God, had she insulted him? “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that your hair looks bad…or anything…” Her voice trailed off.
He finally smiled. “It’s okay. I know exactly what it looks like, and it looks much better than it did a few days ago.”
He had a nice smile. It was only a small smile, barely playing about the corners of his elegantly shaped lips, but it was very nice just the same.
He looked down at the camera she was holding, its strap still encircling her arm. “Are you a professional photographer?” he asked.
Mariah shook her head. “No, no, I’m…not.” God, what was her problem? It had been two decades since she was a seventh grader, so why was she suddenly acting like one? “It’s a hobby.”
Was it her imagination, or had Jonathan Mills just gone another shade paler?
“I’ve got a camera, too,” he said, “though I’ve got to confess I’m not sure I can get it to work. I bought it a few years ago and don’t use it much. Would you mind if I brought it over sometime? Maybe you could show me how it works.”
Would she mind? “Of course not.”
He looked down the beach in the direction of the resort. “I think I better go,” he said.
He was more pale. And perspiration was beading on his upper lip. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. The morning sun was hot, but it wasn’t that hot.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He pressed his temples with both hands. “I’m not sure. I’m feeling a little…faint.”
He was a stranger. Mariah knew she shouldn’t invite him into her house. But it couldn’t hurt to bring him up so he could sit for a minute in the shade on her deck, could it?
“Why don’t you come up to the house and sit in the shade?” she suggested. “I’ve got some iced tea in the fridge.”
Jonathan nodded. “Thanks.”
His entire face was slick with sweat as he followed Mariah up toward the cottage.
Even Princess was subdued, trailing after them quietly.
Mariah walked backward, watching him worriedly. “You’re not, like, having a heart attack on me, are you?”
Whatever was happening, he was hurting. His lips twisted in a smilelike grimace. “My heart’s fine.”
Mariah could see that it took him some effort to speak, so she didn’t ask any other questions. He staggered slightly, and she quickly moved to help him, unthinkingly supporting him by putting her arm around his back and his arm across her shoulders.
He was warm and he was solid and he was pressed against her side from her underarm all the way to her thighs. She may have reached for him unthinkingly, but now that she was in this rather intimate position, she could do nothing but think.
When was the last time she’d walked arm in arm with a man like this?
Never.
The thought flashed crazily through her mind as she misinterpreted her own silent question. She’d walked arm in arm with plenty of men—although not recently—but she’d never walked arm in arm with a man like this.
Jonathan Mills was different from all of the men she’d ever known. Including Trevor. Maybe especially Trevor.
“I’m really sorry about this,” he murmured as they reached the stairs that led to her deck.
“Can you make it up here?” Mariah asked.
But he’d already started to lower himself down so that he was sitting on the third step. He shook his head. “Can you do me a favor?”
“I can try.”
“Call my assistant at the resort. His name’s Daniel Tonaka. Room 756. Will you ask him to come and please pick me up?”
“Of course.”
Mariah took the steps up two at a time, leaving Princess sitting and worriedly watching her master.
It didn’t take long to make the phone call. She woke Daniel Tonaka up, but he snapped instantly awake. She gave him directions, and he told her he was on his way. Mariah had to wonder. Did this happen often?
She poured a plastic tumbler of iced tea as she spoke on the phone, then carried it back to the deck. “It shouldn’t take him much more than ten minutes to get over here from the resort....”
Jonathan Mills was no longer sitting on the stairs. He wasn’t on the deck, and she would have seen him if he’d come into the house…
Down in the sandy yard, Princess barked sharply. Mariah went halfway down the stairs and then she saw Jonathan.
He was crumpled in the sand, out cold.
At first she thought he was dead, he was lying there so completely motionless. She set the glass of iced tea down on the stairs but knocked it over in her haste to get down to him as quickly as possible.
She found the pulse in his neck beating slowly and steadily and she breathed a sigh of relief. His skin was warm and the stubble from his chin felt rough against her fingers. When was the last time she’d touched a man’s face? Surely not an entire five years, back before Trevor finally left? Still, she honestly couldn’t remember.
“John,” she said softly, trying to rouse him but not wanting to shout in his ear.
He groaned and stirred, but didn’t open his eyes.
Mariah could feel the early morning sun already beating down on her head and her back. “John,” she said again, louder this time, touching his shoulder. “Come on, wake up. We’ve got to get you out of the sun.”
He was a large man, but Mariah was no lightweight herself, and she was able to hoist him up by taking hold under both arms. As she dragged him toward the shade, he roused slightly, trying to help her. He opened his eyes, but quickly shut them, wincing against the brightness of the sun.
“God, what happened?”
“I think you fainted,” she told him.
There was a bit of shade at the side of the house, and he sank to the ground.
“Can you sit up?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Still dizzy.”
He lay on his back, right there on the sandy ground. His eyes were closed, and he had one arm thrown across them as if for added protection from the brightness. There were bits of gravel and sand stuck to the side of his face, and Mariah gently brushed them off.
“John, I’m going to go get some cold towels,” she told him. “Don’t try to stand up, all right?”
“Yeah,” he managed to say.
Mariah dashed back up the stairs and into the house. She grabbed two hand towels from the linen closet, stopping only to dampen one with cool water in the kitchen sink.
Jonathan hadn’t moved when she reached him, but he did open his eyes again at the sound of her footsteps. “I’m really sorry about this,” he said. His eyes were so blue.
Mariah sat down next to him, lifting him slightly so that his head was off the hardness of the ground and resting instead in her lap. She pressed the cool towel against his forehead and he closed his eyes. “I really hope whatever this is, it’s not contagious.”
Another flash of blue as he looked up at her. “It’s not. I’m…not contagious, I promise. I haven’t been sleeping that well and… I’m really sorry about this,” he said again.
Someday their children would marvel at the story of the way they’d met....
Where had that thought come from? It had