by Vivi Andrews
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One: Nightmare on South Elm Street
Chapter Two: Commando Barbie Does her Thing
Chapter Three: When the Ghost Exterminator Says Jump…
Chapter Four: Good Karma
Chapter Five: The Horrible Haunting of W. Haines
Chapter Six: Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen
Chapter Seven: Tea with Mussolini
Chapter Eight: See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me
Chapter Nine: Vehicular Compensation
Chapter Ten: Tiny Tim, the Slut
Chapter Eleven: Defunct Mojo
Chapter Twelve: Viral Insanity
Chapter Thirteen: Remote Combat
Chapter Fourteen: The Bubble Gum Wars
Chapter Fifteen: Safe in the Bosom of Family
Chapter Sixteen: It’s My Party and I’ll Commune with the Dead If I Want To
Chapter Seventeen: Impromptu Pool Party!
Chapter Eighteen: The Young and the Dead
Chapter Nineteen: The Plot Thickens
Chapter Twenty: Business and Pleasure
Chapter Twenty-One: Haunt Me, Baby, One More Time
Chapter Twenty-Two: Afterglow
Chapter Twenty-Three: Over the River & Through the Woods
Chapter Twenty-Four: Love Means Never Having to Say Untie Me
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Family that Cuts Ceremonial Ribbons Together
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Road to Hell is Well Paved
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Mile-High Cuddles
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Halloween at the Haunted House
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Badass Showdown
Chapter Thirty: Insanity Loves Company
Chapter Thirty-One: Toys in the Attic
Chapter Thirty-Two: Trick My Treat
Chapter Thirty-Three: Morning-After Negotiations
About the Author
Look for these titles by Vivi Andrews
Rebel meets by-the-book businessman. Love doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance.
A Karmic Consultants story.
Jo Banks has been seeing ghosts since she was six, so normal was never really an option. Embracing the weird and shunning normalcy makes her the top Ghost Exterminator in her region. Then she meets Wyatt Haines, the uptight, materialistic and irritatingly sexy owner of a successful resort chain.
Wyatt’s new Victorian inn is extremely haunted and the Commando Barbie Ghost Exterminator is just the girl for the job. Except Wyatt doesn’t believe in ghosts, or Jo, or anything outside the norm. He’ll have to start believing fast, though, because Jo’s extermination goes awry and accidentally throws two prankster ghosts into Wyatt’s body to haunt him.
Every time he falls asleep, the mischievous ghosts take over, turning his perfectly ordered life into chaos. His waking hours are no less chaotic, with his thoughts possessed by Jo’s quirky appeal and Playmate physique.
Unfortunately, Jo’s ghost-exing mojo is on the fritz just when she needs it the most to unhaunt Wyatt and figure out why his inn is swarming with ghosts. Preferably before his spirit is permanently separated from his mouth-watering body.
And before her heart is permanently attached to the most sexy, frustrating, normal man she’s ever met.
Warning: This book contains prankster ghosts, PG bondage, and a not-so-PG trip to the mile-high club.
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They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520
Macon GA 31201
The Ghost Exterminator
Copyright © 2009 by Vivi Andrews
ISBN: 978-1-60504-718-8
Edited by Laurie Rauch
Cover by Natalie Winters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: October 2009
www.samhainpublishing.com
The Ghost Exterminator: A Love Story
Vivi Andrews
Dedication
For my mom, staunch defender of her position as Number One Fan, who believed in me and loved every word even when my writing was appallingly bad, which proves how biased she is. I couldn’t ask for a better cheerleader….even if she does always cheat and read the happily-ever-after first.
Chapter One: Nightmare on South Elm Street
The house hated him.
Wyatt Haines did not use personification. Cars did not have names. The stock market did not have moods. Computers, contrary to popular opinion, were neither demonic nor temperamental. Wyatt was firmly anti-anthropomorphic.
But the damn house had it in for him. No question about it.
He had bought the Demon House on South Elm—or the Nightmare on Elm Street, as his secretary liked to call it—three months ago, in a frenzy of bargain-induced purchase-lust. The elegant three-story Victorian had shone like a (ridiculously under-priced) beacon of grace and class in a once-shabby, newly chic seaside town.
He had taken one look at the turrets and gables with sickeningly quaint gingerbread trim and seen profits dripping from every eave. And there were a lot of eaves.
The South Elm Victorian, once restored and remodeled, would be the perfect addition to his chain of charming—and highly profitable—country inns. The decision to buy had been almost mockingly easy, but it had come back to haunt him, as all such decisions did. Just one more example of life’s most annoying lesson—the good things never come easy. Dammit.
The deal had been a snap, escrow a breeze. Hell had waited until the day after the sale closed before unleashing its fury.
The Episodes, as he had come to think of them, began the morning the first construction team had set foot on the premises. After the seventh team walked off the job, he had been forced to admit that there might be some problems with the house that couldn’t be solved with new pipes and a fresh coat of paint. His secretary’s suggestion to bring in the consulting firm—ridiculous as it had seemed after the Erupting Toilet Episode—had become his last, best hope by the time the Exploding Furnace Episode had sent the ninth, and final, contractor storming off the site.
Wyatt glared at the mockingly perfect Victorian, convinced, irrationally or not, that it was glaring back at him.
“Dude. That house hates you.”
Wyatt swung around at the dry drawl of a female voice behind him. His frown deepened as he took in the figure leaning against his antique, hand-carved fencepost, one hand idly flaking away the chipped paint. Surely this couldn’t be the consultant.
Wyatt excelled at sizing people up at a glance. It was one of the things that had helped him take one rickety country inn and turn it into a multimillion-dollar, themed resort chain. Taking his cues from posture and attire, a firm handshake or a nervous laugh, he had learned who to trust and who was going to be a liability to his business. He was an expert at avoiding risks. What he saw leaning up against his fencepost was enough to set off every risk-tuned warning bell he had.
She was tall for a woman and visibly muscular—though in the sleek, I-can-run-fifteen-miles-before-breakfast way rather
than the more disturbing, I-can-bench-press-your-car style. Her hair was yanked back into an unforgiving ponytail, revealing a quarter-inch of blonde roots along her forehead before the cheerful color was sucked up by the inky black, light-sucking dye job that covered the rest of her head.
She wasn’t wearing a drop of makeup and should have looked washed out and hideous in the glare of the streetlight, but instead her face was compelling—her expression fixed and stubborn, as if trying to compensate for the fact that her features were overwhelmingly cute and her nose turned up like a pixie’s.
A battered backpack rested against the ankle of one combat boot. Black jeans and a snug black tank top completed the look. Wyatt tried not to focus on what the low-cut tank revealed—had been trying since the second he turned around—but his eyes were itching from the effort.
Pamela Anderson, eat your heart out.
Between the come-to-papa figure and what was clearly long blonde hair beneath that hideous dye job, she could have been a playboy bunny. Lucky Hef. Instead, she looked like Commando Barbie.
Wyatt Haines recognized temptation when he saw it—every disciplined molecule in his body recognized it—but he knew better than to give in to it. Order, discipline, planning—there was no room in his life for the unexpected. The militant playmate would just have to try her tricks somewhere else.
There was no way in hell she was the consultant. Please, if there is a God…
“You’re trespassing.” His bark didn’t have its usual force because he was still trying to make his eyes focus properly.
She continued to gaze blandly at him as if he hadn’t even spoken. “You Haines?”
Oh, no. Wyatt was not a religious man, but he was willing to consider the possibility of a deity—particularly if that deity had a personal vendetta against him. The universe had been just that unfair lately. “I’m Wyatt Haines,” he admitted grudgingly, waiting for her response with a healthy dose of dread.
Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it.
“I’m Jo Banks. Karmic Consultants.”
Damn.
Jo watched, perversely fascinated, as Haines flinched and his perma-frown deepened. He was frowning in the general direction of her cleavage, but since The Girls had always gotten more attention than she did, she didn’t take it personally.
“I was expecting a man,” he blurted out, sweat breaking out across his brow.
“Yep.”
“Joe. That’s short for something?”
A real rocket scientist, this one. “Yep.”
He waited for a beat, then seemed to realize that she wasn’t going to supply a nice girly name for him to use instead and cleared his throat. He tore his eyes off The Girls and raked her with the single most disapproving glance she had received from a man since puberty. Landing at her feet, his eyes locked on her goodie bag where she’d dropped it. He cleared his throat again, his lip curling as if he expected spray paint and toilet paper to leap out of the bag and begin trashing his perfect little Victorian mansion.
Not that it was perfect. That house had some serious issues.
Jo levered herself off the fencepost and bent to grab her goodie bag. Straightening, she flipped the bag onto her shoulder, ignoring the way Haines’s mouth fell open and his eyes glazed at the glimpse down the front of her shirt. She took a step up the gravel walk and Haines suddenly snapped out of his cleavage-induced haze. He planted himself between her and the house.
He frowned and cleared his throat.
That stick shoved up his ass must be tickling his tonsils. Poor baby.
“This’ll go a lot faster if I have access to the house,” Jo said dryly, hoping Haines would take the hint and get out of her way.
He didn’t. She couldn’t say she was surprised.
Wyatt Haines, with his Armani everything, three-hundred dollar haircut, and designer disdain, continued to stand in the middle of the path, every muscle in his (admittedly gorgeous) body clenched in defense of his financial assets. Jo was tempted—just for a moment—to football tackle him and see which one of them came out on top. She might even let him be on top. A delicious little shiver wriggled down her spine. Down, girl.
He may be a stuck-up prick and a soulless businessman, but Jo was woman enough to admit that he was a seriously dishy stuck-up prick. Objectively speaking. Every black hair neatly in place. No trace of a shadow on his face, even though it was well past five-o-clock. And eyes that were so freaking blue, she could see their color in just the light of the one streetlamp that shone over her shoulder. He practically radiated anal-asshole vibes, but he was also putting off some serious pheromones. Luckily, Jo was immune to studly businessman pheromones. Well, mostly immune.
She reined in her libido and arched one brow at him, going for aloof and supercilious. Haines didn’t appear to notice her impressive superciliousness. He was too busy frowning.
“I was under the impression Karmic Consultants was a reputable firm,” he said, clipping off the words, abrupt and precise.
Jo ignored the insult and gave him a nice lazy smile with lots of teeth. “Depends what you mean by reputable, I guess.”
Haines’s frown went up a notch or two on the Richter scale. “I require a certain level of professionalism.”
It was all Jo could do not to roll her eyes. He’d probably expected her to show up in a powder blue suit and heels, looking like a realtor and genuflecting at his feet. Even if she had been the powder blue suit type—not in this lifetime—she still wouldn’t have been stupid enough to crawl around a hundred-plus-year-old house in the middle of the night in heels.
Jo upped the wattage on her smile. “What? Don’t I look professional to you?”
Haines’s eyes dropped to her boots, surveying the landscape along the way. He winced.
Prompted by some devilish impulse, Jo slapped on her most innocent expression and offered, “I know some of the consultants work in the nude. If you’d be more comfortable…”
“No!”
Jo smothered her grin at his obvious discomfort and focused on looking harmless. It wasn’t something she’d had a lot of practice with, and judging by Haines’s expression, her skill had suffered through lack of practice.
He was frowning again. But only about a 2.2 on the Pissed-Off-CEO Richter scale. Certainly not enough to make her quake.
He waved a hand toward her goodie bag. “What are you going to do with that?”
Jo patted her pack and smiled reassuringly. “I’m going to make all of your troubles go away, buddy.”
The frown went up to a 3.4. “You don’t have explosives in there, do you?”
Jo snorted out a laugh. It was even funnier because he was serious. “That’s not how this works, pal.”
“How exactly does this work?”
At last, a question she was used to. “You wait out here. I go in there. I do my mojo. Your house is all better.” Jo made a dusting off gesture with her hands. “Poof.”
Haines shook his head, looking impressively grim. “I can’t let you go in there alone.”
Jo sighed. She’d heard that before—though usually it was from big, strong men who wanted to protect her from the Big Bad rather than some stuck-up businessman who thought she was going to vandalize his property if left unsupervised. “Don’t worry, buddy. I’m a pro.”
He snuck a glance over his shoulder at the house. “That house is possessed.”
Jo peered past him and let her eyes fall on the big Victorian mansion. Even before she drew on her second sight, she could see there was some serious shit going down in that old house. It gave off a dim greenish glow and seemed to be slowly expanding and contracting. Breathing. It definitely appeared to be breathing. Well, that’s new.
She unfocused her eyes, looking without looking, and was nearly blinded by the luminescent energy pouring off the house. Damn, girl. She blinked away the vision, still seeing stars, and focused on the frowning businessman.
“Nope,” she said cheerfully. “Not possessed.
Just really, really haunted.”
Chapter Two: Commando Barbie Does her Thing
Wyatt felt lightheaded, but ruthlessly suppressed the irritating weakness. She was messing with his mind. That was it. The house wasn’t really haunted. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
She tipped her head and looked at him as if he were the crazy one. “If you don’t think the house is haunted, why did you call Karmic for a Ghost Exterminator?”
Instead of admitting he had reached the point of blind desperation, he countered, “How do you know it’s haunted?”
“I can see it.”
Wyatt felt a headache starting behind his eyes. “You see a ghost.”
She shook her head, bouncing on the balls of her feet like a Goth cheerleader and growing more bright-eyed even as his headache intensified. “Not just one ghost. Lots of ghosts.”
Wyatt closed his eyes. “Lots. Of course. Lucky me. How many is lots?”
In the silence that followed his question, he opened his eyes to find her staring blankly at the house, her eyes a little glazed. “I’d say upwards of thirty,” she answered finally. “You’ve got one hell of an infestation, buddy.”
“Hell. So it is possessed.”
She made a face. “Figure of speech. No demons. Just ghosts. Good thing, too. I don’t do demons.” She tapped her forefinger against her sternum, drawing his attention southward again. “Exterminator. Not Exorcist.”
Wyatt worked his jaw and struggled to maintain a logical approach in the face of this lunacy. “You haven’t even been inside yet. How can you tell there aren’t demons?”
She tipped her head inquiringly. “You’re pretty hung up on demons, huh? That easier for you to believe than ghosts?”
He didn’t want to believe in either and he was going to stick with disbelief as long as he could manage it. “My secretary thought the Episodes…” It was all his secretary’s fault. She was the one who believed in ghosts and spirits and auras. Her desk had more crystals than post-its, for Christ’s sake.