is happening over at the spider’s web tonight.”
“I know.” Miller picked up the phone and dialed the resort desk. “Jonathan Mills,” he said. “Any messages?”
“A Mariah Robinson asked to leave voice mail. Shall I connect you to that now, sir?” the desk clerk asked.
“Yes. Please.”
There was a whirr and a click, and then Mariah’s voice came on the line.
“John. Hi. It’s me, Mariah. Robinson. From, um, last night? God, I sound totally lame. Of course you know who I am. I just… I wanted to invite you to a party that a friend is having tonight—”
“Jackpot,” Miller said.
Daniel glanced in his direction. “Party invitation?”
Miller nodded, holding up his hand. Mariah’s message wasn’t over yet.
“…going to start at around nine,” her voice said, “and I was thinking that maybe we could have dinner together first—if you’re free. If you want to.” He heard her draw in a deep breath. “I’d really like to see you again. I guess that’s kind of obvious, considering everything that happened this morning.” She hesitated. “So, call me, all right?” She left her phone number, then the message ended.
Miller really wanted to see her again, too. Really wanted to see her again.
Daniel glanced at him one more time, and Miller realized he was standing there, staring at nothing, listening to nothing. He quickly hung up the phone.
“Everything all right?” Daniel asked.
“Yeah.” He was well aware that Daniel had said not one word about the fact that Miller hadn’t come back to the hotel last night until after dawn. The kid hadn’t even lifted an eyebrow.
But now Daniel cleared his throat. “John, I don’t mean to pry, but—”
“Then don’t,” Miller said shortly. “Not that it’s any of your business, but nothing happened last night.” But even as he said the words, Miller knew they were a lie. Something had happened last night. Mariah Robinson had touched him, and for nearly eight hours, his demons had been kept at bay.
Something very big had happened last night.
For the first time since forever, John Miller had slept.
MARIAH WAS DRESSING UP.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn anything besides shorts and a T-shirt or a bathing suit. She’d gone to Serena’s other parties in casual clothes. But tonight, she’d pulled her full collection of dresses—all four of ’em—out of the back of her closet. Three of them were pretty standard Sunday-best, goin’-to-meeting-type affairs, with tiny, demure flowers and conservative necklines.
The fourth was black. It was a short-sleeved sheath cut fashionably above the knee, with a sweetheart neckline that would draw one’s eyes—preferably Jonathan Mills’s eyes—to her plentiful assets. Her full breasts were, depending on her mood, one of her best features or one of her worst. Tonight, she was going to think positively. Tonight they were an asset.
She briefly considered sheer black stockings, but rejected them in place of bare legs and a healthy coating of Cutter’s—in consideration of the sultry evening heat.
Usually when she went out with a man, she wore flats, but Jonathan Mills was tall enough for her to wear heels. They might make her stand nose to nose with him, but she wouldn’t tower over him.
Since the moment he’d called to tell her that he wasn’t available for dinner but he’d love to go to the party with her, Mariah had been walking on air. She was ridiculously excited about seeing him again—she’d thought about almost nothing else all afternoon.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this way. Even in college, when she was first dating Trevor, she hadn’t felt this giddy.
Even the dark cloud of anxiety cast by John’s potentially terminal illness didn’t faze her tonight. They’d caught the cancer early, he’d told her. The survival rate for this type of cancer was high. He was going to live. Positive thinking.
Mariah felt another surge of anticipation as she slipped into her shoes and stepped back to look at herself in the mirror.
She looked…sexy. She looked…well proportioned. It was true that those proportions were extra large, but they had to be to fit her height. And in this case, she was using her body to her advantage. In this dress, with this neckline, she had cleavage with a capital C. All that without a WonderBra in sight.
The doorbell rang, and she smoothed the dress over her hips one last time, leaning closer to check her lipstick.
Ready or not, her date had come.
Praying that she wasn’t coming on too strong, what with the attack of the monster cleavage and all, Mariah opened her front door.
“Hi,” she said breathlessly.
John’s eyes skimmed down her once, then twice, then more slowly, before coming back to rest on her face as he smiled. “Wow. You look…incredible.”
She stepped back and opened the door wider to let him in.
“Incredibly tall,” he added as he noted the heels that put them eye to eye.
Was that a compliment? Mariah took it as one. “Thank you,” she said, leading the way into the kitchen. “I’m ready to go, but I wanted to show you something first.”
He was dressed a whole lot more casually than she, in a faded pair of jeans, time-softened leather boat shoes and a sport jacket over a plain T-shirt.
“I think I might be underdressed,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it. Knowing Serena’s friends, there’ll be an equal mix of sequined gowns and tank tops over swimsuits.” Mariah opened the door to the basement.
“Serena?” he asked.
“Westford,” she told him, turning on the switch that lit the stairs going down. “She lives a little more than three miles north, just up the road.”
“Is she one of the Boston Westfords? Funny, maybe I know one of her brothers.”
Mariah shook her head, poised at the top of the stairs. “She hasn’t talked about Boston. Or any brothers. When we met, she did give me a business card with a Hartford hotel, but I think that was only a temporary address. I think she lived in Paris for a few years.” She started down, careful of the rough wooden steps in her heels. “Aren’t you coming?”
“Into the basement? Is your darkroom down there?”
“My darkroom’s down here,” Mariah told him, “but that’s not what I want to show you.”
She turned on another light.
The ceiling was low, and both she and John had to duck to avoid pipes and beams. But it was a nice basement, as far as basements went. The concrete floor had been painted a light shade of gray and it had been carefully swept. Boxes were neatly stacked on utility shelves that lined most of the walls.
A washer and dryer stood in one corner, along with a table for folding laundry. Another corner had been walled off to make the darkroom.
But she led him to the open area of the basement, where an entire concrete-block wall and the floor beneath it had been cleared. Only one box sat nearby, in the middle of the room on top of a broken chair.
Mariah reached inside and pulled out one of the plates she’d bought dirt cheap at a tag sale that afternoon, when she’d borrowed Serena’s car. It was undeniably one of the ugliest china patterns she’d ever seen in her life. She handed it to John.
He stared at it, perplexed.
“It occurred