Free Serena's Magic by Heather Graham

unfaithful, men who were either chauvinistic, or totally dependent. Two of her close friends were divorced after disastrous marriages: Karen’s husband hadn’t been able to make a decision between her and an old lover; Beth’s husband had left her when her income as an artist had surpassed his as an accountant.
    Bill had been the perfect mate. Strong and secure, he could both love and trust her. He cheered on each of her triumphs, held her hand and promised the sun would rise during disasters.
    Martha, strangely enough, had been the one to finally talk her into dating Marc. He had come to Salem from Boston to work for the local newspaper, and he had apparently become determined to date Serena from the first day he saw her at the museum. She had eventually given in to his persistence. And she had slowly learned that going out could be fun.
    Serena wondered suddenly if she had discovered that life could not only be fun, but comfortable. Being with Marc was easy. She knew his insecurities, and if she sometimes found them annoying, she would shrug and remind herself that no one was perfect.
    What is the matter with me, she wondered? I’m suddenly finding fault with Marc because … because of that stinking Dr. O’Neill, she thought irritably. All because of a case of temporary insanity!
    She groaned aloud with the thought that her temporary insanity had turned her existence into madness. How was she going to deal with the man in her house all summer?
    “Worry about it later!” she muttered aloud as she unlocked the doors to the museum and flicked on the light switch. A large, horned devil glared at her from the wall of the entryway, and she glared back. “I feel worse than you look!” she told the stained-glass caricature.
    “And you do look like hell!”
    Serena turned with a dry grimace for her assistant, Susan Aspach. “Thanks. I love to begin the day with flattery.”
    Nonplussed, Susan laughed and plopped her huge macramé bag over the ticket counter. She was a pretty, pixyish blonde with deep brown eyes and a happy-go-lucky manner that never failed.
    She was also a practicing “white witch.”
    “What’s the matter?” she inquired, raising a brow to Serena. “Things go wrong with Marc’s publisher? Marc looked in high enough spirits himself.”
    Serena frowned. “You saw Marc?”
    “Yeah.” Susan leaned over the counter to check for a roll of tickets, then brushed past Serena to open the secondary doors and illuminate the displays in appropriate mist-blue fluorescences. “I stopped by the inn,” she called over her shoulder, heels clicking across the stone floor of the main room as she headed for the rear of the building which housed the small book and gift shop and tiny office.
    Following in the wake of her hyper friend, Serena demanded, “Why?”
    “What?” Susan was already pouring water through the Mr. Coffee machine. “Oh—I don’t know. I had just thought we might ride in together, but I missed you.”
    “Oh,” Serena murmured.
    “Well?”
    “What?”
    Susan shook her head and laughed. “Gee, maybe we’d better start all over this morning! My ‘well?’ meant what’s wrong? Did the dinner go badly?”
    Serena shook her head. “No, the dinner didn’t go badly. It went well. Marc is going to get his advance. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
    Susan lifted a brow but queried her no further. She had her own answer. “It’s the painting,” she said, nodding sagely.
    “You saw the painting?”
    “Umm—Marc showed it to me. It gave me shivers, Serena.”
    “Oh, stop!” Serena wailed.
    “You’re going to try and tell me there isn’t a resemblance?”
    Serena sighed, counting slowly to ten. “Yes, there’s a resemblance—but it isn’t that shocking.”
    Susan shrugged. “Coffee?”
    “Yes, I could use the whole pot.”
    She accepted a cup of coffee from Susan and idly ran her fingers over the invoices she had left on the desk the night before. Susan sipped her coffee