Tempting Fate
Halloween
The Phantom Lover
by
Kay Wilde
(c) copyright October 2003, Kay Wilde
Cover art by Eliza Black
New Concepts Publishing
www.newconceptspublishing.com
“No.”
“It’s exactly what you need.”
“I don’t need anything,” Tessa Brandt insisted. “I like my life just the way it is.”
“Bullshit,” her best friend Jessica came back with a snort of disgust. “You don’t have a life. You’ve spent your entire life playing the role of little miss perfect that was forced on you by your grandmother. And what has it gotten you, Tessa? I’ll tell you. Nothing. You ramble around in this museum of a house, alone.”
Jessica was on a roll. Knowing it was pointless to interrupt her friend before she had her say, Tessa leaned comfortably back in her chair, propped her feet up on the ottoman, and settled in for the siege. Besides, what would be the point? Tessa had no convincing argument to offer against the truth. They had been next-door neighbors and best friends since they were in the same class in elementary school. Jessica knew her better than anyone else in the world, maybe even better than Tessa knew herself, at least Jessica believed she did.
“Tessa, you know you’re my best friend, and I love you like a sister, but let’s be honest.
Your grandmother was an autocratic witch who controlled and manipulated you until the day she died,” Jessica continued, jumping with both feet upon sensitive ground that was the one source of friction between the two friends.
“That’s not fair,” Tessa countered, immediately coming to her grandmother’s defense, as she always did. “My grandmother took me in and raised me after my own mother dumped me on her doorstep. Without her, God only knows what would have happened to me.”
“And she never let you forget it. The old woman made you pay for her daughter’s sins,”
Jessica argued. “You were never permitted to play, to get dirty, never allowed to mess up your clothes or your hair. I’m not sure you even sweat. For Christ’s sake, Tessa, you were expected to behave like an adult when you were only six years old.”
Not one word of Jessica’s argument was untrue, but loyalty to the woman who raised her would not permit Tessa to admit it openly. “Using my grandmother to make your point is not the way to get my cooperation, Jess. She’s been gone five years. What do you hope to accomplish by bringing her up now?”
Jessica raked her fingers through her riot of blonde curls, closed her eyes, and turned her head toward the ceiling as if praying for divine guidance. With a sigh of frustration, she opened her eyes and sat on the ottoman in front of Tessa’s chair, fixing her friend with an earnest gaze.
“I care about you, Tessa. I think you’re wonderful. Hell, you’re a saint. But think back to when we were in high school. Every time you talked your grandmother into letting you go on a date, she conveniently got sick, and you stayed home to take care of her. After a while, the boys quit asking. You worked hard in school and earned a full scholarship to a university upstate. You know, that was the first and the last time I ever saw you happy and excited about doing something for yourself. Then your grandmother really became ill. You forfeited the scholarship, took the job you still have, and you stayed home to care for her for the next four years until she passed away.”
“I don’t have any regrets. I was all she had, and I owed it to her.” They had been over this before, and still Tessa found herself defending her actions as if she had done something wrong.
“And being the kind of person you are, you wouldn’t have been able to live with yourself if you had done otherwise,” Jessica conceded. “I understand that, Tessa. I admire and respect you for doing what you felt was right. But look around you. Your grandmother has been gone five years, and you haven’t changed a thing in this house since you inherited it. It’s still her house, not yours. It’s as if she is still here, still manipulating your life.”
“And your point is?” Tessa inserted.
“My point is, you’re twenty-seven years old. It’s your turn. It’s time to get a life. And I can’t think of a better time to bury the ghosts than Halloween.”
“Just like that? I dress up in some ridiculous costume, go with you to this masquerade ball, and at the stroke of midnight I become Cinderella and my boring existence is changed forever?” Tessa quipped sarcastically.
“Of course not,” Jessica answered. “But it is a start. Aren’t you tired of living up to other people’s expectations? Just once, wouldn’t you like to know what it feels like to shed your inhibitions and have a good time, to become the sensual woman you’ve repressed all these years? Dammit, Tessa, I’d bet my new convertible that you’re still a virgin.”
“You’d lose,” was Tessa’s shocking revelation. Her one and only sexual encounter had been hurried, painful, disappointing, and so embarrassing Tessa had never been tempted to repeat the experience.
“I don’t believe it,” Jessica gasped. “When? Who?”
“The last time my grandmother was in the hospital,” Tessa answered, even now unwilling
to share how ashamed she’d felt afterward. Her grandmother was dying. She had been alone and vulnerable, spending day and night at the hospital, returning to her hotel room only long enough to shower and change clothes. Looking back on the encounter, Tessa knew she’d been an easy target, ripe for seduction by a seemingly sympathetic charmer. “He was a young intern who worked the night shift on her floor. We often went to the cafeteria for coffee when he was on break or just sat and talked in the tenth floor visitor’s lounge.”
“Where did you . . . .”
“In one of the empty rooms on the tenth floor,” Tessa answered before Jess could complete the question.
“Wow! That’s one fantasy even I wouldn’t have thought of trying. How could you have held something like that out on me?” Jessica accused, then asked, “Was it good?”
The expression on Tessa’s face was all the answer she needed. “Uh-oh,” Jessica groaned. “Maybe I won’t try that one after all. Anyway, back to the subject at hand,” Jessica quipped, bouncing to her feet and making her way to the garment bags she’d brought with her. “I have two costumes. You can have your pick, and I’ll take the other.”
“Jess, I can’t deny everything you said about my life is true. I do need to get a life,”
Tessa conceded. “But making a fool of myself in some outlandish costume at a fancy ball, no doubt an event worthy of coverage by the local media, is not the answer. I’m not going.”
“That’s the point of a masked ball. You’ll be in disguise, a different person. By the time I’m finished with you, you could make the moves on anyone in town, and they’ll have no idea who you are,” Jessica coaxed. “Besides, even if someone thought a guest resembled you, they’d dismiss it. There isn’t a person in this town who would expect Ms. Prim and Proper Brandt to attend such an undignified affair.”
“No. I’m not going.”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Tessa kept telling herself over and over from the time Jessica’s candy apple red convertible pulled out of her driveway, up to the time they turned between the opened wrought iron gates at the entrance of the restored Rosehaven Estate, soon to open its doors as the exclusive Rosehaven Inn. As an avid history buff and president of the local Historical Society, Jessica had been an invaluable source of information during the restoration of the deserted estate. In gratitude for her assistance, the new owners had sent her two invitations to the “By Invitation Only” grand opening.
Despite Jessica’s steamroller tactics and her arguments as to why Tessa just had to attend the Ha
lloween Ball, in the end it was Rosehaven itself Tessa had been unable to resist.
Once, when she was maybe eight or nine years old, her grandmother had refused to allow Tessa to attend the birthday party of a young classmate, and she ran away from home. She made it as far as the edge of town, somehow ending up at the tall brick wall surrounding Rosehaven. By then she was tired, hungry, frightened, and lost. She had no idea how to get back home even if she wanted to, which she didn’t. Along the west wall she’d discovered an opening where the bricks had come loose and slipped through onto the grounds. To the little girl she was at the time, Rosehaven looked like a forgotten fairytale castle. She’d never seen anything so grand nor so sad. On some strange level, Tessa identified with the abandoned, neglected estate, and she didn’t feel frightened any longer. She didn’t go any closer to the house for fear someone would catch her and she’d be in more trouble than she already was. She sat on the ground, leaned back against the wall, and promptly fell asleep. That’s where the man found her.
She woke up to something tickling her nose and opened her eyes to see a man bending down in front of her with a daisy in his hand. “Are you lost, sweetheart,” he asked her and smiled gently. He was the most handsome man she had ever seen, and she pretended he was the prince who had returned to reclaim his castle. Tessa’s grandmother had warned her never to talk to strangers because some were bad men. She knew she should be frightened. She wasn’t. She somehow knew this man would never hurt her.
“I’m not lost,” she told him. “I ran away.”
“Oh? Now why would you want to do something like that?” he asked as he offered her the daisy he’d used to tickle her nose and wake her.
With her prized daisy clutched tightly in her hand, Tessa told him all about the party and how her grandmother wouldn’t let her have any fun like all the other kids. Sometime during her rambling, he took her hand, and they began walking in the direction of the house, then down the drive to toward the front gates. He listened to her tale of woe and talked with her, not at her, as her grandmother did. He told her she was special, and one day she would grow up to become a beautiful woman, just like the lady who once lived at Rosehaven. When they reached the front gates, they opened by themselves, and he led her to the side of the road. He stood there beside her giving her words of encouragement until he saw the mail truck coming down the road. He stepped inside the gates, and they closed after him.
“When you’re all grown up, little one, come back and see me,” he told her then put his
finger to his lips and winked. Their visit was to be a secret. He stood inside the gates and watched to make sure she was safe until the mailman who had been alerted to watch out for a missing little girl stopped the truck. Tessa looked back toward the gates for one last look at her prince. He was gone.
Tessa never told another living soul about the handsome man at Rosehaven, but she had never forgotten. And now, tonight, she was all grown up and returning to Rosehaven.
Before Tessa had time to breathe, much less bolt, as soon as they stepped through the beveled glass double doors into the entry, Jessica hustled her into the powder room. Not that she could breathe within the confines of the tightly laced corset she was wearing.
“Here’s the plan. We go in separately,” Jessica explained. “While even your dearly departed Granny wouldn’t recognize you in that get-up, people do know we’re good friends, and I’m likely to be recognized. So, in order to protect your anonymity, it’s wiser if we don’t stay together. Agreed?”
Jessica would most definitely be recognized. The revealing harem girl costume she wore did little to conceal Jessica’s lush body and left nothing to the imagination of the appreciative male observer, including her identity. For that very reason, Tessa readily agreed to her friend’s suggestion that they separate. She didn’t want to give anyone the slightest reason to connect the two friends and as such speculate as to her identity.
“Fine,” Tessa agreed, then held up her manacled wrists. “Give me the key to these things before you are snatched up by some Arab sheik, never to be seen again.” While the lightweight manacles linked together by a ten inch length of chain were padded and not uncomfortable, Tessa didn’t care for the sensation of helplessness that went along with them.
“And give you an avenue of escape? Not a chance my friend,” Jessica responded by slipping the key between her breasts and into the scanty bra of her costume. “Besides, the manacles and the blindfold make the costume. Without them you’re likely to be mistaken for one of the serving wenches likely to be wandering around here.” Before Tessa could argue, she turned and headed for the door. “For the first time in your life, don’t analyze the consequences. Just go for it. I intend to,” was Jessica’s parting shot before she stepped through the door.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Tessa turned, bypassing the mirror above the triple sink vanity, she instead gazed at her reflection within the mirror tiled wall to the right.
Jessica was right about one thing, her grandmother wouldn’t recognize her. She didn’t recognize herself. To Tessa’s critical eye, the costume revealed a shocking amount of cleavage. While it was provocative, it was most definitely the lesser of the two evils in Jessica’s possession. The theme of her costume was The Captive. Her long dark hair hanging loose to the center of her back had been moosed and scrunched to give it a tousled, wind blown look. Her mask was a black silk blindfold which allowed her to see through slits artfully concealed within the folds. The simple, strapless, underwire corset of white cotton was the most revealing part of the costume. Although she had never considered her breasts large, Tessa had thought them to be adequate. Thanks to the mechanics of the corset, they now appeared much more than merely adequate. The navy blue ankle length skirt was tattered with a rip up the left side to her hip. A rip which revealed a tantalizing amount of bare leg when she walked. That was doable, Tessa decided. She would just be careful how she walked, which made perfect sense considering that her feet were bare.
“This is a test,” she told her reflection, thankful she had the powder room to herself. “Do you want to be a timid mouse all your life? Or do you have the guts to be the woman you’ve only fantasized you could be?” It was only one night. One night which could give her a taste of what life could be like. “Don’t analyze. Just go for it,” Tessa repeated her friend’s advise as she turned and walked from the powder room into the unknown.
Returning to the elegant tiled entry, complete with a sparkling crystal chandelier, she had no difficulty discovering the direction she needed to go. Music and laughter were emanating from the opened French doors at the end of the hallway to her right. Needing just a little more time to build up her courage, Tessa walked to the closed pocket door on the other side of the entry. She slid the door back, slipped inside, and closed the door behind her. In truth, she chickened out.
Tessa quickly realized she was in the library, the most elaborate private library she had ever seen. But then, only the best would be good enough for Rosehaven. The entire back wall and the walls flanking the ornate fireplace were floor to ceiling bookcases, complete with a ladder on rollers at the top to allow access to the volumes on shelves out of reach from the floor. There were several antique library tables and comfortable leather chairs throughout the room which smelled of old books, fine leather, and pine from the logs burning in the fireplace.
The pull of the room and the cozy fire was almost irresistible. It would be so easy to select a book, curl up in a comfortable chair in front of the fire, and hide out in here for the duration of the party.
“Or I could just leave,” Tessa muttered. “I don’t belong here.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Turning her back on the temptation offered by the inviting room, Tessa reached for the door.
“Did you honestly think the Master of Rosehaven would allow his beautiful captive to escape him?”
Tessa froze, her hand barely an inch from the door.
“Turn around,” the voice b
ehind her instructed.
Unable to resist, she turned to face the room she’d thought deserted.
He rose from the depths of a winged backed chair facing the blazing fire. He wore tight black britches tucked into knee-high riding boots and a black silk shirt opened to the waist, giving her a glimpse of the fine dark hair on his muscular chest. But it was his face which caused Tessa’s breath to lodge in her lungs.
It was him. The man she’d met here as a child, and he hadn’t aged a single day. Logically, Tessa knew it wasn’t possible. The man facing her must be the son of the man who had found her here so long ago. He had the same wavy, raven dark hair, the same compelling onyx eyes, and the same soothing voice she’d never forgotten.
As he walked slowly toward her, Tessa’s legs went weak, and her heart stuttered within her chest. Stopping in front of Tessa, he reached out and, with his forefinger beneath her chin, forced her to look up into his mesmerizing gaze.
“It can’t be you,” she gasped, knowing how ridiculous the remark must sound.
“Can’t it?” he responded as if he knew exactly what she was talking about. “I repeat my earlier question. Did you honestly think I would allow you to leave?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do,” he insisted, then rubbed the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip. “The important question is, do you still want to go?”
“No.” The word escaped her lips without her being aware of speaking.
His head lowered. His lips met hers. At first, his kiss was a mere whisper of a touch, teasing, coaxing, willing her to initiate further contact. When her lips instinctively sought his, he deepened the kiss, his tongue seeking admittance for more intimate contact. Her lips parted. One hand slid around her waist to the small of her back, pulling close to the inflexible hardness of his body. His other hand slid up her back and into her hair, holding her secure while he devoured her lips like a dying man absorbing life-sustaining energy.
Tessa was shocked by the depths of passion his kiss evoked within her. Without being aware of doing so, she slid one hand up his chest, relishing the sensation of the tight curling hair beneath her palm. Her other hand went to the nape of his neck, holding onto him as if he were
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