LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Miller quickly made a fist. "Now what?"

  "Now relax every other muscle in your body – but keep that fist tight. Start with your toes, then your feet. You've surely done that exercise where you relax every muscle, first in your legs and then your arms and then all the way up to your neck?"

  "Yeah, but it doesn't work," he said flatly.

  "Yes, it does. I'll talk you through it. Start with your feet. Flex them, flex your toes, then relax them. Do it a couple of times."

  She ran her fingers through his hair, massaging the back of his head and even his temples. Christ, it felt heavenly.

  "Okay, now do the same thing with your calves," she told him. "Tighten, then relax. You know, this is actually an exercise from a Lamaze childbirthing class. The mothers-to-be learn to keep the rest of their bodies relaxed while one muscle is tensed and working hard. Of course they can't practice with the actual muscle that's going to be contracting, so they contract something else, like a fist." Her voice was soft and as soothing as her hands. Despite himself, he felt his tension draining away. He actually felt himself start to relax. "Okay, tighten and relax the rest of your legs. Are you doing it? Are you loose?"

  He felt her reach down with one hand and touch his legs, shaking them slightly.

  "That's pretty good, John. You're doing great. Relax your hips and stomach...and your rear end. And don't forget to breathe – slow it down, take your time. But keep that fist tight."

  Miller felt as if he were floating.

  "Okay, now relax your shoulders and your arms. Relax your left hand – everything but that right fist. Keep holding that."

  He could feel her touching him, her hands light against his back, caressing his shoulders and arms.

  "Relax the muscles in your face," she told him softly. Her husky, musical voice seemed to come from a great distance. "Loosen your jaw. Let it drop open.

  "Okay, now relax your right hand. Open it up as if you're setting everything free – all of your tension and stress. Just let it go."

  Let it go.

  Let it go.

  Miller did as she commanded, and before he could stop himself, he sank into a deep, complete, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 4

  Mariah woke up, heart pounding, sure she'd been dreaming.

  But then she heard it again. A strangled, anguished cry from the living room. She nearly knocked over the lamp on her bedside table as she lunged for it, using both hands to flip the switch.

  Four fifty-eight. It was 4:58 in the morning.

  And that was Jonathan Mills making those noises out in her living room.

  He'd fallen asleep on her couch. He'd lain there motionless, as thoroughly out cold as if he'd been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. Mariah had stayed up reading for as long as she could, but had finally given in to her own fatigue. She hadn't had the heart to wake him and send him home.

  She'd put an old blanket under the patio table for Princess to curl up on and covered John with a light sheet before she went to bed herself.

  He cried out again, and she went out into the hall, turning on the light.

  He was still asleep, still on the couch. He'd thrown off the sheet, shifting onto his back. Perspiration shone on his face and chest as he moved restlessly.

  He was having a nightmare.

  "John." Mariah knelt next to him. "John, wake up."

  She touched him gently on the shoulder, but he didn't seem to feel her. His eyes opened, but he didn't even seem to see her. What he did see, she couldn't imagine – the look of sheer horror on his face was awful. And then he cried out, a not quite human sounding "No!" that ripped from his throat. And then the horror turned to rage. "No!" he shouted again. "No!"

  He grabbed her by the upper arms, and Mariah felt a flash of real fear as his fingers bit harshly into her. For one terrifying moment, she was sure he was going to fling her across the room. Whoever it was he saw here in her place, he was intending to hurt and hurt badly. She tried to pull away, but he only tightened his grip, making her squeal with pain.

  "Ow! John! God! Wake up! It's me, Mariah! Don't—"

  Recognition flared in his eyes. "Oh, God."

  He released her, and she fell back on the rug on her rear end and elbows. She pushed herself away from him, scooting back until she bumped into an easy chair.

  She was breathing hard, and he was, too, as he sat, almost doubled over on the couch.

  The shock in his eyes was unmistakable. "Mariah, I'm sorry," he rasped. "What the hell happened? I was ... God, I was dreaming about—" He cut himself off abruptly. "Did I hurt you? God, I didn't mean to hurt you..."

  Mariah rubbed her arms. Already she could see faint bruises where his fingers had pressed too hard in the soft underside of her upper arms. "You scared me," she admitted. "You were so angry and—"

  "I'm sorry," he said again. "Oh, God." He stood up. "I better go. I'm so sorry..."

  As Mariah watched, he turned to search for his T-shirt. He couldn't find it and he had to sit down on the couch again for a moment because he was shaking. He was actually physically shaking.

  "You don't ever let yourself get good and angry, Mariah realized suddenly. "Do you?"

  "Do you have a shirt I can borrow? Mine's gone."

  "You don't, do you?" she persisted.

  He could barely meet her eyes. "No. Getting angry doesn't solve anything."

  "Yeah, but sometimes it makes you feel better." She crawled back toward him. "John, when was the last time you let yourself cry?"

  He shook his head. "Mariah—"

  "You don't cry, either, do you?" she said, sitting next to him on the couch. "You just live with all of your fear and anger and grief all bottled up inside. No wonder you have nightmares!"

  Miller turned away from her, desperate to find his shirt, desperate to be out of there, away from the fear he'd seen in her eyes. God, he could have hurt her so badly.

  But then she touched him. His hand, his shoulder, her fingers soft against the side of his face, and he realized there was no fear in her eyes anymore. There was only sweet concern.

  Her face was clean of any makeup and her hair was mussed from sleep. She was wearing an oversize T-shirt that barely covered the tops of her thighs, exposing the full length of her statuesque legs. Her smooth, soft skin seemed to radiate heat.

  He reached for her almost blindly, wanting only...what? Miller didn't know what he wanted. All he knew was that she was there, offering comfort that he couldn't keep himself from taking.

  She seemed to melt into his arms, her face lifted toward his, and then he was kissing her.

  Her lips were warm and soft and so incredibly sweet. He kissed her harder, drinking of her thirstily, unable to get enough.

  Her body was so soft, her breasts brushing against his chest, and he pulled her closer. She fit against him so perfectly, the room seemed to spin around him. He wanted to touch her everywhere. He wanted to pull off her shirt and feel her smooth skin against his.

  He pulled her back with him onto the couch and their legs intertwined. Not for the first time that night, Miller wished he'd worn shorts instead of jeans.

  He shifted his weight and nestled between the softness of her thighs, nearly delirious with need as he kissed her harder, deeper.

  This was one hell of a bad mistake.

  She pushed herself tightly against him, and he pushed the thought away, refusing to think at all, losing himself in her kisses, in the softness of her breast cupped in his hand.

  She was opening herself to him, so generously giving him everything he asked for, and more.

  And he was going to use her to satisfy his sexual desires, then walk away from her without looking back the moment she introduced him to Serena Westford – her friend, his chief suspect.

  He couldn't do this. How could he do this and look himself in the eye in the mirror while he shaved each morning?

  But look where he was. Poised on the edge of total ecstasy. Inches away from paradise.

>   He pulled back, and she smiled up at him, hooking her legs around him, her hands slipping down to his buttocks and pressing him securely against her.

  "John, don't stop," she whispered. "In case you haven't noticed, I am coming on to you now."

  "I don't have any protection," he lied.

  "I do," she told him. "In my bedroom." She reached between them, her fingers unfastening the top button of his jeans. "I can get it..."

  Miller felt himself weaken. She wanted him. She couldn't be any more obvious about it.

  He let her pull his head down toward hers for another kiss, let her stroke the solid length of his arousal through the denim of his jeans, all the while cursing his inability to keep this from going too far.

  He was a lowlife. He was a snake. And after all was said and done, she would hate him forever.

  Somehow, Miller found the strength to pull back from her, out of her arms, outside the reach of her hands. "I can't do this," he said, nearly choking on the words. He sat on the edge of the couch, turned away from her, running his shaking hands through his hair. "Mariah, I can't take advantage of you this way."

  She touched his back gently, lightly. "You're not taking advantage of me," she said quietly. "I promise."

  He turned to look at her. Big mistake. She looked incredible with her T-shirt pushed up and twisted around her waist. She was wearing high-cut white cotton panties that were far sexier than any satin or lace he'd ever seen. She wanted to make love to him. He could reach for her and have that T-shirt and those panties off of her in less than a second. He could be inside of her in the time it took to go into her bedroom and find her supply of condoms.

  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 take
n. 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.

  "You're kidding. Five-thirty? Every morning?"

  "Just about. This morning the tide was low, so I rode my bike along the beach. And as I went past your place, I distinctly saw a man emerging from your deck door. I'm assuming he wasn't the refrigerator repairman."

  "No, he wasn't." Mariah didn't look up from her photos.

  "Well...?"

  "Well what?"

  "This is the place in the conversation where you tell me who he is, where you met him, and any other fascinating facts such as whether he was any good in bed, and so on and so forth?"

  Mariah felt herself blush. "Serena, we're just friends."

  "A friend who happens to stay until dawn? How modern of you, Mariah."

  "He came over for dinner and fell asleep on my couch. He's been ill recently." Mariah hesitated, wanting to tell Serena about Jonathan Mills, but not wanting to tell too much. "His name is John, and he's very nice. He's staying over at the resort."

  "So he's rich," Serena surmised. "Medium rich or filthy rich?"