Serena's Magic (24 page)

“Very cute, darling. What about Marc? I think he married your ‘witch’ replacement faster than she replaced you!”

Serena giggled. “Maybe we should both be a bit insulted. It didn’t take either of them long to get over us!”

“That, my darling, is what love is all about. When it’s right, it’s right, and nothing in the world matters.”

“I don’t know,” Serena contradicted. “Tom and Sue knew each other for years, and it’s only been these last six months that they’ve decided they’re madly in love!”

“There are exceptions to every rule,” Justin noted with mock indignity. He heard the soft mercury of her laughter in return and then smiled. It might be twilight, but his world was as bright and brilliant as the sun. It was as if that long-ago day at the pond had ended everything, all fears, all terrors. They had been married as planned, down to the picture of Eleanora being set above the fireplace for the ceremony. And since that day Serena had been plagued by neither dreams nor accidents.

Yet if she told him it was going to rain, he always brought his umbrella. It was nice to have a wife one could depend upon with far more accuracy than the weatherman.

And it was nice to see life unfold. He had decided to continue teaching. Serena could make him laugh about the politicking. And she was absolutely charming at his functions, her eyes gleaming like amethysts when they met his in secret, loving laughter.

Summers and weekends throughout the year they spent at the Golden Hawk, keeping the old historical site cared for and preserved, and checking in on the Museum of Fact and Fantasy.

Serena had never been bored; she had picked up her bachelor’s degree in psychology and often argued him under the table.

They had their house out on Long Island, their cat—and a dog and a canary—and now they had their wonderful tiny son who kept them both busy.

I have everything, he thought, and he closed his eyes tightly in a moment of sheer gratitude.

He opened his eyes again and pulled his wife tightly against him …

But most of all, I have her.

“How long did you say they would all be gone?” he asked innocently.

She turned in his arms, violet eyes meeting his just as guilelessly. “At least three hours,” she said solemnly.

He lifted her into his arms and carried her up the pool steps. “Then let’s go make a little more magic, shall we?”

She raised a cryptic brow with a wicked half smile, and he laughed huskily.

“Oh, I do—I do—I—do—do—believe in magic!”

Heather Graham (b. 1953) is one of the country’s most prominent authors of romance, suspense, and historical fiction. She has been writing bestselling books for nearly three decades, publishing more than 150 novels and selling more than seventy-five million copies worldwide.

Born in Florida to an Irish mother and a Scottish father, Graham attended college at the University of South Florida, where she majored in theater arts. She spent a few years making a living onstage as a back-up vocalist and dinner theater actor, but after the birth of her third child decided to seek work that would allow her to spend more time with her family.

After early efforts writing romance and horror stories, Graham sold her first novel,
When Next We Love
(1982). She went on to write nearly two dozen contemporary romance novels.

In 1989 Graham published
Sweet Savage Eden
, which initiated the Cameron family saga, an epic six-book series that sets romantic drama amid turbulent periods of American history, such as the Civil War. She revisited the nineteenth century in
Runaway
(1994), a story of passion, deception, and murder in Florida, which spawned five sequels of its own.

In the past decade, Graham has written romantic suspense novels such as
Tall, Dark, and Deadly
(1999),
Long, Lean, and Lethal
(2000), and
Dying to Have Her
(2001), as well as supernatural fiction. In 2003’s
Haunted
she created the Harrison Investigation service, a paranormal detective organization that she spun off into four Krewe of Hunters novels in 2011.

Graham lives in Florida, where she writes, scuba dives, and spends time with her husband and five children.

Graham (left) with her sister.

Graham with her family in New Orleans. Pictured left to right: Dennis Pozzessere; Zhenia Yeretskaya Pozzessere; Derek, Shayne, and Chynna Pozzessere; Heather Graham; Jason and Bryee-Annon Pozzessere; and Jeremy Gonzalez.

Graham at a photo shoot in Key West for the promotion of the Flynn Brothers trilogy.

Graham at the haunted Myrtles plantation, Francisville, Louisiana.

Graham and the Slushpile Band playing the Memnoch the Devil Ball at the Undead Con in New Orleans, 2010.

Graham with dear friend, actor Doug Jones.

Graham (third from left) with F. Paul Wilson, R. L. Stine, Jon Land, and other friends at the seventh annual ThrillerFest, held in New York City, 2011. The authors participated in the “Be Book Smart” campaign organized by Reading Is Fundamental, the nation’s oldest and largest children’s literacy organization.

Graham (seated center) with her local Romance Writers of America group in Broward County, Florida, 2011.