Unstoppable: Love With The Proper Stranger / Letters To Kelly

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 a round, 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. Anytime.”

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 Three

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 seven, 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.