Tuesday was a very unsettling day for Serena. Preferring to keep busy, she went to work as usual, despite her shortage of sleep. But she couldn't keep her thoughts off Merlin and what had happened the night before. Still, she had years of practice in maintaining a normal facade, and that enabled her to get through the day without disgracing herself by bursting into tears or snapping at everyone she encountered.

At least the "switch" she had finally discovered remained firmly off, which kept her inner turmoil from manifesting itself in another dangerous release of unfocused energies. For that she was grateful.

But a bad day was made immeasurably worse when she found Jeremy Kane waiting in the lobby of her office building.

"Hello, Kane." Everyone who knew him, even women, called the reporter by his last name.

"Serena." He was smiling. "If you have a few minutes, I'd like to talk to you. There's a coffee shop just across the street. Shall we?"

His manner was less abrupt than usual, and all her instincts went on alert. She didn't like his uncharacteristically pleasant smile, and there was a gleam in his eyes that made her want to hold on tight to her purse. But Serena knew she had taken a risk on Friday night, and if there was going to be fallout, she intended to deal with it herself.

The last thing she needed right now was an I-told-you-so from Merlin.

Besides that, she was curious about what the reporter had in mind, so she willingly accompanied him into the coffee shop. They were shown to a booth in a corner, fairly private in the less-than-crowded shop, and Kane talked desultorily about the weather (overcast, as usual), politics (screwed up, as usual), and the latest best-seller (his name wasn't on the cover, so he hated it) until their coffee came.

"What's on your mind, Kane?" Serena asked after the waitress left. Ordinarily she would have let him get around to it in his own time, but she wanted to hurry home and see if Merlin had returned.

Kane sipped his coffee for a moment, pale blue eyes fixed on her face. He wasn't a bad-looking man, but the wear and tear of nearly twenty years of a downhill slide was stamped into his. features, lending them an oddly blurred, indistinct appearance that was a bit unsettling.

"Did you take me back to my apartment Friday night, Serena? After our dance?" he asked finally in a very casual tone.

As she assumed an expression of surprise, her mind worked very swiftly, examining the question and recalling every one of her own actions. Of course she knew why he was asking: because he had most likely found the draft of the announcement in his pocket and, obviously remembering she'd been with him before he passed out, had concluded that she was somehow responsible. The most logical answer, naturally, was that she had accompanied or followed him home and had, for some reason, left the paper in his pocket for him to find.

"Why would I have done something like that?" she asked in a puzzled voice.

"Never answer a question with a question."

"No, I didn't take you back to your apartment. I repeat, why would I? A dance is one thing, Kane, but we certainly don't know each other that well."

He didn't lose his smile. "Why did you ask me to dance, by the way? I'm hardly your type."

Gently, Serena said, "Somebody dared me to, Kane. Sorry about that, but I've never been able to resist a dare."

"And did this somebody also dare you to ask me what my address was while we danced?"

So he remembered that, too, dammit. "Your address," she replied, "is in the phone book. I looked it up months ago when I was chairing that committee and needed a speaker. Don't you remember?"

Judging by his tightened lips and narrowed eyes, it appeared he had forgotten that. So had she, as a matter of fact, until just now.

Going on the offensive, Serena shook her head and said, "I don't know what you're after, Kane, but if this is the way you react after a woman asks you to dance, it's no wonder you don't get invited very often."

He ignored the latter part of her statement. "What I'm after? Answers, Serena. I'm a very curious man. I'd like to know, for instance, just who you are. You certainly weren't born Serena Smyth-that much I've found out. I believe you took the name, legally, at sixteen. That was after you came to Seattle, of course, and moved in with Richard Merlin."

She allowed one of her eyebrows to climb in mild amusement. "You make a perfectly innocent and commonplace act sound criminal, Kane. So I changed my name-big deal. If you must know, after my drunken father wrapped his car around a telephone pole when I was six and made me an orphan, I was passed from relative to relative for ten years. That was when I ran away."

"To Merlin," he said in a silky tone.

Serena ignored the tone. "To Richard. I decided to change my name, since I was old enough and since I wanted nothing further to do with any of my other relatives."

"Other relatives? So you still claim he's an uncle?"

She smiled. "No, he's actually some kind of third cousin. But calling him an uncle simplifies matters. Are you planning a story for the tabloids, Kane? One of those juicy headlines like, 'Uncle and Niece in Incestuous Relationship'? Why don't you just write that I'm going to have Elvis's baby? Or an alien's, maybe."

He flushed an ugly red. "I think the society page would be interested in the story," he said tightly. "Wouldn't all your tight-assed friends just love to know the real relationship between you and Merlin?"

Serena couldn't help it; she giggled. "Sorry, Kane, but you seem to have lost track of what really matters to people these days. Do you think you're the first to suspect Richard and I are lovers? Don't be ridiculous; those rumors pop up about once every year or so, as regular as clockwork, until something else comes along to stir up interest." Because she made very sure to distract anyone who suspected the relationship was in any way unusual.

"Can you deny it?" he snapped.

She looked him straight in the eye and replied with a calmness that was far more convincing than histrionics would have been. "Of course I deny it. Richard has been a lot of things to me, but never my lover."

"Maybe not," Kane insisted, "but there's something screwy in your relationship. What name were you born with, Serena? The court documents are sealed, oddly enough."

"Oddly? You know, for an investigative reporter, you seem to have a blind spot regarding facts. I was a minor; of course the court documents are sealed. The name I was born with is no longer mine, and is certainly none of your business. As for my screwy relationships-with Richard or anybody else-they also are none of your business."

"I'll find out what I want to know," he warned her softly. "Sooner or later I'll find a way through all the walls I keep hitting in Merlin's background. And it's just a matter of time until I figure out all your secrets. There's a story here somewhere, Serena. I can smell it."

Serena slid out of the booth and smiled pleasantly at him. She had kept her cool easily until he mentioned a search into Merlin's background, and then she had felt a surge of anger mixed with worry. That was all she needed, to have unintentionally put this story-hungry reporter onto Merlin's trail.

"The only story here concerns a desperate search for lost glory, Kane," she said. "And it's a bit pathetic, you know. If you can't find something a hell of a lot more important than us, then it's no wonder you've fallen so far. Thanks for the coffee, and don't get up."

She walked away without a backward glance, which was a pity. If she had looked back, she might have seen the look of obstinacy on his face. And it might have warned her.