Authors: Heather Graham
No, no, no, she was not going back in the lounge. Not if the devil rose from hell to drag her in.
She began to wish that she were a practicing witch, that she could cast a spell that would make the ground open beneath
his
feet and swallow him up in a single bite. Or that she could cast a spell that would glue his tongue to the roof of his mouth, make each of those defined muscles of his weigh a ton and drag him halfway through to China.
Oh, God! How had a single day turned her life into a nightmare?
She washed her face with cool water and gritted her teeth as she ventured out into the hallway. Thank God. Jerry and Marc were walking from the lounge toward her. Marc looked puzzled and not a little angry; Jerry Kloon merely looked concerned. Serena looked carefully for anyone behind them, but they were alone. She waved a hand. “Here I am.”
She walked toward them with an apology on her lips. “Please, forgive me. I must be coming down with something. The room was beginning to sway on me.”
Jerry Kloon interrupted her to assure her that it was he who should apologize; he had made the night a long one. “Go home and get some sleep and take care of yourself. Marc is going to need your help with that ‘ghost’ novel of his.”
Serena swallowed with relief. Marc had gotten the contract.
But Marc hadn’t said a word to her. Nor did he as good-byes and thank-yous were exchanged. He didn’t speak until they were in his aging Cutlass and on the highway headed home.
Then he exploded. “What the hell were you trying to do to me? You know how desperately I needed this contract! Christ, Serena, it was as if you were going out of your way to make the night a disaster! And we can’t all have been lucky enough to have married for money—especially an older spouse kind enough to die quickly—”
“
Marc
!” The sick horror of his anger-spurred accusation snapped her from all other thoughts, and the exclamation she gave him was a sure sign that he had stepped too far, that his words were unforgivable.
His jaw tightened as he drove; he blinked painfully. “I’m sorry, Serena, I really am. I should never have said that, and believe me, honey, I didn’t mean it. It’s just that I can’t begin to understand you tonight. What is the matter with you?”
Torn between anger and guilt, Serena bit down on her lip with no reply. Marc decided to give her silence meaning.
“It was that story about Eleanora, wasn’t it!” he exclaimed exaltedly. “It does bother you. I know, Serena, that you sense things, know things. Don’t you see how you could be helping me? If you gave me the slightest bit of assistance, Serena, we could do wonderful things—”
“Marc!” Serena hissed out. “Stop it! I mean it! I don’t see things and I don’t sense things and I don’t want my life or my home turned into absurdities! You caused tonight! You know that I don’t believe in ghosts, that I’ve never heard a thing in the Golden Hawk, and you were trying to get me to lie to that man! I won’t do it, Marc—and you’ve gotten your almighty contract! Leave it be!”
They both fell silent. Serena’s aggravation with him was such that she was beginning to wonder why she felt so terribly guilty.
Because in his way Marc had been wonderful; he had been an undemanding companion. He had been there over the last year when she needed him, and yet when she calls a stop to his needs, he laughs and tells her a time will come.
“Oh, Lord,” she moaned suddenly, “do I have a headache.”
They rode in silence again; then his hand reached out to clutch hers in sympathy. “Serena,” he said finally, softly, “I’m sorry. I realize you’re tired, I realize I tried to twist your hand. Thank you for tonight, and forgive me.”
She bit down so hard on her lip that she tasted blood.
“I’m the sorry one, Marc,” she murmured, breathing deeply.
A wave of trembling seemed to sweep over her, and she ground down on her teeth, turning to him and wondering how she was managing to talk and move so deceitfully. But she was doing just that. She smiled as if all were totally clear between them. “By the way,” she murmured, “who was that man?”
“What man?” Marc frowned.
“The one who came to the table to ask about the drinks.”
“Oh.” Marc shrugged. “I don’t know. Jerry answered him, but then he left, mumbling a thank-you as if he hadn’t even heard.”
Breathing suddenly became a lot easier, Serena discovered. She lay back in the seat and closed her eyes, unaware that Marc still held her hand. Minutes later they reached the Golden Hawk.
“You know,” Marc murmured as he walked her to the kitchen door, “I should really move in to work on the book. I’ll be spending half my time here to begin with—it would be much easier.”
“I’d have nowhere to put you,” Serena replied. “The three rooms are already rented for the summer. I have my usual two older couples, and Martha rented out the last room for the summer a week ago—to some old professor researching the ‘clinical psychology’ of the witchcraft trials.”
Marc took her key and inserted it in the lock and led her into the kitchen, smiling as he closed the door behind them and pinned her lightly against it. “You know,” he whispered huskily close to her face, “you could break down and let me sleep in your room.”
She had to laugh; was he teasing or was he serious? They had been through this before; he had often hinted at marriage. And he knew she still didn’t feel herself a widow long enough to try it again.
“No answer?” he queried with a long sigh that was dramatic. “Oh, cruel vixen, I’ll keep suffering!” He moved even closer for a good night kiss.
It was the strangest kiss she had ever received. Her mind and body swept back stubbornly to that touch of lips at the pond, and suddenly she felt nothing. Not a stirring, not warmth, certainly not passion. And at the same time, a great sadness hit her. She should love Marc. She should want him, but she didn’t.
Guilt, and a pain more terrible than ever before, rose within her, and she made herself return the kiss. Feigned passion was better than none. He deserved so much more.
And when he released her, murmuring a soft, “Ummmm,” she brought a tremulous smile to her lips. “See you later,” he murmured insinuatingly, stepping aside, reopening the door, and leaving her with a blown kiss—a charade of a newlywed spouse leaving only to park a car or put out the garbage before returning.
Serena chuckled at his antics, then sobered painfully. What was the matter with her? She had lost her head at the pond, and she was ready to throw a decent relationship away because of it. How stupid. Absurd. She shouldn’t have done what she did, but she had. It was over. And she had seen Joe Jock—he was real, too real. He had come after her in the pond, enjoyed a wild interlude, then run off to keep his dinner appointment with another woman!
She had done the same thing.
But I didn’t go after him, she excused herself.
Musing, she turned to lock the door, telling herself she should be grateful that nothing further had happened in the lounge.
“I thought you weren’t married.”
The sound froze her rigidly. Now she was hearing things. This time, it couldn’t be, it absolutely couldn’t be,
But as she turned slowly, horror restricting her every motion, she began to see things as well as hear them.
It was him, leaning against the shadow of the refrigerator. A scream rose in her throat, but it gave no sound. He straightened and began walking toward her, skirting the heavy oak table that sat in the middle of the room. He was stripped of jacket and tie. His shirt was a pale beige that now opened at the neck to contrast sharply with the dark bronze of his skin and the darkly curled hair that rose in the vee created by the opened buttons.
“You told me you weren’t married,” he repeated, pausing just before her. Not close enough to touch, but close enough so that she could smell his pleasantly masculine scent, feel the electricity of his body heat that seemed to be generated in lashing waves.
“He’s not my husband,” she heard herself saying stupidly.
He paused with a very dry grin that was more snarl than smile and a disdainfully mocking brow arched high. “Then my Lord, Mrs. Loren, you do get around.”
Serena closed her eyes briefly and swallowed, realizing he thought she did jump from bed to bed adulterously. What the hell did she care what he thought? They should never have met; he didn’t own her—what a thought—he appeared to think absolutely nothing of their interlude. And how dare he condemn her when she had seen him with …
A shaft of jealousy whipped through her, which made her more furious than she had been to begin with. “You’re trespassing again,” she said hotly. “I don’t know who you are or what the hell you think you’re doing, but this time I want you off my property—before I call the police.”
His second brow joined the first in a high arch, and with his grin becoming exasperatingly pleasant, he crossed his massive arms over his muscled chest. “Do you call the police on all your guests, Mrs. Loren? Is that part of the inn’s particular brand of hospitality.”
“Guests,” Serena repeated blankly. She shook her head disbelievingly. “I have no rooms,” she murmured, wondering how he had gotten into the kitchen to begin with. “My last was just rented,” she continued to stutter, praying suddenly that she hadn’t become involved with a dangerous lunatic. “Really. I haven’t got a room in the place. There are only three. I have two elderly couples who come every summer, and, and … a college professor. Dr. … umm … O’Neill. Really. You can look at the register.”
He was laughing at her. Dear God, he was a lunatic. And he was taking a step closer. He reached to touch her chin, and she could do nothing but freeze.
“My lovely Mrs. Loren, please don’t look so worried. I am Dr. O’Neill.” He stepped away from her, with something that was very dark and dangerous in his tumultuous hazel eyes. He turned to walk for the hallway door with a brisk step, then paused, spun on a heel, and faced her once more.
“It was truly a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Loren. Truly a pleasure.”
With a slight salute he smiled that deathly pleasant smile and left her.
S
HE HAD ENDURED A
truly rotten night. Finding Marc at her front door hauling a large package at seven thirty
A.M.
did little to improve her mood.
“What on earth are you doing?” Serena demanded, her tone hinting at her irritation as he pushed through the open door with his prize. “Marc, I have to get ready for work—”
“I know, I know, Serena,” Marc replied with enthusiasm underlying his impatience. “But I found
this
just half an hour ago, and I had to show it to you.”
Serena stood back with a frown as Marc dragged his slim, three-by-four-foot brown, wrapped package into the hallway and began to tear away at the paper. “I was passing Mrs. Lund’s flea market in Danvers, and I saw it—you know how early she sets up—and I practically drove off the road. Not that I knew what it was at first, but, well … just a second here, and you’ll see what I mean! Voila!”
The paper fell away, and Serena gasped. It was an old painting—faded and chipped, but pricelessly old. Yet what held her in stunned amazement was not the obvious historical value of the piece, but its subject. The woman who stared from the canvas with a soft smile on her lips belying sad, knowing eyes was uncannily familiar. Serena stared at a very similar face each morning as she put on her makeup.
“Told you!” Marc said smugly.
Serena bent for a more thorough scrutiny of the painting. The woman was clad in a gray wool dress highlighted only by a large white collar in typical Puritan conservatism. She sat upon a stiff-backed chair, her hands folded demurely in her lap. Her hair was dark; it was drawn back from her face severely, but a few wisps of curling ebony escaped that severity with an undeniable defiance to softly frame her face.
Serena couldn’t possibly pretend to deny that the face was like her own. Although the colors of the oils utilized by the artist were fading, it was apparent that the woman was intended to have blue eyes—deeply blue, dark to a point of violet. The cheekbones were slimmer than Serena’s, the chin sharper; the nose lacked the little insolent tilt of Serena’s, but still, despite the drastic difference in hair shade, the woman in the picture and Serena bore a startling resemblance.
“Well, Eleanora, what do you say?” Marc teased.
Serena glanced at him sharply. “How do you know this is Eleanora?”
“Oh, Serena! You disappoint me!” Marc said, clicking his tongue. “Look closely at the hands.”
Serena peered closely at the canvas once more. One of the elegantly folded fingers bore a ring, and as Serena narrowed her eyes, she realized that the ring was formed of a delicately carved
E
.
Serena sat back on her heels and glanced at Marc. “It’s something, all right,” she murmured. “I can’t believe it’s appeared now, after all these centuries—if it’s authentic, that is. Where did Mrs. Lund say she got it?”
Marc laughed. “She’s had it for years and years, but didn’t know it—it was painted over. Her nephew is an art student—he told her about a month ago that he believed that there was a painting beneath the seascape she thought she had. They were both quite excited—Mrs. Lund thought she might be harboring a masterpiece. She was quite disappointed to discover she wasn’t holding a Raphael or the like. Eleanora’s artist was an unknown, I’m afraid. It’s rather surprising that the portrait was painted at all at that time!”
Serena nodded vaguely and shrugged. “I would have it authenticated anyway, if I were you. Not,” she added dryly, “that I think you paid Mrs. Lund an exorbitant sum.”
“Fifty bucks!” Marc laughed.
“Marc,” Serena complained, “that’s highway robbery! How could you do that to the poor woman?”
“Poor woman! She’s loaded! And I’m a struggling author—”
“That’s not the point—”
“And you’re missing the point! Serena, that
is
you! Aren’t you feeling tingles?”
Serena sighed with clenched teeth. “Marc—I don’t know what you’re getting at, but that isn’t me. I grant you the resemblance is startling, but don’t go getting on one of your kicks. If anything—” She broke off as the doorbell began to ring.