The Ghost Exterminator by Vivi Andrews Read Free Book Online Page B

“Crap.”
    “Excuse me?”
    Jo felt her face heat and tried for a subject change, feeling more off balance the longer she spoke to Wyatt’s unexpected secretary. “That’s a nice desk. It’s different from the ones in the rest of the office.”
    Moonbeam smiled and ran her hands along the smooth edge of the desk. “I can’t work around angles. They absolutely destroy my chi. Wyatt was very understanding and found this for me.”
    “You must be a wonderful secretary.”
    It was the understatement of the year. If Wyatt was willing to put up with angle-free, chi-conducive desks and her attempts to balance his soul, Jo could only imagine that, beneath her fluffy exterior, Moonbeam was the kind of woman who could single-handedly run the state department.
    “He’s a sweet boy.”
    Not the description Jo would have used, but she wasn’t going to argue with the Secretary of State. “Is he in?” Then she realized that the question was much too open-ended for Moonbeam and quickly clarified, “His office. Is he in his office?”
    “He most certainly is. You go right on in.” Moonbeam pushed a (round—no angles) button on her desk and the mahogany doors swung open. Jo strode toward Wyatt’s inner sanctum, debating with herself whether the free-spirit secretary was the reason Wyatt had been open-minded enough to call Karmic or the reason he was so closed-minded in the first place.
     

Chapter Seven: Tea with Mussolini
     
    Wyatt sat behind his desk, his face raw and chapped after scrubbing the top two layers of skin off in an attempt to disprove the permanent label on the marker. He hadn’t had much success. There were still faint grey lines on his face in a Groucho Marx configuration.
    He knew he looked ridiculous, so he was duly impressed when Jo’s lips didn’t even twitch as she dropped into the chair facing his desk and took in his experimental artwork. He would have attributed her lack of reaction to professionalism, if not for the fact that she was still sporting black jeans and combat boots. Yesterday’s tank top had been replaced with a Black Sabbath T-shirt that looked like it had been painted on. He could actually see the lace pattern on her bra through the fabric. Not that he was looking. He certainly wasn’t staring hard enough to cross his eyes and drooling like a feeble-minded idiot, though the urge to do so was nearly overwhelming.
    “Mr. Haines?”
    Okay, so he was staring and his eyes were crossed, but there was no drool. He was willing to accept small victories today. “Ms. Banks. Thank you for coming so quickly.”
    She arched one eyebrow suggestively and Wyatt felt blood rushing south away from his brain. Dear God. He had not meant it like that.
    Wyatt cleared his throat, trying to kick-start his brain and get back in control of the situation. If he had ever been in control. He thought he had. At one point. He vaguely remembered what control felt like.
    “I fell asleep and drew on my face,” he blurted out uncontrollably.
    A ghost of a smile flirted around Jo’s mouth, vanishing so quickly he wondered if he had imagined the crack in her expressionless calm. “The ghosts inhabiting your body are children. If the Episodes, as you called them, are anything to go by, they are children who are very adept at pranks. We should have expected them to make their presence known in this way as soon as you relinquished conscious control of your body.”
    “ We didn’t expect any such thing,” Wyatt growled, his tenuous control of his temper going the way all of his control had gone. “ We didn’t expect anything to happen when we went to sleep, because we did not believe that we were haunted.”
    “But you do now, huh? Persuasive little buggers, aren’t they?”
    “Ms. Banks.”
    “Mr. Haines,” she mimicked his somber tone, but under hers was a layer of amusement that he couldn’t begin to feel.
    “Jo,” he said her name on a plea, knowing he sounded weak and pathetic and for once in