Phantom Desires

Computer expert Carly is tired, and ready to downgrade her hectic lifestyle to something simpler. Her solution - pull up stakes and move to an old farm house in the middle of Wyoming.

Dmitri, a Master Vampire, lives beneath Carly's new house, in his hidden lair. Even if Carly can't deny the attraction arcing between them, loving him will force her to make a choice. Life in the sun without him - or an eternity in darkness.

CHAPTER ONE
She woke, bleary-eyed, in that state where the mind is half-conscious but the body still believes it is asleep. She blinked several times, but sleep was winning. In the darkness, she thought she saw a man sitting in the antique chair at the side of her bed, watching her. He was utterly relaxed, and something about his stillness was confident and supremely masculine. Those impressions lasted even as her body won the fight with her semi-conscious brain, and she dropped back to sleep.
The next morning, the image of the man’s shape stayed with her. A dark outline of a man that frightened her almost beyond reason. It had seemed so real. Not like a dream image at all.
She was a capable, steady career woman not given to fits of imagination. Yet, she could have sworn she’d seen a man sitting in her bedroom, watching her sleep in the dark of the night. Was he a phantom? Some sort of spirit left by the former owners of the old Wyoming farmhouse into which she had just moved? Or merely a stray figment of her imagination?
Carly shook her head and tried to ignore the shivers coursing down her spine at the memory of the slightly sinister apparition. The house needed a lot of work, and there was only her to do it. She pushed back the strange memory in the cool light of day and went to work unpacking, moving furniture into place and cleaning house.
The phone rang unexpectedly on Wednesday afternoon while she was polishing the wood in the foyer of the old house. Carly usually worked nights and spent part of the days working on her fixer-upper house. Her friends knew her schedule and knew when to call, so most likely it was one of them. She picked up the receiver and smiled when she heard the voice on the other end of the line. It was Jena.
“Are you ready to come home yet?” her friend asked only half jokingly.
“Not yet, Jen. I’m actually really enjoying myself. This old house has character and the town is kind of nice. It’s good to get away from the hustle and bustle of California.”
Jena sighed. “Well, I guess you did need less stress in your life, but I hate that you’re so far away. We miss you at our monthly get-togethers.”
Jena was a doctor and the mother hen of their group. She worried about all of them—the old college study group that had evolved into lifelong friends. Three of them were married now. The others had chosen various careers to which they were devoted. Jena was a physician, Sally a detective and Carly had her own software business.
“Oh, come on. Christy hardly ever shows up at our dinners anymore and Lissa and Kelly only come for drinks now that they’ve got hunky husbands to get back to.”
“Exactly! Which is why we single girls can’t afford to lose touch.”
“I promise we won’t lose touch, Jen. Besides, you know you have an open invitation to come here and see my new place. There’s plenty of room and the local guys—from what I’ve seen—all fall into the big, brawny stereotype. Lots of ranchers out this way and real live cowboys.”
“Be still my fluttering heart.” Jena could be the queen of sarcasm at times, but Carly loved her all the same. “What about you coming home to visit us once in a while?”
“Jena, I’ve been gone less than a week!”
They both had a good laugh and caught up on the doings of their mutual friends before Jena got paged—which happened too often to Carly’s way of thinking. The stresses of city life had truly gotten to Carly, which was why she’d sought this radical change in lifestyle and pace. So far it was working. Her stress level was lower, as was her blood pressure. She hadn’t even told Jena about the new medication her doctor in town had prescribed. Jena would have had a cow. But the change in lifestyle was already making a dent, and she had a new doctor monitoring her health, which was already looking better.
She hung up the phone and started in on more restoration work. She could’ve hired a crew to do it, but she preferred to do it herself. She had wanted a hands-on project—which pretty much described the entire house—to give her something to do that was both relaxing and rewarding. She’d cleaned most of the house and was now working from front to back, restoring what she could along the way. If she found anything beyond her skill level, she’d call in an expert, but for now she was content to do what she could on her own.