The Ghost Exterminator (8 page)

“Jo, hey, come on…” He stood, reaching out a hand to her.

She didn’t know what he had intended. Maybe to pat her on the back or give her arm a comforting squeeze. But when Wyatt stood, he caught her turning in mid-pace. They both stumbled, tangled against one another. He tried to steady her and one hand brushed against the Girls as the other wrapped around her waist.

Jo looked up into his eyes, startled by his sudden proximity, seduced by the feel of him pressed hard against her.

Then, before rational thought could take control, he was kissing her.

His mouth landed heavily on hers, a full-frontal assault of the lips. The flare of chemistry was sudden, unexpected, and so freaking perfect her brain was instantly wiped of conscious thought.

Her world mojo might be going horribly wrong, but
this
felt right.

He teased and coaxed and Jo was with him every step of the way, throwing herself into the kiss for everything she was worth.

He stumbled under the force of her enthusiasm, his feet tangled with hers, and they tumbled down onto the chair. Jo’s legs fell to either side of his. He yanked her forward by her belt loops until she was seated, straddling his thighs with nothing but air between them. And not much of that.

Jo wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he palmed the back of her skull, angling her head for better access as his tongue drove to take possession of her mouth. He untangled his fingers from her belt loops and brushed up under the edge of her shirt with his thumb, just the most fleeting of touches across the bare skin of her abdomen. Then his hands were sliding against her jeans again, moving around to cup her ass, two fingers of each hand sliding into the tight back pockets of her jeans to hold her still when every hormone in her body was screaming for her to squirm against him, wriggle closer to his heat.

“You can admit you want it,” he said against her throat. “Everything doesn’t have to be a war. Jo Banks against the world.”

God, why is he
talking
? Didn’t he know there are better uses for his mouth?
Jo speared her fingers through his hair. He kept it ruthlessly short, completely restrained, but it felt as wild and thick against her fingers as an animal pelt. She gripped his head in both hands and yanked his face back to within a breath of hers. “I like you so much better when you aren’t speaking,” she growled against his mouth, her lips teasing his with every word.

He kissed her again, each drugging pull of his mouth dragging her further away from reality.

She felt a tug on her scalp and then her hair fell down around her shoulders in a silky mass, released from its ponytail prison. He tangled one hand in it at the base of her skull, using it to angle her mouth more to his liking. His other hand jammed more firmly into the back pocket of her jeans as he held her snug against him. His hardness behind the placket of his pants pressed up against the dampened seam of her jeans, and she ground against him, bringing another rush of wet heat.

He released her mouth and Jo’s eyes fell closed as her head fell back limply in relief at the respite. Then his teeth scraped roughly down the side of her neck, the sensation arching her back with an electric elevator slide up her spine, pressing the Girls against the muscular wall of his chest. She was sure he could feel the hardness of her nipples through all the layers of their clothing, but modesty was the farthest thing from her thoughts. As if she could think at all. She could barely remember to breathe.

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 has 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.”