Serena Mckee's Back In Town

by Marie Ferrarella

  It was one of the reasons she and Cameron had had to keep their friendship and then their budding relationship a secret. Her mother had disapproved of him and his family. But then, her mother had disapproved of almost everyone in Bedford who wasn’t part of her privileged inner circle. And even her high-society friends hadn’t always seemed to live up to the standards Carolyn Tyler McKee had set down. There had been times when Serena thought no one could. Least of all her and her father.

  Cameron nodded. “Detective, first class.”

  He realized that it sounded as if he were bagging. But while he might have bragged to the old Serena, he wouldn’t to this woman—this stranger. She looked a great deal like her mother, he thought. Beautiful, cool, sophisticated. Only the flush in her cheeks reminded him of the girl he’d known a hundred or so years ago.

  “So, now that I’ve answered your question, answer mine.” He saw the wariness entering her eyes. Despite everything, it bothered him. He’d never given her any reason to be wary of him. Did her distrust run so deep that she was on her guard even against him? “What are you doing here?” he repeated, his voice low-key.

  Why didn’t you come for me, Cameron? I waited for you to come, to hold me and make the world go away. Why didn’t you come?

  She couldn’t stop the thought from forming. But the next moment, she upbraided herself for being so childish. The answer was simple. Cameron, like everyone else, had been horrified by what had happened. It had made him distance himself from her, as if somehow she’d had a part in it. As if she could taint him by association. She’d gone over that time and again in her head, her aunt’s patient explanation echoing in her brain. But it felt, at times, as if the message just hadn’t reached her heart.

  But it must have. Because her heart had hardened. Frozen. The aborted relationships that littered her life bore silent testimony.

  “You want to know why I’m here?” Serena narrowed her eyes as she looked at him. “Is that the detective asking?”

  “Yes.” He had no personal interest in her return. What he’d felt for Serena was gone, Cameron told himself. It had been fragile and special and it had belonged to the boy he hadn’t been in years. If, from time to time, deep in the envelope of night, he still ached for her, that was for him alone to know.

  Well, that answered any lingering questions, Serena thought, mentally applying antiseptic to the fresh wound that had surprised her by forming. Just as well. She’d come here for one reason and one reason only. She meant to keep her word to her aunt and find a way to clear her father’s name. Anything else would just get in the way.

  It had taken Aunt Helen’s deathbed request to make Serena realize she had too easily accepted the unacceptable, seen the obvious instead of looking for explanations. She, of all people, should have known better.

  In response to his question, Serena lifted a shoulder, carelessly letting it drop again. Cameron remembered, without wanting to, how soft that shoulder had felt beneath his hand. How delicate she had felt. Once, he’d wanted to protect her from the world with every fiber of his being. To make it up to Serena for every pain she’d ever felt, every slight she’d ever suffered at her mother’s hand.

  But now that very same movement was meant to shut him out, to push him away.

  And it succeeded, placing him on one side of the fence and Serena on the other. Just as her mother had once intended. Carolyn McKee had accomplished in death what she couldn’t in life. The irony of that was not lost on Cameron.

  But then she spoke. “My aunt Helen died a week ago.”

  Serena knew there would come a time when she would need the goodwill of the police, and, if he belonged to the force, Cameron’s, as well. She figured this half-truth would be enough for him—for now.

  He remembered the woman. Tall, thin, she’d been much older than the brother she had raised and doted on. Cameron had heard rumors to the effect that she was conspicuously missing from the wedding when Jon McKee married Carolyn Tyler in a ceremony that kept the county society pages buzzing for days. Carolyn hadn’t liked Helen, and the feeling had been mutual, though far less vocally expressed on Helen’s part.

  It had been Helen McKee who whisked Serena away the day after the tragedy occurred, after closeting herself with Detective Olson—now Bedford’s police chief—who was in charge of the investigation. Olson had declared it an open-and-shut case. Bereft and despondent, Jon McKee had broken in on his estranged wife in their house. They had apparently argued, and Jon had shot and killed her, then turned the gun on himself, The court had agreed, and when the newspapers found another story to follow, things had slowly begun to settle down and get back to normal.

  But not for everyone, he thought, looking at Serena. Not for her, and not for him.

  Helen McKee had been her only living relative. With her passing, he knew, Serena found herself alone. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  She let the sympathy touch her briefly before she pushed it aside.

  “Thank you,” she said, with a formality that only served to anger him. Cameron clamped down on it as he let her continue. “The house belongs to me now, and I thought I’d come back.” Defiance lit her eyes. “End of story.”

  No, he didn’t think so. There was more. There’d been just the slightest hesitation in her voice. Some things, it seemed, didn’t change. Serena had never been able to lie well.

  “Just like that?”

  She’d intended to be the one doing the questioning, not the other way around. “Why? Did I have to write to someone and ask for permission before coming back?”

  He couldn’t remember Serena ever being sarcastic, not even when she was pouring out her heart to him about her mother and the way Carolyn treated her and the father she adored.

  The tone of her question stung. His response was automatic, without thought. “I didn’t think you remembered how to write.”

  Her head jerked up. She wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. “Excuse me?”

  Cameron shook his head, dismissing the comment. That was stupid, allowing residual feelings to seep out. If nothing else, it was beneath him. He’d always thought he had better control over himself than that. Finding out otherwise annoyed him. He was a professional now, not a hothead. He couldn’t allow himself to slip.

  “Nothing. It’s just surprising to hear that you’re thinking of moving back, that’s all. I thought you were living somewhere else.”

  Restless with this lie, Serena began moving around the room, picking her way through the maze of shrouded furniture. Her mother’s expensive, highly prized antiques, which she had never been allowed to sit on, were undoubtedly moldering beneath the drop cloths and layers of gray dust, Serena thought.

  Somehow, it seemed fitting.

  “I was, and now I’m living here.” She gestured around, encompassing the whole house. “Until it suits me to go somewhere else.”

  The lie felt thick in her mouth. She’d never been comfortable with anything but the truth. Maybe that was why she’d never felt at peace with the way her parents’ case was resolved.

  Blowing out a breath, Serena looked up and saw the way Cameron was staring at her. Her conscience pricked at her. He didn’t believe her. It took an effort not to shift. “What are you looking at?”

  His eyes held hers for a moment, and then he shrugged. “Nothing. No one I know,” he said quietly. “No one I know at all.”

  Cameron picked up the edge of a drop cloth, glancing at what was hidden beneath. A rodent had gotten to the armchair’s upholstery, eating a large hole in the expensive fabric. He could almost hear Carolyn McKee’s shriek of anguish. The house had been a showplace once, the pride of a very shallow woman who valued things above people. He let the cloth fall into place again, flicking the film of dust from his fingers with his thumb.

  “Whoever your aunt hired to take care of the place didn’t do such a good job of it. I guess they figured that after a couple of years, when no one came to look in on the property, they were prett
y safe in doing as little as possible. If you’re going to stay here, I’d suggest hiring someone else.”.

  He brushed aside a cobweb directly above her head, his fingers just barely skimming her hair. Something distant rippled through him. He succeeded in ignoring it after the first impact. “And I’d see about having the locks changed, if I were you.”

  That, too, was nothing personal, he told himself. As he was someone sworn to uphold the law, everyone’s safety was of concern to him.

  Serena looked toward the blue-and-cream-tiled foyer and the ornately carved doors just beyond. The beveled glass, with its pink roses, was still intact. A flash of a memory skimmed along the perimeter of her mind, just out of reach. Someone standing, behind the glass, looking in. And then it disappeared, frustrating her.

  She realized Cameron was still looking at her. He’d said something to her. Something about locks. About changing them.

  “Locks changed?” she questioned. “Why?”

  He would have thought that was obvious. “Like I said, kids come in here from time to time—some of them have gotten really good at picking the locks. If I remember correctly, the one in the back doesn’t close properly anymore. A couple of deadbolts wouldn’t hurt. Maybe even an entire security system installed, if you’re serious about staying.”

  Serena missed the skepticism in his voice as she shivered. She hugged herself, automatically running her hands along her bare arms. Why was it that it never seemed to warm up in here?

  She turned her eyes toward him before she thought better of it. Because it was so natural to turn to him. “I can’t imagine needing a deadbolt in Bedford. Or a security system.”

  Apart from an occasional stolen bicycle, crime had been almost nonexistent in the town she grew up in.

  But then, she reminded herself grimly, this was where her parents had died.

  “Start imagining it,” Cameron advised, successfully keeping any stray emotion out of his voice. “We’re not the three-light town we used to be. Unless you came in the back way, over the foothills, I figure you would have seen that.”

  That was exactly the way she had come into Bedford. She’d taken the back way, the long way, driving here from LAX instead of taking a connecting flight and flying into John Wayne Airport, which would have been infinitely closer to the last leg of her journey.

  But she hadn’t wanted to be closer, she’d wanted to drive, to see the countryside and let it soothe the nerves that kept tightening with anticipation, excitement and fear when she thought of the monumental task that lay ahead of her.

  “I did,” she confessed. Turning, she allowed the ghost of a smile to pass her lips. “I guess I was trying to remember things the way they used to be, still hoping that maybe they were.”

  He looked at her then, wondering if she could be talking about them, or if that was only his own wishful thinking projecting hopes that he would have sworn had long since vacated. Obviously, his heart was a little sluggish when it came to reality. And the reality was that, no matter what had happened—or perhaps especially because of what had happened—Serena should have answered his letters. She should have given him some sort of indication that she still wanted him in her life, instead of letting silence do the talking for her.

  He would have moved heaven and earth to be with her. And Serena couldn’t even move a pen across a sheet of paper.

  Water under a bridge that had long since collapsed, Cameron reminded himself. Now they were just two people who had once known each other. And it was his job to see that she was safe. It was what they paid him for.

  Thinking only of that, and not her, Cameron moved from window to window, testing the integrity of sashes long since sealed shut by dust, grit and time.

  “Everything changes. Can’t stop progress,” he said offhandly, without looking at her over his shoulder. “No matter how much you might want to.”

  Serena watched him move from window to window, then followed him at a distance to the next room. And the next.

  Though it seemed unnatural, she maintained the distance between them. She felt awkward in his presence, even just looking at the back of his head. At the way the dark blond hair seemed to skim the collar of his jacket as he braced his shoulders, trying to wrestle each sash open.

  The slight itch in her palms took her by surprise.

  Serena rubbed her fingers over them. She could remember how much she had liked running her hands through his hair, how much she’d liked feeling it rub against her fingertips.

  And how much she’d liked the scent of him, the feel of him. Her eyes drifted shut for a moment, savoring the fragment of a memory.

  She’d felt so safe with Cameron, so protected, as if nothing could ever touch her.

  But something had.

  And the feeling had been a lie, deceiving her so that she was prepared for the horror that lay in wait for her. She knew the danger in that now, the danger in thinking yourself safe when you weren’t. And she wasn’t ever going to let it happen again.

  Serena opened her mouth to say something, changed her mind and settled on the inane. “So, what have you been doing with yourself these last few years, besides becoming a police detective?”

  He turned from the last window and looked at her. Serena couldn’t read his thoughts. It was like looking into the face of someone she’d never known. Someone who just reminded her of someone else.

  The silence made her uneasy. She needed to fill it and wished she’d brought a radio with her. She’d have to see about buying one tomorrow.

  The words tripped over one another. “I suppose that you’re probably married now. The father of what—two? Three?” she guessed.

  It was just idle conversation, something to fill the emptiness, yet the possibility that he might say that he was someone’s father, someone’s husband, scraped sharply and painfully through Serena.

  Cameron thought of saying yes, that he’d gotten married, that his life had settled down into a comfortable and comforting niche. For a moment, he even considered telling her about Rachel’s life and passing it off as his own. But that would be childish, and he had no interest in playing games. He’d never played them with her before.

  “No.”

  “No, what?” Serena prodded as her heart began to hammer again.

  This was silly. It didn’t matter if he was married or not. If he had one child or a dozen. None of it mattered. She hadn’t returned to stake her claim on a man for whom love couldn’t endure the weight of a test. Who hadn’t loved her enough to come to her and stand by her.

  So why was she holding her breath, waiting for him to answer?

  Cameron smiled slightly then, the corners of his mouth curving just a little.

  “No, ma’am?” he supplied with a quizzical raise of a brow.

  Chapter 3

  Silence hummed between them for a long moment, and then Serena laughed.

  It was the same soft, sensual laugh that had seemed so incongruous coming from the shy girl she once was, so fitting now, coming from the woman who stood before him. He’d been wrong, Cameron realized. She hadn’t grown up to be completely cool, like her mother. There was another layer just beneath, a layer that whispered of warmth, of sensuality. Of something that had existed before.

  And for a moment, as her laughter shimmered in the air, they were friends again, with all the intimacy that friendship implied. If he closed his eyes and just listened to her, he could have sworn that no time had passed at all.

  “No,” she explained, still smiling. “I mean, ‘No, you’re not a father?’ or ‘No, you’re not a husband?’” The smile slowly began to fade as Serena waited for his answer.

  If she asked, she wanted to know. And if she wanted to know, maybe she was sorry that things had gone the way they did between them. Maybe she had come back to make amends.

  But then she would have said so, Cameron told himself sternly. He didn’t know what was going on with him; he wasn’t the type to spin dreams out of nothing. Not anymore.
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  “No to all of the above,” he replied crisply. “I’ve been too busy. Like I said, Bedford’s been growing, and every infraction generates piles of paperwork. Being a police detective means my time isn’t always my own, even when I’m supposed to be off duty.” Cameron shrugged, giving her the handiest answer. Why not? It was partially true. She didn’t have to know that relationships made him restless. “Most women don’t really care for the hours I have to keep.”

  Most. That meant that there had been some who did. Some who had gotten close to him, perhaps, Serena thought, the way she had once been.

  It shouldn’t have mattered. But something, some “thing” that she was certain had long since been anesthetized, quickened for a moment as she thought of Cameron holding another woman in his arms. Loving another woman, the way she’d once thought he loved her.

  Serena roused herself. Where was this font of bitterness coming from?

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, her voice detached. The sentence hung in the air with nowhere to go, like the stale odor of an ashtray, emptied but not cleaned. Serena cleared her throat, searching for something to muffle the silence. “How’s Rachel?”

  He clung to the question as if it were a lifeline in unfamiliar waters. “Now, she’s married. Happily this time.”

  This time. So much seemed to have happened to people she’d once thought of as friends. So much she didn’t know. It was as if that other world, the one she was part of for the first eighteen years of her life, hadn’t really existed at all.

  “You mean she was married before?”

  He thought of Rachel’s first husband. A high school baseball star who couldn’t make the grade outside the small arena where he had first found adulation. Rejected, he’d taken out his frustrations on Rachel and his son. Cameron hadn’t known. If he had, there was no telling what he would have done.

  As it was, fate had beaten him to it. Rachel’s husband had died in a car crash, ending his reign of terror over his wife and young son.