Serena Mckee's Back In Town

by Marie Ferrarella

As happy, as grateful, as she was for this time they’d had together, she couldn’t allow herself to make more of it than it was. They weren’t on the path to a happy ending that she’d once imagined. Life had intruded on her, wearing boots with cleats made of rusted nails, completely destroying her ability to believe in happy endings.

  Cameron felt her stirring against him. The movement banished the last remnants of sleep from his system. He reached for her, drawing her closer.

  Was that his imagination, or had she stiffened just a little? He tried to ignore the uneasiness that nibbled at him.

  “Was that really you last night, or did I just dream the whole thing?” Bending his head, he kissed her shoulder.

  Desire awoke again, even as she tried to talk herself out of it. “That was me.”

  “Good, I was afraid that maybe I was getting delusional.”

  Shifting just a little, Cameron lightly grazed the hollow of her throat with his lips. He felt her squirm just the slightest bit in response. He wished it was Saturday and he could remain here with her all day, feasting on nothing but her. Last night had proved to him that he had the endurance. All he needed was the right inspiration. And she was it.

  “Did I remember to tell you that you were magnificent?” he said.

  “I don’t know. Last night is a huge haze to me.” She couldn’t remember the words, only the feelings. And the look in his eyes. Soft, loving. It had probably all been just a trick of the light, but she hugged it to her, anyway. As a treasured memory. Because she’d already resigned herself to the knowledge that memories would soon be all she had.

  “Not to me. I remember every little thing that happened.” He had memorized every movement. Played them over and over again in his head as she slept beside him last night. Too energized to sleep, he’d been content just to watch her.

  Cameron had always known just the right thing to say. “That’s what makes you a good cop.”

  “Yeah.”

  She was retreating, Cameron thought. Not in so many words, but she was. Shrinking away from him, as if she were afraid of getting too close. Afraid of being disappointed. He could understand that. For the past eleven years of his life, he realized, he’d lived that way, too. Never wanting to get close to anyone, the way he had once allowed himself to get close to her.

  He’d give her time if she needed it, as long as the time was spent somewhere around him, where he could see her, where he could assure himself that she was still there. It seemed like a fair condition, from where he stood.

  Though it wasn’t easy holding himself in check, he didn’t want to risk crowding her and ruining what had happened last night. Throwing back his covers, Cameron sat up. “I guess the good cop had better get ready for work.”

  She nodded, relieved for the reprieve. The deeper she sank into this fairy-tale world, the harder it would be to crawl out again once she accomplished what she’d returned to do.

  “I’ll make you breakfast,” she volunteered.

  Serena reached for the robe she kept handy at the foot of the bed and discovered that it, like everything else, had gotten caught up in the whirlwind of last night. It was nowhere to be seen. She wondered if it was even in the room.

  Shy in the light of day, she began to drape the sheet around her. Cameron caught her wrist, stopping her. He was hungry, but food was the farthest thing from his mind.

  “I can grab something on the way in.” His eyes glinted. “Know what I would like, though?”

  Slowly she moved her head from side to side. “No, what?”

  In his mind’s eye, he was already peeling away the sheet from her body. “A shower.”

  Serena pointed to her bathroom. “Right through there.”

  He was on his feet, holding her hand in his and drawing her out of bed, before she could protest.

  “Together,” he told her. “A shower together.” He grinned at the sheet that pooled around her feet. Cameron felt like pooling there himself, kissing her toes and working his way up to her mouth. Slowly. “You have no idea how many times I fantasized about that, taking a shower with you. Maybe even turning on the water after a while.”

  He was undoing her as easily as if she were ribbon rolled up on a spool that he’d sent tumbling down a hill. Her heart began to beat fast again as his fantasy caught her up in it.

  “Can’t rob a man of his fantasies,” she murmured, allowing herself to be led to the bathroom.

  “That’s what I like about you, Serena. You’re so understanding.”

  She laughed, then, and tried not to dwell on the fact that he’d said “like” and not “love.” There was time enough later to know that she was right not to expect this to lead to someplace where she would always be safe and warm. And loved.

  She was just going to live for the moment, nothing more, she insisted silently. That way, maybe it wouldn’t hurt when the moment was gone.

  Maybe.

  Constance Ryan put a long, thin hand to her recently tinted hair, patting it into place for what had to be the third time in the past five minutes. She felt ill at ease as she regarded Carolyn Tyler McKee’s daughter over the rim of her tea cup.

  She wasn’t accustomed to being ill at ease. It rarely happened to a person of her poise and breeding. In part it was because Serena looked so much like Carolyn. The same build, the same torrent of auburn hair that in some light appeared almost sinfully red. And, in part, it was because she, like all the others in Carolyn’s circle, had tried to put this nasty business behind her and pretend it had never happened to one of their own.

  Success depended on no reminders. Having Serena McKee here was a reminder.

  Constance Ryan’s discomfort was almost palpable. Or was that her censure? Serena wondered. The woman’s mouth was small, puckered in a disapproving line that made sitting here, beneath her scrutiny, difficult. More difficult still was remaining as she endured it. Serena found she had little patience with thinly veiled rudeness. Not one of her parents’ so-called friends had made the slightest attempt to reach out to her since she arrived in Bedford.

  Still, she maintained a facade, because she needed answers. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Mrs. Ryan.” Serena curved her mouth into a respectful smile.

  Slim shoulders shrugged regally. The chill in the room intensified.

  “I had the morning free,” Constance replied carelessly. “Although I really don’t know what it is you think I can tell you, my dear. This nasty business happened years ago.”

  It was meant as a dismissal, but Serena had no intention of going anywhere until she’d asked what she had come to ask. It had taken all her nerve just to appear at the Ryans’ door and force her way in past a sputtering housekeeper. She wasn’t about to leave empty-handed.

  Serena plunged in, her eyes intent on Constance’s dour face. “You were my mother’s best friend. I know she wasn’t an open woman, but there were rumors that she had a lover—”

  The thin, artfully penciled-in brows rose on a forehead that some regarded as displeasingly high. “Serena, really.”

  Serena pressed on quickly, afraid the woman would leave the room before she had a chance to finish. “I’m not here trying to shift the blame on her, Mrs. Ryan. I am trying to find out what really happened that night.”

  The scowl was meant to make her cower and put an end to the conversation. “The police already know what really happened.”

  That didn’t satisfy Serena. She moved toward the stiff, uncomfortable brocade chair, so like the ones her mother had favored.

  “If she had a lover, someone who was jealous, someone she might have driven to murder—”

  “If she had a lover, she never mentioned it,” Constance snapped, then hesitated, frowning at her teacup as if the brew had suddenly turned bitter. “I will say this,” she allowed. “There was a difference about Carolyn in the last few months before she died. I thought it had to do with her being separated from your father. I can’t guess why else. I saw less of her. We all did.”<
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  Serena blinked, thoroughly confused. Her mother had hardly ever been home, announcing, when asked, that she would be at the country club. There had been an ever-changing variety of reasons her presence was required. At the time, Serena had been so relieved not to have her home, she didn’t care what the reasons were. Mrs. Ryan had to be mistaken.

  “I don’t understand. My mother spent all her time at the club.”

  Constance took umbrage at being contradicted. “She most certainly did not. She was never there those last months, not even for official functions. Why, I remember how upset Miranda Adams became when your mother even failed to appear for the charity ball she was hosting. If it hadn’t been for Millicent Collins, the whole thing would have been a complete disaster.”

  The pieces weren’t fitting. Serena remembered her mother specifically saying that going to the country club and seeing her friends was the only thing that she found worthwhile in her otherwise wretchedly boring life.

  Apparently that, too, had been a lie, Serena thought. How many more would she discover before this whole thing could be put to rest?

  Having gone this far, she pressed a little more. “You’re sure about this?”

  The look Constance gave her would once have cut her into tiny bits. But she had suffered worse at her mother’s hands and had learned to become immune to looks that were meant to scathe and destroy.

  “I have an excellent memory,” Constance informed her coldly. “But if you doubt it, I can give you the telephone numbers of some of the other women at the club. You may check with them to verify my words if you’re dissatisfied.”

  She had already acquired the same numbers. “I’m not dissatisfied, Mrs. Ryan, I’m just trying to piece together the truth.” She tried to appeal to Mrs. Ryan’s sense of self-importance. “You were my mother’s best friend. I came to you because I believed that if anyone knew she had someone else in her life,” Serena said, purposely easing away from the word lover, “you would.”

  A few of the ruffled feathers settled back into place. “Well, I don’t.” Ice blue eyes met Serena’s. “I’m sorry.”

  It was a dismissal. There was nothing more to be gleaned here today. Serena rose. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Ryan, and the tea.” She’d barely sampled the latter and neither had Mrs. Ryan, she noticed. “I’ll see myself out.”

  Constance nodded curtly, then looked up just before Serena left the room. “Will you be staying in Bedford long?”

  “I don’t know.” The answer was an honest one. “That all depends on circumstances.”

  With that, Serena saw herself out of the room.

  Cameron sensed rather than heard the chief as the older man approached his desk that afternoon. The look on Olson’s face was hard to read, but he didn’t look happy. Instinctively Cameron braced himself.

  “Can I see you in my office, Reed?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Olson led the way back. Cameron knew better than to make excuses and beg off. Feeling like someone possibly on his way to an execution, he followed his superior. Catching his eye, Martinez raised his brow in a silent question. Cameron merely shook his head, attesting to his ignorance of the matter.

  “Shut the door,” Olson instructed. Going behind his desk, he took his chair. His eyes were like tempered steel as they regarded Cameron. “And sit down.”

  Cameron did as he was told. The obvious displeasure in Olson’s voice had him curious. “Something about the reports you didn’t like, sir?”

  The question caught Olson off guard. It took him a moment to apply it correctly.

  “The reports are fine, Reed.” Folding his hands before him on the desk, he leaned forward. “You’re a good cop, Cameron, and I rely on your integrity and your skill to get the job done. To do things right. I trust you. If you say something’s so, it’s so.”

  Cameron was getting a very uneasy feeling. He wasn’t accustomed to Olson addressing him by his first name. “Where is this leading, sir?”

  His eyes never leaving Cameron’s, Olson drew a long breath and then let it out. He flipped the question back at Cameron. “You tell me. You tell me where this little search you’re conducting is leading.”

  Cameron wasn’t following. “Excuse me?”

  A slight flicker of temper was evident in Olson’s face. “Don’t play innocent with me, Reed. That file you wanted—on the McKee deaths,” he added when Cameron looked at him blankly. “You didn’t want it for the centennial magazine, you wanted it for Serena.”

  The theme from the old program “Dragnet,” which he sometimes caught on a nostalgia cable channel, played in Cameron’s head. He was in for it now.

  “I saw Sergeant Li earlier,” Olson went on, “and she said you came in with a woman with red hair, looking for an old file. I thought we’d already settled all that. What is it you hope to find that I didn’t?” The insult Olson had inferred from Cameron’s probing of the case came through loud and clear. “Or do you think I was in some way incompetent in handling the case?”

  That had never been his take on the situation. “No, sir, it’s just that Serena asked me—”

  Olson cut him off, guessing what he was about to say. “Why didn’t she come to me, if she had any requests concerning the file?”

  Cameron felt as if he were being backed into a corner. His first concern was for Serena. He wanted to shield her from Olson’s wrath.

  “I guess I just got to her first, that’s all. I’m sure she didn’t mean anything by it.”

  The answer seem to placate Olson somewhat. He blew out a breath, as if he was suddenly very weary.

  “Let me tell you something, Reed. Something I didn’t tell Serena, something I figured I’d keep quiet.” Even now, he seemed to weigh his words before saying them. “Jon McKee had a temper, a dangerous one, that he managed to keep under wraps. Until Carolyn just pushed him too far.” Olson paused, appearing to be unwilling to divulge something that would further blacken the McKee name, yet having no choice. “He told me he thought his wife had a lover and that he’d rather see her dead than in the arms of another man. At the time, I thought it was just despair talking. Later I saw that it wasn’t.

  “My guess is that he had it out with her that night. Maybe she said something to set him off.” He shook his head, looking back over the years. “Carolyn was good like that, knowing just how to push people’s buttons. She just pushed the wrong one with Jon.”

  Olson looked at Cameron. “I didn’t want that to come out, because I knew it would only further tarnish Jon in Serena’s eyes. She’d been through enough.” He pulled himself up. “Now, as far as this police station is concerned, the case is closed. I want that file back ASAP, Reed. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir. Perfectly.”

  Olson wasn’t satisfied. “We’ve got too much work here to get involved in proving mythical theories about a case that was solved years ago. And since you seem to have so much time on your hands, I’m putting you in charge of the Westbridge investigation.” He tossed a file toward Cameron. It landed on the edge of his desk. “A series of residential break-ins, always when the people are out. Clever bastards seem to know how to bypass security systems, even the complicated ones.”

  Cameron picked up the file, thumbing through it.

  “Get on it,” Olson ordered.

  “Yes, sir.” Cameron was already on his way out the door when Olson called after him, stopping him in his tracks.

  “And Reed, only play detective when I tell you to. Got it?”

  Cameron nodded, though something within him rebelled. “Got it, sir.”

  They’d made no arrangements about tonight, he and Serena. He’d left it open when he went to work, but now that he was off duty, Cameron found himself stopping at his house only long enough to throw a few essentials into a worn knapsack he used for camping trips with Ethan. After tossing it in the back of his car, he drove to her house.

  Even if he hadn’t wanted to be there with every fiber of his being, it
was necessary now, especially with the rash of new break-ins. It lessened his faith in security systems by a good fifty percent. Maybe he’d get her a dog.

  As he was leaving the station earlier, Olson had stopped to tell him that he was allowing the patrol around Serena’s area to remain in effect only until tomorrow morning. If nothing happened by then, the manpower was needed elsewhere. The Bedford Police Department couldn’t hold every nervous citizen’s hand, even if Serena was the police chief’s goddaughter. Cameron knew it was no use to protest the decision.

  “I hope your day was better than mine,” Cameron said as he walked into the house. Her scent greeted him, instantly soothing the tension that had accompanied him in.

  She’d been schooling herself all day not to look forward to having Cameron return this evening. After all, he hadn’t said anything about seeing her tonight. And he did have a life of his own, a life she played no part in.

  She was a lousy student, Serena thought, closing the door. Lengthy silent lectures or not, she could feel her pulse quickening at the very sight of him.

  “Possibly,” she allowed. He turned to look at her for an explanation. “I hit a dead end of sorts when I went to see Constance Ryan. She and my mother were best friends,” she added in answer to the question in his eyes. “If you can picture Mother having a best friend. Anyway, I had this crazy idea that maybe Mother confided in her and told her she had a lover.”

  His interest was aroused immediately. Almost as much as he was at the sight of her. “And did she?”

  “According to Mrs. Ryan, not in so many words. But I get the feeling that she wasn’t as shocked by the idea as she pretended to be. And I found out that all those times Mother was supposed to be at the country club with her friends, she wasn’t.” The interested look on Cameron’s face filled her with a smug satisfaction. “Which put her somewhere else—with someone else,” she continued. “Now we just have to find out who.”

  That wasn’t a “just,” that was a monumental task. “Not exactly a thing you take a personal ad out for,” Cameron speculated. “‘Former lover of Carolyn McKee, please come forward. Disregard possible jail sentence involved.’”