LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER

by Suzanne Brockmann

  "Actually," he said, clearing his throat, "it was probably a combination of low blood sugar – and the fact that I've just finished a course of chemotherapy." He ran his fingers through his barely there hair as he watched realization and horror dawn in Mariah's eyes. He should have felt a burst of satisfaction, but all he felt was this damned twinge of guilt. He hardened himself. He was the robot, after all.

  "Oh," she said.

  "Cancer," he told her. "Hodgkin's. The doctors caught it early. I'm...I'm lucky, you know?"

  She was looking down at the flowers now, but her gaze was unfocused. When she glanced back up at him, he could see that she had tears in her eyes. Tears of compassion, of sympathy. He knew he'd moved another step closer to his goal, but robot or not, he felt like a bastard.

  "Would you be interested in that glass of iced tea I offered you this morning?" she asked, blinking back the tears and forcing a friendly smile.

  Miller nodded. "Thanks."

  Mariah led the way up the stairs to her deck, her hips swaying beneath her beach towel. Miller let himself look. Looking was all he was going to be able to do, God help him.

  "These flowers are beautiful. I've never seen anything like them before." She gestured toward around, umbrella shaded table, surrounded by cushioned chairs. "Why don't you sit down?"

  "Thanks."

  Mariah carried the flowers into the kitchen and set them down on the counter. Cancer. Jonathan Mills had cancer. He'd just finished a course of chemotherapy.

  She gripped the edge of the counter, trying hard to keep her balance.

  Talk about stress. Talk about pain. Talk about problems. Her own petty problems were laughable compared to having an illness that, left unchecked, was sure to kill him. And even with the treatment, there was still a pretty big chance that he wouldn't survive.

  Cancer. God. And he was the one bringing her flowers.

  Mariah took a moment to put them in water, gathering the strength she needed to go back out onto the deck and make small talk with a man who was probably going to die.

  Taking a deep breath, she took two glasses from the cabinets and filled them with ice, then poured the tea. Cancer.

  Somehow, she was able to smile by the time she carried the glasses back out to the deck.

  But he wasn't fooled. "I freaked you out, didn't I?" John asked as she set the glass down in front of him. "I'm sorry."

  Mariah sat down across from him, arranging her towel so that it covered most of her legs, grateful that he wasn't going to ignore the fact that he'd just told her he was so desperately ill. "Are you able to talk about it?" she asked.

  He took a sip of his iced tea. "Sometimes it seems as if it's all I've talked about for the past year."

  "If you don't want to, it's—"

  "No, that's all right. I guess I...wanted you to know. I haven't always made a habit of doing nosedives into the sand at the drop of a hat." He took a deep breath and forced a smile. "So. I'll give you the Reader's Digest version. I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, which is a form of cancer of the lymph nodes. Like I said, my doctors caught it early – I was stage one, which means the cancer hasn't metastasized. It hasn't spread. The survival rate is higher for patients with stage one Hodgkin's. So I took the treatments, did the chemo – which made me far sicker than the Hodgkin's ever did – and here I am, waiting for my hair to grow back in." He paused. "And to find out if I'm finally out of danger."

  Mariah remembered the tension she'd felt in his shoulders. Was it any wonder this man was a walking bundle of nerves? He was waiting to find out if he was going to live or die. He looked exhausted, sitting there across from her, the lines in his face pronounced.

  "No wonder you're not eating well. You're probably not sleeping very well, either," she said. "Are you?"

  Something shifted in his eyes, and he looked out at the ocean, shimmering at the edge of the sand. He didn't answer right away, but she just waited, and he finally turned back to her. "No," he said. "I'm not."

  "Is it that you can't fall asleep?" she asked. "Or after you fall asleep, do you wake up a few hours later and just lie there, thinking about everything, worrying...?"

  "Both," he admitted.

  "I used to do that," she told him. "Two hours after I fell asleep, I'd be wide-awake, lying in bed, suffocating underneath all these screaming anxieties..." She shook her head. "That's not a fun way to live."

  "I have nightmares." Miller heard the words leave his mouth, and it was too late to bite them back. Jonathan Mills didn't have nightmares. The nightmares were John Miller's albatross. They belonged to Miller alone. He drank the last of his iced tea and stood up. "I really didn't mean to stay long. I know you probably have things to do. I just wanted to thank you for...everything."

  Mariah stood up, too. "You know, I have a book on stress reduction techniques that I could lend you, if you want."

  A book. She could lend him. How perfect was that? He could drop by to return it some afternoon – while Serena Westford just happened to be visiting. What a coincidence. Serena meet Jonathan Mills. John, this is Serena...

  "Thanks," Miller said. "I'd like that."

  With the swish of her towel against her legs, she disappeared into the darkness of the house. The book must've been right in the living room because she came out almost immediately.

  He took it from her, glancing quickly at the cover, which read 101 Innovative Ways

  to Relieve Stress. "Thanks," he said again. "I'll bring it back in a few days."

  "Why don't you keep it," she said. "I've gotten pretty good at most of the exercises in there. Besides, I can always pick up another copy."

  Miller had to laugh as his perfect plan crumbled. "Don't you get it? I want to return it. It gives me an excuse to come back out here."

  Mariah's soft brown eyes got even softer, and John was reminded of the way she'd looked at him this morning after she'd gently kissed his ear. "You don't need an excuse to come over," she told him quietly. "You're welcome here. Any time."

  Miller tried to force a smile as he thanked her. What was wrong with him? he wondered again as he walked around to his car. He should be feeling triumphant. She liked him – that couldn't have been more obvious. This was working out perfectly.

  Feeling like an absolute bastard, he put the car in gear and drove away.

  Chapter 3

  Mariah was on the roof when she saw Serena's sports car pull up in front of the Foundations for Families building site.

  "Hel-lo!" Her friend's bright English accent carried clearly up to her.

  Mariah used the back of her hand to wipe the perspiration from her forehead. Tomorrow she was going to have to remember to bring a sweatband – the weather forecast had predicted more of this relentless heat. She was dirty and hot, with stinging salt and sunblock dripping into her eyes, and her back was starting to ache.

  But she was surrounded by people who laughed and sang as they worked. Today she was driving nails alongside Thomas and Renee, the man and woman who would own this house, watching the pride they took in being able to help build the home that would shelter them and their two daughters – Jane Ann and Emma.

  Foundations for Families started each day with a minute of silent meditation, of joining hands and closing their eyes, just taking a moment to touch base with the powers that be – God, or Mother Nature, or even Luke Skywalker's Force – it didn't matter which. Meals were something out of an old-fashioned barn raising with sandwiches and lemonade provided by volunteers. And each day, Thomas and Renee would call to Mariah and thank her by name – sometimes even enveloping her in an embrace as she left to go home.

  Mariah couldn't remember ever being happier.

  Down on the ground, Serena shaded her eyes to gaze up at her. "What time are you done here?"

  Mariah rested her hammer against her work boot and unfastened her water bottle from her belt. She took a long swig before answering. "My shift ends at six," she said.

  "Good. Then you can meet me at seve
n, at the resort," Serena decided. "We can eat at the grill out by the pool, then prowl the bars, husband hunting as you so aptly put it."

  The resort. Where Jonathan Mills was staying. Except Mariah was almost certain he wasn't the type to hang out in a bar. Still, she was almost tempted to go over there. Almost.

  She hooked her water bottle back onto her belt and hefted her hammer. "Sorry. Can't," she told her friend, glad she had an excuse. She wasn't the type to hang out in bars, either. They were noisy, crowded and filled with smoke and desperation. "I'm coming back out here tomorrow. I've got to be up early in the morning. Laronda scheduled a building blitz. We're gonna get this sucker watertight by sundown."

  Serena looked at the rough plywood that framed the modestly sized house and skeptically lifted an elegant eyebrow. "You're kidding."

  "Nope," Mariah said cheerfully. "Of course, we could always use more volunteers. I don't suppose you're interested...?"

  "Not on your life." Serena snorted. "I did my share – in Africa fifteen years ago, with the peace corps."

  The peace corps. Funny. Mariah knew Serena had spent nearly eighteen months with the peace corps – building roads and houses, working in a part of Africa where electricity hadn't found its way to this very day. They'd talked about it quite a bit, but Mariah still couldn't picture the elegant blonde actually getting her hands dirty digging latrines. Serena? No, she just couldn't imagine it. Still, why would the woman lie? And she spoke of her time in the corps with such authority.

  "Sure I can't talk you into having some fun tonight?" Serena asked.

  Mariah shook her head. "I'm having fun right now," she told her friend.

  "You," Serena said, "are one seriously twisted woman." She called back over her shoulder as she headed toward her car, "Don't forget about my party Friday night."

  "You know, Serena, I'm not really the party type..."

  But Serena had already climbed behind the wheel, starting her car with a roar.

  Mariah didn't want to go to any party. She'd been to several of Serena's affairs before and stood uncomfortably while Serena's chic resort friends talked about nothing of any substance. The weather. The stock market. The best place to rent jet skis.

  Last time, she'd left early and vowed to make up an excuse if Serena ever invited her again. She'd have to think up something convincing...

  But she wasn't going to think about it right now. She had a house to build. No worries. No problems.

  Mariah got back to work.

  *

  Miller was running on empty.

  He'd awakened before dawn, after only a few hours of rest, jarred out of sleep by an ominous dream. It wasn't his usual nightmare, but it was a dream filled with shadows and darkness, and he knew if he fell back to sleep, he'd soon find himself outside that damned warehouse.

  So he'd made himself a cup of coffee, roused Princess and headed down the beach, toward Mariah's cottage.

  The first glimmer of daybreak had been lighting the sky when he'd reached the part of the strand where he'd met Mariah two mornings ago. And as he'd watched, the light in her beach house went off, and she came outside, shouldering a backpack.

  She climbed on her bicycle and rode away, down the road toward town, before he was even close enough to call out to her.

  He stayed for a while, hoping she would return, but she hadn't. Later, he'd found her bike, locked to a rack by the public library.

  Having to wait for her to come back was frustrating, but Miller had been on stakeouts that had literally lasted for months, and he knew how to curb his impatience. He'd set up camp under the shade of a brightly colored beach umbrella, lathered himself with sunblock and waited.

  He'd spent the first part of the morning reading that book Mariah had lent him. It was one of those touchy-feely books that urged the reader to become one with his or her emotions, and to vent – to talk or cry. Emotional release was necessary – according to the author, a Dr. Gerrard Hollis from California, of course – before the anxiety causing stress could be relieved.

  Miller flipped through the chapters on breathing exercises and self-hypnosis techniques, focusing instead on the section about reducing stress through sex. There was nothing like regularly scheduled orgasmic release – according to the esteemed Dr. Hollis, whoever the hell he was – to counter the bad effects of stress on the human nervous system.

  Each of the exercises outlined in the book – and this section went on for an entire detailed chapter – were designed to be both physically and emotionally relaxing. They were also designed to be done either by a couple, or by an individual. Women could make use of certain "assistive" devices if they so desired, Dr. Hollis pointed out.

  Miller had gotten a hell of a lot of mileage out of thinking about Mariah performing those exercises, with or without assistive devices.

  But she still hadn't returned by lunchtime, and Miller had gone back to the resort. He'd spent the afternoon helping Daniel fine-tune the surveillance equipment the younger man had planted in Serena Westford's rented house. Yesterday, around noon, their suspect had gone off island. Instead of following her, assuming that if she was going over the causeway to the mainland she was planning to stay for a while, Daniel had used the opportunity to hide miniature microphones in key spots in Serena's home.

  Their surveillance system was up and running.

  And now Miller was back outside Mariah's house, watching the sun set, wondering where she had gone, feeling slightly sick to his stomach from fatigue.

  He heard the squeak of her bicycle before he saw her. As he watched, she turned up her driveway, getting off her bike and pushing it the last few feet up the hill. She put down the kickstand, but the sandy ground was too soft to hold it up, and she leaned it against the side of the house instead.

  She slipped her arms out of her backpack and tossed it down near the foot of the stairs leading up to her deck. And then, kicking her feet free from a pair of almost ridiculously clunky work boots, she pulled her T-shirt over her head and headed directly toward the ocean.

  As Miller watched, she dropped her shirt on the sand and crash-dived into the water. She didn't notice him until she was on her way back out. And then she saw Princess first.

  Mariah's running shorts clung to her thighs, their waistband sagging down across her smooth stomach, the pull of the water turning them into hip huggers. The effect was incredibly sexy, but she quickly hiked her shorts up, pulling at the thin fabric in an attempt to keep it from sticking to her legs.

  "John," she said, smiling at him. "Hi."

  She was wearing some kind of athletic bra-type thing, the word "Champion," emblazoned across her full breasts. There was nothing she could do to keep that wet fabric from clinging, but she seemed more concerned with keeping her belly button properly concealed.

  And Miller couldn't think of anything besides the exercise that Dr. Hollis called "Releasing Control." And the one the good doctor called "Pressure Cooker Release." And something particularly intriguing that was cutely labeled "Seabirds in Eight." It was a damned good thing his shorts weren't wet and clinging to his body.

  "Hey." Somehow he managed to make his voice sound friendly – and as if he wasn't thinking about how incredible it would be to reenact that famous beach scene in From Here to Eternity with this woman right here and now. "Where've you been all day?"

  "Were you looking for me?" She couldn't hide the pleasure in her voice or the spark of attraction in her eyes.

  Miller felt that same twinge of something disquieting and he forced it away. So she liked him. Big deal. "I came by this morning," he told her.

  The waves tugged again at her shorts, and she came all the way out of the water to stand self-consciously, dripping on the sand. She had no towel to cover herself this time, and she was obviously uncomfortable about that. But she leaned over to greet Princess, enthusiastically rubbing the dog's ears.

  "I went over to the mainland," she told Miller, rinsing her hands in the ocean. "I volunteer for Found
ations for Families, and I was working at a building site. We got the vinyl siding up today."

  "Foundations for Families?"

  She nodded, squeezing the water out of her ponytail with one hand. "It's an organization that builds quality homes for people with low incomes. The houses are affordable because of the low-interest mortgages Triple F arranges, and because volunteers actually build the houses alongside the future home owners."

  Miller had heard of the group. "I thought you had to be a carpenter or an electrician or a professional roofer to volunteer."

  She narrowed her eyes at him. "And how do you know I'm not one?"

  Miller covered his sudden flare of alarm with a laugh. She wasn't challenging him or questioning him. She hadn't suddenly realized he knew all about her background through his FBI files. She was teasing. So he teased her back. "Obviously because I'm a sexist bastard who archaically thinks that only men can be carpenters or electricians or roofers. I apologize, Miz Robinson, I stand guilty as charged."

  Mariah smiled. "Well, now that you've confessed, I can tell you that I'm not a carpenter. Although I am well on my way to being a professional roofer. I've helped do ten roofs since I got here a couple of months ago. I'm not afraid of heights, so I somehow always end up working there."

  "How many days a week do you do this?"

  "Three or four," she told him. "Sometimes more if there's a building blitz scheduled."

  "A building blitz?"

  "That's when we push really hard to get one phase of the project finished. Today we blitzed the siding. We've had weeklong blitzes when we start and finish an entire house inside and out." She glanced at him. "If you're interested, you could come along with me next time I go. I've got tomorrow off, but I'm working again the day after that."

  "I'd like that," he said quietly. The uneasiness was back – this time not because he was deceiving her, but because his words rang with too much truth. He would like it. A lot.

  Means to an end, he reminded himself. Mariah Robinson was merely the means to meeting – and catching – Serena Westford.