by Vivi Andrews
“Did you just growl at me?” She bit her lip to keep from laughing. Perfect, put-together Wyatt had been reduced to growling. Maybe there was a silver lining in all this chaos.
“I said that I trust you,” he bit out, his eyes still obediently closed. “It’s the damn ghosts I don’t trust.”
“Buddy, you’re handcuffed to a bed. What mischief can they possibly do?”
“I don’t like this.”
“So noted. Now try to relax.”
Jo reached out and grabbed the larger of the two glowy marbles currently lodged in Wyatt’s ankle. She wrapped her metaphysical fist around the marble and pulled it to the fore, stretching and manipulating the energy until Wyatt’s body surged upward and green light rippled through his limbs. The handcuffs pulled taut, snagging at his wrists and jerking his body back toward the bed as Angelica took form in his body.
The nine-year-old yanked at the cuffs, Wyatt’s throat producing a petulant whine.
“Hello, Angelica.”
The ghost twisted toward the sound of her voice and sniffed. “Oh. It’s you.”
“Yeah, you’re not exactly my favorite person either, Miss Bubblelicious, but I’m going to overlook that for the moment. You and I are going to have a little talk.”
“I’m not interested,” Angelica huffed, flopping Wyatt’s body onto his back and staring stubbornly at the ceiling.
“I don’t believe I asked your opinion,” Jo said brightly. “You seem to be confused about how this works. See, I’m the ghost exterminator. Which means, I run the show and you answer my questions. Or I can make sure you never get out of that body and you never get control of it again. Capisce?”
“You can’t do that!” Angelica wailed.
“Cry me a river, kiddo. Or better yet, answer my questions and we all get to live happily ever after. Or die happily ever after, in your case.”
“You won’t trap me in here. You want me out of the body.”
Smart kid. Jo shrugged, as if there was no particular urgency—souls separating from their natural bodies and whatnot—to getting the ghosts out of Wyatt. “You do something for me, I might be willing to do something for you. Like get you out of there.”
“Deal.” A sly gleam entered Angelica’s eyes. “Don’t you want to shake on it?”
“I’m not uncuffing you.”
The little girl pouted. “Meany.”
“Yep. I’m a tyrant. So, Angelica, do you like jewelry? Necklaces? Pendants?”
The little girl brightened—literally. The green glow covering Wyatt upped in wattage. “Do I get a present?”
“Only if you help me find a very special necklace.” Wyatt’d probably buy the kid a diamond tiara if she could tell him how to unhaunt the Victorian. “A necklace with magic powers. It drew you to the house. Do you know where—”
“No, it didn’t.”
“Interrupting is rude, brat.”
“Yeah, well, so is being a big, fat bully.”
“Did you just call me fat?” Jo hated children. She really, really hated children. Even those who were biologically related to her were barely tolerable.
“A big, fat, dummy bully,” Angelica sneered. “A necklace didn’t bring me to my house. It’s my house.”
“It’s Wyatt’s house. You’re an uninvited guest, kiddo. Just like in his body.”
“It’s my house!” Angelica shrieked. Wyatt’s features contorted with childish rage. “It’s always been mine. My daddy built it for me.”
Jo frowned, wondering if enchanted medallions could create false memories in the ghosts they controlled. It seemed like a stretch. Her daddy built it. “Just how long have you been in the house, Angelica?”
“Forever.”
“How long is forever?”
“For-ev-er,” the ghostling drawled out slowly, rolling her eyes as if Jo were mentally impaired. “That’s always, fat-dummy-bully.”
“Were you there before the other ghosts got there? Before the medallion?”
“Mm-hmm.” Angelica’s expression grew sly. “At first, I didn’t like the other ghosts in my house. They were as bad as the nasty workmen, banging around. Teddy and I couldn’t get away from them, even up in our attic playroom. But then I realized I could get them to do what I wanted. It was so much easier to play my games with all of them helping.”
“Your games.” Jo had a feeling she’d just discovered the origin of Wyatt’s Episodes.
“I’d never have been able to blow up the whole furnace with just me and Teddy.”
Jo felt the first twinge of respect for the little brat. She was downright Machiavellian, the phantom infant general. “Do you remember when the other ghosts started to arrive? When the medallion activated?”
“You mean when the flower lady snuck the knot necklace into the kitchen?”
“Yes.” Jo sat forward abruptly, realizing too late she’d betrayed her eagerness for this bit of information. “Who is the flower lady, Angelica?”
Angelica frowned. “She’s the flower lady.”
Jo rolled her eyes. Obviously.
“Our sister showed Teddy and me movies and pictures and stuff. She didn’t like the flower children,” Angelica said primly. “But the flower lady is too old to be a child.”
“A hippy.” Jo groaned. “Moonbeam.”
Wyatt blinked blearily at the clock. Three twenty-two. From the darkness in the room, alleviated only by the dim glow of the bedside lamp, it had to be three-twenty-two in the morning. He’d been out of it for over seven hours. Jo crouched on the bed beside him, shaking his shoulder. She looked like she’d been through the wars.
“Hey,” he mumbled groggily. He felt like he’d been drugged.
“Hey, yourself,” she muttered crankily. The good mood she had displayed while cuffing him to the bed was clearly a thing of the past. “I hate children. I couldn’t even beat them because that would only have bruised your body. I do not ever want to be a mother.”
“Duly noted,” Wyatt said, though with her youthful zest for life, he had a feeling Jo would be the kind of mother all kids wished they had. “Is there a reason why I’m still chained up?”
“You have to ask?” She waggled her eyebrows lecherously.
“Jo.” The warning was clear in his voice.
“Fine, fine. I get it. You aren’t into the whole bondage thing. I’ll get the key. Keep your pants on. Unless you can get them off without using your hands. In which case I will be duly impressed and reward you accordingly.”
As soon as she darted out of the room, Wyatt took stock of the body that a pair of juvenile ghosts had been occupying for the last several hours. He itched. Everywhere. It felt like his skin had shrunk two sizes.
By the time Jo returned to the bedroom, the tiny handcuff key in her hot little hand, he was twisting around helplessly on the bed.
“Wyatt. I was kidding about taking off your pants.”
He paused in his writhing to glare at her. “I itch everywhere and I can’t scratch a damn thing,” he growled.
“It’s totally psychosomatic,” she said, unsympathetic. “You’re just freaking out ’cuz you hate being out of control for even three seconds.”
He ignored her psychobabble. “It feels like I’ve had spiders crawling over my skin for hours.”
“Darn, you caught me. How did you guess there was a freak tarantula infestation while you were out? I was against it, but the ghosts are very persuasive when it comes to new and creative ways to torture your bod.”
“You’re evil,” he grumbled, flexing his hand as she released the first wrist. The circulation hadn’t been restricted as much as with last night’s silk tie experiment, but his arms were stiff from being held above his head for hours on end. His muscles screamed as he shifted his arm down and began scratching every inch of his skin.
She squinted at him as she leaned across him for wrist number two, giving him a nice view of the assets in her tank top. “Are you sure you’re Wyatt? You sounded just like Angelica f
or a second. She kept whining about how mean and evil I was.”
“A ghost after my own heart.”
“Yeah, she’s a peach. Although you might not like her as well once you find out that she was the mastermind behind ninety percent of the Episodes at your pretty new inn. Apparently, Angie dear was an original resident and doesn’t take kindly to trespassers.”
“A nine year old? Work was stopped for an entire month, setting us back thousands of dollars because of a dead nine year old?”
“Yep.” Jo sprawled on the bed beside him, waiting until his scratching frenzy had died down before she asked, “You want the good news or the bad news?”
Wyatt groaned and closed his eyes. “Please God, no more bad news.”
“Okay, good news first. Angelica and Teddy both have personal attachments to that house. And from what I can figure, they’ve both been dead for at least sixty years.”
“Why is that good news?”
“Because,” Jo purred, tapping him playfully on the nose, “if they have a personal connection to the house, it means we are likely to be able to remove them from you there. And since they predate the talisman’s arrival, it means that they were there to see our Bad Guy put the talisman in the house.”
“So who’s the Bad Guy?”
She made a face. “Yeah, that’s the bad news. How well do you know your secretary, Wyatt?”
“Moonbeam?” He snorted. “Moonbeam wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“I don’t know about flies, but Angelica saw her plant a silver pendant shaped like a knot in the kitchen and ever since then, the kitchen has scared the bejeezus out of both Angelica and Teddy. That’s incriminating enough for me.”
“There are a thousand other explanations,” Wyatt protested. “You said yourself that the talisman could be anything. It probably isn’t even a pendant. Moonbeam could have just dropped a necklace. She’s always wearing bangles and charms.”
“And that never seemed suspicious to you?”
“Jo, she’s worked for me for over a decade,” Wyatt said, his ire on the rise at her persistence. Moonbeam was not the culprit. He was sure of it. “Besides, why would she recommend bringing you in to fix things if she wanted them messed up?”
“To cover her tracks, or because she needs me to do something, provide a catalyst of some sort that she can’t do herself.”
“This is ridiculous.” Wyatt launched himself off the bed, stalking out of the bedroom. Jo followed on his heels.
“Wyatt, Angelica saw her sneak into the house at night, carrying that pendant into the kitchen.”
“You trust a ghost over someone I’ve worked with for a decade?” He began to pace. “She’s a kid, for Christ’s sake. A dead kid! And did she actually see Moonbeam leave the pendant? I’ve never seen a necklace in the kitchen.”
Jo rolled her eyes. “Sure, because there are no places to hide things in kitchens. No cupboards, drawers, dishwashers or drains to stuff something small into.”
“Moonbeam is a friend of the family,” Wyatt protested, absolutely certain she was not involved.
“It’s business, right? No emotional attachments.”
When he stopped his pacing to glare at her for throwing his words back in his face, Jo just shrugged, crossing her arms under her breasts and leaning back against the bar.
“She’s been with us since the beginning. Why would she start sabotaging us now?”
“Look, Wyatt, loyalty is an admirable quality and all, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming.”
“Evidence provided by a ghost!”
Jo straightened, glaring daggers at him. “So we’re back to that again, are we? I wondered when you’d revert back to form. Ghosts don’t exist, is that it? I’m just some bat-shit crazy lady who should be committed, right?”
“Damn it, Jo, I didn’t say—”
“There’s a simple way to prove which one of us is right. We go over to the house, right now, and search the kitchen. There’s a talisman hidden in there, Wyatt. I’m sure of it.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Jo’s expression darkened ominously at his choice of words, but he forged on. “It’s three-thirty in the morning!”
“No time like the present.” She bit out the words.
“Some of us have responsibilities, Jo. I have a ribbon cutting in the morning. I can’t be up all night looking for something that isn’t there.”
She snorted. “I hate to be the one to break this to you, Wyatt, but if we’re tearing apart the kitchen tonight, I don’t think that ribbon is quite ready to be cut.”
“At my other new inn,” he snapped. “Orchard Hollow. I’m flying down there tomorrow morning for the official opening.”
Jo laughed sharply. “I’d love to see what Angelica does in front of a few hundred people with some ceremonial scissors in her hands.”
Wyatt flinched at the reminder of what a mess his life was. The worst part was, he couldn’t even pretend not to believe her anymore. Ghosts existed. He was haunted and he needed Jo around to run herd on his personal ghost population. He rubbed a hand across his eyes, exhausted by the whole experience.
“Look, Jo, Moonbeam will be at the ribbon-cutting tomorrow. We can talk to her there. Talk, Jo. I still don’t think she’s behind this.”
“Are you sure you want to be seen in public with me?” she snapped acidly. “At some big ceremonial opening, there are sure to be cameras. You wouldn’t want people to think you associate with crazy people.”
He sighed. She wasn’t going to make this easy on him. “I don’t think you’re crazy. You’re fashion-challenged, temperamental, and you talk to ghosts on a regular basis, but you aren’t nuts. I need you there with me, Jo. In front of the cameras, if necessary. But do you think you could try to refrain from telling any reporters what you do for a living? That isn’t the kind of sound bite I’d like to hear replayed on CNBC every five minutes for the next week.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” Her tone held a wealth of bitterness. Wyatt’s temper snapped.
“I’m not your boss, Jo.” He stalked to her, grabbed her arm and swung her around. His mouth captured hers in a kiss before she could mouth off at him again.
He thrust his tongue into her mouth as he pressed her body against his. Everything about her was a contradiction—she was so soft and warm, but beneath that was a layer of icy, unyielding steel. She was powerful yet vulnerable, impetuous yet unswerving in her loyalties. She believed in the unbelievable with a pragmatism that was unnerving in its certainty. She had exploded his life from the inside out, shaking his beliefs and scattering his priorities to the wind. Nothing was as it should be in his neatly ordered world, but he couldn’t escape the feeling that he hadn’t really lived until he met her.
Jo was breathless when she pulled back from him, her eyes glazed but still flashing defiance. He’d never be able to kiss her into submission. Jo was not the kind of girl who gave up without a fight, but for the moment, they were both too tired to argue anymore.
“The ghosts,” she reminded him, but the words sounded like an evasion. He had a feeling she could keep the ghosts from appearing if she wanted to, but she needed an excuse to step away from him.
He let her go, reluctant but accepting that it was the right thing to do. She might make him feel alive, but there couldn’t be a future for a workaholic businessman, always in the public eye, and a woman who defied convention with every breath she took.
“You want me to chain you up?”
He laughed shortly without humor. “Yeah. I’m exhausted.”
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Family that Cuts Ceremonial Ribbons Together
The latest jewel in the Haines Hideaways crown in no way resembled the haunted Victorian. It did, however, bear a strong resemblance to the house in Gone with the Wind. So much so, in fact, that Jo stopped a passing waiter to ask if this was where the movie had been filmed. The waiter snorted, shoved a glass of champagne into her hand and walked off, leaving her to draw the conclusion that
perhaps not all sprawling plantation homes had such rich literary histories.
She would have asked Wyatt, but hisself was off schmoozing with the hoi polloi. Jo didn’t have the first idea who any of the people bumping elbows at this shindig were, but Wyatt knew every one of them and was ready with a cheesy smile and a cheesier one-liner about the health of their family, business, or, in one case, schnauzers.
Moonbeam had yet to put in an appearance.
Jo sipped her champagne and wandered through what had probably been the ballroom before the burning of Atlanta, trying to blend in with the upper-crust crowd. And doing a damn find job of it, if she did say so herself.
She wasn’t wearing a powder blue suit, but it was pretty damn close.
They’d stopped off at her apartment on the way to the private airstrip that morning. While Wyatt had waited in the Bentley, doubtless the picture of impatience, Jo had rummaged through her closet until she found the peach sheath dress and matching cardigan that Bethie had picked out for her. There was no helping the fact that her hair still had personality and the Girls still garnered a fair amount of attention, but other than that, she looked like the perfect dull-as-dirt yuppie.
Jo stood up on her tiptoes in her Bethie-approved pumps. She might not be able to run away if something nasty started chasing her, but she could see over the crowd a hell of a lot better than normal. Even with the advantage in height, there was still no sign of Moonbeam.
Wyatt stood chatting with a handsome, middle-aged couple on the other side of the room. Since there was no sign of a ghosty freak-out in the offing, she decided to leave him be and let him do his business thing. Just as she was about to turn away, he looked up, meeting her eyes across the room and beckoned to her with a nod of his head.
Jo didn’t know which was more depressing, that he’d caught her mooning over him like a lovesick heroine from a gothic novel or that she was so pathetically delighted that he wanted her at his side, in public. She wove through the crowd with a fake smile pasted on her face.
Wyatt reached out a hand to her when she got close, catching her hand and drawing her up beside him. He turned to the older couple. “Mom, Dad, this is Jo. She’s been helping me get the ghosts out of my body.”