Read Happy Medium: (Intermix) for Free Online Page B

up that extra money from the television show.
    Rosie narrowed her eyes. “Do you need money?”
    “No,” he said flatly. “I’m fine.”
    “But it sounds like you might have some trouble down the line.”
    “Trust me, sis, I’m okay.” He managed a tight smile. “You’ll have to come over and check out the place.”
Preferably not during the séance.
    His sister gave him a long look, the same kind of look she’d given him when she was trying to determine whether he’d beheaded her Barbie. He had, of course. But he was hoping his lying skills had improved since then.
    “Okay, Raymundo, I’ll let it go for now. Provided you come over regularly to do your laundry and have dinner.”
    “A pleasure.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Gotta get back to pulling up carpet. Thanks for the latte.”
    “Any time.”
    But he had the uncomfortable sense of Rosie’s gaze following him out the door as he headed for the street.
    ***
    The planning sessions with Gabrielle were always the worst part of the show in Emma’s opinion. Gabrielle acknowledged the importance of planning—at least for everybody else who worked on the show. But she didn’t entirely believe in it, no matter what she said. She believed in the importance of impulse. Namely, hers.
    “We need to do a rehearsal at the Ramos house,” Emma repeated. “To make sure it’s going to work for a séance.”
    Gabrielle yawned. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. It has the right aura. We can just do a quick run-through on the day we film. We don’t even have any background on the place yet so I don’t know what spirits to look for.”
    Emma gritted her teeth. “I’ll do the background research this week. But we don’t yet know how well the rooms will work for what we’re planning. We can do a quick walk-through this evening before you go back to Houston. We don’t want something like the problems we had in Tulsa.”
    Tulsa had become a kind of benchmark in screwups for
American Medium.
Gabrielle hadn’t bothered to inspect the house or to rehearse the séance. The resulting debacle, in which the home owner had loudly proclaimed that her home wasn’t haunted and that Gabrielle’s instruments were junk, had never been broadcast, but the scene had somehow made it onto YouTube for a few days. Mentioning Tulsa usually pulled Gabrielle back into line.
    Now she gave Emma a sulky look, pushing her blonde curls away from her face. “All right, but I’m not going to spend much time on this walk-through. I’m not ready to begin thinking about this place yet.”
    “It’s just to confirm that the house will work. The technical crew will need to look it over, and you’ll want to see how the room looks when it’s set up for a séance.” And probably come up with some changes, if past experience was any guide.
    “All right, all right, I’ll do it this evening.” She waved an impatient hand. “Let’s get this over with and then move on.”
    Emma hadn’t talked to Ray Ramos for a couple of days—not since that really hot encounter in the dining room. When she’d left that night, she’d been torn between wishing she could stick around another ten minutes to see what developed and feeling like she needed to quickly put as much distance between herself and Ramos as possible. She didn’t have sexual encounters with men she hardly knew. Or at least she never had before.
    She paused, taking a deep breath. The very idea that she could have a sexual encounter with someone like Ray Ramos was just this side of laughable. He was somebody who could probably pick up any number of women just by arching an eyebrow. And she was, well, Gabrielle DeVere’s frumpy, still slightly overweight assistant.
    Way, way, way out of his league.
    She dialed Ramos’s number, hoping for voicemail—much easier to just leave a message. But he picked up after a couple of rings. “What’s up?”
    “Hi. It’s Emma Shea.” Her voice sounded annoyingly breathy.
Cut it out. You’re a