Dying to Have Her (40 page)

“Yes, yes, and you—”

She was already crushed back against him. “Dammit, I love you, Serena,” he said softly.

They could hear the sound of sirens in the night. Jeff, coming around the back of the truck, pale as the sand, said, “The cops are coming!” He cried, “The
good
cops, I think.”

“Olsen or Rigger,” Liam murmured, still staring at Serena. “It took them long enough. But I was afraid if Oz didn’t reach one of them, Bill could have fooled the other officers.” He touched Serena’s cheek. “We have another night at the police station,” Bill said softly. “And I know how you feel about cops, and after this …”

“I love cops,” she said softly. “Especially the good cops. The conquering-hero types.” She tried to speak lightly. Her knees were buckling. Without his support, she would have fallen.

Many times, she realized.

T
HE PAPERS WERE ONCE
again full of news about
Valentine Valley.

And the cop who had wanted to soar to the heavens with stars and fallen to the earth like Icarus instead.

Once again, Liam was deeply troubled, as were many people Serena had come to love and trust. Serena told Olsen over and over again that she felt with all her heart that most policemen were wonderful public servants, risking their lives for civilians. It was only every once in a while when you came upon a …

Bill Hutchens.

At one point, she couldn’t help but tell Liam, “There are good people, and bad people, in every sex, race, religion—and every line of work out there. Bill doesn’t give a bad name to every cop, any more than Jinx … than Jinx’s life implies that every actor or movie worker is crazy.”

“I know that,” he told her. “It’s just … God! I trusted him not only with my own life, but with yours. And I should have known, I should have seen some kind of sign. …”

“You discovered the truth in time to save my life again,” she told him softly.

And he smiled at last, looking at her. “And you might have saved mine. You acted quickly enough. How did you know I had a gun?”

“I didn’t. I just knew that he was going to shoot you. And I love you.”

He nodded.

It was dawn. They didn’t talk any longer then. They went to his house, and showered, and made love, glad to be alive.

The next days were chaotic. Liam spent a number of them at the police station. So did Serena. Then she fielded a dozen calls and carefully granted interviews.

Days passed and Joe Penny rallied, and they filmed their Valentine’s Day segment. Hank Newton, as the Valentine family patriarch, was nearly murdered—the terrorist extra was killed instead, and it was David DeVille who saved him, deflecting the bullet, adding a layer to the story line now that a Valentine owed his life to the son of his greatest rival.

Valentine’s Day arrived for real.

The ratings had never been higher.

Liam told Serena that he wasn’t buying her flowers. He left early, once again going to the police station, finishing up some business. Serena sat down and watched her own soap. She liked the way it played.

In the early afternoon, she met Liam. He was grim, but ready to go.

“Are we really done with this yet?” she asked him.

“I think so. Come on. We have a great dinner reservation for tonight. It’s a very cozy little place. We can go and have some privacy in a dark booth.”

“It sounds great, except …” Serena was surprised herself when she said, “Liam, stop by the cemetery please.”

“The cemetery?”

“Yeah. I just want to see … Jinx.”

He thought she was crazy, she knew, but he stopped for her to buy flowers, and when they came to the famous old place, he helped her hop the small wall, since the gates had been closed earlier.

“If we get arrested …” he said. “Oh, what the hell.”

They came to Jinx’s grave. Serena knelt and said her little prayer. When she rose, Liam, still looking somewhat weary, his black hair tousled and his jacket thrown over his shoulder, was watching her. She walked over to him.

“You know, I really do love you.”

“I love you, too. You know that. I’ve always loved you.”

“But you left me.”

“I wanted to matter.”

“You always mattered.”

“Maybe I was a little jealous, too.”

“Maybe I should think before I do things,” she murmured. She touched his cheek with her knuckles.

“It is Valentine’s Day.”

“I know that. And I told you, I didn’t think that it was the right year for flowers—”

“I don’t want flowers. I … I don’t understand why you just won’t marry me,” she told him.

He studied her gravely.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he told her.

She frowned.

“Does that mean that you are asking me to marry you?” she inquired.

“I thought you just asked me?”

“You’re supposed to do the asking.”

“Oh. Well, then … will you marry me?”

“Since you’re so eloquent …”

She was startled when he took her hand and fell on a knee, a wry smile on his features. “Miss McCormack, will you marry me? We’re opposites in a hundred thousand ways, but I’ve discovered that what’s good in life is only good when you’re a part of it, and that what’s difficult is easier just because you’re beside me. I’d rather face any misery in life—”

“Are you calling me a misery?”

“Will you please shut up for just a moment? I’m doing my very best to be eloquent. Where was I? Yes, I’d rather face anything in life with you. I want to wake up every morning with you by my side, to see your face again and again—”

“That is eloquent,” she said softly.

“Can I get off my knees now?”

“I don’t know. I rather like you there.”

He rose, smiling. He cupped her cheeks, kissed her lips. “It’s a very beautiful face.”

“I’m older than you, you know.”

“Serena, if you were eighty, I’d love you.”

“What a liar!”

“All right, well, eighty might be pushing it.”

She smiled thoughtfully, feeling the sun and his touch upon her.

“You didn’t answer me, you know,” he told her.

“Well, I didn’t know it was necessary, since I rather prodded you into asking the question.”

“I asked the question. I had intended to talk seriously about our lives and ask you to marry me at dinner. We didn’t make dinner. So now you’re supposed to say ‘Yes, oh yes, I’ll marry you, Liam, because I can’t live without you.’“

“Yes, I will marry you, because I can’t imagine life without you again. I don’t ever want to face life without you again. I love you with my whole heart. And besides, I want our child to have his father.”

He paled at that. A little hopefully, she thought. “We’re … having a child?”

“Well, not at this moment, no, but we can’t mess around too long. You are marrying an older woman. I mean, you don’t mind, do you? I rather got the impression you liked children—”

“Serena, we’ll have a dozen if you want.”

“Two was the actual number I had in mind.”

“Two,” he agreed. “We should go to the restaurant. I mean, I’d never actually envisioned proposing in a cemetery.”

“We’ve let the past rest,” she told him, “and made a new beginning.”

He nodded. “But it’s time to leave the dead and start with living. Let’s go to dinner.”

“Liam, tonight I’d rather go to your house.”

“My house?”

“I was thinking about … well, if we’re going to have two children, perhaps this might be the time to start practicing for the first …”

“Practicing?” he inquired politely.

“Well, you know, working toward such a goal.”

“My house it is,” he said softly.

“One moment,” she murmured, and she paused, kneeling down to arrange the flowers she had stopped to buy on Jinx’s grave.

None of them would live forever. Jinx had taught her to be grateful for every moment she had ahead.

The roses lay prettily arranged upon the earth. Oddly enough, Serena knew that Jinx would have liked them there.

Liam helped her to her feet.

And hand in hand, they walked from the graveyard and back to the streets of the city that was teeming with life.

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.