The Ghost Exterminator (6 page)

“Can’t you just put them in the portal directly from me?”

“I could, yeah, but the problem with that approach is that I’ve never tried to open up a portal inside a person before. People aren’t houses. Even stick-up-their-ass businessmen have souls, believe it or not. Assuming I could even get a portal open inside you, which is a pretty big assumption, there would be a very real risk that along with sucking the ghosts out of your body, your soul would get sucked through the portal too. So that would be bad.”

“I would say so.”

“Although, I haven’t actually tried it before, so for all I know it won’t suck your soul out of your body after all. You wanna try it?”

Wyatt couldn’t help it. He started to laugh.

Chapter Eight: See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me

When her client dropped to the floor, laughing uncontrollably, two questions crossed Jo’s mind. First, was he actively being taken over by ghosts at this very moment? And second, could he possibly have any idea how attractive he was when he wasn’t frowning down on the world?

She was fairly certain the answer to both questions was no, but she took a second to check him out with her second sight and a minute or two to enjoy the smile. The ghosts looked like two little green fireflies behind the left side of his collarbone, rather than the full-body glow that mediums had when they were hosting, so she was pretty sure the laughter—and the edge of hysteria—were all Wyatt.

Jo plopped down cross-legged onto the floor in front of him and waited patiently for him to stop rocking and wheezing. God, he was gorgeous when he smiled. It was as if the constant mask of disapproval and condemnation evaporated into an easy, open grin that didn’t just change his face, it changed
him
. If not for the glimmer of panic in his too-blue eyes, she could have let him keep on laughing forever, smiling back like a dimwit and loving every second of it.

“Wyatt?”

He subsided into periodic high-pitched giggling accompanied by shudders that racked his shoulders as he struggled to suppress his hysteria.

“Why don’t I try just giving them a little tug and see if they pop right out?” she suggested helpfully. “Maybe they won’t resist and you won’t have to come with me to the house after all. It’s probably better that way anyway.” That way she couldn’t accidentally throw any other little ghosts into him if he distracted her again, which she suspected was what happened in the first place.

Wyatt sighed heavily and flopped onto his back, letting his arms fall spread-eagle to the sides. “Do your worst, ghost exterminator.”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Jo muttered, crawling on her hands and knees to lean over Wyatt. He looked up at her, his eyes lazily half-lidded and a teasing shadow of a smile still curving his mouth. He looked utterly relaxed and completely nonjudgmental, lying there, willing to accept whatever she wanted to do to him.

Her hormones provided several deliciously wicked, and physiologically challenging, suggestions as to what she could do with him at her mercy, but Jo simply placed her palm flat against his shoulder where the ghosts were hiding. He was warm—and here she’d thought all businessmen were as cold-blooded as snakes—and surprisingly muscular beneath his Armani, for someone who spent his days sitting in a chair.

A lock of her hair slid out from behind her ear as she bent over him and he reached up to slowly run the inky black strands through his fingers, the act far more distracting than it should have been.

Did he have to look so damned post-coital? She already felt like one giant exposed nerve when she was in his presence and now he had to add this lazy sex appeal to the mix of frustration, anger, and prejudice she was already defending against.

She closed her eyes against the hypnotic sight of him toying with her hair, ignoring the occasional gentle pull against her scalp indicating he hadn’t stopped playing with the lock just because she stopped watching him. Her two-year-old niece had taught herself how to play peek-a-boo by herself by holding her hands in front of her own eyes and then removing them and giggling hysterically. Jo had thought this particularly ridiculous until her sister had explained that, in Maya’s world, what she couldn’t see simply wasn’t there, so taking her hands away from her face was a bright new surprise every time. Jo suddenly found herself wishing she had that same lack of awareness of what went on beyond her closed eyes.

Only Wyatt Haines could make her insanely turned on just by smiling and touching her hair and simultaneously have her wishing she were two again.

Instead of opening her eyes and seeing him lying on the floor like an open invitation, she opened her second sight, focusing on the ghosts rather than the body—and what a body—they were hiding out in.

The pair of them were compacted down to their smallest size, two little balls of green energy about the size of marbles, rolling around behind Wyatt’s clavicle.

Leaving her physical hand pressed against his shoulder, Jo reached in and wrapped her ethereal fingers around the two spheres. With her other hand braced on the floor on the opposite side of Wyatt’s head, she tugged ever so gently. Then less gently. The ghosts didn’t so much as budge, so she closed her metaphysical fist around them and yanked.

“Ow!”

Jo would have had more sympathy for Wyatt’s exclamation of pain if his hand hadn’t simultaneously clamped down on her hair and yanked hard enough to have her yelping herself. She collapsed against him, sprawling across his chest.

“Let. Go.”

“I will when you do,” Wyatt ground out from between clenched teeth, but even as he said it, his fingers relaxed.

“I already did,” she said, quickly tucking her hair back behind her ears and out of his reach.

“Then why does it still hurt?” he growled.

Jo propped herself up on his chest. “It still hurts?” She peered at him through her second sight and saw the two ghosts were now zipping around his body like agitated bumblebees. “What does it feel like?”

“Like my body is trying to turn itself inside out.”

“Huh.” Jo tipped her head to the side, considering that one. “Maybe they’re trapped in there. They might even be trying to get out. Here, open your mouth.”

“That’s your solution?” he barked. “Open my mouth?”

“Do you have to argue about everything? If it makes you feel better you can yell at me, just do it with your mouth open nice and wide. Go on.”

He glared, but obediently opened his mouth.

Jo leaned forward, shaking away the mild distraction caused by his minty-fresh breath, and sent a tendril of energy past his tonsils and down his throat. “Here, little ghosties…”

He made a choking noise that might have been his signature throat-clearing if not for the fact that his mouth was wide open. He started to close his jaw. Jo wrapped her hand around his chin and forced it down. “Open!”

She sent a piece of her energy snaking into him a second time, guiding it through the dense warmth of his life-force, so different from the ghosts she usually dealt with. She searched for that other quality of energy, the cool after-impression of life, rather than the pounding heartbeat of vitality that pulsed through his veins, drowning out every other sensation, washing over her in a drugging rush.

“This is so weird,” she murmured to herself, drawing back enough to get a sense of where she was again before diving back in. His hands were braced on either side of her waist, holding her steady on top of him. All at once, Jo was powerfully aware of the intimacy of their position. Her uptight businessman lay on his back on the floor of his office, with her draped on top of him like a cashmere throw, clinging and limp.

Jo felt heat rushing to her face—not to mention all of her erogenous zones—and cleared her throat. She was immediately struck by a horrifying thought. What if every time he cleared his throat, he was trying to get
his
brain out of the gutter?
Did Wyatt Haines actually have the hots for her?

“Jo?”

Oh God. She was gaping at him like an idiot. “Just, ah, just give me a couple more seconds,” she said hurriedly, slapping an I-am-peering-into-your-soul-with-my-super-ghost-vision expression onto her face, which hopefully did not resemble her I-am-thinking-of-stripping-you-naked-and-covering-your-body-with-chocolate-syrup-just-so-I-can-lick-it-off expression.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t seem to focus enough to actually peer into his soul. Her brain was unnecessarily cluttered with random trivia like
damn, he smells amazing,
and
his hands are so big and feel so good.

Jo shifted against him, in theory to get a better look down his throat, but really just to feel him better. She was right above him now, eye to eye. If she leaned down, just a little closer…

“Mr. Haines, your three o’clock call is—oh.” Moonbeam froze two steps into the office.

Jo rolled off of Wyatt and quickly scrambled to her feet. She’d almost kissed him.
Shit
. She’d definitely almost kissed him. Thank heaven for Moonbeam and Wyatt’s three o’clock.

Jo nervously ran her hands down her shirt and tried not to look like she had been seriously considering trying to remove Wyatt’s tonsils with her tongue fifteen seconds ago.

He groaned and spoke from the floor, “Please tell Brenner I’ll have to reschedule. I appear to be haunted.”

Jo forgot to be flustered. “Well, stop the presses, Wyatt Haines just admitted to believing in ghosts.”

“Hallelujah,” Moonbeam said over her shoulder as the office doors shut behind her.

Wyatt winced and got to his feet. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Oh no. You can’t take it back now. I have a witness.”

“Fine,” he conceded with ill grace. “I will admit to believing in ghosts until you can get whatever the hell is inside of me out again. So could you please hurry up so I can go back to being a faithless heathen?”

Jo felt herself smiling. He was actually sort of charming, completely by accident, but it was endearing nonetheless. “Anything you say, boss. I never could say no to a man in glasses.”

Groucho Marx had nothing on Wyatt Haines.

Chapter Nine: Vehicular Compensation

Wyatt insisted on driving them out to the South Elm Street Victorian—with a quick stop for nail polish remover. Jo couldn’t make herself protest his take-charge attitude when it meant she got to ride in the plush Bentley Continental GT.

Jo was a Harley girl herself, but even she could appreciate the hand-selected leather-hide upholstery and the sexy purr of the six-hundred-horsepower engine—even if it was blatant compensation. As compensation went, it was a hot little way to blow two-hundred grand.

Jo stroked the baby-soft leather and watched Wyatt maneuver the Bentley through the late-afternoon traffic. He was such a contradiction—the materialistic, soulless corporate machine who made his millions by providing people with peaceful getaways in unique, artistic inns with a reputation for spiritual refreshment.

“Has anyone ever told you that you don’t seem like the kind of man who knows how to take a vacation, let alone create the ideal vacation for millions of people every year?” she asked.

Wyatt didn’t even glance in her direction. “Yes.”

“That doesn’t seem odd to you?”

“It’s a job. Are you defined by your job?” Then he did glance at her, taking in the black hair, the rock T-shirt, and her general nod toward badass attitude. “Never mind. Forget I asked that.”

Jo’s irritation spiked. “Hey, I’m more than just a ghost exterminator, thank you very much.”

“Of course you are. You’re an anti-establishment stereotype.”

He did not just go there.
“Did you just call me a stereotype, Mr. Corporate Clone?”

“Are you telling me you’re not trying desperately to fit in by doing everything you can not to fit in?”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Sure it does.” Wyatt took the turn onto South Elm then draped his wrist over the steering wheel as he slowed on the quiet street. “You’re trying to prove that you’re different enough to belong with the people who don’t belong.”

It wasn’t true.
Of course
, it wasn’t true. But it felt true. And terrifying. Who would she be if she wasn’t badass Ghost Girl? “I can’t just be different? I have to be trying to prove something or be something I’m not?”

“You could just be different,” Wyatt conceded readily then ruined it by continuing, “But you’re not.”

“You don’t know me.”

He shrugged. “Not any better than you know me, but you’re determined to box me in as a corporate clone.”

Jo looked out the window to avoid meeting his eyes. As much as she hated to admit it, he did have a point. At least about that. He was completely wrong about everything else, of course, but on this? She was being just as prejudiced as he was. The apology was going to stick in her throat, but she would force it out. “You’re right. It was wrong of me to assume that you are a shallow corporate prick. I’m sor—”

“No, you were right,” he interrupted. “I
am
a shallow corporate prick.” He slid the Bentley into an empty space along the curb in front of the Victorian. “You were completely right about me, so maybe I’m not completely wrong about you.” He cut the engine and climbed out of the car before she could collect her jaw off the floor.

Jo quickly scrambled after him, grabbing her goodie bag out of the backseat and trotting after him up the walk. “Wyatt, wait up.” He didn’t even pause so she redoubled her speed until she was jogging. “You can’t just walk into the house. Give me a minute to assess.”

He stopped at the steps leading up to the front porch to wait for her. “It’s daylight,” he said as she joined him. “Isn’t it safe?”

“Did all of your Episodes happen at night? I didn’t think so. Ghosts aren’t entirely nocturnal. There’s usually an increase in activity at night, but that doesn’t mean you’re safe just because the sun is out. Ghosts, remember. Not vampires.” She saw his face tightening and raised a hand to stop him before he could speak. “No, I don’t know any vampires. Just let me take a look before you end up with enough ghosts to play mixed doubles inside you.”

Wyatt frowned down at her—only a 1.7 on the Pissed-Off-CEO Richter scale.

“What?” she asked irritably. She couldn’t imagine what she had said this time to tick him off.

“Interesting choice of metaphor. You just don’t strike me as the tennis type.”

“I can’t like tennis and be a ghost exterminator?” she snapped.

He shrugged. “You can like whatever you want. You just don’t seem the type.”

Jo rolled her eyes and shoved past him onto the porch. “Everything is types with you.”

“With you, too.” He followed close on her heels, so close she could feel him breathing down her neck. Literally. The man had no sense of personal boundaries. “With everyone, really. I’m just more up front about it.”

“God forbid you should be mistaken for someone with a modicum of tact.” She turned and knocked him back a couple steps with a well-placed shove to his sternum. “Give me some room.”

“See, there you go again. Modicum. How many rebels use language like modicum?”

“Oh, so because I’m not normal, I must be illiterate too?”

He shook his head. “You’re missing the point here, Jo. I’m not arguing that you can’t like tennis or literature because you’re not normal, as you put it. I’m saying that you like tennis and literature because you’re more normal than you want to admit. I bet you grew up in the suburbs.”

She stiffened defensively, hating it when he guessed right. “What does where I grew up have to do with anything? You think most Goth kids come from the mean streets?”

He smiled smugly. “And see, there, what you just said. Goth kids. If you were one of them, then you wouldn’t have referred to them like that. It’s patronizing.”

Jo turned around, abandoning any pretense of examining the front door, and folded her arms under her breasts. Wyatt—to his credit—only glanced down once at the attention-grabbing performance the Girls were putting on beneath her snug T. “You know, Wyatt, no matter how hard you argue, you aren’t going to be able to turn me into a suburban housewife. At some point, you’re just going to have to admit to yourself that you’re turned on by a woman who prefers leather over sweater sets and would rather go see Limp Bizkit than Barry Manilow.”

“Turned on?” he asked in a remarkable impression of incredulity. “That’s what you think this is?”

For one horrible moment, Jo wondered if she had read him wrong. What if he wasn’t grouchy and uncomfortable around her because he wanted her against his will? What if he really, genuinely didn’t like her?

But then she looked into his eyes and saw the panicked heat there he was trying desperately to hide.
Oh, you are
mine
, buddy. All mine.

Not that she wanted him, of course. Neurotic businessman was not her type. But he was pretty damn edible and just because she had never been one for casual flings in the past didn’t mean she couldn’t start now. If she was going to begin her life as a tramp, there were worse places to start than on top of Wyatt Haines.

“Did you hear that?” He turned to look sharply past her toward the house then spun around as if reacting to a noise behind him. The house remained completely quiet as he twisted around himself.

“Hear what?” she asked, disinterested.
God, he’s such a coward
. He couldn’t even talk to her about the fact that he clearly wanted her. He had to change the subject and he couldn’t even come up with anything more plausible than hearing imaginary noises.

He whipped around again, nearly tripping himself. “There! That sound! Do you hear it?”

“Nope. What’s it sound like?”

“There it is again! What
is
that?”

“That’s what I just asked you,” Jo remarked dryly.

“It sounds like— What the hell?” Wyatt took two stumbling steps forward, right into Jo.

She caught herself, her hands closing over his biceps. “Wyatt, you really don’t have to pretend—”

His body jerked forward again. Jo found herself mashed between his firm torso and the door, but only for a moment. The door swung open behind her and together they fell into the foyer.

“Oomph!”

Wyatt put his hand behind her head to keep it from cracking on the hardwood floor, but he wasn’t able to stop himself from landing on top of her. The man weighed a ton and a half.

“Sorry,” he muttered, rolling off her and sitting up.

“We always seem to end up on the floor,” Jo complained, groaning a little as she propped herself up on her elbows.

Wyatt didn’t respond. He was too busy twitching and trying to look in every direction at once.

“Wyatt? You look like you’ve seen a ghost, buddy,” Jo quipped.

No response.

A prolonged moaning wail echoed through the house, starting in the rafters above them and spiraling down like a tornado.

Jo sat up all the way. “Okay. That I heard.” And it made no sense whatsoever. When she had left the night before, the ghosts had all been exterminated. All except the two in Wyatt, that is.

She opened her second sight and looked at him to see if his two residents had skipped town and were now hard at work rattling the rafters, but the green marbles were lodged in his abdomen, vibrating with frenzied energy and battering themselves against the inside of his abs as if trying to break out of the solid flesh. She looked up and unfocused her physical eyes, letting her mind’s eye take a wider view.

“Oh
shit
.”

There were ghosts in the house, all right. Dozens of them, by the look of it. Twining around the banisters, hanging from the chandeliers, and snaking through the floorboards. They were everywhere and they were all in motion. Toward the kitchen.

“Oh shit? What do you mean ‘oh shit’? What’s wrong?”

Jo looked at Wyatt and tried to think of something besides “I fucked up” to explain the situation. What would Karma say? Jo climbed to her feet and offered Wyatt a hand up, accompanied by the frenzied clanging of the pipes as the ghosts around them made their presence known.

“Well, Mr. Haines, it appears your house is still haunted.
Mazel tov
.”