The Ghost Exterminator: A Karmic Consultants story. Read online

  His hands were back under her shirt, framing her abdomen and sliding up with heated friction against her skin, closer to the Girls—who were putting on a distinctly undignified display, screaming for his attention with every thick pulse of her blood.

  His hands finally closed around them through the heavy lace of her bra. Large and confident, they plumped and shaped her breasts, his palms scraping against the sensitive nubs of her nipples. Jo’s eyes rolled back in her head and she moaned his name thickly. He nipped along the edge of her jaw, the sharpness of the bites a heady counterpoint to his deftly caressing hands. Then his mouth was back on hers, softer this time, his kisses liquid and drugging. Her entire body felt as if it were growing heavy, saturated with desire.

  The sound of a clearing throat had her moaning into his mouth. God, when had that sound become so damned sexy?

  Jo clung to him, no longer caring if she was out of control. He could have control. As long as he didn’t stop.

  “Jo!”

  Okay, that hadn’t been Wyatt. Even the best ventriloquist in the world couldn’t shout her name with his tongue wrapped halfway around her tonsils.

  Wyatt froze in place beneath her, his hands still palming the Girls under her shirt and his tongue still camping out in her mouth. He reeled his tongue back where it belonged as a throat cleared from the doorway a second time.

  “Jennifer informs me you wish to see me. Urgently.”

  Jo didn’t turn around. She didn’t need to see Karma’s face to know that it would be completely expressionless, except for the eyes. The eyes would be all-too knowing. Mortifyingly knowing.

  Oh, geez. She’d just jumped a client. In her office. Only hours after she nearly jumped him in his office. Way to be professional, Jo.

  Jo cleared her throat. It didn’t help. Especially since Wyatt’s hands were sliding slowly—oh, so deliciously slowly—back to neutral territory and sending little shivers of oh-please-don’t-stop pleasure jolting through her nerves.

  “I’ll be there in just a minute,” Jo said without turning around and without looking at Wyatt, the second half of which was easier said than done since her face was approximately two inches from his.

  “Excellent,” Karma purred, as dry as the Gobi desert.

  Jo waited until the door clicked shut behind her before she closed her eyes and moaned her embarrassment. She was still straddling Wyatt. She was still one giant, throbbing hormone. And now she had to face him. To talk to him. What did you say to a man after you had just given him a fully clothed lap dance while trying to suck the tongue out of his mouth in the middle of your office?

  Jo opened her eyes. “Was it good for you?”

  Chapter Eleven: Defunct Mojo

  “I didn’t peg you as the kind of girl who would ever need rescuing.” Karma’s sex-operator voice was as cold and hard as Jo had ever heard it.

  So much for pretending nothing happened. Jo crossed Karma’s office to flop down into one of the somewhat uncomfortable, extremely upright chairs lined up facing the desk. “What made you think I needed rescuing?” she asked, hoping her attempt at lazy nonchalance could disguise the blend of panic, confusion, and residual lust still churning through her.

  “What makes you think you don’t?”

  The patronizing edge to Karma’s words tweaked Jo’s temper and she sat up straighter, lazy nonchalance washed away in a tide of irritation. “I’m a big girl and you are not my mommy. If I want to crawl all over a guy—”

  “A client,” Karma interrupted crisply. “In my offices. I think even if I am not your mommy, I am well within my rights to spank you for this particular indiscretion. But that isn’t what I’m trying to do.”

  “No?” Jo saturated the word with disbelief.

  Karma’s dark eyes narrowed to angled slits. “No.” She reached into a concealed drawer in her desk and flipped a neat manila file onto the open surface between them. Jo had no trouble recognizing the face in the photo clipped to the front of the file. She had been sucking face with that face less than ten minutes ago. He was frowning in the picture, which made sense. He was probably frowning outside the office right now as he stewed over being left out of her powwow with the big boss.

  Karma tapped the photo with one long, blood red fingernail. “Wyatt Haines. Anal-retentive CEO. Merciless businessman. Heartless millionaire. Any man that successful should be the catch of the county, but he doesn’t date casually. Not even when bringing a bimbo to a fund-raiser would be the appropriate thing to do.”

  “Are you trying to warn me he’s gay? I think I can vouch for his heterosexuality.”

  “I’m trying to warn you that you aren’t his type.”

  Jo flinched. Dude, that was harsh. Not that she’d ever thought she was his type, but she’d always thought Karma liked her. To have her say Jo wasn’t good enough for Wyatt, to have her just spit it out like that, was a shock to the system. “Look, I know I’m not Martha Stewart—”

  “Why do you think he wants you?” Karma interrupted, the words direct and unforgiving.

  “I don’t know,” Jo snapped, resisting the urge to wail helplessly. “He frowns and clears his throat as if everything I say and do sticks in his craw. I know I’m not his idea of Miss Perfect—he thinks I’m insane, for crying out loud—but most guys will ignore that if they get to cop a feel. The Girls are a pretty big incentive all on their—”

  “No.” Karma cut across her tirade. “I meant, what does he do to make you think he wants you?”

  Jo waved a hand in the general direction of her office. “That. He grabs me and kisses me like I’m frickin’ oxygen.”

  Karma’s eyes widened slightly in surprise. “You mean he instigated that episode?”

  An episode? That hadn’t exactly been a Brady Bunch re-run. Nor was it one of Wyatt’s ghosties’ pranks. “Of course he did. You think I mount unsuspecting clients in my office for kicks?”

  “He’s an attractive man. And you were on top,” Karma reminded her. “But if he started it…” She tapped one finger against her lips and Jo noticed that her nail polish exactly matched her lipstick.

  Karma was the kind of woman a man like Wyatt couldn’t resist—cool, professional, feminine but strong, controlled but distinctly sexual. Jo was more Pamela Anderson, wild and open, everything on display for anyone who cared to look. And everyone knew that Pam needed a Tommy Lee, not a Bill Gates.

  Karma shook her head sharply, drawing Jo’s attention away from her surprisingly depressing musings on her future as a rocker’s playmate of the month.

  “This is even worse than I thought,” Karma muttered direly.

  “Because he wants me?” He had kissed her, after all. Crazy or not, the tent in his pants had been a non-negotiable sign of interest. “That’s a bad thing?”

  Karma shot her a pitying look. “Jo. Think about this.”

  God, she hated it when Karma said stuff like that. Jo was not a stupid woman, but there were days when Karma made her feel like she had the relative IQ of a turkey—and not a wily wild turkey, but one of the dumber-than-dirt domesticated ones that drown in the rain because they are too stupid to close their mouths as they stare upwards watching the wet stuff fall from the sky.

  She had missed something, that much was obvious, but Jo couldn’t seem to find the apparently blatant logic that led to Wyatt wanting her being considered an unredeemable sin.

  “Look, I know there’s some company policy against mixing business with pleasure, but it’s not like Lucy didn’t do the exact same thing, and you know I’m not the kind of girl who’ll crawl on top of any guy who sits still long enough. Wyatt’s different. He’s—”

  “He’s playing you.”

  “What?”

  Karma stood and began to move back and forth across the room. On anyone else it would have been restless pacing, but Karma’s movements were as smooth and deliberate as ever, pensive but not agitated. It was still the most ill at ease Jo had ever seen her.

  “Something about this h
as been bothering me ever since you arrived this morning,” Karma said as she paced, the sound of her high heels muted by the plush carpet. “You said there was another presence in the house, pulling against you and trying to trap the ghosts there, but when you went back after Haines left, you couldn’t find a trace of it. What if he was the presence? Why else would he insist on being present for the extermination? If Haines were a medium, he could be storing up ghosts in that house for some reason. When you released your hold on the ghosts, it is only logical that they would then be pulled directly back toward the other force that was pulling on them—Wyatt Haines.”

  Jo had started shaking her head as soon as she realized what Karma was driving at and she hadn’t stopped yet. She was beginning to get dizzy from her own denial. “No. No, that doesn’t make any sense. Wyatt doesn’t even believe in ghosts.” The whole non-believer thing couldn’t be an act. It just couldn’t.

  “He called us, didn’t he?” Karma countered.

  “Exactly.” Jo sprang up out of her chair, too restless not to join Karma crisscrossing the room. “Why would he hire us to exterminate his ghosts if he really wanted to keep them?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself and the only thing I could come up with was you.”

  “Me?” Jo stopped in her tracks and spun to face Karma, then decided watching her boss pace wasn’t nearly satisfying enough and resumed her own stalking.

  “There must be something you can do that he can’t. Something he needs your particular paranormal skills for. When I called him this morning to try to convince him to let us complete the job, he slipped up. I offered him a replacement medium and he said it had to be you. It didn’t strike me as particularly odd at the time, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve wondered what he could have meant by that. Initially, I thought he was just attracted to you. I’m afraid I may even have inadvertently implanted the idea that he could manipulate you with sex by suggesting that he’d been fantasizing about you.”

  “Karma, this is ridiculous. Wyatt hates the supernatural.”

  “Then why would he kiss a medium? He’s using you, Jo. I don’t know why and I don’t know what he thinks he can manipulate you into doing for him, but it’s the only logical explanation.”

  “I could just be having an off day,” Jo said.

  Karma laughed softly and moved back to the chair behind her desk. “You don’t have off days, Jo. Something is throwing you off. Or rather, someone.”

  “It couldn’t be Wyatt,” she insisted, moving to pace in front of Karma’s desk, still too restless to sit back down. “The presence of another medium doesn’t explain why all of the ghosts I exterminated last night are back. It has to be me, something I—”

  Karma held up a hand to stop her. “Wait just a second. The ghosts you exterminated last night came back?”

  Jo nodded. “The house is seething with them. At least half of them are back already.” She threw herself back onto her chair, feeling another wave of helpless dejection at the thought of her clearly defunct mojo. “I can’t understand how I could have failed. This has never happened to me before.” Then a truly horrifying thought hit her with the force of a sledgehammer to the back of her skull, rocking her forward in the chair. “Oh my God! What if it’s been happening all along and I never knew? What if I never manage to send any of them on all the way? What if they just appear to be gone and then come back the very next day? I could have been a failure my entire life and never even known!”

  “Jo, get a hold of yourself. You aren’t a failure. If there had been anything wrong with your exterminations in the past, we would have heard about it from your other clients. This only serves to convince me more that Wyatt Haines is behind your current troubles.” She tapped a red fingernail against her mouth. “How certain are you that they are the same ghosts?”

  Jo looked up in surprise. “Not certain at all,” she admitted. “After I realized the infestation was back, I thought there was something wrong with me. I grabbed Wyatt and hightailed it back here. Do not pass go, do not stop to consider if the ghosts were the same ones from last night. Although, admittedly, I might have had a hard time telling even if I had tried to check. I’ve never been one to get cozy and make friends with the spirits like Lucy. But if they aren’t the same ghosts, why are they there?”

  “Why were the others there? Whatever it is about that house that drew such a large concentration of spirits in the first place could have drawn another fifty since last night. Haines could have drawn them himself, for all we know.”

  “Wyatt hasn’t had the time or the opportunity to draw more ghosts to the house, even if he was capable of it. He hasn’t been anywhere but home and his office since he left me last night.”

  “According to who? The man himself? You haven’t been with him every minute of the day, Jo. He could easily have dropped by and done some supernatural mischief this morning while you were watching Star Trek.”

  “Hey, don’t blame Captain Kirk.”

  “I’m blaming Wyatt Haines. He’s up to something and until we know what…” Karma’s voice trailed off. She sat behind her desk, regal and commanding, and studied Jo with narrowed eyes. “Can you stay objective? If I let you stick with him, can you keep your distance well enough to avoid giving him whatever it is he wants from you?”

  “Golly, Karma, your confidence in me is so comforting.”

  “You’re the best, Jo. But we both know you’re the best because, when it comes to ghosts, you never let your emotions into the equation. I want to be sure you aren’t going to get wrapped up in Wyatt Haines’ games before I send you out to keep an eye on him, to find out what he wants.”

  “So we aren’t trying to get the ghosts out of him any more. Surveillance only, is that it?”

  “We want the ghosts out eventually, but until we know what he’s doing in the house and why, maybe it would be best to leave them where they are. At least then you have a good excuse for dogging his steps.”

  Jo thought bumping hips with him was a darn good excuse, but Karma’s idea sounded a little more professional. “So I pretend to be trying to take the ghosts out, figure out if he’s really an evil medium collecting ghosts to sabotage his own house—although why anyone would want to do that is beyond me—and keep my hands to myself. Any other instructions, boss?”

  “Be careful.” She tapped Wyatt’s dossier. “I’ll put some of our people on finding everything we can about Wyatt Haines and that house, and I’ll see if I can find any possible use for that much spiritual energy stored in one place.”

  “What if it isn’t Wyatt? What else could be drawing ghosts to the house besides a rogue medium?”

  Karma pursed her lips, the subtle tension in her mouth the only indicator of her irritation. “I’ll look into other possibilities,” she promised. “But it’s Wyatt, Jo. And the sooner you accept that, the better off you’ll be.”

  Chapter Twelve: Viral Insanity

  Apparently, insanity was contagious and Wyatt had been exposed to a virulent strain. That was the only explanation for why he had lost his mind so completely in Jo’s office and attempted to devour her from the mouth down.

  He couldn’t deny their chemistry was electric and Jo herself was surprisingly likable, for a crazy person, but Wyatt never acted on impulse. The spontaneous kiss had been impulsive and idiotic. And fan-fucking-tastic. He was still half hard as he paced in the waiting area outside Karma’s office.

  The kiss may have been electric, but it wouldn’t happen again. He wouldn’t allow it. Wyatt Haines was scrupulously aware of how each woman he was seen with impacted his professional image. He would not allow his image, and by extension his business, to be negatively impacted by an association with a nutcase—no matter how enjoyable he found her company, or her body.

  A relationship was ridiculously out of the question. Jo had to know that. They were oil and water, though judging by what had happened in her office, nitro and glycerin might be a better analogy.

&n
bsp; Thank God Karma had walked in. Wyatt hadn’t been stopping and neither had Jo. Without that timely intervention, Wyatt would probably have bent Jo over her desk and fucked her right there. What if Karma had come in five minutes later? Wyatt flinched. God, what if she had sent her secretary instead? It would be all over the papers. His reputation would be ruined. His business destroyed. His life over.

  It wouldn’t happen again. He wouldn’t be around Jo much longer anyway. Wyatt ruthlessly silenced the little voice that protested that he liked being around Jo. No matter how likable she was, she was toxic to his life.

  There was a scientific explanation for his loss of control, just as there was a rational, scientific explanation for what was happening in the house and in his body.

  The Episodes in the house were likely the work of some extremely creative, disgruntled employee. Or just a kid playing pranks. A living kid.

  The SyFy Channel and Groucho Marx mask could be the result of post-hypnotic suggestion. Wyatt didn’t remember being hypnotized, but wasn’t that part of hypnosis? That you couldn’t remember it?

  That was probably what Jo did, hypnotized people into believing she had solved their problems, which she had probably caused herself with wind-machines and holograms.

  Wyatt frowned. No. That wasn’t Jo. She wasn’t malicious or dishonest. Nutty, yes. Dishonorable, no.

  She believed her delusions wholeheartedly. So much so that the longer Wyatt was around her, the more plausible they seemed. There was a scientific explanation—he knew there was—but he was willing to say he believed in ghosts if she would fix things.

  There was belief and then there was belief. Wyatt believed in Santa Claus, insofar as the Jolly Old Elf existed in the minds of children around the world and there was a perfectly rational explanation for the things he supposedly did on Christmas Eve. Jo believed in ghosts the way children believed in Santa Claus and, for a few seconds there back at the house, Wyatt had felt the belief of childlike wonder for himself. He’d actually thought he heard a ghost.