which would be worse. Even though he’d never actually met her, she was his sister Caroline’s good friend, roommate, forthcoming bridesmaid. He was concerned for her safety. It was the right thing to do. Motive good and pure.
That didn’t make him feel any less of a jackass, though.
And it was starting to occur to him that maybe he had too much time on his hands since retiring, if discovering illegal day trading activity in a social services agency got him this excited.
Deciding to switch it up a bit, he got on the train first, so maybe she would think it was a coincidence that he’d been following her for three blocks. The bag of food in his hand was a decent alibi, too. Hell, he’d needed some kind of reason to be hanging around outside her office for two hours.
His cousin Steve had warned him this was a stupid idea, and Jack was inclined to agree with him now as he held on to a pole with one hand and turned to face out. The doors were about to close, and Jamie wasn’t even on the train yet. She was still digging in her suitcase of a purse. Christ, she was going to miss it altogether. Maybe he should get back off.
Or maybe he should go home and rearrange his DVDs alphabetically, which was probably a smarter use of his time.
But after depositing her phone back in her purse, Jamie suddenly realized the doors were closing, and she went into action, skidding through sideways, bracelets jangling and hair bouncing. She was about to collide with a rather hard looking ex-hippie type in dirty jeans, tattoos up and down his arms.
Jack quickly shifted in between them and took the impact of Jamie slamming into his chest.
His pasta box burst inside the brown bag, leaking oil.
Oh, yeah. This had been a stupid idea.
Because when she looked up at him, horror stamped on her face, Jack felt like someone had grabbed his nuts and given them a good twist.
Surprise, surprise. Jamie Peters was gorgeous.
Jamie shifted her large duffel bag that served as part purse, part file folder for her cases and waited for the train as she tried to decipher what Beckwith was saying. He had called her on her cell, sounding frantic, and in three minutes solid the only thing she’d managed to understand was that it wasn’t a life-threatening emergency.
“Why do I need to check my make-up, Beck?” It was the end of the workday in July. The little make-up she’d started the day with had probably slid off hours ago.
“Because it’s now! Or like really soon, anyway. I was at the handbag sale at Saks—got the cutest little Kate Spade—anyway, it just hit me, right there, at the counter. You’re going to meet him today.”
“Him?” Jamie repeated, this call finally starting to make sense. She had a pretty good idea of where Beckwith was going with this. The tarot card prediction. Intrigued—no, make that freaked out—she stopped trying to shove her subway swipe card in her bag.
“It’s been five months since your prediction, and so far, nothing.” Thank goodness. The problem with believing in Beckwith’s psychic ability was now that he had predicted something she’d really rather he hadn’t, she was stuck waiting for it to happen.
Why couldn’t she be a total skeptic like Allison?
At first Jamie had been seriously on the lookout for Mr. Right, the dishonest dream man. She had walked cautiously past the melons in the grocery store and had scrutinized the deliveryman carefully when she’d ordered a veggie pizza twice. She’d even taken to using the stairs at work instead of the elevator like she normally did since movement had been integral in Beckwith’s prediction.
Nothing. No scary accidents with men fated to make her happy. But Jamie was optimistic by nature. It served her well in social work. She had figured the man Beckwith had described would show up eventually, which did not thrill her in the least.
Not only was it a little unnerving to imagine accidents around every corner, but she was absolutely certain she had no clue how to handle a man whose personal assets added up to more than his T-shirt collection and a carton of Marlboro Reds. Since the thought of both breaking her leg and meeting a man who wore a suit or something crazy like that gave her cold sweats, she had pushed the prediction to a back corner of her mind.
It was going to happen sooner or later, she was convinced, but if that time was now, why couldn’t she be looking cuter? As it was, she probably resembled a Brillo pad with eyes.
“There’s no time frame on destiny,” Beckwith said with great dignity.
Nor was destiny something she sat around and thought about on a regular basis. It certainly hadn’t been in her thoughts that day at all. And at the moment she just wanted to get home and pull a pint of ice cream out of the freezer and inhale it. Then she could meet the man of her dreams. After she’d gained five pounds from the mint chocolate chip. Shoot, that would make a bad situation worse. If her fated soul mate saw her and ran screaming, she would be humiliated on top of everything else. Maybe she should skip the ice cream and have a salad with low-cal dressing.
“I’m on my way home, you know. And I wasn’t planning to do anything tonight but paint my toenails, so I don’t see how I could meet anyone. Maybe the handbags interfered with your radar. Maybe I see him tomorrow.” That would be better anyway.
Digging through her purse to put her swipe card away, she sensed movement and realized everyone around her was surging forward.
Dang it. The train was here, and she would be last one on. There was nothing worse than folding yourself into a full subway car and sharing your personal space with approximately thirty people of various age and odor.
“Gotta go, Beckwith! I’ll call you later, sweetie.”
Running as fast as wedge sandals would allow her, she launched herself through the doors as they began to close and grabbed for the nearest available surface to hold on to.
Not fast enough. The car moved again with a frantic lurch, and Jamie went stumbling forward, her handbag clipping the woman in the seat to her right.
“Watch it,” the woman said.
But Jamie couldn’t apologize. She couldn’t speak.
Because the man she had collided with in her forward motion was him.
Him of the tarot cards. Him of the light brown hair, the minor accident…She looked at his chest. And the food.
Now crushed against him in a brown bag that was leaking some kind of oily sauce from multiple directions.
“Oh,” she said. Beckwith had been so completely right. It was disarming, unsettling, weird, not as bad as she’d thought. It even felt a little…wonderful.
His hand was on her arm, gripping it firmly to keep her steady.
It was a strong hand. A warm hand.
Oh, my. Jamie stared up at him and smiled in spite of herself. “I’m sorry,” she ventured, not exactly sure what she should say to the man of her destiny.
He smiled back, showing white teeth in a somewhat crooked grin. “I’ll be alright, but I don’t think my shirt will ever recover.”
When
