The Ghost In The Machine

by Jane Senese
Paranormal Romance, 354 pages
Cover art by Erin Roberts
Blurb:
For two years, widowed photographer Naddy Lewison has lived with her husband's ghost. Now she finds herself drawn to a living man. Marshal Bill Crawford is handsome and cynical, yet beneath his bluff exterior Naddy sees a kind heart, and a loneliness to match her own.

But her jealous husband has no intention of letting her go…

Excerpt:
Nadia Lewison awoke to the warmth of the morning sun on her face. She moaned softly and pressed her face against her pillow. Not yet. When she felt a pair of fingers playfully walk across her bare shoulder, she gave a groan of annoyance.

"Time to get up," a voice purred against her hair.

"Don't want to." Groggily, she reached around behind her and took his hand. "Stay here," she begged, as she pulled his arm snug about her waist.

His warm breath teased at the nape of her neck. "But I have to go."

She felt him slowly disengage his hand from hers. She rolled over to stop him before he could rise. "Walter..." she mumbled, hearing the childish whine in her voice and hating herself for it. After ten years of gentle rebukes, her only excuse was that she would never be a morning person.

He was. He was made for the mornings. The same sunbeams that burned her eyes and set the dust motes dancing seemed to electrify him. The light turned his dark blond hair golden; his skin took on a youthful flush, the fine lines under his blue eyes seemed to melt away. He was handsome in all lights, her Walter, but never so radiant as at dawn.

She was seized by a need to tell him so, an irrational fear that this would be her last chance. But sleep had drugged her tongue, and she was only able to manage a slurred string of sounds she hoped he could decipher as "You're beautiful."

He grinned, wide enough to crinkle his eyes, and flash his crooked right incisor. For some reason she thought back to their early courtship, when he had been so reluctant to smile.
"Sleepyhead." He bent his head to kiss her brow.

She snuggled against him gratefully, closing her eyes against a rain of feather kisses as he tried to coax her out of sleep. Their old morning ritual, from half-forgotten newlywed days.

She felt his touch withdraw. "Don't go..."

"But, Naddy, it's time to wake up."