Phantom Pleasures: Sexy Paranormal (Book 1, Phantom Series) (2 page)

He shook his head until his brain cleared.

“Damn you, Rogan!”

Damon lifted his sword high, and then plunged the blade down into the canvas, precisely at Rogan’s black heart. He heard the rip and then pain shot through him. He screamed as a thousand shards of light stripped his body bare to the bone.

And then. . .

Nothing.

St. Augustine
, Florida

April 2008

“What are you doing?”

From behind her, manicured hands coiled around Alexa Chandler’s face and pressed gently against her temples. Even without turning around, she knew who’d come up behind her. Catalina Reyes’s scent always gave her away. Spicy. Rich. Exotic. Alexa had tried wearing the same fragrance and had come off smelling like the proverbial French whore. On Cat, however, the scent reminded Alexa of pure freedom—of the wild life she could be living if she used her money for evil rather than good.

If simply making more money qualified as “good,” of course.

“What do you think I’m doing?” Cat replied.

Alexa sighed. They’d played this game before. “Trying to read my mind.”

Cat chuckled softly.

“Only trouble is,” Alexa continued, “you don’t read minds.”

“Says you,” Cat countered.

“Oh yeah?” Alexa said, sounding much more confident than her previous experiences with Cat warranted. “What am I thinking?”

Alexa clutched the railing of the hotel suite’s balcony tighter and focused on the horizon, on the tiny sliver of land far in the distance, where, with any luck, she’d be exploring sometime in the next few hours.

“You’re thinking about how much money you’re going to make if that abandoned old castle on that barren little island your father left you is the cash cow in disguise that you think it is,” Cat replied.

Alexa turned abruptly, breaking Cat’s contact with her skin.

“How’d you know that?”

Cat laughed, the otherworldly tone in her voice completely gone. “Because I’ve watched you go after properties for six years now. What else would you be thinking?”

Alexa rolled her eyes. “See? Not psychic.”

Cat gave her a sly smile. “You’re also entertaining some fairly naughty fantasies about finding a mysterious dark knight in that castle and letting him have his way with you.”

Alexa’s breath caught in her throat. She was fairly sure that she’d never shared that particular fantasy with anyone—not even her favorite drinking buddy. Of course, with all the tequila they’d shared over the years, she supposed she might have gotten a little too tipsy once or twice and spilled her most secret desire to her friend.

As a young girl, castles, headstrong maidens and handsome princes had been her easy, innocent daydream. Her mother had spared no expense in transforming Alexa’s bedroom into a perfect princess palace, right down to the step-up four-poster bed with shimmery sheers flowing from the canopy. After her mother had died, Alexa had forbidden anyone, least of all any of her stream of stepmothers, from changing the decor.

In her teen years, the setting had become more private. More sensual. Ripe for a young girl’s fantasies. Only she’d never wanted a knight or prince to rescue her. From what? A life of wealth and privilege? No, she’d simply wanted a sweet-voiced young man who could satisfy the torturous, mysterious aches that haunted her in the middle of the night. A man who could steal her away with pleasure and, perhaps, a forever love.

Luckily for her, college had pretty much knocked those delusions right out of her head. Sex, while enjoyable, was no longer a mystifying secret. And as far as Alexa had experienced, men who could weave prince-worthy magic with their bodies were few and far between. No, Alexa had now turned her princess fantasy into something much more practical.

Profit.

“I’m not talking about my sexual fantasies,” Alexa said, “until you’re ready to spill a few of your own.”

“You want the ones I’ve actually lived out or the ones I’m still working on?” Cat replied quickly, a sculpted eyebrow arched over a sparkling eye.

Alexa steeled herself against a shudder. “Forget I said anything. I don’t play games I can’t win, and God knows your love life has always been more exciting than mine. Let’s talk about something important, like how you’ll help me with this project.”

Cat stepped back. “God, that hungry look is scary.”

Alexa chuckled. “So I’ve been told.”

“You do realize that you already have more money than God, right? I mean, in case you’re wondering where your next meal is coming from, I’d say from the nearest five-star restaurant that delivers. Hell, who cares if they deliver? You can buy the place and have the chef come over to make you a peanut butter sandwich. With truffle sauce.”

Alexa blanched at the combination of flavors, imaginary or not. “It’s not about the money.”

Cat laughed out loud. “Come on, Alexa. With you, it’s always about the money.”

Alexa turned back to the sliver of land on the horizon, shaking her head as she gazed. She couldn’t blame Cat for making that assumption. She presented that picture to everyone, even to her best friend. Her father had left her millions—millions he’d made with his own ingenuity and backbreaking determination.

He’d worked his way up from a doorman to become a competitor to the likes of Hyatt, Hilton and Marriott. Crown Chandler hotels exemplified excellent service, meticulous decor and premium prices. Since Richard’s death six years before, Alexa had kept the business running with keen precision, as she hadn’t been raised to whittle away her legacy without first adding to the pot. She’d worked twenty-four/seven to ensure that everyone from the maintenance man to the top executives knew that Alexa Chandler put the solvency and growth of her business above all else.

When she discovered that in addition to his all-consuming work ethic, her father had also left her this perplexing piece of land off the coast of St. Augustine, Florida, uncharacteristic whimsy had shot through her. What could be more perfect for her than an abandoned island and a castle? Though Richard Chandler had died in the same car accident that had also nearly killed Alexa, no mention of the property had been made in his will, and the deed had only recently been discovered by her stepbrother, who found the paperwork among his mother’s belongings—along with a note that had “For Alexa” jotted on the corner. None of his attorneys knew a thing about it, though they’d verified the authenticity of the document and Richard’s signature.

The discovery had spawned a series of events that had led her here, to St. Augustine, with her best friend, the occult expert, opening her briefcase in preparation for a meeting Alexa had been anticipating for hours. Initial research revealed that the island—and the castle—were reportedly haunted, which put them right up Cat’s alley. A well-known paranormal researcher with a list of degrees as long as her waist-length hair, Cat was the perfect person to delve into the history of the land Alexa had inherited. And if the rumors of ectoplasmic activity were true, Alexa knew she had a real discovery on her hands.

In more ways than one.

“The only reference I could find to Valoren was in a database run by a Gypsy genealogy site,” Cat informed her after placing pointy-cornered glasses on her regal nose.

At the news, a thrill shot into Alexa’s veins, and she spun, excited and terrified at the same time. The word “Valoren” had been scribbled on the bottom of the deed, with no explanation.

Alexa had tried to research the island—called Isla de Fantasmas by the locals—on her own and had come up with little more than rumors and speculation. She’d learned that the island’s reputation as a gathering place for ghosts had been recorded as far back as the Spanish occupation of Florida in the fifteen hundreds. Tales of hostile spirits, coupled with the inhospitable terrain made up mostly of prickly palmettos and thick walls of bamboo, had kept anyone from inhabiting the land. Even sea birds and turtles stayed away. Locals speculated that the tales of spectral activity had been planted by pirates protecting their stronghold, but the tales had remained long after the privateers vanished from the Florida coast.

Then, sixty years ago, according to a local historian, a mysterious speculator had bought an abandoned castle in Germany and began moving it to Florida to rebuild on Isla de Fantasmas.

Piece by piece.

Quietly, almost secretly, the medieval-style stronghold had been rebuilt by a foreign architect and workers housed exclusively on a ship anchored off the island. Armed men in fast boats had kept curious onlookers away. Even the press had been thwarted in their quest to find out more about the project.

And then, in 1950, two years after the work began, the project stopped.

The architect, the workers, the ships, disappeared. The castle remained, but the local fishermen claimed that even if a visitor did find a place to go ashore on the craggy island, the castle was surrounded by a completely impenetrable twenty-foot stone wall. If anyone had made it over the wall, he or she hadn’t returned to tell about it. The sheriff had reported that thrill seekers often claimed to have breeched the island’s natural defenses, but no one cared enough about an empty scrap of land to provide proof.

Interestingly, the county courthouse contained no record of the land being bought by Alexa’s father, though the quitclaim deed had been declared genuine by a local judge. Yet when she’d asked for a guide to take her to her property, the local sailors had scattered faster than a school of grouper startled by a hungry shark.

That’s when she’d called Cat.

“So, the rumors. . .are they true?”

Cat shook her head, her ironed-straight hair brushing along bared shoulders. “That the island is haunted? I’ll need to see that for myself,” Cat said, her tone, as usual, brimming with skepticism. Though Cat’s genetic makeup included a potent mix of New Orleans Creole and
Santería
-worshipping Caribbean stock, her friend didn’t believe in any magic she couldn’t prove. So far, Cat had built a reputation for proving more paranormal phenomena than any other researcher in her field—and disproving even more.

“The only other reference I found to Valoren was in a book written twenty years ago by a Gypsy
Chovihano
whose family dated back to the seventeen hundreds,” Cat said.

Alexa slid onto the sleek leather couch beside her friend. “And?”

“That book was useless.”

“Then why—”

“The writer is dead, the mention to Valoren the equivalent of your father’s note on the deed, though it does lead me to believe that Valoren is a place, not a person or a Romani word. The
Chovihano
left no relatives. His publisher was no help. Small press. Out of business. But,” she said triumphantly, “in the acknowledgments, the author made reference to an anthropology professor in Texas. A Gypsy expert. I called him.”

“And he’s heard of Valoren?”

Cat nodded. “And not just an oral history, either. He’d read about the place, though his memory was sketchy. He remembered something about it being a Gypsy enclave. A sort of safe haven.”

“I thought Gypsies never stayed in one place.”

Cat shrugged. “They don’t, ordinarily, which makes the place all the more interesting, doesn’t it?”

“Could he remember his source?”

“No, but he seems to think it was a dissertation or an academic paper of some sort. Maybe a diary. Unfortunately, he has hundreds of professional journals and personal memoirs in his private collection and he can’t remember which one has the reference.”

Alexa cursed. Why she felt so compelled to figure out the answer to this puzzle perplexed her, except. . .she missed her father desperately. This gift seemed so personal, as if he’d searched for a castle for his little princess, remembering how fierce she’d been about her room, about her mother’s legacy. And her father had been just the type—loving and whimsical one minute, serious and driven the next—to try to turn her childhood dream into a moneymaking reality. In all practicality, a reputedly haunted, five-star hotel on an exclusive, hard-to-reach island could become the crown jewel for Crown Chandler. If Alexa made this project happen and filled the rooms with celebrities, dignitaries and nouveau riche entrepreneurs who appreciated privacy with their pampering, she might finally be accepted as the shrewd, creative new leader of Crown Chandler Enterprises and not just the spoiled little rich girl who’d inherited her legacy because she’d lived and her father had died.

Or was she simply so hard up for a decent lover that she was pinning all her hopes on some Sleeping Beauty fantasy?

“What’s our next step?” Alexa asked, shaking off her apprehension.

“I’m flying to Texas,” Cat informed her. “The professor said I could search his collection. I’ll check out the island when I get back. That is, if you’re still interested in the history of the castle before you move forward with your plans.”

“Oh, she’s interested.”

Alexa sat up straighter, her spine rigid. Ordinarily, she didn’t react so icily to her stepbrother walking into a room unannounced. However, she ordinarily didn’t allow Jacob anywhere near Cat, either—at least, not since their messy breakup.

“My, my,” Jacob said, his nose crinkled as if Catalina’s exotic scent offended his delicate sensibility. “Look what the
cat
dragged in.”

Cat skewered him with a sharp glare, tore off her glasses and snapped her briefcase closed. “God, Jacob. You’re such a drama queen. You could at least make an attempt at being original.”

Alexa jumped to her feet. Blood would be drawn if she didn’t act quickly. “Okay, now that we’ve had our warm reunion, can I talk to you, Jacob, in the other room?”