Serena's Magic (12 page)

His eyes didn’t lower from hers. “I’m sorry, Serena,” he said quietly.

She blinked and her eyes slipped past him to stare unseeingly at the forest which surrounded the inn. For a moment she had felt a strange catch in her heart, not for the husband she had lost, but for the man who had been costing her sleep by his very existence.

When he had spoken to her, she had felt that tug of familiarity, that lightness, about being near him.

I do love him, she thought. I love the way he moves. I love his mind. I love the quirk in his brows, that fathomless storm that can darken his eyes. I don’t know him, but I do know him. I know his moods, I know his needs, I know his love. …

“Serena! There you are!”

Marc bounded from the house, notepad and pen in hand. He rushed to Serena, gripped her shoulders, and brushed her lips with a hasty kiss. “Darling, just wait till I spring today’s surprise on you!”

“I can hardly,” Serena murmured, uncomfortable with the awareness that Justin was watching her. She pulled from Marc’s hold subtly and smiled so there would be no repulse to her action. “What is it?”

“Oh, I can’t show you now! But I will in just a few days.” He fell silent as if he realized suddenly that they weren’t alone. “You’ll enjoy my discovery, too, O’Neill. It was a real find.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Justin said politely, and Serena noticed that he watched Marc not with jealousy, but with a patient tolerance.

“Listen,” Marc continued apologetically, “I know I offered to help with the barbecue, but I really need to get into Boston. Would you mind if I copped out, Justin?”

“No problem,” Justin replied evenly.

Marc rubbed his chin with a grimace and turned his attention back to Serena. “God, honey, I’m sorry, I just realized this is Friday night. I should be taking you someplace.”

Serena felt her breath coming short. The pain of her deception and hypocrisy was suddenly staggering. “It’s all right, Marc,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. He had been in such a whirl all week he had never noticed she had been avoiding him too. “I have to open the museum tomorrow anyway. You know how I need my sleep.”

“Serena, you’re a gem,” Marc said, stepping forward to quickly kiss her brow. He started to walk across the lawn, then suddenly turned back. “Hey, Justin! Thanks again for all the copies of the trial transcripts! I never knew they had so much on the Hawks in them!”

Justin didn’t reply; he waved his answer. Serena waited until Marc rounded the whitewashed corner of the house to speak. “You’ve helped Marc with research?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I had to have it all myself, so I just made two copies of everything I had duplicated. Get the plates, will you? Everyone ordered rare.”

Serena turned and headed for the kitchen. She ducked inside and found Martha had left a large serving platter on the counter. Clutching it, she walked back out to the barbecue.

Justin glanced at her for a second, then began stabbing the meat to transfer it from flame to stoneware. “Well, ‘gem,’” he murmured, “I see you haven’t sat down with Marc for an honest conversation yet.”

Serena drew in a breath. His eyes found hers again. “You can’t run forever, you know.”

She clasped her hands to still her trembling fingers. “You know,” she repeated in the same blasé tone, “if it weren’t for Tom, Dr. O’Neill, I wouldn’t even need to talk. I would ask you to take your patronage elsewhere.”

“Tom?” his brows lifted high. “Another poor dangling sap, Mrs. Loren?”

She smiled vaguely, remembering that he had no idea of who Tom might be. His voice had sounded gruff, which gave her a little thrill of pleasure. Inexperienced, was she? she thought with a laugh. He had been so damned certain of her—it was fun for a moment to allow him to think he just might have been wrong. …

His fingers suddenly clutched her upper arm, and in that simple gesture she saw the pulse and bulge of a dozen tight muscles across his chest.

Then she saw the piercing demand in his eyes, and triumph fled away as she heard herself explaining. “My brother, Justin. Tom Hawk. He owns half of the inn. And,” she added bitterly, “although he leaves the management to me, he loves it dearly. And I doubt that he’d appreciate me kicking you out. Therefore I have tolerated your presence.”

She panicked for a brief moment, holding her breath, her eyes widening. She felt a bit like a canary in a gilded cage, chirping away in a cat’s claw. She had seen him angry, but never furious, and it occurred to her belatedly that in a full-fledged temper he would be terrible to see.

But she began inhaling air again as she saw that her remark hadn’t made him angry. To the contrary, he laughed and his whisper brushed her ear. “Mrs. Loren, when are you going to stop lying to yourself?”

She didn’t reply. She heard the chattering of Martha and the inn’s other guests as the screen door slammed behind them and they all moved out to the lawn. Justin’s eyes rose from hers and focused on the group coming up from behind her. “Rare as ordered,” he called cheerfully.

Serena ran back into the kitchen for the beer she had never had a chance to drink.

To her surprise she enjoyed the evening. The seven of them sat about the wooden picnic table, and conversation never flagged. Serena learned that Justin O’Neill was a man with widespread and diverse interests. He listened to the Donnesys’ and Bakers’ tales of travel and laughingly contributed a few of his own. He loved museums of any kind, she discovered, just as he loved activity, and if something were brought up about which he knew little, he readily admitted it and listened.

It was a long and leisurely dinner, with Serena the only silent one at the table.

When at long last the coals were quenched and the plates collected, the older couples yawned and said their good nights. But as Giles Donnesy reached the screen door, he paused to turn back to Justin. “I’ll work up those notes for you tomorrow morning, young man! Don’t you worry!”

“Thanks, Mr. Donnesy!” Justin replied smoothly. “I appreciate it.”

Serena glared at Justin but said nothing until Martha had followed the Donnesys inside.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “Making that nice old man spend his summer vacation reading books for you! You have no right to expect that of anyone, Doctor, especially since you are supposed to be so damned brilliant in your field!”

She should have instantly realized the answer when it came to her with his contemptuous stare.

Oh, Lord, she thought, he didn’t need help from anyone. He probably had a mind like a damned computer. All he had done was made her older guests feel wonderful. He had made them feel respected and needed, and he had given them the glory of knowing that their own minds were as bright and beautiful as when their bodies were young.

Serena clutched the garbage she had been collecting tightly in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, and then, before she could burst into tears of misery and confusion, she fled into the house.

In her room she took two aspirin, and then took two more. She drew a very hot bath and plunged into it, praying that the mist above the water could make the rough edges of her whirling mind begin to blur.

Justin bathed quickly in cold water and then poured a generous portion of whiskey into a cup of the coffee Martha provided him nightly in a thermos so that he could work at night undisturbed.

But he had no interest in working tonight. He stared at his meticulous notes on the trials and the Mathers in particular with absent distaste. His concentration was simply shot. He slipped the cover over his typewriter and prowled his room in his robe, raking his fingers repeatedly through his hair.

It had been his torture knowing that she was just a few doors away. And now he had to wonder what the hell had been the matter with him to threaten her or offer ultimatums.

Although he had spent his life studying human behavior, he had no explanation for his own.

She was simply a fever in his blood. When he closed his eyes at night he saw her, the sparkling violet eyes, the waving mass of chestnut hair, the simple beauty of her curving smile.

And, he thought wryly, the simple beauty of her other curves, too.

But though he longed to hold those curves, there was more to his obsession. He had never been so affected by a woman, and he was still a little stunned. He loved to merely watch her walk across a room. The soft sound of her voice seemed to permeate his soul. He loved the keen glitter of interest which would so often sharpen her eyes.

He stopped his pacing and drained his spiked coffee, then lay upon his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

I love her mind, he thought.

Sure, man, you love her mind. That’s why you’re lying here wondering if you ought to try sleeping in the bathtub with the water high on cold.

But I do, he thought wryly. I love her mind. I want her so badly that I can’t function, but part of that wanting is because I love all that is mirrored in those beautiful eyes.

He had spent his days subtly querying anyone he could about her. And as he had expected, he had only learned nice things. She had adored her husband; they had been a marvelous couple, always doing things together. She had never even noticed the glances of other men.

And when the Donnesys had been injured in a car accident together, Serena had flown to be with them so that they could come home rather than be confined in the hospital, old and alone.

So many things he had learned about her. Beautiful things.

Too bad, he thought dryly, that someone hadn’t mentioned her brother. He had almost blown the whole thing tonight when she mentioned “Tom.”

Oh, God, he thought, I am obsessed. I’m in love, and I didn’t think I really believed in love.

I even want children with her.

Jenny, he thought then, I wonder what she’ll think of Jenny. She doesn’t even know I have a daughter.

Justin stood up and glanced at the paneling to the right of his bed. He turned away from it.

He had been exploring since he arrived—and discovered the catch to the hidden door. It led to the hidden stairway.

And the stairway veered down, and then back up.

To Serena’s room.

Get away from there, he grumbled silently to himself.

He started pacing again. Damn, but she was different. He winced with the memory of his last encounter with Denise at the restaurant. She had flown into a rage first, then into a fit of very dramatic tears when he had said it was over between them. She had assumed it was another woman—and at that time, she had only been partly right. He had realized that he couldn’t continue the empty, shallow relationship any longer. But even as she had cried, he had wondered how many tears had actually been shed for him. The tears had faded too quickly and become another rage in which she had informed him that his career would falter without her. She had spurred him on; she had made him what he was.

He suddenly discovered that he was not only staring at the paneling again, but that he had stopped his pacing directly in front of the catch.

I can’t, he thought. I gave her a week.

Yeah, and what happens when she ignores me, which it appears she has every intention of doing?

She wants me. I know it! I know it when I touch her, when I see her eyes.

I need her.

I can’t go sneaking into her room.

Well, I sure as hell can’t knock. She won’t let me in.

If I don’t touch her, feel her next to me, I’ll go crazy. I can’t sleep because she’s in my dreams and I wake up aching.

I cannot go through that panel.

It wouldn’t be right; it wouldn’t be fair.

He stared at the paneling as seconds ticked by. Then his fingers reached out and ran slowly down the board.

The hell with fair.

His fingers found the hollow section, and he pressed. A section of the wall revolved neatly to reveal the old wooden spiral stairs.

He paused only long enough to fetch his flashlight from the nightstand drawer, then he moved into the staircase. He cursed as he smashed his head against the sloping ceiling. “Damned thing was built for midgets,” he muttered beneath his breath.

He had to follow the spiral down to the first floor, then find the spring in the dead-end panel. The well was two-sided—two avenues of escape, he assumed. If one was discovered, the other might still go unnoticed.

He found the second spring and entered the tiny enclosure which led both outside and up—to Serena’s room. “You’ve come this far, O’Neill,” he told himself silently. “No chickening out now.”

He trained his light on the second spiral of steps and hunched his back over to prevent another clunk on the head. When he reached the top, he allowed his fingers to grope a third time.

And just as surely they found the third spring. A panel quietly slid—and gave him entrance.

She wasn’t in the bedroom, but he saw the light in the bathroom and heard the splash and ripple of water.

He closed the panel behind him and leaned against it, absently crossing his arms over his chest as his eyes scanned her room.

Woven blue throw rugs adorned the highly polished floor, and the walls were papered in a lattice pattern of a complementing shade. The drapes were white and elegantly sheer, as was the spread on the queen-size bed. Her toiletries were neatly displayed on an antique dresser. Her penchant for her town was clearly in evidence; little “kitchen” witches dangled from the ceiling along with a huge potted fern. A TV/stereo cabinet sat across from the bed, filled with a variety of albums and tapes. He wanted to study every album, to know her taste in music. He was so hungry for any little scrap of knowledge about her.

She’s going to freak out when she sees you, O’Neill. Scream her head off and order you out of her house, brother or no.

I have to be here. I can’t stay away anymore.

I have to have her.

A slight sound drew his wandering gaze sharply back to the bathroom door.

She stood before him, a huge white towel wrapped around her torso.

Her eyes were huge in her face, shimmering their unique blue-violet. Her hair cascaded in heavy waves about her ivory shoulders, and her lips were parted in incredulous surprise.