LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER

by Suzanne Brockmann

Mariah turned and really looked at him for the first time. He was dressed in jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt. He looked as if he'd climbed out of bed without a shower or a shave. His chin was rough with his morning beard, and he wore a baseball cap on his head, covering his hair. It was silly, actually. His hair was still too short to be rumpled from sleep.

  But she knew the song he was talking about. It was a wonderful song, a thoughtful song, a not-at-all shallow song. "That was the Indigo Girls," she said.

  "Was that who they were? It was good. I liked them. I never used to listen to music ... you know, before."

  Before he'd been diagnosed with cancer. Cancer – the reason she couldn't just tell him to go away. He could very well be living the last of his days right now. Who was she to tell him he couldn't spend his time doing exactly as he pleased?

  "Mariah, I'm really sorry about last night. I didn't realize I was neglecting you, and then you were gone and—"

  "I think my expectations were too high," she admitted. "You had no way of knowing."

  "I really want to be your friend," he said quietly.

  Mariah turned and looked at him. He'd told her point-blank that he wanted to be her friend before, too. Was it his fault that she hadn't listened? Was it his fault that her feelings already were much stronger than mere friendship?

  "Please let me come with you today," he added.

  Mariah could see the Triple F van approaching, and she shouldered her backpack.

  "All right," she said, knowing that she was a sucker. He wanted to be friends. So she'd spend the day with him because he wanted to be friends, never mind the fact that every moment she was with him made her like him even more. Want him even more. As more than just a friend.

  The really stupid thing was that she would have turned another man down. But for Jonathan Mills, with his sad smile, his startlingly heaven blue eyes and his catastrophic illness, she was ready to cut a great deal of slack.

  Even though she knew damn well she was going to live to regret it.

  *

  Miller was getting into the rhythm. Take a nail, tap it gently, then drive it in.

  He'd never really had much of an opportunity to work with a hammer before. It fitted well in his hand, though. Almost as well as his gun did.

  Mariah glanced over at him, wiping ineffectively at a river of sweat that streamed down her face despite the sweatband she wore. "Tired yet?"

  "I'm fine."

  When they'd first arrived, she'd set him up in a lawn chair in the shade, like some kind of invalid. Like the invalid he was supposed to be.

  But he'd been unable to sit and watch. Even though it jeopardized his cover as a weak and ailing man, it hadn't been long before he'd begged an extra hammer and was working alongside Mariah.

  They were inside the little house, putting plasterboard up, turning the framed-off and already electrically wired areas into real rooms. They'd completed the living room, with several more experienced members of the volunteer building crew cutting out the holes for the electrical outlets and the light switches. They'd worked their way down the hall and into the larger of two bedrooms. The place was starting to look like a home. Sure, the seams had to be taped, and the tape and the nail heads covered with spackle, then sanded before the rooms could be painted, but all of its promise gleamed through.

  The owners of the house, a tall black man named Thomas and a slender, proud-looking woman named Renee, kept wandering through every time they took a break, holding hands like a pair of wide-eyed schoolchildren, going from room to room.

  "Glory be," Thomas kept saying, tears in his eyes. He'd never owned his own home before, never thought he'd be able, he kept saying. He'd even stopped at one point to pull Miller into his arms, giving him a heartfelt hug of thanks.

  Miller knew why Mariah liked this work. He'd caught her with a tear or two in her own eyes more than once. And when everyone on the work crew wasn't busy fighting back tears of joy, they were singing. They sang anything and everything from current pop tunes to spirituals as the radio's dial got moved back and forth, depending on who was in control at the moment. Miller even found himself joining in once or twice when the Beatles came on. He remembered the Beatles from when he was very young. To his surprise, he still knew almost all of the words to their songs.

  But as the sun was rising in the sky, the little house was starting to heat up. Miller had long since pulled his shirt off. He wished to hell he'd worn shorts instead of these jeans. It had to be near ninety – and the mercury was climbing.

  Mariah set down her hammer and took off her T-shirt. She was wearing another athletic bra – a sweatshirt-colored gray one this time. She used her shirt to mop her face and then hung it over her tool belt.

  Miller tried not to watch her, but it was damned hard. He drove another nail into the wall, narrowly missing hitting his thumb.

  In the other bedroom, someone turned the radio to a classical station.

  "Mozart," Miller said, barely aware he'd spoken aloud. He looked up to find Mariah watching him. "His clarinet concerto," he continued, giving her a half smile. "My mother loved this piece. She swore that listening to Mozart would make you smarter."

  "I've heard that, too," Mariah said. "The theory being that the complexity of the music somehow expands your ability to reason."

  "Lemonade break," Renee said cheerfully, carrying two tall glasses into the room.

  Mariah put down her hammer and took one of the plastic glasses as John took the other. He nodded his thanks to Renee, then sat down next to Mariah on the dusty plywood floor.

  Mariah drained half her glass in one long drink. "God," she gasped, catching her breath, "what I really need is a hosing down. Can it get any hotter?"

  "Yes."

  Mariah laughed. "That was not the correct answer." She leaned her head back against the newly erected plasterboard and pressed the cool plastic against her neck as she closed her eyes.

  Miller let himself stare. As long as her eyes were closed, he could take the opportunity to drink her in. Her eyelashes were about a mile long. They rested, thick and dark, against her sun-kissed cheeks. She had a sprinkling of freckles on her nose. Freckles on her shoulders and across her chest, too.

  He looked up to find her eyes had opened. She'd caught him doing all but drooling. Perfect.

  But she didn't move away. She didn't reprimand him.

  "Thomas and Renee can't wait to move in."

  It took him a moment to realize what she was talking about.

  "This is a really nice little house," Mariah continued. "It's a popular one – I've helped build at least seven just like it."

  Miller nodded. "I lived in a house with a layout almost exactly like this when I was a kid."

  Mariah pulled her knees up to her chest, her eyes sparking with interest. "Really?"

  "Yeah, it's almost weird walking through here." He pointed down the hall. "That was my bedroom, next to the bathroom. This one was my mother's."

  Mariah was watching him, waiting for him to tell her more. He knew that once again he'd already said too much, but her eyes were so warm. He didn't want her to stop looking at him that way.

  Besides, he'd figured out a way to make it work – this odd blending of his background and the Jonathan Mills cover story. As Mills, he would have the same background as Miller, except when he was eleven, when his mother died, he hadn't gone into foster care. He – Mills – had gone to live with his fictional estranged father, the king of the car alarms. It would work.

  "I can still remember how the kitchen smelled," he told Mariah. "Ginger and cinnamon. My mother loved to bake." He glanced up at the white plasterboard they'd just used to cover the wall opposite the closet, gesturing toward it. "She also loved books. That whole wall was covered with bookshelves and filled with books. Everything and anything – if it was any good, she read it." He smiled at Mariah. "She was kind of like you."

  As he said the words, he realized how accurate they were. Physically, Mariah looked nothing lik
e his mother. His mother had been average height and willow thin. But their smiles had the same welcoming glow, the same unconditional acceptance. When he was with Mariah, he felt accepted without question. It was something he hadn't felt in years.

  "She worked as a secretary," he told Mariah. "Although she swore she was four times smarter than her boss. I remember, even though it was expensive, we kept the house heated well past seventy degrees all winter long. She would get so cold. I used to walk around in T-shirts and shorts, and she'd be wearing a sweater and scarf." He smiled, remembering. "And then there was the year she let me pick the color we were going to paint the living room. I must've been six, and I picked yellow. Bright yellow. She didn't try to talk me out of it. People's eyes would pop out of their heads when they came into the house."

  "When did she die?" Mariah asked softly.

  "A few days before I turned eleven."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Yeah, I was, too."

  "You talk about your mother, but you've never said anything about your father," she said quietly.

  Miller's real father had died in Vietnam. He was a medic who'd been killed evacuating a bombed Marine barracks, two weeks away from the end of his tour of duty.

  He shrugged. "There's not much to say. He and my mother were divorced," he lied. "I went to live with him after she died." He shifted his weight, changing the subject. "We always talk about me. You've never really told me about yourself."

  "My life has been remarkably dull."

  "You mentioned your father dying of a heart attack," he pointed out. "And at dinner the other night, you told me you'd once been married, but you didn't go into any detail."

  "His name was Trevor," she told him. "We were married right out of college. We parted due to irreconcilable differences in our work schedules, if you can believe that. He wanted kids and I couldn't schedule them in until late 1999. So he left."

  Miller was quiet, just waiting for her to say more.

  "He married again about six months after we split," she said. "I ran into him downtown about a year ago. He had two little kids with him. His new wife was in the hospital, having just delivered number three."

  She was silent for a moment.

  "I looked at Trevor and those kids and I tried to feel really bad – you know, that could have been my life. Those could have been my cute little kids. Trevor still could've been my husband...."

  "But..." he prompted.

  "But all I could feel was relieved. And I realized that I had married Trevor because I couldn't really think of a good reason not to marry him. I loved him, but I'm not sure I was ever really in love with him. I never felt as if I'd die if he didn't kiss me..."

  She trailed off, and Miller found himself staring at her, memorizing her face as she in turn stared down at the empty glass in her hands.

  "If I ever get involved with anyone again, it's going to be because I find someone I can't live without. I want to find the kind of passion that's overpowering," she told him. "I want to lose control."

  Lose control. Overpowering passion.

  The kind of passion that started wars and crumbled empires. The kind of passion that made it difficult even for a hardened expert like Miller to do his job. The kind of passion that made him want to break every rule and restriction he'd set for himself and pull this woman into his arms and cover her mouth with his own.

  She was talking about the kind of passion that flared to life between them even when they did no more than sit and quietly talk. It was a one-of-a-kind thing, and Miller hated the fact that he couldn't take it further – push it to see where it would lead.

  Mariah was quiet, lost in her own thoughts.

  Miller tried not to watch her. Tried, and failed.

  "Mariah!" One of the little girls – one of Thomas and Renee's young daughters – came skidding into the room. "Jane Ann climbed way, way up into the big ol' tree in the backyard and now she can't get down!" the girl wailed. "Papa says he's too big – the branches up that high won't hold him. And Mama's got no head for heights. And Janey's crying cause she can't hold on much longer!"

  Mariah scrambled to her feet and ran.

  Miller was right behind her.

  A crowd had gathered beneath the shade of the monstrously large tree that dominated the quarter acre plot. It was a perfect climbing tree, with broad, thick branches growing well within even a child's reach of the ground. But the branches became narrower as they went up the trunk. And up where Janey was sitting and howling like a police siren, way up near the top of the tree, the branches were positively delicate-looking.

  Mariah moved quickly, navigating her way up through the branches effortlessly and efficiently. But she was no lightweight herself. Despite the fact that she'd told him she was good with heights, good at climbing, this was going to be tricky.

  "Mariah!" Miller called. "We can call the fire department for help."

  She only glanced down at him very briefly. "I think Jane Ann wants to come down right now, John," she told him. "I don't think she wants to wait for the fire truck to arrive."

  He didn't know what to do – whether to climb up after her, or wait there on the ground, hoping that if she or the child slipped, he could somehow cushion their fall. He turned to the girl's father.

  "Thomas, didn't I see some kind of tarp out front? Thick plastic – it was blue, I think – the kind of thing you'd use to cover a roof that's not quite watertight, in the event of rain?"

  Thomas didn't understand.

  "If we stretched it tight, it could break the girl's fall," he explained. "We could try to catch her if she slips."

  Thomas gave a curt order and two teenaged boys ran quickly to get the tarp.

  Miller looked up into the tree. Mariah was moving more slowly now, more carefully. He could hear the soothing rise and fall of her voice as she spoke to the little girl, but he couldn't make out the words. But the girl was finally quiet, so whatever Mariah was saying was working to calm her.

  The boys came back with the tarp, and everyone but Miller took an end, pulling it taut, ready for disaster. Miller, instead, started up into the tree.

  Mariah had climbed as far as she dared and she held out one hand to the little girl. Her other arm was securely wrapped around the rough trunk of the tree. Miller knew she was willing the child to move closer, just a little bit closer, so that she could grab hold of her.

  Slowly, inch by inch, Jane Ann began to move.

  There was an audible sigh of relief from the ground as Mariah pulled the child close to her and the girl locked her arms around Mariah's neck.

  But the worst was not yet over. Mariah still had to get back down – this time with the added weight of an eight-year-old girl threatening her balance.

  Mariah stepped down, one branch at a time, testing its strength before she put her full weight upon it.

  And then it happened.

  Miller saw the branch give before he heard the rifle-sharp snap. In nightmarish slow motion, he saw Mariah grab for the branch above her, holding them both with only one hand, one arm. He could see her muscles straining, see her feet searching for a foothold.

  And then he saw her fingers slip.

  "Mariah!" The cry ripped from his throat as she began to fall.

  But somehow, miraculously, she didn't fall far. She jerked to a stop, still holding tightly to the little girl in her arms.

  Her tool belt. Somehow the back of her belt had been hooked upon the stub of a branch – a branch sturdy enough to hold both of them. They hung from the tree, facing out, dangling like some kind of Christmas ornament.

  Miller raced up the tree, the bark rough against his hands and sharp against his knees, even through his jeans.

  As he drew closer, he could see that Mariah's elbow was bleeding. Her knees, too, looked scraped and the worse for wear. The belt was holding her not around the waist, but rather around the ribs. Still, she managed to smile at Miller. "That was fun," she whispered.

  "Are you all right?" He
saw them then – bruises on the insides of her upper arms. The tree hadn't done that to her – he had. That night that he'd fallen asleep on her couch. He'd grabbed her, thinking she was Domino. God, he could have killed her. The thought made him feel faint and he brought himself back to here and now. He'd have enough time to feel bad about Mariah's bruises after he got her down from this tree.

  "I think I may have rearranged a rib," she told him. "I had the breath knocked out of me, too. Take Janey. Please? Jane Ann, this is John. He's going to take you down to your mommy and dad, okay?"

  The little girl looked shell-shocked. Mariah gave her a kiss on the cheek and Miller lifted her out of Mariah's arms without a fuss. "Let me get you down from there," he said to Mariah.

  "Take Janey down first," she told him, still in that odd, whispery voice. "I think you're going to need two hands for me."

  Miller nodded, moving as quickly down the tree with the child as he dared. He looked back at Mariah, but she'd closed her eyes. Rearranged a rib. He knew she'd put it that way so as not to frighten Jane Ann. Her tool belt had slammed into her ribs with the full weight of her body against it. And it wouldn't take much for a broken rib to puncture a lung.

  Miller felt a flash of fear as he glanced back up at Mariah. Had she simply closed her eyes or had she lost consciousness?

  He practically threw Jane Ann into her father's waiting hands, then swiftly climbed back up to where Mariah was still hanging by her belt.

  She opened her eyes as he approached, and he nearly fell out of the tree from relief.

  "Ouch," she said. "Can I say ouch now?"

  Miller nodded, looking hard into her eyes for any sign of shock. "Can you breathe? Are you having trouble breathing?"

  She shook her head. "I'm still a little ... squashed."

  "Can we unfasten your belt?" he asked.

  She shook her head. "I already thought of that, but the buckle seems to be in the back. And it's not easy to undo even in the best of circumstances."

  They were going to have to do this the hard way.

  Miller braced each foot on a separate branch, pressing his body up close to Mariah's. "Hold on to me," he ordered her. "I'm going to lift you up and get your belt free."