Imaginary Lover

by Sandra Chastain

Genres: Women's Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

In this haunting love story from Sandra Chastain, meddling spirits push two wounded mortals to discover a passion that’s out of this world.
 
Returning to Stone Mountain, Georgia, after serving two years for a crime she didn’t commit, Dusty O’Brian receives the sad news that her Aunt Hattie is dead. Dusty will inherit one half of her old house. The other half has been willed to a man who is as racked with heartbreak as she is. Every instinct tells Dusty to run the other way, but Aunt Hattie must be playing matchmaker from beyond the grave—because every time Dusty hits the road, some invisible force inevitably drags her back.
 
After a car crash claims his wife, Dr. Nick Elliott vows never to get involved with a woman again. Meeting Dusty isn’t going to change that . . . no matter how much the alluring beauty entices him, or the strange fact that Dusty’s presence begins to unlock the medical knowledge he lost in the accident. Nick will not go to her—until Dusty needs a strong, gentle pair of arms to catch her.
 
Includes a special message from the editor, as well as excerpts from other Loveswept titles.

Release date: December 9, 2013

Publisher: Loveswept

Print pages: 256

Sample

ONE
 
Dusty O’Brian opened the door of the cab of the giant eighteen-wheeler, let her feet dangle in the air for a minute, then slid out and dropped to the ground.
 
“So long, Buddy,” she said, “thanks for the ride.”
 
Dusty started up the grassy embankment, then stopped to thread her arms into the straps of her backpack. The burly truck driver opened his window, leaned across the seat, and called out one last concerned warning, “Next time take a bus. Hitching a ride with an old friend is one thing, but there’re some bad guys out there on the road. After what you’ve been through, I wouldn’t want anything else to happen to you.”
 
“Neither would I,” Dusty agreed with a tired sigh. “But I’m as close as I’m gonna get to where I was headed.”
 
Traffic on the Georgia freeway beside them barreled past, buffeting her with wind. She gave a wave to the driver as he eased his enormous vehicle back to the road and moved off into the October night.
 
A part of her wanted to climb right back up into the cab of that truck and keep on going, to see new places then leave them behind before they had time to make an impression on her.
 
A mirage, an illusion. That’s what she wished she were, a veil of smoke, moving through the night, disappearing into the air unseen. If she weren’t real, she couldn’t hurt.
 
A car horn blasted and brought her back to the present, to the noise, the smell of exhaust fumes, and the hunger that roiled in the pit of her stomach.
 
With a sigh, she turned and climbed the hill. When she reached the city street she was looking for, she disregarded Buddy’s advice and held out her thumb. According to her best recollection, the little village of Stone Mountain was off Memorial Drive a few miles up ahead.
 
Memorial Drive. Dusty wondered briefly what event this six-lane highway filled with fast-food restaurants and strip shopping malls was meant to memorialize. Indulging the appetite, she decided, and considered stopping for a burger. Then she remembered her empty pockets and kept moving.
 
At that moment an elderly woman stopped her car and rolled down the window. “What’s a pretty girl like you doing hitchhiking?” she asked in a worried voice. “You get in here quick.”
 
Dusty dumped her backpack in the rear of the car and climbed in. The old woman reminded Dusty of Martha, one of the street people she had once kept a protective eye on, until the woman vanished one day. To Dusty, Martha was just another of the people she had cared about who had deserted her along the way.
 
“Where are you going, child?”
 
“Stone Mountain.”
 
“It’s pretty late to be sightseeing.”
 
“The village, not the park,” Dusty said, and wished she’d taken the city bus they’d fallen behind.
 
“Well, I can take you to the edge of town. I’m going to visit my daughter. She lives in one of those new apartment complexes along West Mountain Drive. I don’t know why she can’t find a young man and settle down, but no—she drives into Atlanta every day to study law. Wants to be a criminal lawyer, can you imagine that?”
 
A criminal lawyer was the last thing Dusty wanted to imagine. She’d seen enough of them, the charity-appointed kind who took your case, met you at the door to the courtroom, and asked for a quick rundown on the facts on the way inside. Dusty didn’t answer.
 
Luckily, she didn’t have to say a word. Her Good Samaritan kept up a running conversation about the area, her family, and friends. Dusty had forgotten how old ladies could go on and on. She wondered if Aunt Hattie had turned into an old woman. Hattie was the only person Dusty had left in the world.
 
Though Hattie couldn’t have loved Dusty more, she wasn’t even Dusty’s real aunt. Dusty was the child of a young actress Hattie had befriended, a woman who’d suffered through a long illness and later died. Hattie had taken in an orphan and given her a home.
 
There’d been a time when Dusty had listened for hours to her aunt’s exciting tales about her career as a stage actress, a career that had dried up and left Hattie with no focus for her life’s energy. Until she’d been offered a glorious role that would take her back to Broadway, then later on the road.
 
Reluctantly, she’d arranged to send Dusty to boarding school, but Dusty, rebellious and feeling like an old overcoat conveniently abandoned when a new style came along, gave in to a temper tantrum in the midst of an argument and ran away.
 
It hadn’t taken Dusty three days to decide that she’d made a mistake. But she knew her aunt; if she went back, the good-hearted woman would never take the role she’d been offered. She’d already spent five years caring for Dusty; it wouldn’t have been fair to Hattie.
 
So Dusty had kept going. As time passed, being away got easier.
 
Later she read in the newspaper that Hattie had been nominated for an award for her performance, and Dusty knew that she’d made the right choice. Eventually Dusty called Hattie, giving her glowing reports on how well she was doing on her own, but she never allowed herself a visit. She’d survived initially by living with a clan of homeless people in Florida. With the help of some counselors who’d taken a special interest in her, she eventually completed high school, two years of night school, and at last, the Florida State Police Academy.
 
But just when she thought she’d finally found her place in the sun, that place had been taken away, and Dusty came to believe that she was destined to be a vagabond. She’d hit the road, never admitting until she stepped off the truck that she was going home, back to Hattie.
 
Dusty was beginning to wonder if her driver knew where she was going, when the elderly woman turned off the busy highway and took a back street. “This is it,” she said as she came to a stop at the corner. “I go straight.”
 
“Thanks for the ride. Good night, and ma’am,” Dusty cautioned, “it isn’t a good idea for you to pick up hikers, even if they are women. I could have easily robbed and hurt you.”
 
The elderly woman’s eyes widened and she gasped. Dusty closed the door and heard the click of the locks as the woman drove quickly away.
 
Dusty felt vaguely guilty for having frightened the woman who’d been kind to her, then faced the reality of her warning. There might have been a time when lonely old women could be kind to strangers, but no more. A woman couldn’t even trust her own friends. Dusty was living proof of that.
 
Moments later Dusty was on the crowded, brightly lit sidewalk. There were shops, restaurants, small businesses, all quaint and inviting. She turned into a craft shop.
 
“Where is the ART Station?” Dusty asked a clerk behind the counter.
 
“Go half a block and turn to your left. It’s the old railroad depot on the corner. Hey, I like your costume. Are you auditioning as a storyteller?”
 
Dusty shook her head and moved off again. Her costume? She brushed the dust from her jeans, then glanced into a shop window and gave up. She’d been traveling for three days, and she did look scruffy—dangerous even—wearing black and carrying all her worldly belongings on her back.
 
Dusty shrugged. What did she care what people thought?
 
Dusty came to the ART Station, gave it a passing glance, then turned down the street beside it, walking slowly, until she came to the two-story white Victorian house on the corner beyond.
 
Four Twenty-Two. The script letters spelled out the number over the door. The porch light was on, but the door was locked, and nobody answered the bell. Finally Dusty moved around to the back door. It was locked as well. At least there was a swing on the porch. Dusty threw her backpack onto the swing, stretched out, and laid her head on it. She’d been in worse places. Moments later she was asleep.
 
It was the smell of tobacco that woke her. The sound of a board creaked in the darkness.
 
Someone was out there.
 
Correction. Someone was on the steps. As if she’d never stopped using a finely trained instinct, Dusty considered the possibilities.
 
It wouldn’t be Aunt Hattie. She wouldn’t be slinking into her own house. She’d use the front door. At best, the intruder was some sort of Peeping Tom; at worst, a burglar intent on theft. Dusty knew that if she made the slightest movement, she could give herself away.
 
Whatever she did had to be quick, all in one motion, a complete surprise. If she hadn’t been so tired, it might have occurred to her that a burglar wouldn’t be smoking. If she hadn’t been awakened from a sound sleep, she might have realized that the man was sitting, not standing, on the step.
 
If Nick Elliott hadn’t been concentrating so hard on trying to bring back the still-missing pieces of his memory, he’d have known he wasn’t alone. When the swing creaked, he turned, straight into the force that caught him in the chest and catapulted him into the yard. Before he could react, someone rolled him onto his stomach and pulled his wrists together behind him.