Well, she scored points for honesty.
I turned onto a side street, looking for a parking place.
Candy took my silence for permission to keep talking. “Since finding the lost Etruscan horde, Jack Knight-Snow has become the internet’s favorite mystery man.”
Didn’t I know it.
She kept going. “As the art dealers representing Mr. Knight-Snow’s finds, D’Angelo Enterprises surely has contact with him.” Her voice lowered into that of-course-you-can-tell-me tone of all sorority girls. Another manipulative weapon. “Is he as hot as the photo suggests?”
No need to clarifywhichphoto she was referring to.
I spotted a parking place and carefully pulled in, killing the engine.
Candy was just warming up, unfortunately. “Does Jack Knight-Snow really look like a young Harrison Ford? I mean that photo! It’s . . . wow. Any woman with a pulse is in love with him. I’ve got this whole bit about how he’s the real Indiana Jones. I just need some official comment to round it out. Would you be willing to be interviewed? Or, at least, give me a quote?”
I couldn’t believe she expected me to respond to that.
Okay. Sure.
Yes, Jack Knight-Snow did bear an uncanny resemblance to a young Harrison Ford, complete with chiseled jaw, wavy hair, charming smile and never-ending snark.
Yes, he was still a ghost, unbeknownst to Ms. White and the rest of the world.
And, yes, he had recently become one of the most celebrated (or wasnotoriousa better descriptor?) treasure hunters in the world. The Indiana Jones comparison was not completely out of line, as much as it pained me to admit it.
Jack had moved in with Tennyson last July and had spent the past year chasing his sunken Etruscan treasure. Jack knew where the ship went down, off the coast of Sardinia near the town of Sassari. There simply had been no way to raise the ship in 1818.
Enter the twenty-first century. Jack, along with Tennyson, located the sunken ship. Being a ghost did come in handy when needing to explore the ocean floor for days on end.
Not to go into all the legal details, the ship was in international waters and, as the original discovery came from historical D’Angelo lands, Tennyson was perfectly within his rights to raise the ship once he got the proper permits. After forging a partnership with Roberto Moretti—an Etruscan expert and archaeologist who knew all about Jack and my brothers’ special abilities—they excavated the site.
Ten months of underwater archeology and forty million euros worth of treasure later, the world was clamoring to know more about the Sassari Horde and this dashing adventurer with the same name as the long-dead John Knight-Snow, Lord Knight.
Worse, several weeks ago an over-eager grad student had captured a shadowy photo of Jack.
Thankfully, Jack didn’t look like a ghost in the image.
But—and here I will be honest—Jackdidlook insanely hot. Dark and mysterious, his blue eyes and tousled hair popping off the dark background, teal satin waistcoat over an old-fashioned shirt loose at the throat, eyes dancing with mischief and humor. The whole thing was a cross betweenPirates of the CaribbeanandLord of the Rings. Basically, Jack looked like a gentleman who had just rolled out of a velvet-draped, four-poster canopy bed after a night of debauchery.
To say the internet blew up over the photo would be to put it mildly. And now, the entire world (or at least the female half of it) could not get enough of Jack Knight-Snow.
Sigh.
Candy was still on the phone.
“I have no comment, Candy. Though I work with Mr. Knight-Snow on the sale of antiquities, he is a very private man which means I rarely speak with him. I’ve only seen him a handful of times over the past year.” That was the absolute truth. “I will, however, pass along to him that you called—”
“Wait! Could you at least tell me if he is as sexy in person as he is in the photo? Ya know, just woman-to-woman?”
Grrrr.
I couldn’t feed the paparazzi mill on this one. One, my brothers would never let me live it down and two . . . my brothers would never let me live it down.
“I suppose I would say, based on the last time I saw him, Jack appears in person just as he looks in the photo.” I carefully hedged.
“Thank you, Ms. D’Angelo.”
Click.
