Love with the Proper Stranger (12 page)

He made his way to one of the more comfortable-looking lounge chairs instead. He’d have a clear view of Serena from there.

Serena was watching him. He could feel her glancing in his direction as he gingerly lowered himself into one of the chairs. From the corner of his eye, he saw her lean closer to the man she was talking to. The man turned to look over at the bar and nodded. As he walked away, Miller sensed more than saw Serena heading in his direction.

His cover flashed through his mind like words scrolling down a computer screen. He was Jonathan Mills. Harvard University, class of ‘80. M.B.A. from NYU in 1985. Car alarms. Hodgkin’s. Chemotherapy. Never married. Facing his own mortality and the end of his family line.

Forget about Mariah. God knows she’d be better off without a man like him in the long run. He was “The Robot,” for God’s sake. What would a woman who was so incredibly warm and alive want with a man rumored to have no soul?

“Are you feeling all right?” Serena’s cool English voice broke into his thoughts. He glanced over to find her settling onto the chair next to his. “Mariah was telling me how you’ve recently been ill.”

There was an unmistakable glint of interest in her eyes.

Miller nodded. “Yeah. I have been.” Across the deck he could see Mariah, a glass of something tall and cool
in each hand, held in conversation by the same man who’d been talking to Serena earlier. She glanced at him, but he looked away before she could meet his eyes.

“How awful,” Serena murmured.

“Mariah didn’t tell me anything at all about
you
,” Miller countered, knowing that everything she was about to tell him about herself would be a lie.

In the past, this game of pretend had had the power to excite him, to invigorate him. She would lie to him, and he would lie to her, and the game would go on and on and on until one of them slipped up.

It wouldn’t be him. It never was him.

But tonight he didn’t want to play. He wanted to turn back the clock and spend the next one hundred years of his life reliving this morning’s dawn, with Mariah in his arms, the taste of her kisses on his lips.

“I think our Mariah has something of a crush on you,” Serena told him. “I don’t think she was eager for you to meet me.”

Meaning that it was an indisputable fact that the moment Miller met Serena, he would turn away from Mariah, and—in Serena’s opinion—rightly so.

This woman’s self-confidence and ego were both the size of the Taj Mahal.

Miller leaned closer to Serena, feeling like Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane. “I don’t really know her—not very well. We just met a few days ago, and… I know we’re here together tonight, but we’re really just friends. She seems very nice, though.”

Meaning, he hadn’t made up his mind about anything.

“Tell me,” Miller said, “what’s a woman like you doing on Garden Isle all by yourself?”

Meaning Serena was definitely interesting and attractive to him with her petite, aerobicized body and her gleaming blond hair and killer smile.

Serena smiled.

The game had moved into the next round.

* * *

M
ARIAH FELT LIKE A GIANTESS
. Standing next to Serena, she felt like a towering football linebacker despite the dress and heels. Maybe
because
of the dress and heels. She felt as if she’d dressed up like this in an attempt to fool everyone into thinking she was delicate and feminine, but had failed.

Miserably.

John and Serena were deep in a conversation about Acapulco. Mariah had never been to Acapulco. When had she had the time? Up until just a few months ago, she hadn’t gone anywhere besides the office and to the occasional business meeting up in Lake Havasu City or Flagstaff.

Feeling dreadfully left out, but trying hard not to let it show, Mariah shifted her weight from one Amazon-sized leg to another and took a sip of her wine, wishing the alcohol would make her feel better, but knowing that drinking too much would only give her a headache in the morning.

This evening was
so
not what she’d hoped. Silly her. She’d never even considered the fact that Jonathan Mills would take one look at Serena and be smitten. But he was obviously infatuated with Mariah’s friend. He’d watched the blond woman constantly, all evening long. The few times Mariah had been alone with him, he’d talked only about Serena. He’d asked Mariah questions
about her. He’d commented on her hair, her house, her party, her shoes.

Her
tiny
shoes. Oh, he didn’t say anything about size, but Serena’s feet were small and feminine. Mariah hadn’t worn shoes that size since third grade.

All those signals she’d thought she’d picked up from him were wrong. Those kisses. Had he kissed her first, or had she kissed him? She couldn’t remember. It was entirely possible that she had made the first move this morning on the couch. She
knew
she’d made the first move down in the basement.

And each time she’d kissed him, he’d told her in plain English that he thought they should just be friends.

But did she listen? Nope, not her. But she was listening now. It was all that she could do—she had nothing worth adding to the conversation. Acapulco. Skiing in Aspen. John and Serena had so much in common. So much to talk about. Art museums they’d both been to in New York…

Serena seemed just as taken with John as he was with her. In spite of the fact that she herself had warned Mariah about becoming involved with a man who could very well die, Serena looked for all the world as if she was getting ready to reel John in.

Some friend.

Of course, Mariah had told Serena that she and John were just that—friends. Still, Mariah had the sense that even if she’d told her friend that she was already well on her way to falling in love with this man, Serena wouldn’t have given a damn.

Neither John nor Serena looked up as Mariah excused herself quietly and went back to the bar.

The hard, cold fact was that Mariah didn’t stand a chance with John if Serena decided that she wanted him for her own. And it sure seemed as if she wanted him.

Disgusted with all of them—herself included—Mariah set her empty glass down on the bar, shaking her head when the bartender asked if she wanted a refill. No, it was time to accept defeat and beat a retreat.

The bartender had a pen but no paper, so Mariah quickly wrote a note on a napkin. “I’m partied out, and I’ve got to be up early in the morning. I’ve gone ahead home—didn’t want you to feel obligated to drive me. Enjoy the rest of party. Mariah.”

She folded the napkin in half and asked the bartender to bring it to John in a minute or two.

Chin up, she silently commanded herself as she took off her shoes and went barefoot down the stairs that led to the beach. Jonathan Mills wasn’t the man she’d thought he was anyway. He was just another member of the jet set, able to talk for hours at a time about nothing of any importance whatsoever. Frankly, she’d expected more of him. More depth. More soul. She’d thought she’d seen more when she’d looked into his eyes.

She’d thought she’d seen a lover, but she’d only seen the most casual of acquaintances.

She headed down the beach, toward home, determined not to look back.

* * *

“J
OHN
.” T
HERE WAS THE
briefest flare of surprise in Daniel Tonaka’s eyes as he opened the door to his hotel room and saw Miller standing on the other side. “Is there a problem?”

Miller shook his head. What the hell was he doing here? “No. I…” He ran his hand through his too short
hair. “I saw that your light was still on and…” And what? “I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted, then shrugged. “What else is new?”

What was new was his admitting it.

Daniel didn’t comment, though. He just nodded, opening the door wider. “Come in.”

The hotel suite was smaller than Miller’s room, but decorated with the same style furniture, the same patterned curtains, the same color rug. Still, it seemed like another planet entirely, strange and alien. Miller stood awkwardly, uncertain whether to sit or stand or beat a quick exit before it was too late.

He remembered the way he used to go into Tony’s room without even knocking, the way he’d simply help himself to a beer from Tony’s refrigerator. He remembered the way they’d pick apart every word spoken in the course of the night’s investigation, hashing it out, searching for the hidden meanings and subtle clues, trying to figure out from what had—or hadn’t—been said, if their cover had been blown.

They’d done the same thing in high school, except back then the conversation had been about girls, about basketball, about the seemingly huge but in retrospect quite petty troubles they’d had with the two rival gangs that ruled the streets of their worn-out little town. They’d often been threatened and ordered to choose sides, but Tony had followed Miller’s lead and remained neutral. They were Switzerland, for no one and against no one.

Switzerland. God, Miller hadn’t thought about
that
in ages.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Daniel asked politely. “A beer?”

“Are you having one?”

Daniel shook his head. “I don’t drink.” He paused. “I thought you knew that.”

Miller gazed at him. “I knew that when you were around me, you chose not to drink. I didn’t want to assume that held for all the times you
weren’t
with me.”

“I don’t drink,” Daniel said again.

“I shouldn’t have bothered you. It’s late—”

“Be careful about coming on too strong with the suspect,” Daniel warned him.

Miller blinked. “Excuse me?”

The kid’s lips curved slightly in amusement. “I figured that’s why you came over here, right? To ask my opinion about where you stand with Serena Westford?”

Miller didn’t know why the hell he was here. He turned toward the door. “I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing.”

“John,” Daniel said, “sit down. Have a soda.” He unlocked the little self-service refrigerator and crouched down to look inside. “How about something without any caffeine?”

Miller found himself sitting down on the edge of the flower-patterned couch as Daniel set a pair of lemon-lime sodas on the coffee table.

Daniel sat across from him and opened one of the cans of soda. “I listened in on most of your conversations,” he said. “I think it went well—Serena kept talking about you even after you left. She was asking people if they knew you. She’s definitely interested. But she kept referring to you as Mariah’s friend, John, and it was more than just a way to identify you. I got the feeling that she’s getting off on the idea of stealing you away from her friend.”

Miller gazed at his partner. He’d never heard Daniel talk quite so much—and certainly not unless his opinion had been specifically solicited. “Yeah, I got that feeling, too,” he finally said.

“What are you going to do about it?” Daniel asked.

“What do
you
think I should do?”

It was clear that Daniel had already given this a great deal of thought. “The obvious solution is for you to see the friend again. Play Serena’s game. Hook her interest even further by making it seem as if you’re not going to be an easy catch.” The kid gazed down at the soda can in his hands as if seeing the bright-colored label for the first time. “But that doesn’t take into consideration other things.”

Other things. “Such as?”

Daniel looked up, squarely meeting Miller’s gaze. “Such as the fact that you really like this other lady. Mariah. Marie. Whatever she wants to call herself.”

Miller couldn’t deny it. But he could steer the conversation in a slightly different direction. “Mariah invited me to go out to the Triple F building site tomorrow morning.” Of course, that had been
before
he’d ignored her so completely at Serena’s party.

Daniel nodded. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

Miller had never hesitated over making this kind of a decision before. If he had a choice to do something that would further him in his case, by God, he’d do it. No questions, no doubt. But here he was wavering for fear of hurting someone’s feelings.

It was absurd.

And yet when he closed his eyes, he could still see Mariah, hurt enough to leave the party without him, but
kind enough to write a note telling him she was leaving. He could see her, head held high as she went down the stairs to the beach.

He’d left the party soon after and followed her to make sure she’d arrived home safely. He’d sat in his car on the street with his lights off and watched her move about her house through the slats in her blinds. He watched her disappear down the hall to her bedroom, unzipping the back of that incredible dress as she went.

She’d returned only a moment later, dressed in the same kind of oversize T-shirt that she’d worn to bed the night before. When she’d curled up on the couch with a book he’d driven away—afraid if he stayed much longer he’d act on the urge to get out of the car, knock on her door and apologize until she let him in.

And once she let him in, he knew damn well he’d end up in her bed. He’d apologize and she’d eventually accept. He’d touch her, and it wouldn’t be long until they kissed. And once he kissed her, there’d be no turning back. The attraction between them was too hot, too volatile.

And then she would
really
be hurt—after he slept with her, then married her best friend.

So he’d make damn sure that he wouldn’t sleep with her.

He’d show up in front of the library tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. He’d see her again—God, he wanted to see her again—but in public, where there’d be no danger of intimacies getting out of hand. Somehow he’d make her understand that their relationship was to be nothing more than a friendship, all the while making Serena believe otherwise. Then Serena could “steal” him from Mariah without Mariah getting hurt.

Miller stood up. “I’m going to do it. Figure I’ll be out of the picture all day tomorrow.”

Daniel rose to his feet, too. “I’ll stay near Serena.” Miller turned to leave, but Daniel’s quiet voice stopped him. “You know, John, we could do this another way.” His cover was all set up. He was here, he was in place. And all of his reasons for not going ahead would be purely personal. He’d never pulled out of a case for personal reasons before and he sure as hell wasn’t about to start now.