Bartholomew 02 - How to Marry a Ghost by Hope McIntyre Read Free Book Online Page A

And even though she is tiny, with dainty feet and hands, she is also enormous, like a pretty little hippo in sugary camouflage. But she is so comfortable with her bulk that she almost makes me want to gain thirty pounds.
    And she is the only person, apart from Tommy, who under-

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    stands that I’m neurotic and antisocial and that I prefer to live vicariously through other people, which is why ghostwriting is so perfect for me. But ever since Bettina had been on her books, I’d had the sense that she wasn’t quite as there for me as she had once been.
    “What’s Bettina doing?” she echoed, lifting a little bottle of Evian to her rosebud lips and taking a tiny sip. “Nothing, dear.
    She’s just finished the newscaster book and she’s currently in New York for an interview. She’s been there awhile actually, two or three weeks. Went there for a holiday and then this job came up.”
    “Genevieve, I want you to put me up for it too,” I said.
    She blinked in surprise and immediately protested. “You don’t even know what it is. And it’s not right for you, Lee. Anyway, as I just said, it’s in New York.”
    “What’s that got to do with it?” I was feeling very tetchy. “I know New York. I’m going there next week anyway because my mother lives there now and she’s getting—” I let it dangle because I couldn’t say she was getting married and I still hadn’t quite got to grips with the partnership affirmation thing. “I could stay with her.” I made eye contact with Genevieve and held it until she looked away. “So who is it?”
    She shrugged. “Shotgun Marriott. Not your thing at all.”
    “Why should it be Bettina’s thing and not mine?” I leaned forward to stare in outrage at Genevieve across her desk. “Well?” I said when she didn’t reply.
    “Oh all right,” she said finally, “it might be something for you but Bettina does have a history with this guy.”
    “She knows him?”
    “Not exactly. When I first took her on as a client she told me the one person whose book she wanted to ghost was Shotgun Marriott’s. She said she’d tried to nail him—her words—once

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    before a few years ago but he wasn’t interested in doing a book.
    She said she was alerted to the idea of doing his story when she was ghosting the tell-all book by Patsy White, Smokey White’s wife, remember?”
    I nodded. Smokey White, another rock legend, had made the mistake of dumping his wife who had promptly dished the considerable dirt on their marriage to Bettina.
    “Well, Patsy had been on the road with Shotgun and his wife and she hinted to Bettina that there was a story to tell about the Marriott marriage.”
    “So what happened?”
    “Nothing as far as I know. Bettina said she did some digging around at the time but since neither Shotgun nor his ex-wife would talk to her, she didn’t get very far. So it’s understandable that when a rumor started to spread about a month ago that Shotgun wanted to do a book, she was determined to be first in line to ghost it. She said she was going to America on vacation but I shouldn’t be surprised if she went there just to be strategi-cally positioned geographically when he was ready to start interviewing.”
    “But she hasn’t actually got the job yet?”
    “Well, I haven’t heard anything,” Genevieve conceded.
    Well, that was it! I’d been dithering at the thought of attend-ing my mother’s ceremony, telling myself I shouldn’t go out of some kind of deep-rooted loyalty to my father, but the next day I called my mother and told her I was on my way.
    But now, as I wandered about the mausoleum a couple of days after my mother’s ceremony, dwelling on the drama of not one but two bodies being found with a connection to Shotgun Marriott and fretting about the fact that I still hadn’t had a summons for an interview with him, I began to give up hope. Bettina had got there ahead of me and yet again she had