A séance gone wildly wrong leaves hotelier Angela Georgenes sharing her body with a randy Victorian ghost. The ghost, Minerva, needs to tell Angela about a threat to the hotel…but she can only communicate when Angela’s on the verge of orgasm.
Talk about awkward.
Both lust after new handyman Tyler Woodruff. A knight in a shining pickup—or a thief after treasure allegedly hidden in the hotel? Although distracted by Angela’s wicked imagination and uninhibited bedroom antics, he shies away from a deeper commitment as much as she does.
But only by Angela and Tyler admitting their true feelings can Minerva reveal the nature of the treasure—and the real threat.
Angela balanced on the rickety ladder and prayed she wouldn’t fall.
The ladder wasn’t actually rickety. It wasn’t exactly new, and it wasn’t fancy, but it wasn’t old. But it did wobble a teeny bit. And she hated heights, even just ladder heights, and she couldn’t shake the nagging sense that the ladder was about to collapse under her, or topple sideways and land her in a rosebush with a broken arm and a disfiguring gash across her cheek from a thorn.
The chill wind blowing in off the ocean, numbing her fingers, was no help at all.
Still, as she drove the nail cleanly into the wood with a single hammer blow, reinforcing the butter-yellow shingle that had come loose in the recent winds, she couldn’t help but feel a level of contentment, too. Below her, the blustery breeze goosed the hotel’s sign, causing it to swing back and forth on its chains.
ANGELIKA
READ MOREIt still gave her a thrill of pride every time she saw it, thinking about the hard work she and Kari had put into restoring the place and making it into a swank spa and artists’ retreat. Last year, their first, had been a bated-breath affair, but they’d gotten a good write-up in several magazines—from the LA Times to Poets and Writers—and taken off. Some solid Yelp reviews had boosted the signal. They hadn’t turned much of a profit last year, but they’d broken even, which was stellar for a new small business. Now they were entering their second year, coming off the post-Valentine’s Day lull with weekends, and many of the weeks, booked solid for the first six weeks of the summer.
Which was good and bad, because while the taste of success was thrilling, she and Kari were scrambling to make sure Angelika was ready for the onslaught—on a budget for which “tight” would be a compliment. All those bookings were great, but until the guests actually showed up, the hotel was strapped for ready cash.
With the shingle firmly attached to the house again, she could get off this Ladder of Certain Doom. Her stomach twisted. She had to climb down. She had to move her feet from her relatively safe, stable position.
The face-eating thorns lurked below, waiting for her to slip.
She eased one foot a millimeter off the rung.
“I don’t suppose you need any help up there?”
The voice, deep in timbre and unabashedly male, startled her. Gripping the ladder with both hands, she found the next rung with her seeking toes. Only then did she dare to look down.
Her stomach lurched for a different reason. The man down there was gorgeous.
His dark blond hair was on the long side—a style Angela always appreciated, because it gave a girl more to grab hold of during sex. Blue eyes, as near as she could tell from here, a rough five o’clock shadow, and an easy smile. Possibly even a dimple.
Hot, hot, hot.
She took a deep breath. “Nope, I’m fine. What can I do for you? Looking for a room?”
“Actually, I’m here about the handyman job you advertised.” He graced her with a slow, easy smile. “Although it looks like you’re doing just fine on your own.”
Somehow, he made that sound dirty. If she wasn’t mistaken, those heavy-lidded eyes were appraising her ass.
She used that thought and his voice to distract her, and made it down the ladder without becoming intimate with the rosebush.
He had a very nice voice.
She gave a small, silent prayer when her feet hit the ground, then turned to face Mr. Gorgeous, their potential savior.
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