Imaginary Lover

  Imaginary Lover is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  2013 Loveswept eBook Edition

  Copyright © 1994 by Sandra Chastain.

  Excerpt from Accidental Cowgirl by Maggie McGinnis copyright © 2013 by Maggie McGinnis

  Excerpt from After the Kiss by Lauren Layne copyright © 2013 by Lauren LeDonne

  Excerpt from The Notorious Lady Anne by Sharon Cullen copyright © 2013 by Sharon Cullen

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States of America by Loveswept, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-345-54191-8

  Originally published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House Company, New York, in 1994.

  www.readloveswept.com

  v3.1

  •••

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Editor’s Corner

  Excerpt from Maggie McGinnis’s Accidental Cowgirl

  Excerpt from Lauren Layne’s After the Kiss

  Excerpt from Sharon Cullen’s The Notorious Lady Anne

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  My thanks to David Thomas, Betty Hirt, Michael C. Hidalgo, and the staff at the ART Station for allowing me to use them in this book. The ART Station’s A Tour of Southern Ghosts is a remarkable fund-raising project for a worthy cause, and I salute those people who volunteer their support.

  Also a special thanks to Nancy Knight, who gave me the idea for this book and is both my spell-checker and my guardian angel. In addition she can go anywhere and never get lost. If I ever take a ship to the stars, I want her to sail it.

  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.

  “What in hell?” he said.

  “Don’t move! You’re in big trouble, fella!”

  It was a shocking realization to learn that the intruder sitting astride his waist was a woman, a strong woman with tight thigh muscles and hands of steel. “In trouble for what?”

  “Attempted breaking and entering.”

  “The only thing breaking here is my back. And I can enter any time I like, you wildcat. I live here.”

  “You do?” Dusty let her captive go and slid to her knees beside the prostrate man. “I’m sorry, I thought this was Hattie Lanier’s house.”

  “It is. Do you attack people at random, or do you do it by some special selection process?”

  Dusty stood and moved away. She’d done it again, opened herself up to blame and ridicule. “Sorry,” she said, “my mistake.”

  The man stood awkwardly. It was then she realized that he was crippled in some way. “Damn! I didn’t mean to hurt you. Let me help.” Not only had she tackled someone who apparently belonged there, but she’d body-slammed a handicapped man.

  “You didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said with a growl, then turned and gave her such a glare of anger that she could see it in the dark. She could have been facing the devil himself. He was tall, thin, almost gaunt, with eyes that pierced right through her.

  She recognized someone at the breaking point. She’d seen the same kind of reaction in a Vietnam vet fighting a flashback. Dusty backed slowly away, holding her hands up in a gesture of placation. “Okay, fella. Fine. Whatever you say. Can I call someone to help you?”

  “I don’t need any help!” he said. He pushed past her, stumbling over her backpack. “And if you’ve come for a handout, or you’re another one of those crazy fans looking for some memento, you’re too late. I’ve been told not to let anybody in until everything’s been officially inventoried. And don’t call me fella.”

  He fumbled for a moment with his key, then moved inside, slamming the door behind him. She heard the loud click in the darkness. The devil had locked her out.

  “Son of a—” She kicked the bottom step and swore. She hadn’t even asked about Hattie. With her hands on her hips she strode into the yard and looked up at the second floor. A light came on in the corner room, then switched off again. She knew he was standing there at the window, staring down at her. She was tempted to make an obscene gesture, then felt that familiar curtain of control slide back into place.

  So, what to do? Hattie wasn’t at home, and Dusty didn’t think the man she’d tackled was ready to be friends.

  Once again she was on the outside looking in. What was new about that? She caught sight of the cigarette he’d been smoking still smoldering in the dry October grass. Grinding it out with the heel of her boot, she stalked back to the porch and reclaimed her spot in the swing.

  What did he mean about claiming a memento? Of course Hattie was famous, or she had been once. It was hard to believe that people would try to take something of hers after all this time. And who would be itemizing her belongings? Dusty was too tired to worry about that now. Handouts she could understand. Hattie had been famous for giving them.

  Her aunt must be selling the house. Or maybe she was on the road again. He’d been left in charge and was taking his job seriously. At least he’d confirmed to Dusty that she was in the right place.

  If there was a right place. It had been thirteen years, but this was still the house where she’d come once before when she’d needed a safe haven. In the morning she’d explain who she was and that she only wanted to stay until she could find a job, until she could find a place of her own where people didn’t know her by name. If Hattie knew she were there, she wouldn’t turn her away.

  Dusty O’Brian didn’t care much about starting over. She was better at leaving. Starting over promised a future; she didn’t have one. The present was all she had. She might as well get used to it, beginning with spending the night in the swing.

  Nick Elliott stood in the window and looked down at the silhouette of the woman in the yard below. He’d been totally surprised by her presence, though he shouldn’t have been. There’d been a string of curiosity seekers. Hattie was famous for taking in strays, and Nick thought he’d seen most of them in the last few days. But somehow he didn’t think this woman was a down-on-her-luck artist or actress.

  This was a woman accustomed to being in charge. Everything about her said that, from her harsh voice to her firm body. She gave the impression that she belonged and he was the outsider.

  There’d been a time when he would have been a better match for her, when he might have been the one to pin her down beneath him. A time before his body
had been ravished by injury and the healing that stripped him of his dignity and his strength.

  There was a time when he’d been the best racquetball player at the club where he worked out. Now he was lucky to take a slow jog around the park without getting muscle spasms in his leg.

  Gingerly he rubbed his kneecap, trying to still the throbbing. But it wasn’t the injury or the healing that he was beginning to recognize; it was a need more fundamental than that—the need of a man’s body for physical release—the reaction of that body to the presence and the touch of a woman.

  “Damn!” She’d had him in a scissors hold and was ready to string him up as a burglar before he’d known what was happening.

  Nick frowned. Surely Hattie would have warned him if she’d been expecting somebody special.

  He assumed the woman was one of the many who’d suddenly appeared at the door after Hattie’s death notice had run in the newspaper. They’d all wanted the same thing, just something to remember Hattie by. Some had even resorted to sneaking in and helping themselves.

  The silhouette of the woman below gradually took on form and substance as the light from the moon etched her shape in the darkness. She was tall, her hair long, probably caught with a clasp at the neck. She stood, one arm folded across her chest, rubbing her other arm as she stared up at his window.

  He could feel the challenge of her posture. But more, he could feel a kind of pain.

  After a long moment she ground out the burning cigarette he’d dropped and disappeared out of sight onto the porch below. Whoever she was, she wasn’t giving up. He’d probably find her in the swing come morning.

  Nick shrugged his shoulders and rolled his head around, trying to stretch the still-present kinks that had come from sitting day after day in a hospital room. Waiting for someone to die was more exhausting than waiting for someone to get well. The body fought both.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” Hattie had argued up to the end. “I’ve told stories on A Tour of Southern Ghosts since it started seven years ago. And I don’t intend to miss this time, Nick Elliott. You just get these doctors on the ball and get me well!”