Unstoppable: Love With The Proper Stranger / Letters To Kelly

Mariah reclined the seat slightly, then leaned across John to fasten his seat belt. Her breasts brushed his chest, and when she glanced down at him, his eyes were open again, and he was looking directly at her.

“Thank you,” he said, giving her one of his almost smiles.

Mariah’s mouth was dry as she backed out of the car and closed the door.

“Come on, Princess,” Daniel said.

The dog jumped into the car, taking a surefooted stance on the back seat.

“Thank you very much, Miss…?” Daniel called to her. “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Robinson,” she told him. “Mariah Robinson.”

Jonathan Mills lifted a hand in a weak wave as the car pulled away.

Mariah looked at her watch. It wasn’t even 6:00 a.m. The day had barely just begun.

SHE SAW THEM THROUGH THE window of the resort health club.

She worked out for several hours early each morning—earlier than most other people used the resort facility. She was here only to tone and strengthen her body. She wasn’t here to flash her spandex-clad reflection in the mirrors on the wall, to catch the attention of some healthy, weight-lifting, muscle-bound man.

No, the man she was looking for wasn’t going to be found pumping iron.

A car pulled into the parking lot alongside the building—the only thing moving in the early-morning stillness. As she worked her triceps, she watched a young Asian man help another man out of that car and toward the wing that held the more expensive rooms. A dog trotted obediently behind them.

The older man was bent over, his shoulders stooped as if from fatigue or pain. His skin had a grayish cast. Yet there was still something about him that caught her eye.

She set down her weights and moved closer to the window, watching until they moved out of sight.

MARIAH ROBINSON belonged to him.

The game had begun early this morning, and already he’d gotten much further than he’d hoped.

John Miller pulled to a stop in Mariah’s driveway. He took a deep breath, both amused and disgusted by the sensation of anticipation that was flowing through him.

This woman was his way to get closer to a suspected killer. No more, no less.

He tried to tell himself that the anticipation he was feeling was from being under cover, from closing in on the Black Widow. And those flowers he had on the car seat next to him were all part of his plan to make friends with a woman who was close to his suspect.

Miller had ordered a dozen roses yesterday—a thank-you gift for helping him—before he’d even met Mariah Robinson, as she was currently calling herself. But as he’d gone into the florist’s to pick them up this afternoon, he’d spotted a display of bright yellow flowers—great big, round flowers that brought huge, colorful splashes of brilliance into the room.

He’d known instantly that Mariah would prefer wild-looking flowers like that over hothouse roses. On a whim, he’d canceled the roses and bought a huge bouquet of the yellow flowers instead, mixed together with a bunch of daisies and something delicate and white called baby’s breath.

He should’ve stomped down his impulse and bought the damned roses. The roses were part of his plan. The roses said an impersonal thanks. But the yellow flowers echoed the memory of Mariah’s gentle hands touching his face, her strong, slender fingers massaging his shoulders, her lips brushing lightly against his ear.

And that was trouble.

The yellow flowers had nothing to do with catching Serena Westford and everything to do with the unmistakable heat of desire that had flooded him as he’d gazed into Mariah’s soft brown eyes.

She was everything her picture had shown and more.

And now he was going to walk into her house with these stupid flowers and lie to her about who he was and why he was here. But the biggest lie of all would be in denying the attraction that had flared between them. Jonathan Mills was only to become Mariah’s friend. It was John Miller who wanted to take this woman as his lover and lose himself in her quiet serenity for the entire rest of the year.

It was John Miller who’d found himself unable to tear his eyes away from the soft cotton of Mariah’s T-shirt as it clung revealingly to her body out on the beach that morning. He’d caught himself staring more than once, and he could only hope that she hadn’t noticed.

But he knew damn well that she had. He’d seen the slight pink of her blush on her cheeks.

Miller got out of the car and, carrying the flowers with him, went to Mariah’s front door and rang the bell.

There was no answer.

He knew she was home—Daniel had been out on surveillance all day and had just called saying that Mariah was back home after an afternoon of running errands in town. Sure enough, her bike was leaning against the side of the house.

Miller went around toward the back, toward the beach, and nearly ran smack into Mariah.

She’d come directly from the ocean. Her hair was wet, her dark curls like a cap against her head. Her skin glistened from the water, and her tank-style bathing suit was plastered to her incredible body. The sun sparkled on a bead of water caught in her eyelashes as her eyes widened in surprise.

“John! Hi! What are you doing here?”

God, she was gorgeous. Every last inch of her was fantastic. But she wrapped her towel around her waist as if self-conscious of the way she looked in a bathing suit.

He held out the yellow flowers. “I wanted to thank you for helping me this morning.”

She took the flowers, but barely looked at them. Her attention was fully on him, her gaze searching his face. “Are you all right? You didn’t walk all the way out here, did you?”

“No, I drove.”

“By yourself?” She looked over his shoulder at the car, parked in her drive.

“I’m feeling much better,” he said. “It was just…I don’t know, low blood sugar, I guess. I didn’t have much dinner last night, and I didn’t have anything to eat before I left the resort this morning. But I had some breakfast and even managed to catch a few hours of sleep after Daniel gave me a ride back to my room.”

“Low blood sugar,” she repeated her gaze never leaving his face.

She clearly didn’t believe him. It was the perfect opening for him to begin to tell her Jonathan Mills’s cover story. But the words—the lies—stuck in his throat, and for the first time in his life, he almost couldn’t do it.

What was wrong with him? This was the part of being under cover that he always enjoyed—getting close to the major players in the game. He’d never thought of his cover story as lies before. It was, instead, the new truth. His cover became his new reality. He was Jonathan Mills.

But as he looked into Mariah’s eyes, he couldn’t push John Miller away. No doubt the fatigue and the stress of the past few years were taking their toll.

“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.