Love with the Proper Stranger Read Free Page B

mercurial and charming, displaying perfect white teeth. Her hair was blond with wisps escaping from underneath the big straw hat she always wore, and her trim body was that of a twenty-four-year-old.
    She was as cool and confident as she was beautiful. She was everything Mariah wished she could be. Everything Marie Carver wished she could be, Mariah corrected herself. But Marie Carver had purposely been left behind in Phoenix, Arizona. Mariah Robinson was here in Georgia, and Mariah was happy with her life. She went with the flow, calm and relaxed. No worries. No problems. No stress. No jealousy.
    Serena was wearing a black thong bathing suit, covered only by a diaphanous short wrap that flutteredabout her buttocks and thighs in the ocean breeze, leaving only slightly more than nothing to the imagination. Despite the fact that Serena Westford was no longer a schoolgirl, she was one of the minuscule percentage of the population who actually looked
good
in a thong bikini.
    Mariah let herself hate her friend—but only for a fraction of a second. So what if Mariah was destined never to wear a similarly styled bathing suit? So what if Mariah was the exact physical opposite of petite, slender, golden Serena? So what if Mariah was just over six feet tall, broad shouldered, large breasted and athletically built? So what if her hair was an unremarkable shade of brown curls, always messy and impossible to control? So what if her eyes were brown? Light brown, not that dark-as-midnight intriguing shade of brown, or cat green like Serena’s.
    Mariah was willing to bet that behind Serena Westford’s cool, confident facade, there lurked a woman with a thousand screaming anxieties. She probably worked out two hours each day to maintain her youthful figure. She probably spent an equal amount of time on her hair and makeup. She was probably consumed with worries and stress, poor thing.
    “I just came down here to violate the photographic rights of these unsuspecting beachgoers,” Mariah told her friend, unable to hide a smile.
    The two women had first met when Mariah took Serena’s picture here on the resort beach. Serena had been less than happy about that and had demanded Mariah hand over the undeveloped film then and there. What could have been an antagonistic and adversarial relationship quickly changed to one of mutual respectas Serena explained that while in the peace corps, she’d spent a great deal of time with certain tribes in Africa who believed that being photographed was tantamount to having one’s soul kidnapped.
    Mariah had surrendered the film, and spent an entire afternoon listening to Serena’s fascinating stories of her travels around the world as a volunteer humanitarian.
    They’d talked about Mariah’s work for Foundations for Families, too. Serena had mentioned she’d seen Mariah getting dropped off by the Triple F van in the evenings. And they’d talked about the grassroots organization that used volunteers to help build affordable homes for hardworking, low-income families. Mariah spent three or four days each week with a hammer in her hand, and she loved both the work and the sense of purpose it gave her.
    “Hey, I got a package notice from the post office,” Mariah told her friend. “I think it’s my darkroom supplies. Any chance I can talk you into picking it up for me?”
    “If you had a car, you could pick it up yourself.”
    “If I had a car, I would use it once a month, when a heavy package needed to be picked up at the post office.”
    “If you had a car, you wouldn’t have to wait for that awful van to take you over to the mainland four times a week,” Serena pointed out.
    Mariah smiled. “I like taking the van.”
    Serena looked at her closely. “The driver
is
a real hunk.”
    “The driver is happily married to one of the Triple F site supervisors.”
    “Too bad.”
    Serena’s sigh of regret was so heartfelt, Mariah had to laugh. “You know, Serena, not everyone in the world is