Chapter 3
Jamie stood outside Mama Luigi’s and rubbed the crystal in her hand. “Okay, this is it. I hope he showed up.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, which wasn’t a good idea in her clinging tank top.
In a moment of impulse she had put on a melon-colored sleeveless shell, which strained to contain her healthy chest. To make it even worse, there was a flower in the middle of the shirt, and Jamie felt like the petals were serving as directionals to her nipples. She couldn’t begin to imagine why she had thought wearing it was a good idea.
But she had been motivated by the need to feel attractive, to gain Jack’s attention. Allison, resigned to the date, had wanted her to wear an elegant skirt and one-shoulder blouse, but she knew she needed to meet Jack wearing her own clothes, so he would fall in lust with the real her.
She suspected the only thing falling tonight would be her breasts, right out of this shirt. Of course, that would serve her purpose of securing Jack’s attention, though it wasn’t a sure bet that he’d enjoy the view.
Slipping her crystal into her tiny handbag shaped like an alligator, she fluffed her hair and licked her lips. Jeans had seemed appropriate since Allison had told her the restaurant was casual, but now she wondered if it was too late to go home and change.
It was. It would take her an hour to go home and change and come back.
“Don’t let me regret this,” she whispered, and pulled open the door.
He was the first person she saw.
Jack was standing in the waiting area, staring right at the door. Jamie thanked her crystal from the bottom of her melting heart. He was hot, hot, hot.
His short hair was clean cut, not so short as to look military, but not long enough to be trendy. It was the kind of brown that started to lighten and streak in the summer, and now that it was July it looked like caramel. He smiled and started toward her.
Which was a good thing since her legs were incapable of carrying her anymore. She might always have to be sitting down when she saw Jack since she felt in danger of collapsing whenever he was around her.
He was wearing jeans. That hugged in the right places.
And one of those nondescript guy shirts that buttoned up the front, was machine washable, and cost one-fifth what a woman’s shirt did, but still managed to convey style. The navy color caused the blue of his eyes to deepen until they were the shade of a stormy summer sky.
He was just as gorgeous as she remembered. It hadn’t been a trick of the fluorescent subway lighting or the power of suggestion.
“Hi, Jamie. I’m glad you came.” He touched her hand briefly.
“Hi, Jack.” She felt herself grinning like the Greenwich Village idiot.
“They have a table ready for us.” He gestured to the dining room.
“Great.” Concentrating on moving forward in a normal person fashion, Jamie wasn’t ready for Jack’s hand to slide across the small of her back as he guided her.
Only a swift lockdown on her jaw kept her from yelping out loud like a nipped puppy.
The table was in the corner of the semidarkened dining room. It was a casual atmosphere, with stucco walls and rich vibrant paintings in red and mustard yellow. A large planter hid the view of the table next to theirs.
Jack held out her chair, and Jamie sat down in confusion. Men she dated didn’t pull back chairs. Of course, her dates usually had no money to take her out to dinner either.
“Would you like some wine?” Jack leaned against the back of his wrought-iron chair, looking relaxed and comfortable.
In stark contrast, Jamie was thankful she’d worn the sleeveless shirt since anything else would now be sporting massive pit stains, due to the copious sweating she was doing. Maybe Jack was out of her league. He looked a little too…normal. Conservative. Nary a tattoo anywhere that she could see.
“Sure, I’ll have a glass.”
“Red or white?”
She cared not one bit, since she had every intention of guzzling it down in three seconds to steady her nerves. “Red.”
Jack fingered the menu, but didn’t open it. “So, tell me, Jamie The Klutz, where are you from? I can’t place your accent.”
Setting her alligator handbag—shaped like a grinning alligator, not actually made from alligator, because that would be cruel—down on the floor, she smiled at her napkin in relief. She could do small talk. It was just looking at him that was a problem.
“I’m from La Grange, Kentucky. I’ve been in New York eight years. And I thought my accent was gone.”
“It comes and goes. It increases when you’re nervous.”
That got her attention. How could he have noticed that already? How embarrassing. She looked at him, but he was just sitting there, with a casual half smile on his face. “What makes you say that?”
“I noticed it right away yesterday afternoon. You started out with more Kentucky in your voice, then it just faded away as we talked.”
“And now?” Stupid question.
“I’m expecting you to say y’all in a minute or two.” His smile disappeared, his serious gaze turned sensual. “Why are you nervous?”
Fighting the urge to fan herself with her menu, Jamie knew that she could never be anything but honest with Jack. If this—it, destiny, fate, whatever it was—was even going to have a lick of a chance, she needed to tell the plain truth.
“Because…I’m attracted to you.” Lord, she could not believe she had said that out loud. Allison would croak.
But Jack said, “The feeling’s mutual.” And the burn in his eye confirmed it.
The question was, what exactly were they going to do about it?
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know yet.
“How’s your shirt?” she managed to force out, determined to behave like a normal woman and not grab him and make love to him on the table the way she suddenly wanted to.
“It’s in the garbage.” He shrugged with a grin.
“That bad?”
“Yes, but you’ll be happy to know, despite sloshing around the inside of the bag, my grandfather thought the spaghetti was great. He ate it all.”
“It was your grandfather’s dinner?” She struggled not to show exactly how much it pleased her to hear that a man would take food to his grandfather.
“Yep. I bring him dinner in his nursing home every Thursday. He hates eating in their cafeteria.”
Jack spoke casually, like it was no big deal for a man to give up his Thursday after work every week to visit his grandfather and bring him a meal. And maybe it wasn’t a big deal to Jack, maybe he expected that anyone with half a heart would do the same.
But Jamie had seen too much in her line of work not to appreciate the enormity of such a gesture. The world was filled with selfish, cruel people who constantly overshadowed the many others who were living out their lives as good, caring people.
It confirmed what she had sensed the minute she had looked up into Jack’s eyes on the subway.
He was different. Special. Maybe there was more to Beckwith’s fortune than she had thought. Maybe Jack wouldn’t just touch her body and all its one thousand parts, but her soul, too. Maybe there was such a thing as Mr. Right and she had crashed into him.
She felt a cheesy grin spread across her face. Lordy, she was in trouble.
Jamie smiled at him in a way that made Jack’s insides twist like taffy. She looked so soft and warm and lush. Between yesterday’s floral dress and the clinging sleeveless shirt she was wearing now, he suspected he would never be able to look at another flower again without thinking of Jamie’s breasts.
That wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Jamie’s breasts were a gift to man. A total sexual feast for the eyes.
And his eyes were directly connected to his dick, which was enjoying the view. Jack coughed and tried to focus on her words.
While he was entertaining fantasies of licking her nipples, she was talking about his grandfather.
“That’s so nice of you.
I’m sure he likes the company.”
Her green eyes had gone round, her shoulders dropping down into a more relaxed position. He was really having trouble concentrating on their conversation. All he could think about was her, all curvy and sweet, and how he had the sudden overwhelming urge to take her home and keep her there.
Forget Hathaway and illegal day trading. The only thing that seemed important was getting to know Jamie Peters. All of her. Of course, he couldn’t forget anything about the funding request. Because he knew who she was, but she didn’t have the same advantage.
Jack should tell her the truth. Let her come around to it on her own through conversation. Like it was an accident that they’d met. Like he wasn’t a total freak weirdo who had followed her. He would just act surprised when she mentioned who her roommate was.
“Pops is a real character. He’s seen it all, and he gives good advice. Taught me all I know, really.”
Jamie nodded. “I have a granny like that back in Kentucky. She’s never been more than fifty miles from her house, but she knows everything.”
As the waiter brought their wine and took their orders, he wondered why Jamie didn’t look out of place in Manhattan. She should, with her country voice that came and went and her doe-eyed innocent looks. But she also looked earthy and new age, and that certainly blended with New York.
She did not look like the kind of woman who would be friends with his sister. Caroline was meticulous, driven, polished, a little uptight. She had Darien, Connecticut, written all over her, whereas Jamie screamed twenty-first century hippie.
Jack wasn’t sure what was written all over him. Right now probably something like undersexed workaholic looking for woman to share friendship, possibly more. A lot more.
“So, ah, what do you do, Jamie?” Lead her around to it. Yeah, he was slick.
“I’m a social worker.”
Well, that just got him nowhere. Which was a good thing, because rationally, he knew he couldn’t tell her about the potential fraud. But the corner he was backed into wasn’t feeling very comfortable. “Wow, that’s tough work.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not. It’s wonderful. The pay is lousy of course, but what I do has a real impact on people’s lives. That matters to me.”
He could see that it did. Sincerity shone in her eyes. His heart turned over like an engine roaring to life. This was a new feeling, a strange, exciting, vulnerable sort of feeling.
When he’d broken up with his last girlfriend, Meredith, after hearing her tell a friend Jack’s best quality was his money, he hadn’t thought he would ever feel eagerness for a new relationship. But it was there, and it wasn’t as terrifying and horrible as he had expected.
It actually felt a lot like when he’d first start investigating a possible business venture. Like it could be lucrative or a disaster, but in the beginning there was cautious optimism, excitement.
“Do you work with children, or teens?”
“Everyone.” She waved her hand in an all-encompassing gesture. “We try to salvage families if we can. I work with teen mothers a lot, helping them learn how to raise their children. They love their kids, they’re just lacking in basic skills.”
Her voice grew animated as she talked, and he nodded to show his interest. “I can understand that.”
She went on. “We had this mother, she was only fifteen, and her baby was born with colic. The baby cried all the time, and the mother was really on the edge. She didn’t know what to do with the baby, and she hadn’t bonded with her.”
Jamie took a sip of her wine. “After all, it’s kind of hard to fall instantly in love with a creature that does nothing but squall at you no matter what you do. We were afraid she was going to eventually lose it—shake the baby, or leave her home alone or something.”
“So what did you do?” Jack watched her run her finger around the rim of her wineglass, her thin, creamy fingers long and unfettered by fake nails or polish.
“We sent her and the baby to baby massage classes. They taught her how to touch and rub the baby to soothe her and ease her crying. After a month of those classes, the baby had stopped crying, and that mother was glowing with love for her baby.”
She stopped and gave him a rueful grin. “I’m running on and on, aren’t I?”
“No,” he protested immediately. He didn’t want her to stop talking. “We’re having a conversation. You’re talking and I’m listening.”
Jack leaned forward and said, “I want to hear what you have to say. And I had no idea that social work was so creative. We, the general public, have this idea that all you do is take kids away from parents who abuse them, then stick them with foster families that are equally as bad.”
“It’s so much more complicated than that.”
“I can see that it is.”
Sitting on the board of directors for the Hathaway Foundation and writing a check was nowhere near as difficult as what Jamie was doing.
She was in the trenches.
This sweet, smiling woman who looked like she wouldn’t swat a fly no doubt saw all manner of horrific things in her job. Obviously there was a layer of toughness to her to deal with that day in, day out. Yet he couldn’t find it. Not yet anyway. There was nothing but warmth and compassion.
“Right now I’m working mostly with a reentry employment program. We train ex-prisoners to fill out job applications, make a résumé, how to handle tough interview questions about their conviction, and guide them to jobs that can utilize their skills.”
“You work with prisoners?” That alarmed him a little.
“Ex-prisoners. It’s an important program because a lot of these men only have a window of a few weeks to get their lives back on track before passing bad checks starts to seem like a good idea. We support them so they won’t commit a crime out of desperation.”
Jack wasn’t sure desperation was what lead men to commit crimes. He thought it was probably greed. He’d seen plenty of that in the corporate world. “So you teach them how to get a job?” The thought of Jamie, who looked like a poster for naïve white girl, working with prisoners made him a little nervous. A lot nervous.
“Yes. And sometimes we let them work around the office, answer the phones, do data entry, to practice their office and people skills.”
There was his potential thief. And it was worse than he’d thought. This could be a criminal straight out of prison who wouldn’t hesitate to use violence if confronted. Jack did not like the way this sounded at all.
“What do you do, Jack?”
He froze with his wineglass at his lips. “Uh.” Truth or evasion?
There was her safety.
And there was his comfort in not having to wear the mantle of millionaire for one night.
If Jamie could like him, just the way he was with no knowledge of his money, then expanding on the truth later wouldn’t matter in the least. Probably.
“I’m between careers right now. My last job was very stressful, and I’m looking for something that will allow me to actually have a life outside the office.”
The minute the words were out of his mouth, he wanted to groan aloud at his idiocy. What woman wanted to date a man who was unemployed?
In striving to hide his wealth, he had made himself out to be a loafer. That was sexy. Not.
But Jamie only nodded. “It’s important to be happy with what you’re doing. No one should be a slave to the workplace.”
“Exactly.” He beamed at her. That was exactly why he had walked away from the firm after cashing in his stocks. He had felt as though he lived and breathed nothing but work every minute of every day. He had felt strangled and old at twenty-nine. Restless. Ready for the next challenge.
Most people had considered him nothing short of crazy for quitting his high-paying job, but Jamie seemed to understand. She didn’t care about his money, or lack thereof.
God, she was damn near perfect.
He was almost perfect. The thought hit Jamie like her latest r
ent increase had, leaving her feeling stunned and incapable of speech.
Of course, no one was perfect. After all, he had admitted to liking action movies as they had talked over their dinners. And horror of all horrors, he didn’t see the charm in her favorite flick, Gone With The Wind.
But everything else seemed to yell and scream and shout that this man was perfect for her.
He was kind, considerate, he listened to her talk, and he had insisted on paying for dinner, despite the fact that he had admitted he was between jobs. She felt extremely guilty that her calamari and wine had cost forty-five dollars. Had she known he intended to pay, she would have ordered a salad and water.
But he hadn’t blinked at the bill, had paid it with cash while telling her about playing Little League as a kid. Unless he was doing something illegal, he had obviously planned to quit his job with a hunk of money set aside.
Now as they walked down Broadway, his hand rested across the small of her back, guiding her, protecting her from the crowd. It felt right. Tingling.
There was nothing awkward or uncomfortable about being with Jack.
Jamie breathed in the scents of fried food and exhaust fumes that permeated the summer air and sighed with contentment. Tourists were rushing along to catch shows at various theaters, and the crowd surged across the intersection, daring the taxis to hit them as they ignored the Don’t Walk sign.
It felt as though they, too, were careening forward with the speed of a cab, eye on a future fare.
“I never come to Times Square,” she said.
“Most New Yorkers don’t.” Jack stopped walking in front of a store and looked down at her, his blue eyes dark. “It’s a tourist trap.”
His words were absent, spoken in a whisper, but his eyes were focused and intense, bearing down on her. He was leaning, bending, right there on the sidewalk while they were jostled by people on either side of them.
“Jack?” Jamie fought to steady her breathing. This was it. Right here, right now, he was going to kiss her.
And she had no ability to stop him. She wanted it. Bad. In a way that made her tilt her head back, slide her mouth open, and wait.
Unwrapped Bundle with You Don't Know Jack & Bad Boys in Kilts Page 30