Blurb: Robert is the best lover Kelly’s ever had, even though he’s a ghost. If he could return, could reality live up to the fantasy?
Paranormal
Copyright
© Katherine Kingston, 2015
That
particular spring Thursday she’d been gone for three days, working on a large
collaborative project. By the time she got back at eight in the evening, she
was beat. She’d had dinner before she left the city but she headed for the
kitchen right after dumping the briefcase and stepping out of her pumps. That
martini was calling her name.
“Kelly?”
Robert materialized beside her while she got out the bottles and filled the
shaker with ice. It no longer startled her. His form was never fully solid,
which made it hard to get a perfect idea what he looked like. She could tell he
had a lean, handsome face with strong jaw and cheekbones and sensual lips, but
it was especially hard to see his eye and hair color. Both seemed to be light. Otherwise, he’d been
a tall man in life, but thin. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, which made
sense since he thought he’d been about twenty-five when he died. He didn’t like
to talk about it, but he had one time admitted that he’d been hanged in 1706.
He wouldn’t discuss the reason. Nothing she’d learned of him in the three years
since she’d bought the house—and his company along with it—suggested he was a
bad or violent man, so his fate mystified her.
He must
have some way to change his clothes—or maybe just his appearance, since his
dress didn’t reflect a man who’d lived in the late seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries. He usually appeared to be wearing a polo shirt and
slacks.
“Rough
trip?” he asked, staring at her as she measured out the vermouth. “Took longer
than usual and you look beat.”
“Busy.
Lots of negotiations, a zillion details to hammer out. And I had to wear heels
for three solid days.”
“Poor
baby.” An intriguing hint of British accent underlay the slang he’d picked up
from the TV. “Go put your feet up and I’ll rub them while you tell me about
it.”
That was
an offer she never refused.
Kelly
finished putting together the double martini and took it to the living room.
She settled into the reclining end of the leather sofa with a sigh of relief,
letting the quiet, homey atmosphere she’d created sink into her tired bones. A
puff of warm air surrounded each of her feet after she raised the footrest. The
air began to move around, pressing against her flesh.
She had no
idea how he did that. Another of the drawbacks of a ghostly lover was his
inability to touch her, but Robert had figured out how to use puffs of
compressed air to substitute for it. He admitted it had taken him years of
practice to learn and master the technique. Kelly refused to ask how many women
had gotten similar attentions from him. He’d said there were a couple, though
he claimed he first developed the method to use for turning the pages of books.
“Tell me
what’s happened the last few days,” Robert said, his half-visible form kneeling
beside the chair. It appeared his hands were around her feet, though he
couldn’t truly touch her. Still, the air
shifted around her toes, stroking them gently but firmly.
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