Unwrapped Bundle with You Don't Know Jack & Bad Boys in Kilts

by Erin McCarthy

  “When is the photo shoot?”

  “Eleven,” she answered, topping off her glass again, the golden liquid, sparkling, bubbles dancing.

  Tristan didn’t feel like dancing, he was furious, but he pushed it aside, remaining cool. Giving in to his own emotions wouldn’t help the situation.

  He returned to the body, crouching down to slide an arm under its neck and under its knees. With only a slight grunt, he hefted it up. Thank Lucifer and his many minions, this one was thin. The last one had been a good twenty-five pounds overweight, which hadn’t helped her with Finola’s wrath and ultimately was a large part (no pun intended) of her . . . early retirement.

  “You do realize that gave her less than twenty-four hours to get the material for you, don’t you?” he said, his tone breathy as he struggled to carry the body over to the rug.

  “Well it can’t be impossible. It could have been flown on the Concorde of something.”

  Tristan dropped the body rather unceremoniously onto one side of the carpet. “The Concorde stopped flying about five years ago.”

  “Oh,” Finola sighed, clearly weary of their conversation, “well whatever, she was a terrible assistant.”

  She settled back in her lounger, replacing her mask over her eyes. Tristan arranged the body so the limbs were straight, then he lifted the edge of the carpet and started to ease the carpet and body over, rolling the body up like the filling of a jelly roll. A very complicated, costly jelly roll.

  Finola lifted the edge of her mask and peered at him. “What are you doing?”

  Saving your ass.

  “Playing it safe,” he said, with a grunt, shoving with both arms to finish rolling the carpet. “You should really require height and weight to be included on all your employee résumés.”

  “You are so right,” she agreed, but not for the reason he wanted the measurements on there.

  He rose, running his hands down the front of his Armani trousers, smoothing any wrinkles. Ah, there was an analogy there.

  “I quite like that carpet, you know,” Finola said, but then released her mask back over her eyes.

  Well, at least she accepted that better than he’d expected.

  “I’m going to have to go get one of the moving vans to dispose of this,” he told her.

  She made a noise of acknowledgment, disinterested acknowledgment. But why would she care? Finola just made the messes, he cleaned them up.

  He strode across her office, heading out to get the van and get this done.

  “Wait,” Finola said, sitting up, her voice suddenly panicked, “I don’t have a personal assistant.”

  “No,” Tristan agreed, his voice wry, “this is true.”

  “I need an assistant. I mean, look.” She took off her eye mask and waved it in his direction. “My mask is absolutely cool now. A cool mask is not going to help this wretched headache behind my eyes. I need someone to warm my mask.”

  Tristan fought back the urge to roll his eyes. Instead he walked over the cabinet he had considered using for the body disposal. He opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a thick manila folder. Then he went to Finola and placed it onto her lap.

  “Pick one.”

  She considered the file for a moment, then opened it. She flipped through several of the résumés, scanning them very briefly.

  Finally she sighed, and randomly tugged one out of the dozens. “Hire this one.”

  She held the page out to him without even glancing at the person’s education, abilities, or experience.

  “This could be why your assistants never work out,” he said dryly, but accepted the résumé.

  He raised an eyebrow as he perused the information there, but he walked over to Finola’s desk and picked up her phone. After punching in the numbers, he waited as the phone rang.

  Finally, just when he would have hung up, a woman answered, her voice breathless, and heavily laced with a Southern drawl.

  Tristan cringed. Not a good start. Finola wasn’t fond of the South.

  “Hello,” he glanced back to the page in front of him, “I’m trying to reach Annie—Lou,” Lou? Really? “Riddle.”

  Oh yeah, this was not going to go well.

  The woman on the other end excitedly told him that was she.

  “My name is Tristan McIntyre and I’m calling from HOT! magazine. I’m pleased to tell you that Ms. Finola White had decided to hire you as her personal assistant.”

  Tristan nodded impatiently as Annie Lou thanked him profusely—and lengthily.

  “Great,” he said, finally cutting off her sweet, golly-gee gratitude. “We’ll see you tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock sharp.”

  Annie Lou Riddle was still drawling away as he hung up the phone.

  “Done,” he said.

  “You are the best, Tristan.”

  Yes, he was. But he didn’t say anything, he just left the office. As he strolled past the large, ultra-modern assistant’s desk, he made note to himself that he had to get rid of all of the last assistant’s personal items that were still there.

  Annie Lou Riddle. She had no idea that by accepting this job, she’d just sold her soul to the devil. Literally.

  Annie stared at the receiver still clutched in her hand. The faint dial tone hummed signifying no one was on the other end of the line, but she still didn’t hang up.

  Finola White’s assistant. HOT! magazine. HOT! magazine!

  She managed to pull herself together enough to press the OFF button on the cordless phone and drop it back into the receiver. Then with total abandon, she started to hop and dance around the tiny living room, laughing like a madwoman.

  HOT! magazine! Finola White!

  “Oh my God . . . oh my God,” she repeated over and over, still dancing.

  Only the pounding from the downstairs neighbor on his ceiling, her floor, made her stop her happy dance. She collapsed onto her worn circa 1970s tweed couch.

  YOU DON’T KNOW JACK

  YOU DON’T KNOW JACK

  ERIN McCARTHY

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  YOU DON’T KNOW JACK

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Prologue

  “Ten bucks says he’s not wearing any underwear,” Allison whispered in her ear.

  Tempted to laugh, Jamie Peters turned to her roommate and shushed her. “Don’t disturb his essence, Allison.”

  Beckwith Tripp, ex-junkie and current psychic, was leaning over the coffee table, eyes half closed as he chewed his lower lip, currently sporting Pucker Up Pink lipstick. While his vintage Chanel suit did match the lips to a tee, it was a startling contrast to the very obvious male bulge below his waist.

  So Beckwith was a little on this side of odd. He had the gift. He sensed things and could translate them into remarkably accurate predictions of the future.

  Jamie had been ecstatic when she had stumbled across him while working on one of her many post-prison reentry cases as a social worker, and had seen his talent. Beckwith had been straight for four months, had an apartment in the Bronx, and a booming business telling fortunes.

  She loved the success of helping someone better his life.

  Jamie also loved the thrill of hearing what lay around the corner for her, besides the Village Deli, that is. Hopefully it would involve losing ten pounds—actually twenty—and an unlimited supply of funding for Beechwood, the social services agen
cy where she worked.

  Jamie’s friend, Allison Parker, a nonbeliever in fortunes, karma, healing crystals, or the power of love, was intent on scoffing at everything out of Beckwith’s mouth. She lounged on the sofa next to Jamie, swinging her crossed leg so that her red toenails flashed in her stiletto sandals.

  Caroline Davidson, her cool blond hair swept into a twist, sat across their living room, looking nothing short of horrified. Jamie recognized the expression well, since Caroline wore it every time she popped her head into Jamie’s bedroom and saw the vibrant and cozy warmth of kitsch that Jamie surrounded herself with.

  Mandy Keeling, the fourth resident of their two-bedroom walk-up in Greenwich Village, was on the floor on her knees, across from Beckwith, her brow crinkled in concentration.

  Jamie thought Beckwith’s prediction for Mandy was interesting, a nice hodgepodge of hope, love, and pastries. It was a bit subject to interpretation, but a nice fortune all the same.

  It was Jamie’s turn now.

  Jamie knew Allison was closed to the possibility of anything unscientific. Not Jamie. She wouldn’t hold back. She believed, and she had every intention of letting Beckwith scramble around in the depths of her past, present, and future via her mind, heart, wavelengths, aura—whatever it was called.

  Beckwith smiled at her, adjusting his pearl earring.

  She grinned back at him. “Are you going to do the cards?”

  “Yes, honey, I know you love the cards.” Beckwith drawled his words out slowly as he slapped the deck of tarot cards in front of her. “Cut the deck.”

  Jamie closed her eyes and tried to feel the right place to separate the cards. Nothing. Not an ounce of intuition. She either didn’t have Beckwith’s sensitivity or she was approaching the whole thing wrong. Either way it was cause for a good sigh. She had spent a good many years of her childhood wishing she were psychic or, even better, a witch.

  The only sign she’d ever shown of being a witch was the wart she’d developed on her thumb at age seven.

  Beckwith took the split deck and flipped the first card of the new pile over. “This is an accident card.”

  Now that wasn’t a very promising beginning. She wiped her sweaty palms on her long floral skirt. “What kind of accident?” Maybe she should stop using the food processor to make guacamole.

  “Oh, nothing major.” He waved off her concern. “And I think…” He flipped the next card. “Yep. It has to do with meeting this man.”

  His long pink fingernail tapped the card.

  Jamie’s heart stopped pumping. Well, not really, but it certainly felt like a malfunction. Accidents involving strange men sounded like the contents of a future police report. “What man?”

  “One not like your other men.”

  “You mean he has a job?” Allison said sarcastically.

  Everyone laughed, and Jamie nudged Allison with her knee, but didn’t protest. It was sad but true. She had dated a disproportionately large number of unemployed men. But that was just the way she was, and she couldn’t help herself. She liked to help people, fix them up, send them on—better off than when they’d met her. It was why she was a social worker.

  Still, she defended herself, happy to talk about the irrelevant and avoid a discussion of who the man in the cards was. “Scratch had a job.”

  Caroline raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. “True, after you got it for him. Now he’s a tattoo artist who dumped you the first chance he had and left you with nothing to show for three months of your life.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. Jamie did have a daisy-chain tattoo wrapping around her left ankle compliments of Scratch.

  “Tell me about this guy, Beckwith.” She pressed the tip of her finger to the card before yanking it back. The colorful swirls and rather creepy sticklike figures were starting to weird her out. Maybe the downside to knowing her future was that it might not be good. It might be really horrible and twisted. “Is he going to hurt me?”

  Beckwith waved his hand. “Jesus, no. Holy crap. I didn’t mean that kind of accident, sugar.” He frowned a little. “Damn it, I have to work on my technique or I’ll be sending people screaming out of my shop.”

  No kidding. Jamie sagged in relief. “Well, then who is he?”

  Beckwith smiled slyly. He loved moments like this, she knew. He rubbed his five-o’clock shadow and drew out the suspense. “He will touch your soul like no other has,” he declared.

  Jamie sighed, a flush creeping out over her face in a warm rush. That sounded simply luscious. Touching her soul. In the past no man had ever even seen her soul, let alone had contact with it.

  It had been nine months since Scratch had dumped her. Having an affair certainly sounded like a good plan to her. She’d never done that, had a hot and heavy short-term relationship. But passionate, steamy sex to warm up cold winter nights…now her skirt was as hot as her face. The man had definitely better show himself soon.

  “Dang, I like the sound of that. When will I meet him? Where? What does he look like?”

  “Soon. On something moving, some sort of minor accident. And he is tall, light brown hair, carrying…food. Or maybe liquid. Something edible, at any rate.”

  “The market,” Mandy said in her clipped British accent. “Pushing the buggy.”

  “Or he could be a pizza delivery man.”

  Her three friends launched into a heated discussion about the meaning of Beckwith’s words, but Jamie didn’t participate, startled by the serious expression on his face.

  Beckwith was watching her, his brown eyes probing. “Jamie, this man doesn’t need mothering. He doesn’t need fixing. He’s your destiny, your soul mate.”

  “What? What do you mean?” Jamie wrapped a finger around one of her many unruly curls and tugged her hair in distraction. That almost sounded like an insult. Like she dated men to fulfill some kind of maternal need.

  “You are one of the sweetest women I know, but you date for charity. You’re never going to find a man to marry if you don’t steer clear of these fucking fixer-uppers you keep going for.”

  Allison cleared her throat.

  Jamie felt a pain somewhere in her chest. She didn’t need a man in her life, not permanently anyway. Not to marry. That wasn’t in the cards for her, she was positive, no matter what Beckwith saw or said. She’d learned a long time ago that the kind of men who were attracted to her did not stick around to pick out china patterns.

  It didn’t matter, because her mother had taught her to be self-reliant. Heck, her mother had taught her to live off of no money and nothing more than a plot of land and your own hands. At eighteen Jamie had left her home in rural Kentucky for New York and had been happily independent ever since.

  And she got more fulfillment on the job than she had ever expected from helping others. That was her destiny, to continue in the career she loved, no matter what Beckwith or her granny back in Kentucky said about snagging a man.

  Marriage wasn’t about snagging or trapping or coercing a man into spending his life with her. She didn’t want that, never had. “I don’t regret dating the men I have. And I’m not looking for a man to marry.”

  Fanning herself a little, she shifted on the couch and met Beckwith’s knowing gaze. He had a disturbing, penetrating stare that seemed to reach inside her, scrape off the layers, and find the secrets of her heart.

  Beckwith took her hand and squeezed. “He won’t leave you, baby doll. This one isn’t like your daddy.”

  That shocked her spit dry. She swallowed hard, trying to work up some moisture so she didn’t choke. Not many people knew about her father. “My self-esteem is fine, Beckwith. I don’t have a daddy complex.”

  He didn’t let go of her hand, but he just shrugged, as if it was unimportant. “This man will make you happy.”

  “I already am happy.”

  Beckwith grinned. “More happy. Giddy happy. The kind of happy that makes everyone around you gag.”

  Allison said wryly, “It’s working already. I fe
el sick. I would love a crack at Mr. Right, and all I get is the nineteen-year-old intern at the radio station coming on to me.”

  The disturbing, raw thoughts of her father dissipated, and Jamie laughed, grateful that Allison could turn anything into sarcastic humor. “Maybe I can pass my destiny on to you when he shows up, Allison.”

  Beckwith gasped in horror. “Bite your tongue and break your nails! You can’t do that.”

  Allison grinned. “So, Jamie, do you want to go to the grocery with me and see who’s squeezing the melons? Maybe you have a major falling-melon accident, suffer amnesia from a conk on the head, and fall in love with your doctor.”

  There was an image. “Thanks, I’ll pass.” She didn’t want to meet the man of her dreams in the grocery store. In fact, she didn’t want to meet him at all. She was just a little bit worried that a soul mate was more than she could handle.

  She knew what to do with men who mooched and made promises they couldn’t possibly keep. With them, she never made the mistake of falling in love. Mr. Right could be a whole other story, and she was sure it wouldn’t have a happy ending.

  Mandy shook her head. “I don’t think you’re going to meet him at the grocery. I think you bump into him at Caro’s wedding reception in July, doing the funky chicken. See there? Moving food.”

  Beckwith ignored the bantering. “Don’t turn your back on him, honey. Embrace it. It’s meant to be, even if a dishonest act will bring him to you.”

  Now, that sounded promising. Not. If there was one thing Jamie didn’t understand or tolerate, it was lying.

  “Sugar, there is no reason to be afraid if you meet him dancing at a wedding or otherwise.”

  Easy for Beckwith to say. He wasn’t the one who had his future staring him straight in the face, making him question what he wanted, and wondering why he had ever asked.