“THE PHANTOM LOVER by Kay Wilde is a short story of a beautiful passionate encounter that will free a woman from the hold her domineering grand-mother still has over her, long after her death. A well written sensual story; I very much enjoyed reading.” Romance Junkies -- Blue Ribbon Rating: 4
“Sensuality, passion, eroticism, and spine tingling zeal will engulf the reader throughout Kay Wilde's The Phantom Lover. The exquisiteness of a life lived fully explodes throughout The Phantom Lover.” 5 Angels -- Fallen Angel Reviews
“THE PHANTOM LOVER has great character development and the way Kay Wilde changes Tessa is unique. In order to become the woman she wants to be, Tessa must go down a path that will uncover her hidden passion and free her from the chains of the past. Though fairly short, if you are looking for a hot, romantic story with a twist, THE PHANTOM LOVER is a story you want to read.” Romance Reviews Today
“The Phantom Lover is a quickie. It will leave you wanting more. Kay Wilde sure knows how to capture the interest with her ability to lead the reader to the point of wanting a Phantom Lover of their own.” The Road To Romance
Summary:
Despite her best friend's steamroller tactics and her arguments as to why Tessa just had to attend the Halloween Ball, it was the location of the ball which Tessa had been unable to resist. On some strange level she identified with the once neglected estate, the estate which featured in all her childhood fantasies. Along with the man who had come to her rescue when she ran away from home as child and found herself lost on the abandoned estate. Her fantasy prince.
"When you're all grown up, little one, come back and see me," he'd told her then put his finger to his lips and winked. Their visit was to be a secret. Tessa never told another living soul about the handsome man, but she had never forgotten. And now, tonight, Tessa Brandt was a mature woman and she was returning to Rosehaven.
This story was previously published as part of the Tempting Fate Holiday Fantasies Collection.
WARNING: This book contains hot, explicit love scenes.
Excerpt:
“No.”
“It’s exactly what you need.”
“I don’t need anything,” Tessa Brandt insisted. “I like my life just the way it is.”
“Bullshit,” her best friend Jessica came back with a snort of disgust. “You don’t have a life. You have spent your entire life playing the role of little miss perfect that was forced on you by your grandmother. And what has it gotten you, Tessa? I’ll tell you. Nothing. You ramble around in this museum of a house, alone.”
Jessica was on a roll. Knowing it was pointless to interrupt her friend before she had her say, Tessa leaned comfortably back in her chair, propped her feet up on the ottoman, and settled in for the siege. Besides, what would be the point? Tessa had no convincing argument to offer against the truth. They had been next-door neighbors and best friends since they were in the same class in elementary school. Jessica knew her better than anyone else in the world, maybe even better than Tessa knew her self, at least Jessica believed she did.
“Tessa, you know you’re my best friend and I love you like a sister, but let’s be honest. Your grandmother was an autocratic witch who controlled and manipulated you until the day she died,” Jessica continued, jumping with both feet upon sensitive ground that was the one source of friction between the two friends.
“That’s not fair,” Tessa countered, immediately coming to her grandmother’s defense, as she always did. “My grandmother took me in and raised me after my own mother dumped me on her doorstep. Without her, God only knows what would have happened to me.”
“And she never let you forget it. The old woman made you pay for her daughter’s sins,” Jessica argued. “You were never permitted to play, to get dirty, never allowed to mess up your clothes or your hair. I’m not sure you even sweat. For Christ’s sake, Tessa, you were expected to behave like an adult when you were only six years old.”
Not one word of Jessica’s argument was untrue, but loyalty to the woman who raised her would not permit Tessa to admit it openly. “Using my grandmother to make your point is not the way to get my cooperation, Jess. She has been gone five years. What do you hope accomplish by bringing her up now?”
Jessica raked her fingers through her riot of blonde curls, closed her eyes and turned her head toward the ceiling as if praying for divine guidance. With a sigh of frustration she opened her eyes and sat on the ottoman in front of Tessa’s chair, fixing her friend with an earnest gaze.
“I care about you, Tessa. I think you’re wonderful. Hell, you’re a saint. But think back to when we were in high school. Every time you talked your grandmother into letting you go on a date, she conveniently got sick and you stayed home to take care of her. After a while the boys quit asking. You worked hard in school and earned a full scholarship to a university upstate. You know, that was the first and the last time I ever saw you happy and excited about doing something for yourself. Then your grandmother really became ill. You forfeited the scholarship, took the secretarial job you still have, and you stayed home to care for her for the next four years until she passed away.”
“I don’t have any regrets. I was all she had and I owed it to her.” They had been over this before and still Tessa found herself defending her actions as if she had done something wrong.
“And being the kind of person you are, you wouldn’t have been able to live with yourself if you had done otherwise,” Jessica conceded. “I understand that, Tessa. I admire and respect you for doing what you felt was right. But look around you. Your grandmother has been gone five years and you haven’t changed a thing in this house since you inherited it. It’s still her house, not yours. It’s as if she is still here, still manipulating your life.”
“And your point is?” Tessa inserted.
“My point is, you are twenty-seven years old. It’s your turn. It’s time to get a life. And I can’t think of a better time to bury the ghosts than Halloween.”
“Just like that? I dress up in some ridiculous costume, go with you to this masquerade ball, and at the stroke of midnight I become Cinderella and my boring existence is changed forever?” Tessa quipped sarcastically.
“Of course not,” Jessica answered. “But it is a start. Aren’t you tired of living up to other people’s expectations? Just once, wouldn’t you like to know what it feels like to shed your inhibitions and have a good time; to become the sensual woman you have repressed all these years? Damn it, Tessa, I’d bet my new convertible that you’re still a virgin.”
“You’d lose,” was Tessa’s shocking revelation. Her one and only sexual encounter had been hurried, painful, disappointing, and so embarrassing Tessa had never been tempted to repeat the experience.
“I don’t believe it.” Jessica gasped. “When? Who?”
“The last time my grandmother was in the hospital,” Tessa answered, even now unwilling to share how ashamed she’d felt afterward. Her grandmother was dying. She had been alone and vulnerable, spending day and night at the hospital, returning to her hotel room only long enough to shower and change clothes. Looking back on the encounter Tessa knew she’d been an easy target, ripe for seduction by a seemingly sympathetic charmer. “He was a young intern who worked the night shift on her floor. We often went to the cafeteria for coffee when he was on break or just sat and talked in the tenth floor visitor’s lounge.”
“Where did you . . ?”
“In one of the empty rooms on the tenth floor,” Tessa answered before Jess could complete the question.
“Wow! That’s one fantasy even I wouldn’t have thought of trying. How could you have held something like that out on me?” Jessica accused, then asked, “Was it good?”
The expression on Tessa’s face was all the answer she needed. “Uh-oh,” Jessica groaned. “Maybe I won’t try that one after all. Anyway, back to the subject at hand,” Jessica quipped bouncing to her feet and making her way to the garment bags she’d brought with her. “I have two costumes. You can have your pick and I will take the other.”
“Jess, I can’t deny everything you said about my life is true. I do need to get a life,” Tessa conceded. “But making a fool of myself in some outlandish costume at a fancy ball, no doubt an event worthy of coverage by the local media, is not the answer. I’m not going.”
“That’s the point of a masked ball. You will be in disguise, a different person. By the time I’m finished with you, you could make the moves on anyone in town and they will have no idea who you are,” Jessica coaxed. “Besides, even if someone thought a guest resembled you, they’d dismiss it. There isn’t a person in this town who would expect Ms. Prim and Proper Brandt to attend such an undignified affair.”
“No. I’m not going.”
* * * *
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Tessa kept telling herself over and over from the time Jessica’s candy apple red convertible pulled out of her driveway, up to the time they turned between the opened wrought iron gates at the entrance of the restored Rosehaven Estate, soon to open its doors as the exclusive Rosehaven Inn. As an avid history buff and president of the local Historical Society, Jessica had been an invaluable source of information during the restoration of the deserted estate. In gratitude for her assistance she had been sent two invitations to the “By Invitation Only” pre-opening gala.
Despite Jessica’s steamroller tactics and her arguments as to why Tessa just had to attend the Halloween Ball, in the end it was Rosehaven itself Tessa had been unable to resist.
Once, when she was maybe eight or nine years old, her grandmother had refused to allow Tessa to attend the birthday party of a young classmate and she ran away from home. She made it as far as the edge of town, somehow ending up at the tall brick wall surrounding Rosehaven. By then she was tired, hungry, frightened and lost. She had no idea how to get back home even if she wanted to, which she didn’t. Along the west wall she’d discovered an opening where the bricks had come loose and slipped through onto the grounds. To the little girl she was at the time, Rosehaven looked like a forgotten fairytale castle. She had never seen anything so grand nor so sad. On some strange level Tessa identified with the abandoned, neglected estate and she didn’t feel frightened any longer. She didn’t go any closer to the house for fear someone would catch her and she’d be in more trouble than she already was. She sat on the ground, leaned back against the wall and promptly fell asleep. That’s where the man found her.
She woke up to something tickling her nose and opened her eyes to see a man bending down in front of her with a rose in his hand. “Are you lost, sweetheart,” he asked her and smiled gently. He was the most handsome man she had ever seen. She pretended he was the prince who had returned to reclaim his castle. Tessa’s grandmother had warned her never to talk to strangers because some were bad men. Young Tessa knew she should be frightened, yet she somehow knew this man would never hurt her.
“I’m not lost,” she told him. “I ran away.”
“Oh? Now why would you want to do something like that?” the fairytale prince asked as he offered her the daisy he’d used to tickle her nose and wake her.
With her prized rose clutched tightly in her hand, Tessa told him all about the party and how her grandmother wouldn’t let her have any fun like all the other kids. Sometime during her rambling he took her other hand and they began walking in the direction of the house and then down the drive to toward the front gates. He listened to her tale of woe and talked with her, not at her, as her grandmother did. He told her she was special and one day she would grow up to become a beautiful woman, just like the lady who once lived at Rosehaven. When they reached the front gates they opened by themselves and he led her to the side of the road. He stood there beside her, giving her words of encouragement until he saw the mail truck coming down the road. He stepped inside the gates and they closed after him.
“When you’re all grown up, little one, come back and see me,” he told her then put his finger to his lips and winked. Their visit was to be a secret. Their secret. He stood inside the gates and watched to make sure she was safe until the mailman who had been alerted to watch out for a missing little girl stopped the truck. Tessa looked back toward the gates for one last look at her prince. He was gone.
Tessa never told another living soul about the handsome man at Rosehaven, but she had never forgotten. And now, tonight, she was a grown woman and returning to Rosehaven.
Before Tessa had time to breathe, much less bolt, as soon as they stepped through the beveled glass double doors into the entry Jessica hustled her into the powder room. Not that she could breathe within the confines of the tightly laced corset she was wearing.
“Here’s the plan. We go in separately,” Jessica explained. “While even your dearly departed Granny wouldn’t recognize you in that get-up, people do know we’re good friends and I’m likely to be recognized. In order to protect your anonymity, it’s wiser if we don’t stay together. Agreed?”
Jessica would most definitely be recognized. The revealing harem girl costume she wore did little to conceal Jessica’s lush body and left nothing to the imagination of the appreciative male observer, including her identity. For that very reason Tessa readily agreed to her friend’s suggestion that they separate. Tess didn’t want to give anyone the slightest reason to connect the two friends and as such speculate as to her identity.
“Fine,” Tessa agreed and then held up her manacled wrists. “Give me the key to these things before you are snatched up by some Arab sheik, never to be seen again.” While the lightweight manacles linked together by a twelve inch length of chain were padded and not uncomfortable, Tessa didn’t care for the sensation of helplessness that went along with them.
“And give you an avenue of escape? Not a chance my friend,” Jessica responded by slipping the key between her breasts and into the scanty bra of her costume. “Besides, the manacles and the blindfold make the costume. Without them you’re likely to be mistaken for one of the serving wenches likely to be wandering around here.” Before Tessa could argue she turned and headed for the door. “For the first time in your life, don’t over analyze the consequences. Just go for it. I intend to,” was Jessica’s parting shot before she stepped through the door.
