by Vivi Andrews
“So they come back,” he said. “How bad can it be? They’ve already run us out of bubble gum.”
“Do you seriously think they need bubble gum to cause mischief? Are you telling me you don’t have any permanent markers in this place? Maybe a bottle of superglue stashed somewhere? You don’t want to think about what these kids could do with a little superglue, whipped cream and condoms.”
“Condoms?” he repeated, his eyebrows flying up.
“For example.”
“You told them to stop playing pranks.”
“So they’re just going to listen to me? Just like that? Karma interrupted before I could get Angelica to agree to my Pixar bribe.” Jo turned and dropped her forehead against the window with a groan. Her breath puffed out against the cool glass and echoed back against her lips. There was a chill in the air tonight, but not enough for her breath to fog the glass.
She didn’t hear Wyatt move up behind her, so when his warm hands framed the back of her neck, she started, smacking her forehead against the glass. “Ow.”
Wyatt dug his fingers into the tense muscles of her neck. The man had some seriously talented fingers.
“You need to relax.”
Great. Now he was putting the moves on her. What had happened to the Hands-Off-Wyatt of last night? Although, really, would it be so terrible to go along with him? Sort of like granting a last request to a prisoner on death row. Give him a little send off. Jo winced at the thought, closing her eyes and leaning into his hands. But she couldn’t force herself to relax. There was too much at stake.
“Do you have any enemies, Wyatt? Anyone who might want to hurt you or your business?”
“It’s business,” he said. “It’s not personal and there are no vendettas. Just profit margins, success and failure.”
“Some of the inns you converted into Haines Hideaways…you bought them out when they were on the edge of bankruptcy, but they were family owned for generations before that, weren’t they?”
He dropped his hands and stepped back. “How did you know—”
Jo shrugged, still facing away from him. If she looked at him, she was going to start confessing sins and she had no idea which one was going to jump out of her mouth first. “I googled you while you were in the shower. My point is, it’s not just business to those families.”
“Which is why they were failing. You can’t run a business with your heart. You have to use your head, even when it means firing your Aunt Millie because she sucks at keeping the books.”
Jo had a feeling that wasn’t just an analogy. “Did you fire your Aunt Millie, Wyatt?”
“Actually, no,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion. “I fired my mother.”
Jo choked. “Your mother? You fired your mom?”
Behind her, he cleared his throat and Jo grinned a little at the familiarity of the sound. She was beginning to think he made it whenever he was uncomfortable or felt like he wasn’t in control.
Wyatt crossed to the wet bar and began rummaging through the bottles there, not mixing a drink, just occupying his hands. Probably categorizing the liquor by price. “Haines Hideaways started as just the one inn, my parents’ inn. When I was six, my mom inherited some money. My parents had always wanted to run a B&B so they bought this cute little place and poured every dime they had into it. Then they sold our house, moved us into the manager’s suite at the inn, took out a second mortgage and poured money they didn’t even have into it.
“By the time I got my MBA and took over, we were so far in debt it made more sense to file for bankruptcy and start from scratch than it did to keep it running. But my mother—after twenty straight years of sliding farther and farther into debt—insisted that we could make it profitable. Which, incidentally, would have been the first time it ever made a dime in all the time they owned it. I told her that I thought I could make it turn a profit, but we would have to do things my way. No more discounts for people just because they had a nice smile or seemed like they could use a break. No more complimentary everything from Swiss chocolates on the pillows to theatre tickets in town at the same price you would pay for a motel room at the Budget Inn. If we were going to run an exclusive, all-inclusive vacation getaway, then we were going to charge exclusive prices.
“My mom had a hard time sticking to the new rules, so I encouraged her to take a leave of absence until we were in the black again. We lost a few customers whom she thought of as loyal and I thought of as cheap, but we ran a profit the second year under my control and by the fifth we had expanded to a second location, both of which were running in the black.”
“And now you’re a bazillionaire.” Jo sighed. “Has your mom forgiven you yet?”
Wyatt cleared his throat, and then was silent for a long moment before he spoke again. “We don’t talk about business,” he said flatly. “They still own a considerable share of the company, but they spend most of their time traveling these days, just dropping by for the occasional ribbon-cutting.”
Jo turned, leaning back against the window as she watched him fidget with the bottles at the bar. “Does your mom ever visit her inn?”
“What?” He’d heard her, she was certain. He just didn’t want to answer.
Jo wasn’t willing to let it slide though. She was determined to find the human under Wyatt’s corporate shell. “Her inn, the first one, the one that was her dream. Does she ever go there?”
“No.” Wyatt shifted uncomfortably under her steady gaze then flashed her a charming smile. “But I hardly think she’d set a bunch of ghosts on me. I’m still her son.”
“Spoken like truly grateful offspring,” Jo grumbled. “What about other victims of hostile Hideaway takeovers?”
Wyatt lost the smile. “I bought unsuccessful inns, Jo. I was getting people out of untenable financial situations. I’m not going to apologize for it. They should be grateful to me.”
“It’s funny how seldom the heart listens to what it should feel.”
Her feelings for Wyatt were a perfect example of that.
Jo knew she should be running in the opposite direction, but there was just something about him that wouldn’t let her. He was an arrogant, prejudiced, emotionless prick, but when he frowned, her heart went all gooey to see him struggling to understand a world that didn’t fit into his neat little boxes. When he cleared his throat, she couldn’t help but grin at the way he tried to never let on that things weren’t in his control. And when he smiled…well, that was another problem altogether. Her stomach flipped over at that little boy grin and all her good intentions turned to mush.
But he also treated her like she was one step away from a straightjacket. Jo hated seeing herself through his eyes, the crazy ghost girl. There was no future for them, that much was clear. She couldn’t be with someone who liked her in spite of who she truly was. She deserved more than that.
Jo cleared her head and her throat, the corners of her mouth turning up a bit when she realized she was mimicking Wyatt. “So no violent former business partners? Death threats? Maybe a psycho ex-girlfriend with a collection of weird hand-bound books?”
“None of the above.”
During Jo’s ruminations on Wyatt’s unfortunate appeal, he had abandoned the bar. He now crossed to lean against the window beside her, his shoulder brushing hers. He leaned down to murmur conspiratorially, “Do you have a collection of weird hand-bound books, Jo?”
“Um, no.” Her brain felt like it was melting, along with her knees. How was she supposed to think when he was standing so close, focused so intently on her? “The, ah, the books are for witches. I’m…”
“A medium?” he reminded her, leaning closer still. His aftershave and leather smell teased her.
“Mm-hmm.” Her heart nearly jumped out of her chest when his mouth brushed the side of her neck. “Wyatt…what are you doing?”
His breath fanned the spot where her neck met her shoulder and she shivered. “Isn’t it obvious?”
His mouth touched down on the s
pot his breath had just warmed, barely brushing the skin, a soft, wet abrasion. Jo braced her hands on the windowsill, her nails digging into the paint. There was a reason why they shouldn’t be doing this. She knew there was a reason. He was…what was he?
“Thank you for defending me today,” he murmured against her skin as he turned so that his body faced her fully, leaning over her.
“Anytime,” Jo mumbled as he nuzzled against the side of her neck, sending delicious shivers coasting lightly across her skin.
“No one has ever done that for me before,” he continued in that hypnotically low voice. “Of course, usually no one has to. I’m not in the habit of throwing people into pools.”
Jo smiled as much as the spell of soft-edged want he was weaving around her would allow. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“You were my hero today.” His teeth scraped her neck and Jo’s back bowed, arching her toward him.
“That’s me,” she gasped out dizzily, her eyes closing against her will. “Defender of the haunted.”
The haunted.
Jo’s eyes flew open. She wrenched away from him, taking two staggering steps until she was completely out of his reach. They hadn’t even kissed, but her breath was coming in pants and she knew her eyes were just as passion-black as his as he faced her with confusion twisting his pretty-boy face.
“You’re trying to seduce me!” she accused.
A lazy grin immediately replaced the confusion. “How am I doing?” he asked, taking a step toward her.
Jo quickly took two steps back. “You can’t seduce me!”
“Why not? No one can see us.”
“You’re haunted! There are little children ghosts inside you!”
Wyatt stopped chasing her around the room and frowned. “You told me they couldn’t see anything when I’m in control. I certainly have no idea what the hell is going on when they’re in control.”
“That isn’t the point! They’re still there. I know they’re there. It would be like making out in a playground.”
Wyatt’s frown grew darker—which was the correct response. If he’d actually liked getting it on in front of little kids that would have been a total deal-breaker. Ewww.
“It would not be like a playground,” Wyatt insisted. Clearly his hormones were unwilling to give up the fight. “They would never know anything had happened.”
“I would know.”
“That didn’t bother you in your office,” he reminded her.
“That was before. I didn’t know them then. They were just blobs of light. I have no problem getting busy in front of blobs of light. But when Lucy and I talked to them, when I saw them, that changed everything. They’re kids, Wyatt.” She shuddered in revulsion. “And what if we, you know, and you did the guy thing and passed out afterward? As soon as you’re out, they come out to play and suddenly the body they’re in is all naked and sweaty, and I’m there and I’m naked and sweaty—”
Wyatt held up both hands to stop her. “Okay, I get it. Enough.”
Then something he’d said earlier replayed in her mind. “What did you mean ‘No one can see us’?”
“What? Nothing.”
But Jo knew it wasn’t nothing. She gazed at him steadily until he blurted, “Oh, come on, Jo. You know as well as I do that we can’t be seen to be having an affair.”
“Excuse me?”
“My professional image is important. Can you imagine what it would do to the Haines Hideaway stock price if it came out that I was running around with a woman who openly admits to seeing ghosts? I’d be a laughingstock.”
His words lanced through her. She knew she shouldn’t be hurt. She should have expected just this kind of bullshit from Wyatt Haines, CEO, but she still felt as if she’d been slapped. “I see.”
“Jo, come off it. It isn’t personal.”
“Isn’t it? I’m good enough to fuck but not good enough to be seen in public with, but it’s nothing personal.”
“Jo, I didn’t…”
“Forget it, Wyatt. Nothing was going to happen between us anyway, right? Why should it matter whether it’s because of little ghosties or your image?”
“Jo…”
“This is when it’s best to just stop talking, Wyatt.”
“Fine.” He held up his hands to call for a truce. “So now that we’ve ruled out TV, beer, sex, and talking, what do you want to do?”
Jo knew exactly what she wanted to do. She also knew it was a bad idea. She knew that Karma would have her ass if she ever found out. And she knew that she would never be able to get to sleep until she did.
“Well, hell. It’s almost Halloween. Let’s go check out a haunted house.”
Chapter Twenty-One: Haunt Me, Baby, One More Time
The Victorian looked exactly as it had when she first laid eyes on it two days ago. My God, was that only two days? The moonlight cast a faintly bluish tinge across everything it touched, but the house glowed distinctly green under the heavy moon. This time, the house wasn’t just breathing, it was practically panting. There were well over two hundred ghosts in there now.
“Time for some house cleaning,” Jo muttered to herself as Wyatt rounded the Bentley’s hood and came to stand beside her.
“So, what are we going to do?”
“We aren’t going to do anything. You are going to hang out here while I go in and check things out.”
“If you wanted to leave me behind, you shouldn’t have let me drive. I’m going in with you.”
“My Harley is still parked at your office,” Jo grumbled. “I didn’t have much of a choice but to let you drive when you wouldn’t let me have the keys to your damn car.”
“Yeah, I’m a heartless prick. But I believe we’ve covered that already. Shall we go in?”
“You’re a masochist, you know that? Don’t you remember what happened to you last time you went in there?”
“I fell on you. I can think of worse ways to end the day.” He waggled his eyebrows lecherously and she smacked him.
Jo tried to hang onto her earlier irritation. She reminded herself that no man who wasn’t willing to be seen in public with her could be attractive. No matter how engaging he might seem to be.
She planted her hands on her hips. “What about the time before that? You want to end up even more haunted than you are? Bodies aren’t meant to hold more than one spirit, Wyatt.”
“What happened to the ‘house will suck the ghosts right out of me’ theory?”
“You have the self-preservation instincts of a cliff-diving lemming, you know that?”
“Hey, I’ll be better this time. When the ghost exterminator says jump, I ask how high.”
“Just jump. I don’t think there will be time for questions if it gets hairy.” She studied him, looking for chinks in his armor, but the bastard was even more stubborn than she was. “Fine, you can come. Just don’t do anything stupid.” Stupid, like getting emotionally involved with a man who didn’t think she was good enough to be seen at the supermarket with, let alone take home to mother.
Wyatt saluted and took her arm, a true gentleman. Asshole. They strolled up the walk like a couple on a Sunday promenade instead of a pair of clueless ghost hunters on a Saturday night. The house creaked and rattled. Wind rustled through the eaves, even though, beyond the house, the night was perfectly still.
Jo knew it was dumb to come back to the scene of the crime when they still had no idea what the hell was causing all of the anomalies, but she hadn’t been able to stay away. Somewhere inside this house were the clues she needed to get the ghosts out of Wyatt and save him from possibly having his soul ripped out of his body by overzealous ghosts. Not to mention finding the source behind all of this and getting her mojo back, once and for all.
Wyatt, for all his control freak ways, had become remarkably easy-going about the whole ghost phenomenon, content to follow her along and do what she said. It was that, possibly more than any other factor, which had made her desperate to come here tonigh
t.
He trusted her to find a solution. The man who hadn’t believed in ghosts two days ago was putting all of his faith in her. She still wasn’t entirely convinced that he really believed in ghosts, but he believed that she would fix it. Wyatt wasn’t overtly worried. He had confidence in her. He may not have noticed he had confidence in the freaky ghost girl, but Jo noticed, and it scared the shit out of her. For the first time since she was in grade school, she was out of her depth with ghosts. Just when she needed her spooky ghost knowledge the most.
They stepped up onto the front porch and Wyatt stumbled, his grip on her arm tightening as he tried to find his balance.
“Wyatt?”
He had gone pale and inside him the glowing marbles that were Teddy and Angelica zipped around his body in a chaotic whirl.
“That’s it. I’m taking you back to the car.”
But when she grabbed his shoulders to turn him, Wyatt shook her off. “No, I’m good,” he protested, straightening. He shook his head as if trying to clear it and gave her a pathetic excuse for a smile. “I was just a little disoriented for a second. Let’s keep going.”
“That is such an obvious lie,” Jo snapped. “You are not fine and we are not moving one more step until you tell me what you felt.”
Wyatt eyed her, but apparently realized he wasn’t getting around her stubbornness this time. “I heard the voice again,” he admitted. “The whispery one.”
“Could you tell what it was saying?” Jo asked, urgency gripping her as she clutched his arm. “Or where it was coming from?”
Wyatt nodded toward the house. “The kitchen, maybe? But there were still no real words.”
Jo turned to face the front door head-on. “I am getting sick and tired of this house messing with us,” she growled. “I think it’s time to show this hunk of plywood what we’re made of.”
“What are we made of?”
“Well, what I’m made of at least. You sure you won’t wait here?”
“I’m sure. Let’s do this,” he declared firmly then ruined it by muttering, “Whatever it is that we’re doing.”
Wyatt unlocked the front door and Jo marched through.
