Читать книгу Unstoppable - Suzanne Brockmann - Страница 13

Chapter Four

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 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.

“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?”

“I don’t know—who cares?”

“I care. Take a guess.”

Mariah sighed in exasperation. “Filthy rich, I think. He inherited a company that makes car alarms.”

“You said he’s been ill? Nothing serious, I hope.”

Mariah sighed again. “Actually, it is serious. He’s got cancer. He’s just had a round of chemotherapy. I think the prognosis is good, but there’s never any guarantees with something like this.”

“What did you say his name was?”

“Jonathan Mills.”

“It’s probably smart to keep your distance. If you’re not careful, you could end up a widow. Of course, in his case, that means you’d inherit his car alarm fortune, so it could be worse—”

”Serena!” Mariah stared at her friend. “Don’t even think that. He’s not going to die.”

The blonde was unperturbed. “You just told me that he might.” She stood up. “Look, I’ve got to run. Thanks for the tea. See you later tonight.”

Mariah frowned. “Later…tonight?”

“My party. You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? Lord, Mariah, you’re hopeless without your date book.”

“No, I’m relaxed without my date book. Oh, that reminds me—can I borrow your car this afternoon? Just for an hour?”

Serena looked at her watch. “I’m getting my hair done at half past two. If you want to drive me to the salon, you can use the car for about an hour then.”

“Perfect. Except I’m not sure I can make it to the party—I’m tentatively scheduled to have dinner again with John.” Except she wasn’t. Not really. She’d asked, but he’d run away.

“Bring him. Call him, invite him to my party, and bring him along with you. I want to meet this friend of yours. No excuses,” Serena said sternly as she disappeared down the deck steps.

Mariah gazed after her. Call him. Invite him to the party. Who knows? Maybe he’d actually agree to go.

HE WAS THE ONE. THE gray-faced man from the resort.

She’d recognized him right away.

The fact that he’d spent the night with that silly cow only served to make him even more perfect.

Tonight she would begin to cast her spell.

Tonight she would allow herself to start thinking about the dinner she would serve him.

Oh, it was still weeks away—maybe even months. But it was coming. She could taste it.

And tomorrow morning, she would go shopping for the perfect knife.

THE MESSAGE LIGHT ON HIS telephone was blinking when Miller returned to his suite of rooms after lunch.

Daniel had the portable surveillance equipment set up in the living room. The system was up and running when Miller came in. Daniel was wearing headphones, listening intently, using his laptop computer to control the volume of the different microphones they’d distributed throughout Serena Westford’s house. The DAT recorder was running—making a permanent record of every word spoken in the huge beach house.

“Lots of activity,” Daniel reported, his eyes never leaving his computer screen. “Some kind of party is happening over at the spider’s web tonight.”

“I know.” Miller picked up the phone and dialed the resort desk. “Jonathan Mills,” he said. “Any messages?”

“A Mariah Robinson asked to leave voice mail. Shall I connect you to that now, sir?” the desk clerk asked.

“Yes. Please.”

There was a whirr and a click, and then Mariah’s voice came on the line.

“John. Hi. It’s me, Mariah. Robinson. From, um, last night? God, I sound totally lame. Of course you know who I am. I just… I wanted to invite you to a party that a friend is having tonight—”

“Jackpot,” Miller said.

Daniel glanced in his direction. “Party invitation?”

Miller nodded, holding up his hand. Mariah’s message wasn’t over yet.

“…going to start at around nine,” her voice said, “and I was thinking that maybe we could have dinner together first—if you’re free. If you want to.” He heard her draw in a deep breath. “I’d really like to see you again. I guess that’s kind of obvious, considering everything that happened this morning.” She hesitated. “So, call me, all right?” She left her phone number, then the message ended.

Miller really wanted to see her again, too. Really wanted to see her again.

Daniel glanced at him one more time, and Miller realized he was standing there, staring at nothing, listening to nothing. He quickly hung up the phone.

“Everything all right?” Daniel asked.

“Yeah.” He was well aware that Daniel had said not one word about the fact that Miller hadn’t come back to the hotel last night until after dawn. The kid hadn’t even lifted an eyebrow.

But now Daniel cleared his throat. “John, I don’t mean to pry, but—”

“Then don’t,” Miller said shortly. “Not that it’s any of your business, but nothing happened last night.” But even as he said the words, Miller knew they were a lie. Something had happened last night. Mariah Robinson had touched him, and for nearly eight hours, his demons had been kept at bay.

Something very big had happened last night.

For the first time since forever, John Miller had slept.

MARIAH WAS DRESSING UP.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn anything besides shorts and a T-shirt or a bathing suit. She’d gone to Serena’s other parties in casual clothes. But tonight, she’d pulled her full collection of dresses—all four of ’em—out of the back of her closet. Three of them were pretty standard Sunday-best, goin’-to-meeting-type affairs, with tiny, demure flowers and conservative necklines.

The fourth was black. It was a short-sleeved sheath cut fashionably above the knee, with a sweetheart neckline that would draw one’s eyes—preferably Jonathan Mills’s eyes—to her plentiful assets. Her full breasts were, depending on her mood, one of her best features or one of her worst. Tonight, she was going to think positively. Tonight they were an asset.

She briefly considered sheer black stockings, but rejected them in place of bare legs and a healthy coating of Cutter’s—in consideration of the sultry evening heat.

Usually when she went out with a man, she wore flats, but Jonathan Mills was tall enough for her to wear heels. They might make her stand nose to nose with him, but she wouldn’t tower over him.

Since the moment he’d called to tell her that he wasn’t available for dinner but he’d love to go to the party with her, Mariah had been walking on air. She was ridiculously excited about seeing him again—she’d thought about almost nothing else all afternoon.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this way. Even in college, when she was first dating Trevor, she hadn’t felt this giddy.

Even the dark cloud of anxiety cast by John’s potentially terminal illness didn’t faze her tonight. They’d caught the cancer early, he’d told her. The survival rate for this type of cancer was high. He was going to live. Positive thinking.

Mariah felt another surge of anticipation as she slipped into her shoes and stepped back to look at herself in the mirror.

She looked…sexy. She looked…well proportioned. It was true that those proportions were extra large, but they had to be to fit her height. And in this case, she was using her body to her advantage. In this dress, with this neckline, she had cleavage with a capital C. All that without a WonderBra in sight.

The doorbell rang, and she smoothed the dress over her hips one last time, leaning closer to check her lipstick.

Ready or not, her date had come.

Praying that she wasn’t coming on too strong, what with the attack of the monster cleavage and all, Mariah opened her front door.

“Hi,” she said breathlessly.

John’s eyes skimmed down her once, then twice, then more slowly, before coming back to rest on her face as he smiled. “Wow. You look…incredible.”

She stepped back and opened the door wider to let him in.

“Incredibly tall,” he added as he noted the heels that put them eye to eye.

Was that a compliment? Mariah took it as one. “Thank you,” she said, leading the way into the kitchen. “I’m ready to go, but I wanted to show you something first.”

He was dressed a whole lot more casually than she, in a faded pair of jeans, time-softened leather boat shoes and a sport jacket over a plain T-shirt.

“I think I might be underdressed,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it. Knowing Serena’s friends, there’ll be an equal mix of sequined gowns and tank tops over swimsuits.” Mariah opened the door to the basement.

“Serena?” he asked.

“Westford,” she told him, turning on the switch that lit the stairs going down. “She lives a little more than three miles north, just up the road.”

“Is she one of the Boston Westfords? Funny, maybe I know one of her brothers.”

Mariah shook her head, poised at the top of the stairs. “She hasn’t talked about Boston. Or any brothers. When we met, she did give me a business card with a Hartford hotel, but I think that was only a temporary address. I think she lived in Paris for a few years.” She started down, careful of the rough wooden steps in her heels. “Aren’t you coming?”

“Into the basement? Is your darkroom down there?”

“My darkroom’s down here,” Mariah told him, “but that’s not what I want to show you.”

She turned on another light.

The ceiling was low, and both she and John had to duck to avoid pipes and beams. But it was a nice basement, as far as basements went. The concrete floor had been painted a light shade of gray and it had been carefully swept. Boxes were neatly stacked on utility shelves that lined most of the walls.

A washer and dryer stood in one corner, along with a table for folding laundry. Another corner had been walled off to make the darkroom.

But she led him to the open area of the basement, where an entire concrete-block wall and the floor beneath it had been cleared. Only one box sat nearby, in the middle of the room on top of a broken chair.

Mariah reached inside and pulled out one of the plates she’d bought dirt cheap at a tag sale that afternoon, when she’d borrowed Serena’s car. It was undeniably one of the ugliest china patterns she’d ever seen in her life. She handed it to John.

He stared at it, perplexed.

“It occurred to me this morning that you probably never give yourself the opportunity to really vent,” she explained.

“Vent.”

“Yes.” She took another plate from the box. “Like this.” As hard as she could, she hurled the china plate against the wall. It smashed into a thousand pieces with a resounding and quite satisfying crash.

John laughed, but then stopped. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No.” She gestured to the plate in his hands. “Try it.”

He hesitated. “Don’t these belong to someone?”

“No. Look at it, John. Have you ever eaten off something that unappetizing? It’s begging for you to break it and put it out of its misery.”

He hefted it in his hand.

“Just do it. It feels…liberating.” Mariah took another plate from the box and sent it smashing into the wall. “Oh, yeah!”

John turned suddenly and, throwing the plate like a Frisbee, shattered it against the wall.

Mariah handed him another one. “Good, huh?”

“Yeah.”

She took another herself. “This one’s for my father, who didn’t even ask if I wanted to spend nearly seven years of my life working eighty-hour weeks, who didn’t even try to quit smoking or lose weight after his doctor told him he was a walking heart attack waiting to happen, and who died before I could tell him that I loved him, the bastard.” The plate exploded as it hit the wall.

John threw his, too, and reached into the box for another before she could hand him one.

“This one’s the head of the bank officer who wouldn’t approve the Johnsons’ loan for a Foundations for Families house even when the deacons of their church offered to co-sign it, all on account of the fact that she’s a recovering alcoholic and he’s an ex-con, even though they both have good, steady jobs now, and they both volunteer all the time as sponsors for AA.”

The two plates hit the wall almost simultaneously.

“We only have time for one more,” Mariah said, breathing hard as she prepared to throw her last plate of the evening. “Who’s this one for, John? You call it.”

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Sure you can. It’s easy.”

“No.” He glanced at the plate he was holding loosely in his hands. “It gets too complicated.”

“Are you kidding? It simplifies things. You break a plate instead of someone’s face.”

“It’s not always that easy.” He gazed searchingly into her eyes as if trying to find the words to explain. But he gave up, shaking his head. Then he swore suddenly, sharply. “This one’s for me.” He threw the plate against the wall so hard that shards of ceramic shot back at them. He moved quickly, shielding her.

“Whoa!” Mariah said. She wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that, but he was catching on.

“I’m sorry. God—”

“No, that was good,” she said. “That was very good.”

He had a tiny piece of broken plate in his hair, and she stepped toward him to pull it free.

He smelled delicious, like faintly exotic cologne and coffee.

“We should get going,” he murmured, but he didn’t step back, and she didn’t, either, even after the ceramic shard was gone.

As Mariah watched, his gaze flickered to her mouth and then back to her eyes. He shook his head very slightly. “I shouldn’t kiss you.”

“Why not?” He’d shaved, probably right before he’d come to pick her up, and his cheeks looked smooth and soft. Mariah couldn’t resist touching his face, and when she did, he closed his eyes.

“Because I won’t want to stop,” he whispered.

She leaned forward and brushed his lips with hers. With her heels on, she didn’t even need to stand on her toes. She kissed him again, as softly and gently as before, and he groaned, pulling her into his arms and covering her mouth with his.

Mariah closed her eyes as he kissed her hungrily, his tongue possessively claiming her mouth, his hands claiming her body with the same proprietary familiarity.

But just as suddenly as he’d given in to his need to kiss her, he pulled himself away, holding her at arm’s length. “You’re dangerous,” he gasped, half laughing, half groaning. “What am I going to do with you?”

Mariah smiled.

“No,” John said, backing even farther away. “Don’t answer that.”

“I didn’t say anything,” she protested.

“You didn’t have to. That wicked smile said more than enough.”

Mariah started back up the stairs. “What wicked smile? That was just a regular smile.”

When she reached the top of the stairs, she realized he wasn’t behind her.

“John?” she called.

From the basement, she heard the sound of a shattering plate.

“Did that help?” she asked with a smile, as he came up the stairs.

He shook his head. “No.” His expression was so somber, his eyes so bleak, all laughter gone from his face. “Mariah, I’m…I’m really sorry.”

“Why, because you want to take some time before becoming involved? Because you’re trying to deal with a life-threatening illness? Because it’s so damn unfair and you’re mad as hell? Don’t be sorry about that.” She gazed at him. “We don’t have to go to this party. We can stay here and break some more plates.” She paused. “Or we could talk.”

He tried to smile, but it didn’t quite cancel out the sadness in his eyes. “No, let’s do it,” he said. “I’m ready to go.” He took a deep breath. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”