The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant (2 page)

Chapter Three: Stud Muffins

Jake turned away, grateful for the distraction when his cell rang. He flipped open the phone. “Yo,” he grunted by way of greeting.

“
Don’t sleep with her
.” Karma’s voice crackled with desperate intensity.

“Excuse me?” Jake glanced back to where Lucy stood, but she had disappeared.

“You can’t sleep with her. If Lucy gets off, then Mellman won’t go to her tonight. You can’t touch her.”

“Jesus, Karma, what do you think I am? I just met the girl five minutes ago. Do you think I don’t think about anything but how I can get into your medium’s pants?”

The devil of it was, he had thought about it. Since Lucy Cartwright had opened her front door looking like she had just rolled out of bed—all soft and warm and sweetly muddled—he’d thought of little else but finding a way to roll her back into bed. Preferably underneath him.

Nothing about Lucy Cartwright was what he had expected. Mediums were supposed to be seventy-year-old women draped in scarves, who spoke in round, dramatic tones and filled their homes with incense and crystal balls. A young, wholesome blonde in navy silk pajamas did not fit the bill. Neither did her floral,
Better Homes & Gardens
decorating taste or the slight, lingering scent of baked goods that wafted through her apartment.

Jake had been off balance—and horny as hell—since the moment she opened her door to him, but there was no reason for Karma to know that. As far as he knew, there weren’t any mind-readers working at Karmic Consultants.

“I don’t care what you’ve been thinking about,” Karma snapped. “I just did a reading that showed some serious sexual fireworks, and if that happens, Lucy won’t be any good to you.”

Jake didn’t bother to point out the inherent contradiction in what she had just said.

“Is she some kind of virgin oracle or something?”

“No, no, nothing like that. She just…” Karma trailed off and Jake checked his phone to make sure it hadn’t dropped the call—Karma was
never
at a loss for words.

“She’s what?”

When Karma spoke, each word was pulled out of her like taffy, slow and sticky. “The circumstances of Mellman’s death, his lack of resolution in his sexual affairs, are what led me to believe he would be going to Lucy. Men who die with unresolved sexual issues often pay her a visit.”

Jake nodded to himself. That made sense. If he died horny, Lucy would be his first stop in the afterlife. “But if I’m with her, he won’t show?”

“You can be with her, you just can’t be
with
her. In the Biblical sense.”

“So keep my hands to my fucking self. Thanks for that vote of confidence, Karma.”

“I don’t know why I called,” Karma said grouchily. “I knew you wouldn’t seduce her, so I didn’t even mention it when we spoke earlier, but then this reading seemed so certain.”

Jake gritted his teeth, inexplicably annoyed by the assumption that he wouldn’t have seduced Lucy, but he kept his voice carefully devoid of a telling hint of irritation. “Was there anything else?”

“No,” Karma said then proved it a lie by going on. “But, Jake? If anything happens to my medium, I’m taking it out of your ass. I may not have kicked your ass in years, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still make you wish you weren’t born.”

“Love you too, sis.”

He flipped the cell closed and looked up to find Lucy standing barefoot in front of him in a little sundress, looking freshly scrubbed and twice as edible as before.

“You’re Karma’s brother?” She blushed as she said it. Jake had known her about five minutes, but he had already noticed that she blushed a lot, so he didn’t read anything into her pink face.

He flashed a smile. “Did you think she had sprung out of the ether fully formed with no family of any kind?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard her last name. I thought her brother lived in Phoenix.”

“I moved.”

Lucy nodded. An awkward lull fell over the conversation. She fidgeted and blushed and squirmed and Jake enjoyed her rosy-cheeked discomfort too much to alleviate it. Her neat little figure, which had looked damn good in men’s pjs, looked even better sheathed in the snug cotton sundress, especially with her pale, bare legs on full display. Jake was perfectly willing to sit back and enjoy the view of warm, soft femininity. Lucy, however, was quite literally tying herself into knots, one leg wrapping around the other, her hands twisting together and, through it all, her face flushing rosy and warm.

Finally, she blurted, “Can I get you an orange soda?”

Jake blinked. “Orange soda?” Did he look like the orange soda type?

Lucy blushed again and shuffled toward the kitchen. “I know I’m supposed to offer you coffee or something, but I don’t drink coffee. Or tea. Or anything hot really. And I don’t have beer, even though you probably shouldn’t be drinking on the job. If this counts as on the job. Waiting for the ghost to show so you can go on the job. I don’t even know what you’re going to do to him. What are you going to do to him? I ran out of milk. So no milk. Just orange soda. Or water. Do you like water?”

Lucy turned away from him to open the fridge, muttering something that sounded distinctly like, “Shut
up
, Lucy.”

Jake grinned in spite of himself. She was adorable. A little kooky, perhaps, but utterly charming. He wiped the smile off his face—he didn’t want her to think he was laughing at her—before she turned back around holding a liter bottle filled with neon-orange liquid.

“I love water,” he said. Anything to keep that fluorescent chemical concoction out of his body.

“Water it is.” Lucy turned to pull a glass out of a cupboard and Jake watched her putter around the kitchen, completely in her element.

“So what are you going to do with him, supposing he shows?” she asked. “Are you going to ask him who did it? Because I have to warn you, most of the ghosts I’ve met aren’t terribly concerned with the details of their death. Although it might be different for murder victims. The ones who die naturally tend to be pretty obsessed with the unfulfilled things in their life rather than the reason they died. That’s the real injustice—all the things they didn’t get to do.”

She extended the glass of ice water toward him and he took it, letting their fingers brush just to see her reaction. A little crackle of energy passed between them—not quite static electricity, but definitely electric. Lucy scurried back a few steps until the width of the kitchen separated them. She quickly began rifling through cupboards, pulling out mixing bowls and ingredients with a subconscious grace that spoke of serious repetition.

“So, you really talk to ghosts, huh?” he asked casually, leaning back against the counter to watch her hands fly through the familiar motions. “I still can’t quite wrap my head around it. I guess you know the meaning of life, then.”

Lucy shrugged without pausing in her mixing and measuring. “Not in the cosmic sense, no. I’m just about helping people accept their lives for what they are, release the baggage they are afraid to leave behind and move on. Sort of post-life therapy.”

“So, you’re a ghost shrink.”

Lucy grinned impishly. “Yeah. They talk to me and their presence in our slice of reality
shrinks
.” She giggled a little at the pun and Jake bit back a smile. She was too cute—especially with the little dab of flour clinging to the tip of her nose.

He nodded toward the mixing bowl in her hands. “What are you making?”

Lucy looked down at her hands as if surprised to find them baking without her permission. “Rum Cake Muffins?”

“Are you asking me?”

Jake thought she made a face, but she was turned half away from him and it was hard to tell.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said as she preheated the oven.

“About what I’m going to do to Mellman?”

She glanced at him over her shoulder, her eyes even bluer in contrast to the flour on her nose. “Is that his name? Mellman?”

“Eliot Mellman. Thirty-seven-year-old accountant and murder victim.”

Lucy sighed. “I get a lot of accountants.”

Jake thought about what Karma had said about the love-hungry ones coming to Lucy for satisfaction. “Yeah, I imagine you would see quite a few repressed number crunchers,” he said, unable to keep the suggestive undertones out of his voice.

Lucy froze. “Oh God, she told you.”

“About the sex thing? Yeah. Is that a problem?”

Lucy just groaned.

Jake studied her, puzzled. Lucy’s cheeks were getting redder by the second and she stood staring down at the mixture in her hands, refusing to meet his eyes. She was obviously embarrassed, but he couldn’t figure why. It was a compliment of sorts that all of the horny ghosts wanted her. He certainly couldn’t blame them. Although it probably got old, night after night, ghost after ghost. There was no end to the horny men out there. There must be even more horny dead guys.

A sudden thought had Jake straightening away from the counter. “You just talk to them, right? You don’t actually, you know,
do
anything with them, do you?”

“Mr. Cox!” Lucy exclaimed, scandalized. “They don’t have bodies! And they’re
clients
! It wouldn’t be ethical.”

“So, that’s a no.”

“Of course it’s a no.” Lucy glared at him and slapped a silicon muffin tray onto the counter.

Jake began prowling around the kitchen. In part to hide his smile at her adorable indignation. And in part to hide his body’s reaction to her sexy, flour-coated domesticity. “So he shows, you talk to him, then what?”

“He sort of…transcends.” Lucy waved floury hands vaguely in front of her face.

“And what? Disappears?”

“Yep.” Lucy paused in the act of filling the muffin tray, staring off into the distance. “The actual transcendence is kind of pretty. Sparkly.”

“I need to talk to him before you transcend him.”

“
I
don’t transcend him,” she corrected. “He allows himself to transcend by releasing worldly cares.”

“Yeah, whatever. I need to talk to him first.” Jake frowned. “Will I be able to talk to him? Will I even be able to see him?”

Lucy shrugged, apparently unconcerned by this potential hitch in his master plan. “Probably. A ghost’s presence is magnified by linking to a medium. If you aren’t naturally sensitive to supernatural energies, he may look like nothing more than a wisp of white smoke to you. Though if Karma is anything to go on, the paranormal runs in your family, so you may be able to see ghosts even more clearly than I do.”

“So I’ll be able to interrogate him directly.”

“You can’t upset him.” Lucy shot him a stern look that was somewhat less effective due to the flour that had spread from her nose to both cheeks and her chin. “When they’re upset, sometimes it takes
days
for them to transcend. I do not want to babysit a ghost for a week just because you can’t be tactful.”

“Hey. I’m the picture of tact.” Jake grinned his most charming, bullshit-innocent grin.

Lucy sniffed to show him just what she thought of that. “There will be no upsetting my ghost.”

“Oh, so he’s your ghost now, is he?”

“He’s more my ghost than yours. No matter what he’s a victim of. He’s my responsibility until he transcends and I will not have you bullying him.”

“I won’t bully him,” Jake lied absently, barely even aware of what he was saying. How was it that Lucy looked even sexier with her face covered with flour? She was a quirky, muffin-cooking medium, and yet he was in real danger of breaking his promise to Karma and irreparably fucking up the job. Literally.

He comforted himself with the knowledge that Karma hadn’t said anything about what he was and wasn’t allowed to do to her medium
after
Eliot Mellman made his appearance.

“So he shows, I talk to him—
without
upsetting him—and then you get him to transcend.”
And then I seduce you
. Jake grinned in anticipation. “Done deal.”

Chapter Four: If You Can’t Stand the Heat

Lucy took one look at that devastating grin and knew she was in trouble. Not the James Bond dodging bullets, running for your life kind of trouble, but trouble of the Moneypenny variety—unrequited lust with a man who knew exactly how mouthwatering he was and was going to tease you with his gorgeous body and wicked, flashing eyes until you melted into a puddle of hormones. Moneypenny should have gotten hazard pay.

Lucy looked down at the loaded muffin tray—baking was supposed to
relax
her, dammit—and mentally tried to navigate a path to the oven that did not put her in the line of fire, so to speak. He seemed to be everywhere. Long legs, massive shoulders, fantastic ass—every time she turned around, she saw something else to be tempted by.

And, oh boy, was she tempted.

Even if he was her boss’s brother. And so far out of her league, she had no business even fantasizing about him.

Lucy knew what she was, and more importantly, she knew what she wasn’t.

Lucy Cartwright was no sex goddess. When men described her, they used words like
cute
and
sweet
. She was
adorable
and
domestic
. And she had long since learned that the bad boys she lusted after took one look at her good-girl dimples and ran for the hills.

When she tried to be sexy, she looked and felt ridiculous, so she giggled. Sexy women did not giggle. They had throaty, sexy voices and throaty, sexy laughs. They probably had sexily scarred vocal chords from all the post-coital cigarettes they were smoking. Lucy was not a smoker—which seemed to mean both no lung cancer and no sex.

Some women were Aphrodite and some women were Martha Stewart. Unfortunately, Martha Stewart never got laid. Please God,
why
wasn’t Jake Cox a gigolo?

Lucy slipped past the eye-candy in her kitchen, set the timer and shoved the muffin tray into the oven. Then she heard him breathing.
He’s allowed to breathe, dammit
, she told her hormones, but they weren’t listening. They were already summoning up fantasies involving breathing. And panting. And gasping.

So Lucy gasped, and swore, as her hand brushed the hot oven rack. She snatched her hand out of the oven, mentally cursing her stupidity, and slammed the door closed.

“Did you burn yourself?” Jake demanded, stepping forward and immediately taking control.

He caught her wrist and held it up for inspection. Seeing the vivid red welt rising on the back her hand, he tugged her over to the sink and turned on the faucet with a single-minded economy of movement that was somehow indescribably hot.

Dear God, I’m doomed. Even his first aid is sexy.

He temperature-tested the tap with his own hand before thrusting her burn beneath the cool, running water. “Keep it there,” he ordered, already on his way to the freezer. He was back a moment later, a clean dishtowel wrapped around a bundle of ice. “Here, let me see.”

He gently took her wrist and drew her hand out of the water, cautiously inspecting the burn. His attention was so focused, so intent, as he brushed the soft skin around the burn with his fingertips, careful not to touch the wound itself. He bent and blew cool air on her hand before gently pressing the ice pack over it, his concentration complete. Lucy couldn’t help but wonder if he would bring that focus and intensity to everything he did. A delicious shiver ran down her spine.

“I know it’s cold,” he said, and Lucy was relieved he didn’t suspect the real reason for her shivering—she was embarrassed enough already. “You need to keep it on there for twenty minutes or so.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

Jake shook his head abruptly, rejecting her gratitude. “My fault. I shouldn’t have been distracting you while you were cooking.”

“You weren’t distracting me,” Lucy lied, knowing she was blushing. Again.

“No?” He arched his eyebrows skeptically then reached up to brush the back of one finger against her cheek. “You have flour all over your face.”

Lucy winced internally. Great. Now, not only was she as red as a turnip, she had the distinction of being a blotchy, flour-coated turnip with a propensity for burning herself. Oh yeah, he wasn’t going to be able to keep his hands off her now.

She waited for him to laugh at her. She waited for him to turn away, writing her off as ridiculous. She waited…until he tipped her chin up, forcing her to meet his eyes. Eyes that didn’t look mocking or superior, but rather curiously intent.

Oh my.

He brushed at the clinging flour on her cheeks, his calloused hands tentatively caressing. Lucy gazed up at him, trying to remember how to breathe, or think, or do anything other than stare at him with her heart in her throat and her stomach down around her toes. They were standing near the oven, but Lucy had a feeling the burning sensation rippling along her skin had more to do with the mountain of solid muscle in front of her than the oven behind. He smiled gently, his hands still cradling her face. “Even without the flour, you look pretty damn edible,” he murmured, his voice low and intimate.

The world slowed and tightened until they were the only two people in it, and time was frozen in that thick moment when she
knew
he was about to kiss her. She stood paralyzed, hopeful, but not allowing herself to hope.

He bent toward her slowly, his gorgeous black eyes shuttered by thick black lashes. Lucy’s eyes fell closed and she held herself perfectly still, desperate, waiting. When his lips finally touched hers, it was like putting a spark to a fast-burning fuse. A fuse attached to a stick of dynamite.

Lucy dove recklessly into the kiss, arching against him shamelessly. The first tentative brush of his mouth instantly became an urgent, open-mouthed exchange. She wound her arms around his shoulders and he gripped her butt in both hands, lifting her to get a better angle on her mouth, a better angle of her body pressed against his.

As soon as her feet left the floor, Lucy looped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles at the small of his back. Jake took two steps across the kitchen and pinned her against the refrigerator, the cool, smooth surface teasing her exposed shoulder blades where the spaghetti straps of her sundress left them bare. Lucy gave a little groan of pure, unadulterated lust, her hormones throwing an orgiastic party when Jake immediately echoed it.
Now,
this
is how a gigolo behaves.

Jake grabbed the knees squeezing his waist with both hands and shifted her slightly for better access. The combination of his fingers teasing the sensitive skin at the backs of her knees and the sudden, grinding friction of his jeans where she wanted it the most was nearly enough to send her off right there. Lucy let her head fall back against the refrigerator, her eyes closing in anticipation of bliss as she sent a little prayer of thanks to the gods of nookie.

Jake immediately took advantage of the exposed line of her throat, his hands sliding slowly up her thighs as his mouth slid deliciously down her neck. Lucy dug her fingers into his muscular shoulders as his hands found their way beneath the skirt of her sundress. Deft fingers teased her through the soaked fabric of her panties and Lucy heard bells. She’d always thought that hearing bells was a metaphor, but apparently she just hadn’t met Jake Cox, because the ringing in her head was very real. And loud as hell.

He stilled, his mouth pressed against the pulse point at her throat and his hands teasing the gates of heaven. His muscles clenched and he groaned, sounding pained rather than pleased. “Lucy.”

“Hmmm?” Lucy tried to shimmy her hips to get him back into action, but he wasn’t moving, and since he was the only thing holding her up, neither was she.

“Shit, Lucy,” he groaned, bracketing her hips with his hands to keep her still as his forehead dropped to her shoulder. “We need to stop this.”

“Mm-hmm,” Lucy moaned agreeably, grabbing his head and pulling his mouth back to hers for another kiss. She sent her tongue exploring, every ounce of willpower she possessed focused on making Jake forget whatever had made him stop. When he broke away, they were both breathing hard, the sound of their panting pierced by the shrill ringing of Lucy’s imaginary bells.

Then she smelled the smoke. She knew that Jake was hot, but surely even he couldn’t set kitchens on fire with just his presence.

“My muffins!”

With a dismount worthy of an Olympic gymnast, Lucy launched herself across the room, pausing only to grab an oven mitt before throwing open the oven door. “Crapadelic. They’re burnt.”

Jake was still standing with his arms braced against the refrigerator door. Lucy turned off the timer, whose persistent ringing had derailed them, and dropped the slightly crisp muffins onto the cooling rack. She ducked under his arm and slid between the mountain of warm, coiled muscle and the cool refrigerator door.

Lucy placed her hands on his chest and slid them slowly downward. “Where were we?”

Jake caught her hands before she could get to anything good, pulling them off his abs and holding her in front of him so the only point of contact was his hands manacling her wrists. “No, Luce.”

His words landed like a slap. Lucy flinched. “No?”

Jake groaned, closing his eyes. “I’m glad the buzzer went off,” he ground out. “God knows I needed something to stop me. Karma… I shouldn’t have… We shouldn’t have...” He shook his head abruptly, as if trying to clear it. Then suddenly he released her, quickly moving to the opposite side of the kitchen. “I’m sorry,” he bit out sharply. “It won’t happen again.”

“It won’t?” Lucy knew the pathetic, desperate whining tone had crept back into her voice, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted it to happen again. She
needed
it to happen again. He couldn’t just get her all hot and bothered and then walk away without fulfilling even one little fantasy. Could he?

Apparently he could. He turned and headed toward the living room, pausing in the doorway, but not even turning to face her as he said, “I think it’s best if we aren’t in the same room. Just come find me when Mellman shows up.”

“Jake,
come on
,” she called, but he was already gone. “Crap.”

Lucy stood in the middle of her kitchen, glaring at a pan of overcooked muffins, the refrigerator she would never be able to open without having sexual frustration flashbacks, and the timer that had ruined her afternoon. A few minutes later, her agitation calmed enough that she was able to think again.

Her first coherent thought was that she had just tried to mount her boss’s brother in the middle of her kitchen while he was sort of on the job. Her sexual frustration had officially reached pathetic levels. With her luck, he’d probably report back to Karma about the attack of the nympho medium.

Lucy moaned. “Just kill me now.”