Serena Mckee's Back In Town

By Marie Ferrarella

And she's got one thing on her mind .

SOMETHING WAS MISSING

Eleven years had passed since the shocking murder that forced Serena McKee to flee her childhood home. Now she was back, seeking more than just the elusive evidence that would clear her father's name. She needed answers from Cameron Reed, the man who had sworn he would never leave her yet had.

Maybe a man couldn't forget his first love, but Cameron had tried as long as she was far away. As a police detective, he was obliged to protect Serena from the shadowy killer who stalked her. As a man who loved her still, he was determined not just to save her life but to share it forever .

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jul 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781460874592

Marie Ferrarella

This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA ® Award-winning author has written more than two hundred books for Harlequin Books and Silhouette Books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

Book preview

Chapter 1

He wondered if he was getting old.

There had been a time, and not all that long ago, when Detective Cameron Reed of the Bedford Police Department could have put in a long day on a stakeout and then gone out and partied the night away. But tonight, when they got off duty and his partner, Joel Martinez, suggested getting a few beers and soaking up some of the finer pleasures Bedford had to offer, Cameron had found himself passing on the opportunity.

The lure of a hot shower and a warm bed was far more enticing at the moment than the call of some nubile woman who was looking for only a night’s entertainment.

Yeah, he had to be getting old, all right.

Cameron could feel his muscles aching, each one individually protesting every movement he made. Even turning the steering wheel and lifting his foot off and on the accelerator sent swarms of sharp needles all along his spine.

Maybe it wasn’t really old age, he rationalized. And maybe he wasn’t out of shape. After all, he’d been sitting immobilized at the stakeout for hours. And he had spent all day yesterday—typically a day of rest, if he had his way—helping his brother-in-law pour cement and lay a new patio out back, in place of the one that had cracked so badly in the last earthquake. There were times that it seemed to him that the earth beneath his feet was constantly buckling and undulating.

It had certainly left its mark on Rachel’s patio.

Well, he had no one to blame but himself, he thought. Himself, and the look on Rachel’s face when she’d told him that Kirk was tackling the job all by himself. His sister still knew exactly how to apply the screws and make him feel guilty without actually coming out and asking him to do anything. The talent was a holdover from their childhood, when she had used him shamelessly.

Cameron grinned to himself. It hadn’t seemed so bad yesterday. He liked socializing with his family, even with a cement mixer between them, and heaven knew he got little time to do it these days.

So there he had been, toiling beneath the hot August sun with his brother-in-law and his ten-year-old nephew, Ethan, instead of sitting at home, feet propped up, holding a beer and hopefully watching the Angels cream their opposition.

By the time he got home, the Angels had lost and he’d been too tired to care.

He cared now.

Today, every bone in his body reminded him that he wasn’t twenty anymore, but thirty. Sitting and watching the warehouse where the anonymous informant had tipped them off that the computer thieves would strike next had been an endurance test after the second hour.

The stakeout had been fruitless. But without any other leads, they would continue with it until it paid off, or until there was another break-in somewhere else.

Now there was something to hope for, he thought grimly.

Turning the car, he passed another construction site. The apartment complex that was being erected was in its final stages of completion. Cameron shook his head. It seemed that nowadays, everywhere he looked, there was another construction site, another cluster of homes, another onslaught of stores. Bedford had certainly grown up since he was a kid here.

Bedford was in a constant state of forward progress. That meant more and more people. And more probability of the need of his services. There had been a time, he remembered, when a policeman was only window dressing, not a necessity. But times had changed, and so had Bedford. It wasn’t a sleepy-eyed little picture-book town anymore. It hadn’t been for over eleven years now.

Eleven years ago. When the first murder had taken place.

Cameron looked up and realized that he had somehow managed to take the long way home. Subconsciously.

Annoyed, he began to turn around, then shrugged. It was a nice night, and driving here, in the more peaceful region of Bedford, relaxed him, even if it was somewhat out of his way.

He set his jaw. Maybe relaxed wasn’t quite the word for it. Not when he was deliberately passing McKee Hill. Why was he doing this to himself, anyway? It had been a long time since he had thought of it.

Of her.

Maybe it was because on nights like this, with the warm California air almost sultry as it caressed his face, he remembered her the clearest.

Serena.

Serena, with her long auburn hair curling about her bare shoulders like summer smoke, the light of first love in her eyes—or what he had taken to be first love, he thought ruefully.

The memory of that night shimmied over him, softening him. For a moment, he managed to block out the sense of rejection that always came afterward. He thought only of the way she’d looked then.

He remembered there had been fireflies out that night. And a moon. A moon so big, so round and so bright, it looked as if it had been painted in place by divine command. Just for them.

Funny, how when you were young you could really be so stupid as to believe in things like that. In things like love.

How long ago had that been now? Eleven years...but it might as well have been a hundred. At times, it felt that long ago. But it was really just eleven years ago, just a week before the scandal that rocked their growing town hit. The scandal that took her away, whisking her from his side as if she had never even existed.

Maybe, in a way, she hadn’t. Maybe it had all been just a figment of his imagination. A seed that he had allowed to grow until it flowered into something beautiful. Something that really hadn’t been there to begin with.

He laughed softly to himself as he drove on. No, there was no denying it. It had been there. She had been real. Like magic beneath his hands, hesitant and eager beneath his lips. They’d been soul mates, for the briefest instant in time.

And then she was gone.

A bittersweet smile creased his lips, the way it always did when he thought of Serena and that night. He’d thought that evening was the beginning of everything. He hadn’t realized that it was an entire lifetime. A beginning and an ending.

For it had marked the end of his boyhood, the beginning of his manhood. And with it, all the stark reality that accompanied that state of being.

Cameron shut off the air-conditioning and rolled down the window, preferring the touch of the sweet evening breeze to anything that technology and man had made right now.

He wondered where Serena was now. What she was doing, and most of all, if she was happy. Cameron supposed he really hoped she was happy. Even if she was being happy without him.

He was getting positively maudlin, he thought, upbraiding himself. This wasn’t like him—at least, not anymore.

In the old days, she had remained on his mind like a logo stamped on every thought, on everything he did. Now, when he did think of her, her memory lingered like a half dream he had once had. One that he knew was eventually destined to fade away.

He had only to let it.

The road was dark here. Progress, or civilization, or whatever the popular term was that was bandied about in boardrooms where CEOs in expensive imported suits decided these things, hadn’t made it this far yet. The Bedford Company hadn’t turned their attention in this direction.

At least not yet. They had. tilled the other fields, uprooting hundred-year-old eucalyptus trees and orange groves to make way for houses, apartment complexes and tidy shopping centers, all artistically structured and pleasing to the eye.

Not a one of them was nearly as soothing as a field of freshly ripened strawberry plants. Not to him, he thought. And not to Serena. He could remember picking the berries with her, watching her slip one plump, ripe strawberry into her mouth. Kissing the taste from her lips...

Damn, what was he doing to himself, anyway?

Cameron ran his hand through his hair. He forced himself to concentrate on the road. Any oncoming traffic was not as easy to see out here as it was on the regular roads. Here, on the outskirts of Bedford, traffic lights were still at a minimum.

The area was the last bastion for an occasional deer and the continually dwindling society of opossums that still made their home here. Turning down his radio to absorb the peace that tiptoed around him on silent feet, Cameron thought he heard the screech of a barn owl to his right.

Looking, he found his eyes inevitably drawn to another sight.

To McKee Hill.

He’d passed it countless times before. In the evening, it stood like a sprawling, enshrouded ghost from another era—a mourner for the double tragedy that had struck here one hot summer night, wiping out two lives and permanently suspending two more.

It wasn’t until he looked away again and at the dark road stretching before him that the sight completely registered. There was a light on in the old house.

Cameron eased his foot down on the brake and looked again. No, it wasn’t his imagination. There was a light coming from the rear of the house. Faint, but definitely there.

Damn.

He sighed and shook his head as he turned the car toward the right. Probably just some kids with lanterns who had climbed over the wrought-iron fence and decided to break in. Somebody’s idea of a dare or an initiation into a club: Spend a night in the old, haunted mansion to prove your manhood.

Cameron had caught his own nephew at it just last fall. Ethan had looked outwardly put off by his intervention, but Cameron had had the distinct impression that the boy was actually relieved to have him show up. The house had been the site of a murder-suicide, and in the dead of night, kids swore that the ghosts of the people who had died so violently here walked the grounds, looking to avenge themselves on those who were free to go on with their lives.

The house was a magnet for teens bent on pranks. Another time, he’d come upon a couple of kids making a fire in the fireplace. Harmless kids, out to have an indoor cookout. The flue had been shut, and they would have wound up burning the whole place down if he hadn’t happened on them in time.

Cameron to the rescue, he thought sarcastically as he got out of his car to open the gates.

He had no idea why the house hadn’t been sold and torn down long ago. Just a monument to pain, not to mention another source of irritation and trouble to the police department.

Tugging on the gates, he frowned when they wouldn’t give. The electronic lock had long since been disconnected. Just his luck, they were stuck.

Now what?

He debated just forgetting about it and going home, but he couldn’t very well just turn his back on it. There was definitely someone lurking about. Maybe he’d call it in for a patrolman to investigate.

Cameron went so far as to reach inside his car and pick up the transmitter, but then he hung it up again. If he had a rookie come out in a squad car to investigate, he would never live it down. He could just hear Martinez and Sheffield now:

Getting old, Reed? Martinez would ask with a smirk, nudging Sheffield.

Sheffield, who was as old as he was and was built like a rock, would shake his head as he looked at him. Or maybe just soft?

It would all be in fun, but Cameron didn’t want it at his expense. He wasn’t quite ready to admit that he wasn’t still a kid just yet. At least not when it came to being agile.

He came away from the car and eyed the fence. It seemed taller to him now that he was older.

Just his imagination again.

He wrapped his hands around the wrought-iron stakes, debated the wisdom of this undertaking one last time, then started up.

I’ve got to be crazy, he muttered under his breath as he climbed up and then over.

There was a twinge in his shoulder blades, not to mention his back, as he jumped down on the other side. He could feel the jolt when he reached the ground all the way from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.

Sheffield was right. He had to get down to the gym more often, Cameron admonished himself as he made his way up the winding paved path toward the house. He was too young to feel like this.

Though he knew that a gardening service was supposed to come up here once a month to tend to the property, the weeds were reaching out hoary dark green fingers to obliterate the pavement. Someone wasn’t doing the job he was being paid to do.

Cameron pressed his hand to the ache in his back. And he was doing too much. He was going to enjoy putting a scare into those kids for this, he thought.

The door was locked when he tried it. That never stopped kids from getting in. They were getting more and more resourceful these days, he mused.

Just listen to him—he was beginning to sound like his own father. Rachel was right. He needed to get out more. Tomorrow night, he would take Martinez up on his offer, aching body or no aching body.

Maybe there was someone out there who could make him forget about the ache.

Listening for any unusual noise, Cameron began to pick the lock. Whoever was inside was guilty of trespassing.

What did that make him? he thought, amused, as he heard the click that told him the lock was open. An upholder of the law, he concluded.

He’d always liked the sound of that. It beat the hell out of being caught on the other side.

Easing the door open, Cameron slipped in quietly, determined to put the fear of God into whoever was here tonight.

He felt for his service revolver, just in case the trespasser turned out to be not some teenager, but someone who had decided to use McKee Hill as a hiding place from the law.

Serena McKee ran her hands along her arms and stifled the shiver that overtook her.

It was colder here than she remembered. Even in August, it felt cold. Despite the fact that her mother saw to it that the house was constantly being renovated and upgraded, it had somehow always managed to absorb whatever drafts there were and take that chill into its walls.

Or maybe it had just been the way she felt about growing up here, the chill being a by-product of the atmosphere her mother, Carolyn, with her cutting remarks and sharp tongue, had always generated.

If it hadn’t been for her father...

Her father.

Serena felt moisture gather in her eyes and wiped it away with the back of her hand. She had thought she was years past crying by now.

It had to do with being here again. That, and Aunt Helen’s request which throbbed in her mind like an endless migraine.

Part of her had been afraid to return, to face this house again. To face the ghosts that she had managed ,to tuck away so neatly.

But she couldn’t put it off any longer. Even if she hadn’t been having those dreams lately—the dreams that made her feel that there was something she had overlooked, something important—she had promised Aunt Helen that she would return. Return and find a way to absolve her father of the heinous crime that was attached to his name for all eternity.

She couldn’t clear Jon McKee while she was in Dallas. She had to return to where it had all happened and hope that the passage of eleven years hadn’t made the task impossible.

Being here was harder than she’d thought. An inexplicable fear hopscotched through her, ready to spring up at her from within each dark room.

Serena forced herself to walk through them now, turning on lights. She had called ahead before leaving Dallas and had both the telephone and the electricity turned on. Serena had absolutely no desire to spend her first night back here in the dark.

It wasn’t that she believed in things that went bump in the night, or in ghosts, for that matter. Her father’s daughter, she was far too logical for that.

But the house was full of memories, most of them unpleasant. Especially those memories of the last night she had spent here. It was going to take every ounce of strength she had to lock them away and remain here. To do what she had promised to do.

To do, she now knew, what she needed to do, if she was ever going to have any peace of mind. She had to find out the truth once and for all, in order to place not only her father’s restless spirit to rest, but her own, as well.

The house had gone to Aunt Helen after her father’s death. Whether because Aunt Helen couldn’t or wouldn’t rent it out, there had never been any boarders here. The only people who had passed through the door downstairs after the police were through with it were the people from the cleaning service, who arrived once a month to keep the place from falling into complete ruin.

Didn’t do a very good job of it, Serena thought as the pale light she turned on illuminated the small upstairs study. Granted, the house was large, but all the cleaning crew had to do was chase the dust away.

It wasn’t as if someone were living here, making a mess for them to clean up.

That hadn’t happened even while she was growing up here. Her mother had absolutely forbidden it. Everything had always had to be in its place, whether it was a book, a newspaper or clothing. Nothing was allowed to be left out or carelessly tossed aside. The house had always been pristine. A legion of housekeepers had been hired and then fired because they couldn’t live up to Carolyn McKee’s critical standards.

No one could.

A noise from downstairs made Serena jerk her head toward the stairs. She strained, listening carefully. Nothing.

Just her nerves, she thought, nothing more.

Small wonder, being here again. She’d been the first one on the scene that night. The first one to see her mother sprawled out on the floor, a victim of her father’s heated anger. The