Phantom Lover - Anna Leigh Keaton

• Author: Anna Leigh Keaton
• Publisher: Cobblestone Press, LLC
• Year: 2007
• Genre: Paranormal Sensual Romance
• Setting: Moonlight Cove, Oregon

Book Description

Cursed by a woman who’d loved him, Jacques Cheever has spent the last 200 years trapped in Moonlight Cove. No one can see him, no one can hear him. Only his touch can be felt. He seeks the love that will finally let him experience the peace of death.

Lilly Nightsong has lost everything important in her life, and now she must say goodbye to her beloved Moonlight Cove B&B. Feeling alone, she believes her imagination has taken hold when she feels the touch of a man…until he speaks.

Reviews

• "Phantom Lover is one of those stories that readers will need to have a tissue box near by and one they will want to tell everyone they know to read." -- 5 Angels and Recommended Read - Fallen Angel Reviews

• "For anyone looking for a good paranormal romance with spicy love scenes, PHANTOM LOVER should be at the top of your list!" -- Romance Reviews Today

• "Ms. Keaton has put together a story that is unforgettable. I was overwhelmed with emotions and I cried, laughed and hurt along with the characters." -- Romance Junkies

• "This is an intriguing story which captures the reader’s imagination... a recommended, gentle, cozy, read. It would be excellent beach or summer vacation reading." -- 5 Stars - Euro-Reviews

Excerpt

Prologue

“Jacques! Jacques where are you?”

Jacques came out of the woods where he’d been sitting and looked toward the cliff path leading down from the Moonlight Cove Bed and Breakfast. Little Lilly came down the narrow, rutted pathway at a speed that made his heart stumble every time he saw her doing it.

“I’m here, petite amie,” he called, moving down the sandy beach toward their normal meeting area where a large, flat-topped bolder sat with two smaller boulders, which formed chairs. Since Lilly couldn’t see him, it was easier to have a designated spot for them to meet.

Lilly dashed through the thick, brightly flowering rhododendron bushes at the base of the cliff and scampered out onto the beach, making a beeline for the table, kicking up sand behind her. “Jacques!” she screeched with the kind of glee only young children possessed. Breathing hard she threw herself against the table and faced him, even though he knew she couldn’t see him. “I found you!”

Jacques laughed. The only bright spot in his endless, lonely life was the time he spent with the dark-haired, dark-eyed sprite. “Surely you did, chérie.”

She waved a book so close to his face, he leaned back to keep it from hitting his nose. “No, I found you in this book Gamma gave me to read. It’s all about Moonlight Cove and the people, the Indian Natives that used to live here.” She gulped in huge breaths, and he wondered if she’d hyperventilate. “Gamma said we’re des...des...desend...”

“Descendants?” he supplied.

“Yeah, that. She said that we’re a little bit a part of the Coos Tribe that used ta be all over here.”

Jacques nodded to himself. He’d known from the first that the Nightsongs were part of the same tribe he’d once known. They had a look about them. An unparalleled beauty. Even Clara Nightsong, Lilly’s sixty-year-old grandmother, was still a stunning woman. “That you are, chérie.”

“Right. But this book talks about you, too. Did you know that?”

“What does it say about me?” he asked, feeling trepidation eke its way into his bones. As far as he knew, his name had been forgotten to history. He’d accomplished nothing in his life that warranted his immortality. Not even his death.

Lilly moved toward him, reaching out her hand to touch him, to locate him. When her hand made contact with his chest, she plopped down on his lap. He cuddled her close and breathed in her warm child scent, and once again wondered what his life would have been like if... things had worked out differently.

She opened the book on top of the table to a dog-eared page. She pointed to words and bounced happily, her little feet smacking his shins. “See, there you are.”

Jacques grabbed her ankles to hold her still and picked out his name in the writing. Even though he couldn’t read English, Jacques Lazare Cheever, his Christian name, stood out clearly to him.

“Read it to me, chérie.”

She settled against his chest, and he held her loosely, enjoying the human contact. She was so open and giving of her attention, it warmed him in ways he thought impossible. She was the light of his life and he dreaded the long, lonely winters when she lived far away with her parents.

Lilly slowly started reading in that stilted, monotone way of children who’d so recently learned to read.

“Chérie, have you read this before?”

She nodded.

“All of it?”

Again, she nodded.

“Then just tell me what it says.” He smiled to himself, thinking they’d be there until after nightfall if she had to sound out each and every word.

“It says a lady saved you from your sunked ship. She was an Indian princess, and that you loved her very much.” Lilly shut the book and settled even more snug against him, resting her head on his shoulder. “It said that you wanted to marry her, but her dad said no, that you didn’t belong with the Indians, that you were a stranger and had to go home.”

Jacques ground his jaw as anger built within him. The story’s facts were anything but accurate.

“It said the princess was so upset about it, she threw herself off the cliff, and that you’re the Phantom of Moonlight Cove. That sometimes, during a full moon, people see you walking on the beach, looking for your true love.”

Merde! Once, just once, he went for a swim during a full moon and someone had seen him, or rather the water sluicing off his body as he emerged from the ocean, and he’d become legend. He knew that, had known it for nearly a century. He’d used that legend to his benefit at times, but the story in that book couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

“Do not believe everything you read, chérie,” he said, his voice hoarse, his throat tight with anger and regret.

“No princess killed herself because she loved you?” Lilly asked with the innocence of youth.

He swallowed and fisted his hands at his side. “I am here because I did not love her. I am stuck in this world, this...” He sneered and stopped himself. To Lilly he was just a man, an invisible man to be sure, but still a man. Her friend. He couldn’t bring himself to disillusion her childlike imagination. Couldn’t tell her, that the princess had cursed him to an eternity of loneliness and misery, of endless days and nights that melded into each other until he had no idea how long he’d lived. “What year is this, Lilly?”

“Nineteen seventy-six.”

Mon Dieu! He’d been stuck in this bay for two hundred years.

Chapter One

“You shall never know peace until you experience the agony of love.” -- Curse by Chailali

Jacques reclined on the wide back porch of the abandoned Moonlight Cove Bed and Breakfast. His hands behind his head, his feet propped up on the rickety, paint-chipped railing, he let the sunshine warm his face and the sounds of the sea some hundred and fifty feet below soothe him.

What else was there to do?

He sighed and opened his eyes, staring at the stunning blue sky, the wispy clouds far out over the ocean, the haze of sea spray carried on the gentle, salty breeze. Mon Dieu. I’m going to go out of my mind.