Sudden Pleasures (2 page)

“Nina, come and look,” she called out, and her assistant hurried in.

“God, it’s beautiful!” Nina said. “She’s going to love it, but I wonder if he knows it will be Christmas before she can wear it. I mean, it isn’t something you put on when you’re nursing. Breast milk would really stain such delicate silk, and she’ll nurse exclusively for six months, like they all do now.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Ashley said softly. “And he thought of it. Now, why can’t I find a guy like that?”

“You want to talk about it?” Nina asked sympathetically. She was a motherly but fashionable woman in her early fifties.

“What’s to talk about?” Ashley said gloomily. “Three weddings planned. Three weddings canceled. Three florists, three caterers, three bands, all paid for and canceled. Three wedding gowns and twelve attendants’ dresses, all paid for and then donated to the hospital’s secondhand shop. And let us not forget the hundreds of wedding gifts that have all had to be packed up and returned with a handwritten note of regret. ‘Dear Mr. and Mrs. Van Buren: I’m so sorry to tell you that the wedding has had to be canceled because the groom turned out to be gay, dead, a con man. I am returning your beautiful and most thoughtful wedding gift via Federal Express. Fondly, Ashley Cordelia Kimbrough, who has sucky taste in men.’”

Nina couldn’t help it: She laughed. “Oh, honey,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorrier,” Ashley replied. “But it really is getting to be rather comical, isn’t it? I wonder if ‘three strikes and you’re out’ applies to situations like this?”

“I think you just haven’t met the right man,” Nina, a widow, said cheerfully.

“I’ve got eighteen months,” Ashley said softly, “or I really will be out. Out on the street. Damn! I will not lose everything to an organization called SSEXL, even if I have to marry a monkey in the zoo!”

“Speaking of monkeys, Lila Peabody came in today to pick up her new bras,” Nina murmured. “That boob job she got looks great. And at her age, too. She said she was just seventy.”

“Seventy-five,” Ashley corrected. “Perky boobs, and a face like a leather satchel. She has the money. Why she didn’t do the face too, I don’t know. I suppose it’s because her skin is so damaged from her constant tanning.”

“Rumor has it she has a new beau,” Nina said.

“I heard. Old Paul Hilton,” Ashley replied.

“No fool like an old fool,” Nina remarked.

“Do you ever think of remarrying?” Ashley asked her assistant.

“No. I don’t want to break another one in, thanks. Besides, who needs a man when you have the Channel, my dear? I can’t thank you enough for introducing me to it. I can have sex anytime, and any way I want it, and at four a.m. I’m back in my own bed. It’s just too perfect.”

Ashley laughed. “TMI,” she told Nina, who just chuckled.

“Do you want me to call Mr. Devlin and tell him his order is in?” Nina asked.

“Yes, please,” Ashley said.

The rest of the afternoon passed without incident. Two more brides-to-be came in to purchase items for their trousseaux. One of them was a girl Ashley remembered being the little sister of a schoolmate. She almost winced when the girl glowingly told Nina that Ashley and her sister used to baby-sit her when they were in their teens. Then Ashley made the mistake of asking after the girl’s older sister.

“Oh, Claire’s been married over ten years now, and has three kids,” came the reply. “Can I tell her that you said hi?”

Ashley nodded, smiling, but catching Nina’s sympathetic gaze.
Bloody hell!
she thought.
Why is it that everybody but me can find a husband? I’m not looking for anything unusual. I want a nice guy with a good sense of humor with whom I can talk and share things. Is that so hard?
Obviously it was. Being rich was both a blessing and a curse.

At five p.m. on the dot she closed up Lacy Nothings for the day and bade Nina good night. Then, going around back, she got into her silver Solstice and drove home.

“Good evening, Miss Ashley,” Byrnes, her butler, said as she entered the house. “Shall I tell Mrs. B. dinner at the usual time?”

“Yes, but I’ll want to eat out on the porch tonight, Byrnes,” Ashley told him.

“Very good, miss,” the butler replied with a bow, and went off to the kitchens to speak with his wife, who was Kimbrough Hall’s cook.

Ashley went up to her bedroom suite. After stripping off her clothes she walked naked into her large bathroom. Opening one side of the double glass doors to her shower, she programmed it and turned the water on before stepping into it. A dozen water jets spurted forth from the marble enclosure as she turned herself about to get thoroughly wet. Reaching for a cake of olive oil soap a friend had brought her from Italy last year, she washed herself quickly. She didn’t want to be late for dinner, because Mrs. Byrnes usually did some sort of steak dish midweek, and dinner was served at six p.m. on the dot. She would want a little time for a glass of wine before she ate.

Turning off the shower after she was well rinsed, Ashley stepped from the glass-and-marble surround and reached for a towel. The towel was warm from the heating rack. Once dried, she looked at herself critically in the full-length mirror. She wasn’t one of those tiny size-zero or size-two little girls. She was the average size of the American woman: size fourteen. But there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her body, her legs were long, and her breasts were high and softly rounded. Everything was in proportion, she thought smugly, even if she couldn’t be called dainty. That was one reason she had opened Lacy Nothings: so that every women from size two to size twenty-two could have sexy underwear and night wear.

Pulling on a pair of soft, fleecy pale gray pants and a light pink cotton tee, Ashley padded downstairs in her bare feet and headed for the screened porch that overlooked the bay. Byrnes was waiting for her with a glass of red wine. Ashley took it from him and sniffed. “North Fork viticulture,” she said, and the butler nodded. She took a sip of the wine, swishing it about her mouth, breathing the fragrance. “Bedell Cellars Main Road Red,” she decided, and looked to him for confirmation.

“Very good, Miss Ashley,” Byrnes said with a small smile.

“Mrs. B. is cooking me a filet, isn’t she?”

“Yes, miss. Shall I tell her to put it on now, or do you wish to wait?” the butler asked.

“Now, please, I’m starving!” Ashley told him. “It’s been a long day, and Grandfather’s will cannot be broken.”

“Mr. Kimbrough was a very careful and thorough man, Miss Ashley,” Byrnes observed, and then he hurried off to the kitchen.

Ashley chuckled as she sipped her wine and gazed out over the bay. Byrnes knew her late grandfather probably better than anyone. He had grown up at Kimbrough Hall, as his father had been the previous butler. And he knew all about the clause that had been added to her grandfather’s will at Lila’s behest. Byrnes had not liked Lila Peabody, but he would have thought it presumptuous to voice an opinion on the matter. But Ashley had heard him speaking to his wife on the subject one day, and the butler had not spoken well of her grandfather’s last girlfriend, stating most bluntly that Lila was no lady. Ashley smiled to herself as she remembered the butler’s disapproving tone. But, of course, he was right: Lila Peabody had not been a lady, which had amused Ashley’s grandfather.

Hearing Byrnes rolling in the dinner cart, Ashley seated herself at the little table that had been set up for her. Byrnes placed to her left a small salad plate of endive dressed lightly with a raspberry vinaigrette. Next came the dinner plate, which held a very rare piece of filet mignon, three small potato puffs, and several slender stalks of asparagus with a splash of Hollandaise sauce. The butler stood in attendance while Ashley ate in silence. When she had finished he cleared the dinner and salad plates from the table, replacing them with a dish of freshly hulled local strawberries dusted with sugar, and a tiny pitcher of thick cream.

“The berries were picked this afternoon, Miss Ashley. The strawberry patch is quite bountiful this year,” Byrnes said. “Mrs. B. will be making jam and freezing some whole berries for the winter.”

“They’re delicious, and still warm with the sun,” Ashley noted.

“Are there plans for this evening, Miss Ashley?” the butler wanted to know.

“No, I’ll be going up to my quarters after I’ve finished,” Ashley told him.

“If you don’t mind my mentioning it, Ghostly and Graybar could use a good run on the beach, Miss Ashley.”

“I have been neglecting them, haven’t I?” Ashley said. “It won’t be dark for a while. I’ll take them out. Thanks, Byrnes.” Finished with her dinner, she stood up. “Are they in the kitchen with Mrs. B.?”

“Yes, Miss Ashley. Shall I bring them up?” the butler asked her.

“No, I’ll go and fetch them myself. I want to thank Mrs. B. for such a wonderful dinner. The potato puffs were marvelous, even if I do try to stay away from those hard carbs,” Ashley said with a smile. She hurried down to the kitchen, where she found her two greyhounds sprawled beneath Mrs. B.’s large wooden kitchen table. “The puffs were heaven,” she told the cook. “Thanks, even if I shouldn’t have them.”

“Nonsense!” Mrs. B. said with a smile. She was a small, round woman with fading strawberry blond hair that she wore in a bun. She was a perfect contrast to her tall, thin husband. “You’re too thin, Miss Ashley, as it is.”

Ashley laughed. “Bless you!” she said. Then she whistled to the two dogs, who roused themselves and ambled over to her. Ashley took their leads from a hook on the wall where they were hung, fastened them about the dogs’ collars, and led them out of the house through the kitchen gardens. Once on her private beach she released Ghostly and Graybar, and let them run as she strolled along.

The sun was getting lower and lower on the horizon when she finally decided to turn back. Whistling for the two dogs, she turned about. She wanted to get well settled before she turned on the Channel. They had done some upgrades in the last year. Now you could simply subscribe to it the way you would any other premium channel. And the remote had a terrific new feature on it: You could have two fantasies ready to go if you wanted, and Ashley did.

In both of her fantasies she was a Roman noblewoman, the lady Cordelia, but the fantasies had slightly different themes. In fantasy A the noble Cordelia possessed a Celtic sex slave named Quinn, whom she used and abused to their mutual pleasure. In fantasy B, Cordelia, visiting her properties in northern Gaul, was kidnapped by a northern barbarian named Rurik, who made her his sex slave, to be deliciously used and only sometimes abused.

Ashley debated about which fantasy she wanted tonight, but she was still feeling cranky about her visit to the offices of Johnson and Pietro d’Angelo today. She felt so damned helpless about the situation in which she was caught. She had no choice in the matter: If she didn’t find a husband she would lose everything, and she didn’t want to lose everything. She liked her comfortable lifestyle. She loved the mechanics of her business. And if she had to take a husband to keep it all, she damned well would.

“A,” she said aloud. “Tonight I need to be completely in charge, even if it’s only my fantasy.” Arriving back at the house she let the dogs back into the kitchen. Their beds, when they weren’t sleeping with her, were in an unused pantry. “Good night, boys,” she said, patting the silky heads. The kitchen, she noted, was vacant. Everything was in its place, but it was empty. Mrs. B. had already retired to the apartment where she and Byrnes lived above the kitchen wing of the house. Back in the open foyer of the house she encountered her butler locking up.

“Will you be needing me again tonight, Miss Ashley?” he asked politely.

“No, thank you. Run along, Byrnes. I’m heading upstairs myself,” Ashley said as she mounted the stairs. “Good night.”

“Good night, Miss Ashley,” the butler replied.

Ashley entered her bedroom suite just as the clock on the mantel of the fireplace in her bedroom was striking eight o’clock. Her bed was already turned down, something Byrnes did every night without fail, as Ashley didn’t feel the need for a private maid. Stripping out of her pants and tee, she climbed naked into her bed. Picking up the remote, she pointed it at the wall above the fireplace mantel and pressed a button. Immediately the wall slid back, revealing a large flat-screen television. Ashley pushed a second button and the television came to life.

“Good evening, and welcome to the Channel, where your fantasies become your reality,” a silky voice purred. “Please press button A or button B, followed by the enter button. Thank you, and enjoy your evening.” The screen darkened.

Ashley pressed button A, then the enter button. She experienced a slight sensation as if her insides were being drawn out, and then she was there, in the bedchamber of her villa, standing naked before a silver mirror. “Where is Quinn?” she demanded of her slave woman. “Why is he not here? The day has been long and trying. He should be here! Find him and bring him to me immediately!”

The slave woman scurried off. Ashley viewed her naked body in the mirror. Her hair in her fantasy was long and luxurious. It fell down her back to her waistline. In reality she had short hair, styled in a gamine look. Her nipples were rouged to make them more prominent. She could hardly wait to get her hands on Quinn tonight. She needed to punish him as she was being punished.