AMAGANSETT, N.Y. (AP) – They’re here, there and everywhere: Paul McCartney and his latest rumored love interest.

The 65-year-old ex-Beatle and a New Jersey trucking heiress (no, she’s not a Soprano) were spotted last weekend in the tony Hamptons at a sushi restaurant, a movie theater and a lingerie shop. On Wednesday, pictures of the pair smooching and strolling along the beach turned up in the tabloids, alongside headlines like “TRYST AND SHOUT.”

The shot of McCartney kissing Nancy Shevell in the front seat of his truck was published first by The Sun of London, but quickly made its way across the pond to the Daily News, the New York Post and Newsday.

Paparazzi outside Shevell’s Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan snapped her picture as she left home Wednesday morning, her anonymity swept away by a burst of 21st-century Beatlemania.

Shevell, 47 and a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, is McCartney’s latest apparent flame since his marriage to Heather Mills disintegrated last year. The rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Famer was previously spotted with high-profile dates Renee Zellweger, Christie Brinkley and Rosanna Arquette.

McCartney, whose songs as a Beatle and a solo act sold millions of records worldwide, opted to keep his mouth closed Wednesday about the tab two.

“We don’t comment, as a policy, on private or business affairs,” said McCartney’s spokesman, Paul Freundlich.

Out in the Hamptons, where the couple did their bonding, local merchants were equally tight-lipped about McCartney. The owner of a British pub where the Liverpudlian occasionally stops for a drink declined to comment, as did workers at an assortment of local businesses: a pharmacy, a jewelry store, a gourmet deli.

Although the streets were fairly empty on a brisk November morning, nobody acknowledged seeing the instantly recognizable McCartney and Shevell in tandem – or even separately. They instead observed the unwritten local rule that loose lips sink businesses in this summer haven for bold-faced names like Steven Spielberg, Jerry Seinfeld, Sean Combs and Gwyneth Paltrow.

“The Hamptons are filled with celebrities,” said Hamptons scene chronicler Steven Gaines, who is also the co-author of “The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of The Beatles.” “This is a community that’s very protective of those who live here.”

McCartney is a veteran of the Hamptons scene, coming out for years with his wife Linda before her 1998 death from breast cancer. Gaines said McCartney prefers to stay after Labor Day, when things are more quiet and private.

“October is Paul’s favorite month,” he said. Or it was, it seems, until this November.

Shevell is estranged from her husband of 23 years, Long Island lawyer and politician Bruce Blakeman. She serves as a vice president for New England Motor Freight, Inc., a New Jersey family business that was linked to the mob back in 1988.

Federal authorities alleged that her father, Mike Shevell, “cultivated a corrupt relationship” with Genovese family soldier Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano and other reputed mobsters.

Provenzano, a former Teamsters leader, has been identified as a prime suspect in the 1975 disappearance of ex-Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. The case against Mike Shevell was settled with no admission of wrongdoing by Shevell, according to a report in the Village Voice.


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