Phantom's Touch: Sexy Paranormal (Book 2, Phantom Series) (33 page)
Read Phantom's Touch: Sexy Paranormal (Book 2, Phantom Series) Online
Authors: Julie Leto
Tags: #Romance
“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?”
With a sneer, her stepbrother begrudgingly headed toward the suite’s bedroom. Just to be on the safe side, Alexa shut the door behind them.
“Why are you still hanging out with that freak?” he asked.
Alexa bit the inside of her mouth. Black pot? Meet kettle.
“Just because the two of you broke up—four years ago, I should remind you—doesn’t mean I can’t be friends with her.”
Clearly, time hadn’t lessened the bitterness between her brother and her friend. Catalina had kicked Jacob to the curb once she realized he’d been using her to meet the self-proclaimed witches and vampires who flocked to Catalina unbidden, sometimes because of her research into the occult, most times because of her legacy as the granddaughter of a
Santería
priest and a voodoo priestess.
From the moment Jacob Sharpe’s mother had married into the Chandler family, Alexa had realized that her new brother had interests that were more than a little weird. While Alexa herself had always been interested in ghosts, her reasons leaned toward the capitalistic and had nothing to do with Cat. Long before Alexa had met her friend, her interests in the paranormal had always stemmed from how a rumor of ghostly hauntings in the hotel world nearly always equaled financial gain. Travelers often paid big money to have a cold, otherworldly breeze blow across their cheeks in the dead of night.
Jacob, on the other hand, had proclaimed himself Wiccan, Goth and anything else that would drive his parents crazy. After college, he’d stopped trying to shock everyone. Alexa had figured he’d finally grown out of his rebellious stage. Cunningly, he’d let the inky dye fade out of his brown hair, gave up lining his icy blue eyes with black kohl, and traded his favorite black duster jacket and Nazi storm trooper boots for Armani suits and Bruno Magli shoes just long enough to land himself in her daddy’s will. Which was why she had to deal with him on a regular basis.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “I told you I could handle this situation on my own.”
He had an unnerving habit since the accident of following her around like a guard dog, despite the fact that she’d given him an entire division of established, top-performing hotels to supervise. She’d survived the car wreck, even if his mother and her father had not. Therapy for her concussion, punctured lung and broken thighbone had been a bitch, but she’d recovered with even more strength—and determination—than she’d had before.
Jacob shrugged in that boyish way that made her forget he was nearly thirty years old. “Things are running like clockwork as usual. But I’m bored. I need a challenge.”
“You can always look into that ski lodge in Utah.”
He scrunched his nose. “Too many Mormons in Utah.”
She blew out a frustrated breath. “Yes, they do tend to gravitate there.” And the good Lord knew that Mormons weren’t her stepbrother’s speed.
“Let me help you here,” he said, his tone vaguely whiny. “I am the one who brought you the deed. I didn’t have to, you know.”
She supposed he didn’t. He’d taken his mother’s death pretty hard—harder than she’d expected for all the tension that existed between the two of them. Apparently, he’d waited until recently to go through the last of her effects, and Alexa supposed that if he had wanted to be cruel, he could have kept the deed to himself. But while Jacob had nearly always been a pain in her ass, he’d never been underhanded or mean.
“Come on, sis,” he pleaded. “I can make myself more useful with your spooky castle than I can approving budgets for bed linens. With your knowledge of hotels and mine of all things mysterious, we can build a property that will make our competitors weep with envy.”
Jacob’s grin quirked up on the right side of his face and his eyes glittered. They might not have been related by blood, but Alexa couldn’t deny that they both suffered from a condition that caused hot flashes at the possibility of growing their portfolios.
“Yes, well, I can’t make any decisions until I see the place close-up,” Alexa said, wearing her most unengaged expression. She didn’t want anyone, even her stepbrother, to know how desperately she wanted this venture to work out. “But since you’re here, you can at least come with me. I hate flying.”
Alexa’s father had taught her everything he knew about hotels in particular, but also about business in general. He’d also insisted that a smart woman adhered to the old adage of keeping her friends close and her enemies closer. She wasn’t exactly sure where her stepbrother fell most of the time, but as she was on the brink of a spectacular opportunity, she’d rather not take any chances.
At least not until she arrived on the island.
*********
Please visit
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Phantom Pleasures
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New York Times
bestselling author Julie Leto actually hates hearing ghost stories. . .mainly because she’s a self-avowed fraidy cat. On ghost tours, she is known to wear the rosary bracelet that she was given as a child (which was blessed by the Pope, according to her grandmother) and to announce loudly that any ghosts in the vicinity should show themselves only to the other people on the tour and not her, because she’s just there to hear about the history.
She does, however, love writing ghost stories, especially when they are super-sexy, mysterious and fun. The Phantom series was conceived of very early in her career, but she sold the revised idea, along with two sequels, fourteen years after Damon Forsyth, the hero of Phantom Pleasures, first stormed out of her brain. Now that she has the rights back to the series, she hopes to write the second trilogy very soon and answer the final questions about the gypsy curse that plagues the Forsyth family.
Julie lives on the west coast of Florida with her daughter, a spoiled dachshund, a haughty lynx-point Siamese and a wide range of relatives all within driving distance. Readers can find her at
www.julieleto.com
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