Kiss of the Phantom: Sexy Paranormal (Book 3, Phantom Series) by Julie Leto

her dream.
    Rafe, however, stepped away. “I awoke with the sunset, as if from a deep and powerful sleep. I wished to be with you again...and here I am.”
    Her heart was beating the hell out of her insides. From the shock of his appearance, of course. And nothing more.
     “You wished to be...”
    She let the words die on her lips. Whom else would he want to be with? She did, after all, have the stone. He could have wished to be in the presence of the bloody queen of England, and still she was the best he’d get.
    “Remarkable,” he said, turning the flashlight over in his hands, the beam shining around them like a beacon. Which, under the circumstances, wasn’t a good thing.
    She threw out her hand to stop him. “We don’t need to broadcast that we’re up here, okay? It’s bad enough that the chopper is so noisy. I have no idea what neighbors I might have, but I’d prefer not to let anyone know where we are.”
    He nodded, then followed her toward the cabin. “I understand, but tell me about this fireless torch. What’s it called?”
    “In Australia, a torch,” she noted with a snicker. “In America, where we are, it’s a flashlight.”
    “Australia?”
    “My homeland. You might know it as...” she started, trying to remember the history of her native country, “New South Wales.”
    He stared at her blankly.
    “Aren’t you British?” she asked.
    His lip curled and his nose twitched, as if a skunk had discharged a warning directly in their path. “I am Romani.”
    “Half Romani,” she said, remembering that his father had been a British earl.
    He merely sniffed in response. “In my world, the Romani half was all that mattered.”
    “Probably not to your father,” she said.
    “Especially to my father,” he replied curtly.
    Mariah let the matter drop. She understood better than most how relations with parents could be complicated and contentious. She loved her own father deeply, but he’d been a bush pilot in the Northern Territory who considered rough living to be the ultimate test of his manliness. He’d raised two sons the same way. He’d never exactly been sure what to do with his daughter.
    Her mother hadn’t been any more insightful. When she’d abandoned the family to move to Sydney, she’d left Mariah behind, taking her in only after Mariah had reached puberty and Bert Hunter had left his ex-wife no choice. When Mariah wasn’t rebelling against high expectations and responsibility, she’d gotten on pretty well with her mum once they were reunited. Unfortunately, the damage to their relationship had been done. Mariah was still fending off the demons born of a childhood of not fitting in, and she didn’t want to stir up those memories tonight.
    “We should get inside,” she said, pointing the beam of the flashlight toward the door just as a cloud opened up and dumped a flood of rain on top of them.
    Lightning followed. Mariah cursed as sheets of cold rain doused her, ruining her chances of remembering under which clay pot she’d buried the key. Suddenly, Rafe took her arm and pulled her inside, shutting the wide-open door firmly behind them.
    “How’d you do that?” she asked, swiping water from her face. “Wasn’t it locked?”
    He did not reply. Mariah lit the kerosene lantern she kept on the table beside the door, then darted to the supply closet, where she pulled out a couple of towels. She handed one to Rafe, then dried her face and hair so that water didn’t drip down her back. Still, she was shivering, and if there was one thing Mariah hated, it was being cold. She longed to strip out of her soaking wet clothes, but realized she’d left her only change of wardrobe back in the chopper.
    She wrapped the towel around her shoulders and tried to keep her teeth from chattering by whistling. Under the dim golden glow, she scanned the room, frowning at the layer of mountain dust clinging to every surface, and especially at the empty wood box beside the fireplace.
    The