Kelly frowned. What? Wait a minute, Jared hadn’t been anywhere near Central America and…
“How do you tell someone something like that?” T.’s voice sounded oddly tight. “Do you just walk up and say, ‘Sorry I missed your eighteenth birthday, but I was a political prisoner in a country where the phrase “human rights” isn’t in the dictionary?’ How do you tell someone you love that you were locked in a four-by-eight room, given barely enough food and water to stay alive for nearly two years?”
“Oh my God,” she breathed. He wasn’t talking about Jared. He was talking about…himself!
With a sudden flash of memory, she saw T. as he was at Kevin’s wedding, thin to the point of gauntness, as if he’d been ill or…nearly starved to death. She heard an echo of Stefanie’s shocked voice, from the day they’d had lunch together. He never told you what happened in Central America?
Kelly felt sick.
“What’s he going to say to her?” T. said again. He turned away and looked out the window at the sunlight dancing across the water.
Heart pounding, Kelly crossed toward him. As she put her arms around his waist, he looked down at her and forced a smile. “It’s just not easy to talk about.”
“What if she asks?” she said softly. “Will he tell her then?”
“Yeah.”
“T., tell me about…Central America?”
He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, then slowly let it out before turning and looking out at the water again.
“I went there for an interview with an opposition leader,” T. said. He was trying to sound normal, as if they were talking about last night’s Red Sox game instead of his…incarceration. Oh, God. Kelly could see tears in his eyes, but he staunchly ignored them, managing to look only slightly less cool and collected than he usually did. “After I talked to him, the government thought I might have information on the whereabouts of the rebel forces. They failed to, um, persuade me to part with any of my information—of which I had very little—and on my way to the airport, I was arrested. Someone had planted a small fortune in cocaine in my overnight bag. I was sentenced to ten years in prison. I was really a political prisoner, but the American consulate couldn’t do anything to help me, because of the drug charges.”
Tears escaped from his eyes, and he brushed them brusquely away. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly.
Kelly punched him, and he looked at her in surprise.
“Don’t you dare apologize,” she said hotly. “My God, I can’t even imagine how terrible it must have been. Jackson, how can you stand there like that and give me the impersonal Journalism 101 synopsis?”
“I’m sorry—”
“Stop apologizing!” she shouted. “You should be furious, angry, outraged that this happened to you. God, T., did they hurt you? Did you cry? Were you alone? What did you do? Did they make you work? Tell me what it smelled like. Tell me how you found the strength to survive! Tell me how you felt!”
Kelly paced back and forth, nearly shaking her fist in the air. She whirled to face him. “Show me how you felt, damn it. Get pissed! Throw something! Break some furniture—”
“I love you,” Jax said. “And you love me. That’s all I need to feel now, Kelly.” He pulled her into his arms. “I can show you that, and I will—every day for the rest of our lives, if you’ll let me.”
She was crying, hot, angry tears, and Jax gently caught one with his finger. “Besides—” he smiled slightly and kissed her “—I don’t break furniture. I write.”
He pulled away from her and crossed to his big bookshelf. Reaching up, he took a heavy blue three-ring binder down from among all the other notebooks and handed it to her. “This will tell you how I felt.”
Kelly looked down at the manuscript as she wiped the tears from her face. “A story?”
“Nonfiction,” T. told her. “Although, when I publish it, I should probably give cowriting credit to my psychologist. I’d meant to get this all down on paper when I first came back, but it was my shrink who finally forced me to sit down and write it.”
He kissed her again. “I’ll be on the beach,” he said, but she’d already sat down at the table, opening up the thick manuscript to the first page. She didn’t even hear him as he slipped out the door.
It was called Letters to Kelly, she realized with shock. Leafing quickly through, she saw that the entire manuscript was a series of letters—all addressed to her. Heart pounding, she began to read.
After the first few pages, she was in tears again.
Dear Kelly,
I regain consciousness in my cell, and I am surprised—surprised that I am still alive. I’m lucky. I saw the bodies of less fortunate men being dumped into the back of a pickup truck the last time I was in the courtyard.
But then I move, and my entire body screams with pain. And I wonder. Maybe they were the lucky ones….
Dear Kelly,
Four days since I’ve last been fed. You come and keep me company, and we talk about Thanksgiving dinner. You take my hand and pull me back with you, back in time, and I’m at your house. Your dining room table has been extended, and your parents and your grandmother, your aunt Christa and your cousins, Kevin, you and I all sit, bowing our heads as your father says grace.
I stare at the feast on the table, realizing that the leftovers from this meal could keep me alive for months….
Outside the office window, the sun moved across the sky, but Kelly was aware of nothing but the words on the paper. T.’s words. Letters he’d written her, from hell.
T. Jackson was sitting on the beach, arms wrapped loosely around his knees, watching the sunset. The wind ruffled his golden blond hair, and the sunlight flashed as it hit the reflective lenses of his sunglasses. He had a bottle of beer in his hand—he was a living advertisement for the good life.
He looked at Kelly as she sat down next to him. She knew what she looked like—her eyes were puffy and the tip of her nose was red. He put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “You all right?” he asked quietly.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?” Kelly reached up and took off his sunglasses so that she could see his eyes. They were beautiful, greenish-blue in the late-afternoon light, and so warm and loving.
“I’m extremely all right.” He touched her hair and kissed her mouth. “In fact, I keep wondering if maybe I haven’t actually died and gone to heaven. We’re finally together, and you love me, too—”
Kelly started to cry, pressing her face into the warmth of his neck, holding him as tightly as she could.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, come on—”
“I’m sorry.” Sobs shook her body. “Oh, T., I’m so sorry. You came back from that…that…place, and I wasn’t there for you.”
“Kel—”
“All this time I thought you had deserted me, but I was the one who deserted you. All that time you were in that horrible prison and I didn’t even try to find you—”
“It’s okay, Kel.” His voice was gentle, soothing. “You didn’t know.”
“T., I wasn’t there for you.”
“You’re here for me now.”
Kelly looked up at him, tears running down her face. “Yes, I am,” she said, and she kissed him.
“You know, I meant it when I said that I won’t ever leave you,” he told her.
He had never stopped loving her. He would never stop loving her. Kelly believed that now. “I know.”
T. smiled at her then, and wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt, she managed to smile back at him. It was shaky, but it was definitely a smile.
“So,” she said. “You want to go play a few rounds of miniature golf?” She laughed weakly at the surprised look on his face. “Or do you want to skip the golf and just call my parents and tell them that we’re getting married?”
T. stared at her, his eyes opened wide, for several long seconds. Then he started to laugh. He kissed Kelly hard on the mouth, then jumped up and started dancing down
the beach, whooping and shouting.
Kelly stared at him in shock, her mouth open. T. was acting so utterly uncool. She started to laugh. She loved it.
He froze suddenly, looking back at her.
“Are we really getting married?” he asked, as if he were making a quick reality check.
Kelly nodded. “I take it you still want to?”
He grabbed her hands and pulled her to her feet. “Oh, yeah.” He kissed her, a deep, fiery kiss that left her dizzy. He swung her effortlessly up into his arms. His long legs covered the ground quickly as he carried her back toward the house. “This is definitely the best day of my life,” he said, taking the stairs to the deck two at a time.
Jax opened the screen door into the living room and carried Kelly inside. He set her gently down, but her arms stayed around his neck and she kissed him. He groaned, opening his mouth under the pressure from her lips, sliding his hands underneath her big gauze shirt. Her skin was so soft and warm. He kissed her harder, deeper, shifting his hips so that she could feel his desire against her. She slid one smooth leg up, twisting it around his own leg, and breathing hard, he reached for the string that would untie the top of her bathing suit—
“Well, well, you two have certainly been busy since I’ve been gone,” Stefanie’s well-polished voice cut through.
Startled, Kelly sprang away from Jax, blushing and clutching her overshirt together.
“Stef,” Jax said. “On your way in or out? Hopefully out.”
She was in the entryway, a small suitcase in her hand. She laughed, amusement in her gray eyes. “Gee, what a welcome home. But no, lucky you, I’m going away for another month or so. Emilio’s waiting in the car. We’re flying to Italy to meet his parents.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve totally lost my mind. I’ve agreed to marry the man.”
“Congratulations,” Kelly said.
“Maybe we can make it a double wedding.” Jax pulled Kelly in close to him, kissing the side of her face.
Stefanie’s eyes softened. “Oh, darling, I’m so happy for you.”
She looked at Kelly. “Thank God you finally came to your senses. I was ready to wring your little neck.”
Kelly laughed. “I’m glad you didn’t have to.”
“Our flight leaves Boston in just a few hours.” Stef’s hand was on the doorknob. “I’ve got to run, but I am very glad.” She waved to them. “See you when I see you, darlings.”
The door closed with a bang behind her, leaving T. Jackson and Kelly staring at each other in the sudden stillness.
T. smiled, a slow, sexy smile that made Kelly’s heart race. “Where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?” he asked.
She smiled. “I think we were about to run naked through the house.”
“No, we’ve got a whole extra month to do that,” he murmured, kissing the delicate skin under Kelly’s ear. “We don’t need to do that right now.”
She closed her eyes, humming her approval of the placement of his lips and hands. “Maybe you wanted to go upstairs and finish writing your novel?”
“No, no, not the novel,” he said. “But there was definitely something I wanted to do upstairs.”
He took her hand and led her up to the second-floor landing.
“Maybe you wanted to write me another love letter.”
At the top of the stairs he stopped and kissed her again and she melted against him.
“Haven’t you read enough for today?” He lifted her up and carried her the last few steps into his bedroom.
“There’s no such thing as too many love letters,” Kelly pointed out.
He placed her gently on his bed, softly kissing her lips.
“Dear Kelly,” he said, gazing into the depths of her eyes. “Let’s skip the miniature golf, and call your parents much, much later—”
“Tomorrow,” Kelly suggested, pulling his lips toward hers.
Tomorrow. Jax liked the sound of the word. Tomorrow, and the next day, and the next tomorrow after that, sliding way out into the infinite future, he’d have Kelly by his side. It was the only future he’d ever wanted, and it was finally his.
“Tomorrow sounds perfect,” he breathed. “I love you. Love, T.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5105-6
LETTERS TO KELLY
Copyright © 2003 by Suzanne Brockmann
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