Serena's Magic by Heather Graham

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