The Ghost Exterminator (13 page)

Chapter Twenty: Business and Pleasure

Night two at Casa Haines proved much less eventful than the previous evening. Jo vetoed beer and TV as “too relaxing”, since she didn’t want Wyatt falling asleep on her again, which left them with leftover pizza and not much else.

She paced the condo, growing more agitated by the second, as Wyatt watched her. She should tell him. He had a right to know that there was some whacked-out witch casting spells on his house and trying to separate his soul from his body. But he barely believed in ghosts and she wasn’t eager to push her luck on the new supernatural experiences front.

“You should relax,” he commented, looking relaxed enough for both of them from his sprawl on the couch.

“I can’t relax,” Jo snapped, willing to pounce on any excuse to pick a fight. At least it would keep them awake and provide some distraction from her guilt over the fact that she wasn’t being entirely honest with him. “I have to be vigilant in case the ghosts come back.”

Wyatt just shrugged, clearly not understanding the gravity of the situation—which might have been due to the fact that Jo hadn’t been able to bring herself to confess the whole ‘you might die if we don’t get these ghosts out of you fast’ part.

“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 spot 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…”