Authors: Heather Graham
“I’ll get it,” Marc murmured dourly.
From her crouched position in the hallway, Serena watched as Marc opened the door.
To her horror she saw that it was the guest who had first disrupted her entire life, then added insult to injury by stealing even her sleep with the audacity of being in her house.
He had apparently been jogging. A leather band held slick wet hair from his brow, and he was clad in a pair of loose shorts and a tank top. Little of his astounding physique was left to the imagination, and yet he was a man apparently unaware of his remarkable assets. He was leaning against the doorframe breathing heavily, his bronze skin glistening with a sheen of perspiration as Marc opened the door.
Serena felt her own breath catch; the picture had erased him from her mind for a heaven-sent interlude, but now a wave of new horror and humiliation washed over her like an entire ocean. She had spent part of her sleepless night wondering how she would deal with him when she saw him again, and how she would deal with his inevitable meeting with Marc. But surely Marc would recognize him only as the stranger in the restaurant, and he
was
a stranger. Surely a stranger wouldn’t say anything in front of Marc, especially when that stranger was apparently well versed in one-night affairs.
In those few seconds her mind spun so quickly it was almost as if everything that happened did so in slow motion.
Marc didn’t even recognize him as the stranger in the restaurant. He took one look at the he-man build and started to absently close the door with a casual, “Deliveries to the rear, please.”
A hand came out to stop the door from closing. “Excuse me—I’m not delivering anything.”
Serena would have laughed at the noticeable irritation in the painfully civil protest except that she was feeling pathetically unnerved. Her blood had seemed to heat at the sound of his voice; her hands became instantly clammy. She had to concentrate merely to stand, and then, once she was on her feet, she found herself plunging in and nervously chattering at a frantic pace.
“Marc, this is, uh, Dr. O’Neill. He’s taken the third guest room for the summer. Dr. O’Neill, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Marc Talbot. Dr. O’Neill is a—” For the life of her, Serena couldn’t remember exactly what Martha had said the “old Doc” did. “He’s a—”
“Psychologist,” Justin O’Neill offered dryly. “Clinical psychologist.”
The two men shook hands somewhat warily. Serena was aware that Marc’s reaction to O’Neill was not dissimilar to her own. The man had no right being any type of an intellectual. He should have been driving a semi-truck, or wielding a hockey stick—or fighting off lions with his bare hands in a Roman arena.
“Sorry to have interrupted you,” O’Neill apologized with a sarcasm only Serena seemed to notice. “I forgot to take the main door key with me.” He released Marc’s hand, and his piercing hazel eyes with their sardonic depths turned to Serena.
“You weren’t really interrupting anything, Dr. O’Neill,” Serena returned with what she hoped was a cool nonchalance. She kept wondering how Marc didn’t sense the tension in the small hallway, tension that was so thick it might be cut with a knife.
But Marc didn’t seem to think anything. After a moment he appeared to accept the psychologist/jogger with little thought. His appearance, in fact, seemed providential.
“A clinical psychologist, eh?” Marc queried, and Serena winced inwardly, as she knew what was coming by his self-satisfied tone. “A man of science—just whom I’d like to see at the moment.” He beckoned to Justin O’Neill to come around to see the painting. “Take a look at the picture, and then take a good look at our Mrs. Loren. What do you say?”
O’Neill stared at the picture for a long time. Then he turned his fathomless gaze back to Serena. “I say it’s a bit of a resemblance,” he remarked, then shrugged. “An extraordinary resemblance, Mrs. Loren.”
“Extraordinary,” he said, but not “uncanny.” Despite the fact that she still wished the man might disappear into a hole in the earth, she was suddenly grateful for his tone. Yes, it was extraordinary—but interestingly so, nothing else.
She didn’t know she had been holding her breath until she expelled a long sigh. Then she closed her eyes momentarily. She was in the middle of an “extraordinary” turmoil, trying to control the shiver that had come over her since he had come near, but if she didn’t get herself together, she was going to be up an “extraordinary” creek; the chamber of commerce would be revoking their endorsement if she didn’t get her business opened on schedule this morning in the height of the summer tourist season.
“Well,” she murmured, lowering her eyes from both men, “if you’ll excuse me, I want to get some breakfast and get out of here.”
“Think Martha will feed me?” Marc inquired hopefully.
“She never refuses you,” Serena said dryly, biting her lip as she realized she had just informed her intimate stranger that this other man was a frequent guest. What difference did it make? She didn’t even know if he had realized yet that she wasn’t an adulteress.
What do I care what he thinks? her mind shrieked. He seduced me and disappeared and then had the utter gall to reappear.
The stranger passed her with his infuriating smile, and she dimly realized that he had excused himself to shower for breakfast. She had to blink to come back to life once more, and coming back to life was misery. She was so physically aware of him again as he brushed her, aware of his very masculine scent, aware of the glistening bronze muscles.
He didn’t get them just from jogging, she thought resentfully. How had a city college professor become so darkly tanned, so incredibly sinewed? It wasn’t fair.
“Serena, I swear I don’t know what is wrong with you lately. You’re continually off in some kind of dream—”
“Oh, sorry, Marc,” Serena murmured, whirling around quickly. “Come on, let’s go to the dining room.” Once more she was moving like a whippet, having realized that if she hurried, she could be out of the dining room before Dr. O’Neill reappeared.
“Wait a minute,” Marc said. “Just let me set the painting before the wall.”
Serena left Marc adjusting his portrait and hurried into the kitchen. It was exactly eight, and Martha was piling a plate high with blueberry biscuits. “Take these, will you, dear?” Martha told Serena, handing her the plate without bothering to wait for a reply. “The Bakers and the Donnesys aren’t having breakfast this morning,” Martha told Serena, her brown eyes sparkling as she smoothed back neat gray curls before reaching for the massive coffeepot. “They all left at the crack of dawn to go whale watching.”
Serena laughed, the sparkle in her eyes matching that of Martha’s affectionately. The Donnesys and the Bakers were all four on the far side of seventy, but more active, life-loving people she had yet to meet. She had looked forward to their coming for the summer leaving their southern retreats to stay at the inn. “Good for them!” Serena said, but then her smile faded as she followed Martha from the kitchen to the elegantly cared for dining room. Only one of three tables had been set—Martha had planned for Dr. O’Neill to join them.
“I heard Marc’s voice,” Martha said with a shade of exasperation. She wasn’t terribly fond of the number of meals she afforded the young man. “So I assumed he was staying.” The prim note left her voice. “Wait until you meet Dr. O’Neill! You’re really going to enjoy him, Serena! Not that he’s a thing like I expected—I mean a professor?—but you’ll see! He’s doing a book up here, you know. Kind of a heavy thing, I take it. He’s totally against the witchcraft trials being presented historically as cases of fraud and the like—he was trying to explain to me how very terrible and physical the clinical type of hysteria could be! And he can tell you all sorts of fascinating things! He’s studied voodoo and African arts and Indian shamans and—but he’s not at all the bookish type. Like I said, just wait till you see him, dear—my Lord, I do run on.”
She certainly had run on. Serena hadn’t been able to find a second in which to interrupt. “Martha,” she murmured, following the older woman back into the kitchen to be handed a large platter of bacon, “I’ve met Dr. O’Neill.”
“Oh!” Martha paused and scrutinized Serena sharply. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“What did you think?”
Serena lowered her eyes. I wasn’t actually thinking when we first met, she thought bitterly. She shrugged, turning with her bacon. “He seems all right,” she said nonchalantly.
“Did I hear you say something about a book?”
Marc entered the dining room and pulled out a chair for himself.
“Yes,” Martha said, her eyes narrowing upon her unwanted guest. “Dr. O’Neill writes textbooks that are used in colleges and universities all over the country.”
“Who told you that?” Marc inquired a bit sourly. “Dr. O’Neill?”
Martha gave him a thin-lipped smile. “No, Marc. When he called to reserve the room, he mentioned he was writing a book. I happened to mention him to Mrs. Baker.
She
told me that he was considered the best in his field!”
Serena hated to hear the sharp edge passing between two of her best friends. But there was no help for it. Martha and Marc simply didn’t get along, and although open warfare had never been declared, situations had been known to get tense. She took the seat beside Marc and lied valiantly with false cheer. “It should be an exciting summer—a clinical writer and an imaginative one—both haunting the Golden Hawk!”
Just as she finished speaking, the “clinical” writer made his appearance. Bathed and shaved, and both casual and overwhelmingly vigorous in jeans and a sport shirt, he offered a pleasant “Good morning” to Martha before taking the chair beside Serena.
“I hear you’re a writer,” Marc said to him. Serena heard the defensive quality to his tone and winced. You aren’t in competition, Marc, she thought sadly, except it was easy to understand his feelings. As she had noted herself, the doctor was a bit of an awesome shock. A power like nothing she had ever known. It was only natural that he had Marc off base. First he had discovered that he was venturing into his first big novel along parallel lines with an acclaimed veteran. To second that affront, the acclaimed veteran towered over his medium height, and besides being brilliant, Justin had also managed to become an astounding physical specimen.
And, oh God, Marc, Serena thought a little sickly, he’s also another one up on you.
She couldn’t seem to control the color from flooding her face with thought of her own capitulation to the good doctor. She lowered her head and pretended an engrossed concentration upon buttering a muffin.
Justin O’Neill shrugged in reply to Marc. “I’m a teacher,” he said, “who writes on the side. Nothing terribly exciting most of the time, I’m afraid. Especially to the grad students studying for their exams.”
Martha and Marc chuckled at the dry comment; Serena felt her muffin catch in her throat. A shiver caught hold of her, and she picked up her coffee cup, wincing as the hot liquid burned in her throat. Suddenly she could stand the absurdity of the situation no longer. She stood and murmured, “You’ll all have to excuse me. I want to get to work.”
Marc glanced at her strangely; Justin O’Neill rose. “I look forward to seeing you later, Mrs. Loren. Martha has informed me that you’re a wealth of information—and I’d very much like to hear the history of the inn … from you.”
There was the slightest pause between the words, but to Serena their implication was deep.
“I’d be willing to help you all I can,” Marc offered. “If you’re after intriguing history, that would be Eleanora Hawk—the woman in the portrait we showed you this morning.”
“I’ve heard the story,” O’Neill mused in reply to Marc, his eyes still on Serena. “The resemblance becomes all the more interesting though. Do you think there is an explanation, Mrs. Loren?”
Marc started to speak, but Serena, aware of the mystic meaning he would give, quickly interrupted.
“Certainly there’s a plausible, clinical explanation, Dr. O’Neill. I’m a widow, and therefore, a Loren. But my maiden name was Hawk. Long range genetics, but genetics nevertheless. Now, if you will please excuse me …”
She fled the room before anyone could say anything else. When she reached her car, she was shaking. She gripped the wheel tightly for a moment and took a deep breath. What a fool she was being. The man was making her a nervous wreck. And on top of it all, Marc was becoming convinced she was a reincarnation of a long-dead ancestor.
“And everything was going so well,” she murmured aloud to herself in bewilderment. Impatiently she twisted her key in the ignition and drove down the long sloping drive to the highway.
The Museum of Fact and Fantasy was located in the center of town. As a child she had dreamed of opening such a place, and when she had married Bill Loren, she had laughingly told him her dream. “Silly dream, I guess,” she had said. “Salem is already full of attractions.”
“The only silly dream,” her husband had replied, “is one that you don’t attempt to accomplish.”
Serena bit her lip with her thoughts. She had loved Bill Loren dearly, with all her heart. He had been twenty years her senior, but it hadn’t mattered to either of them.
She bit into her lip harder. It had been a long time since she had cried. He had been dead two years. She had spent the first year learning to live without him, nursing her memories with tears at night. And then, when she had realized she couldn’t mourn forever, she had been afraid. Her friends had dated, and frequently they had affairs with married men who were unfaithful, men who were either chauvinistic, or totally dependent. Two of her close friends were divorced after disastrous marriages: Karen’s husband hadn’t been able to make a decision between her and an old lover; Beth’s husband had left her when her income as an artist had surpassed his as an accountant.
Bill had been the perfect mate. Strong and secure, he could both love and trust her. He cheered on each of her triumphs, held her hand and promised the sun would rise during disasters.
Martha, strangely enough, had been the one to finally talk her into dating Marc. He had come to Salem from Boston to work for the local newspaper, and he had apparently become determined to date Serena from the first day he saw her at the museum. She had eventually given in to his persistence. And she had slowly learned that going out could be fun.