt for him, and help him out the door.

But he found his shirt on his own, on the floor next to the couch. He slipped it on. “I better go.”

He didn’t want to leave. She could see it in his eyes. And when he leaned over to kiss her goodbye—not just once, but twice, then three times, each kiss longer than the last—she thought he just might change his mind.

But he didn’t. He finally pulled away, backing toward the door.

“I’d love it if you came over for dinner again tonight,” she told him, knowing that she was risking everything—everything—with her invitation.

Something shifted in his eyes. “I’m not sure I can.”

Mariah was picking up all kinds of mixed signals from him. First those lingering goodbye kisses, and now this evasiveness. It didn’t make sense. Or maybe it made perfect sense. Mariah wasn’t sure which—she’d never been this intimate with someone dealing with a catastrophic illness before.

“Call me,” Mariah told him, adding softly, “if you want.”

He looked back at her one more time before going out the door. “I want. I’m just not sure I should.”

SERENA WENT THROUGH the sliding glass doors, past the dining table and directly into the kitchen, raising her voice so that Mariah could hear from her vantage point on the deck. “Thank God you’re home. I’m so thirsty, I was sure I was going to die if I had to wait until I got all the way to my place.”

“Your place is not that much farther up the road.” Mariah glanced up from the piles of black-and-white photographs she was sorting as Serena sat down across from her at the table on the deck, a tall glass of iced tea in hand.

“Three miles,” Serena told her after taking a long sip. “I couldn’t have made it even one-tenth of a mile. Bless you for keeping this in the icebox, already chilled. I was parched.” She leaned forward to pull one of the pictures out from the others, pointing with one long, perfectly manicured fingernail. “Is that me?”

Mariah looked closely. Ever since her initial meeting with Serena, she had tried to be careful not to offend her friend by taking her picture. Or rather, she had tried not to offend Serena by letting her know her picture was being taken. Mariah had actually managed to get several excellent photographs of the beautiful Englishwoman—taken, no less, with one of those cheap little disposable cameras. Serena was incredibly photogenic, and in color, even on inexpensive film, her inner vibrance was emphasized. Mariah was careful to keep those pictures hidden.

But yes, that was definitely Serena, caught in motion at the edge of a particularly nice shot of the resort beach, moments before a storm struck. “You must’ve walked into the shot,” Mariah said.

Serena picked it up, looking at it more closely. “I’m a big blur—except for my face.” She lifted her gaze to Mariah. “Do you have any copies of this?”

Mariah sifted through the pile that photo had been in. “No, I don’t think so.”

“How about the negative? You still have that, right?”

Mariah sighed. “I don’t know. It might be down in the darkroom, but it might’ve been in the batch I just brought over to B&W Photo Lab for safekeeping.”

“Safekeeping?” Serena’s voice rose an octave in disbelief. “Forgive me for being insensitive, but, Mariah sweetheart, no one’s going to want to steal your negatives. You know I love you madly, dearest, but it’s not as if you’re Ansel Adams.”

Mariah laughed. “I bring them to B&W for storage. I don’t have air-conditioning here, and the humidity and salt air are hell on film.”

Serena slipped the photo in question into her purse. “You realize, of course, that I’m going to have to kill you now for stealing my soul,” she said with a smile.

“Hey, you were the one who stuck your soul into my shot,” Mariah protested. “Besides, I’ll get the negative next time I’m over at B&W. You can have it, and your soul will be as good as new.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise. Although it occurs to me that you might want to get yourself a more American approach to having your picture taken. You’re not living in Africa anymore.”

“Thank God.” Serena took another sip of her drink. “So. How are you?”

“Fine.” Mariah glanced suspiciously at the other woman. “Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“Don’t I look fine?”

Serena rested her chin in the palm of her hand, studying Mariah with great scrutiny. “Actually, you don’t look half as fine as I would have thought.”

Mariah just waited.

“You’re not going to tell me a thing, are you?” Serena asked. “You’re going to make me ask, aren’t you? You’re going to make me pull every little last juicy detail out of you.”

Mariah went back to work. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about the man.”

“What man?”

“The one I saw leaving your house at five-thirty this morning. Tall, dark and probably handsome—although I’m not certain. I was too far away to see details.”

Mariah was floored. “What on earth were you doing up at five-thirty in the morning?”

“I get up that early every morning and go over to use the resort health club,” Serena told her.