Free The Man of her Dreams: A Paranormal Romance by Nathan Stratton

first step.
     
    She was sitting at a corner café and looking at the menu when a shadow fell across her table. She ignored it, turning a page in the menu, but then the shadow moved deliberately into her line of vision. She looked up to see a tall man standing before her. The sun was behind him, so all she could see was a powerful outline of a body, broad shoulders and something that might have been a shadow of a smile.
     
    The man pulled out the chair on the opposite side of her table. Before she could utter a word of protest, he had sat down in the chair in front of her. She dropped her menu, looked at his face…
     
    She gasped. Her eyes widened. She stared at him as her heart began to pound. She put her hand against her chest as though she had to keep her racing heart under control. This wasn’t possible, this couldn’t be  possible, it wasn’t happening…
     
    “Am I dreaming?” she whispered.
     
    Across the table, Philip laughed. She watched as he threw his head back and laughed hard, as though she had just said the funniest thing in the world. He finally sobered up enough to look at her with an expression of loving indulgence.
     
    “What a beautiful way to greet me after all this time,” he said to her, and bestowed that smile she loved so much.
     
    “But…you…you’re not here. You can’t be here!”
     
    Philip leaned across the table and took her hand. She stared at the fine cut of his suit. His hair was slightly tousled, and his face had a little bit of stubble, just enough to make him look even manlier than he already was. He looked as though he had stepped right from the pages of a men’s fashion magazine. She had never seen someone so breathtakingly handsome in all of her life.
     
    “The Devil made one big mistake,” he said, still smiling into her eyes. “When we made our agreement, he told me that I could go back to the one I loved when I had completed my part of the bargain. Remember?”
     
    Alexis didn’t flinch. She stared at him hard, looking for answers.
     
    “…What are you saying?” she demanded.
     
    “The woman I love is you, Alexis.” He took her hand. “It’s that simple. In all my centuries of torment, I never dreamt I’d meet a woman like you. When you came to me, it was a miracle… I’d given up on ever loving anyone again. But when I saw you, something changed. Somehow, after all that time, I felt ready to fall in love again. And I did, Alexis,” he said, gripping her hand tightly. “I fell in love with you. And so now I’m in the land of the living again, with the woman I love – with you.”
     
    Her world began to spin. She was vaguely aware of Philip moving his chair over next to hers. He took her into his arms. She could hear him ask the waiter for a glass of cold water, but the rest of the world seemed to be too distant for her to comprehend.
     
    He’s in love with me? And he’s here?
     
    The water arrived, and Alexis drank most of the water down in a long swallow. Then she looked at Philip. There were so many questions, so many things he had to know, but there was only one question that came to her mind. It was the only one that mattered right now.
     
    “Are you here to stay?” she asked.
     
    He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. The touch of his lips was warm and soft. It brought back such a rush of memories that for a moment, Alexis had to remind herself that she was in her world – it wasn’t a dream.
     
    “I am here to stay,” Philip said. “…If you will have me.”
     
    Suddenly Alexis laughed. She threw her arms around his neck so hard that she almost knocked him from the chair. Everyone else in the café turned to watch, as she made a spectacle out of both of them.
     
    “Let me hear it,” she said, and he grinned.
     
    “I love you, Alexis,” he said simply. And at that moment, she was sure of it. The psychic had been right, after all. She knew that no matter what else happened in her life, she was absolutely