Praise for
Olivia Darling
“Escape into the glamorous, moneyed world of international fine art.… There’s plenty of intrigue, sparkling sex and champagne on offer, so enjoy!”
—Woman’s Day (Australia, on Priceless)
“A wonderful, intelligent blockbuster which has it all: sex, intrigue, glamour, a page-turning plot and lashings of champagne!”
—SOPHIE KINSELLA, on Vintage
“This book had me turning the pages at a serious rate of knots! It is sexually charged and quite gripping.… Priceless had a good storyline … and an interesting outcome for the priceless painting at the helm of the storyline.”
—Gloss (NZ)
“Lies, lust and libation fuel this early summer beach read.… Darling’s … pitch-perfect description and characterization draw readers into the complex world of vintage wine without overwhelming terminology.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review), on Vintage
“Vintage has three heroines you genuinely care about, love-to-hate villains, and a parade of gossipy detail. Don’t wait for the beach to enjoy this fantastic beach read; open up a chilled bottle of sparkling wine and enjoy it now!”
—HESTER BROWNE, New York Times bestselling author of The Little Lady Agency
“The sex pops like champagne corks, the action races along. Pure, vintage fantasy. I loved it.”
—TILLY BAGSHAWE, New York Times bestselling author of Adored, on Vintage
“A dazzling tale following three women and their insatiable need for glamour, power and survival. Prepare for lust, betrayal and strictly no moral fiber.”
—Heat, Top Ten Chart (UK), on Vintage
Also by Olivia Darling
Vintage
Priceless is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2010 Dell Mass Market Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Olivia Darling
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Dell, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton, a Hachette Livre UK company, in 2009.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33969-4
www.bantamdell.com
v3.1
For Nat Wilde
Contents
Cover
Praise for Olivia Darling
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PROLOGUE
In a small village on the southeast Mediterranean coast of Italy, in a room with windows that opened out right onto the sea, an artist was painting a portrait of a young woman. The girl was positioned at a table by the open window with a fig in her hand. The sunlight fell on her hair, turning it from plain yellow to a sheet of glittering gold. Her face was smooth and flawless, pink-cheeked and red-lipped without any need for artifice. Her expression was as sweet and calm as an angel’s as she gazed out onto the waves. Her name was Maria, and she was modeling for a portrait of her namesake, the Virgin Mary herself, captured in a moment of quiet reflection before the Annunciation.
But the thoughts that were running through the mind of the lovely Maria were more than a little at odds with the subject of the painting. Maria was thinking about the man behind the canvas, Giancarlo Ricasoli. They hadn’t spoken much; he had told her he preferred to work in silence. But she had heard quite a bit about him, and what she knew of his reputation made her shy.
“How much longer will I have to sit like this?” She chanced to disturb him as she saw her father’s boat come into the harbor.
“Are you uncomfortable?” Ricasoli asked.
“No,” she said. “But I will have to go to mass. It isn’t long now.”
“Ah, church,” said the artist. “Of course.”
Maria had heard that Giancarlo Ricasoli didn’t go to mass. Apparently the priest had given Ricasoli a special dispensation on the grounds that while he’d been painting the fresco on the ceiling he’d spent as much time in the church as an ordinary member of the flock might spend there in a lifetime. Having promised that he would provide a beautiful Madonna and Child for the priest’s private residence as soon as he had finished this Annunciation for which Maria now posed, Ricasoli had been assured that no more would be said about the matter. At least not officially.
Maria wished she had a talent that could allow her to be excused another hour from that dark old church. But dodging mass was the least of it. She’d heard other things about the artist too. She’d heard that in Florence he had been responsible for the ruination of not one but five young women. All had been models for his interpretation of the meeting of Christ and Mary Magdalene. All of them had been virgins when they’d first been summoned to his studio and had been fallen women by the time they’d left.
And so Maria had been horrified when it had first been suggested that she sit for this painting, as had her parents. They too knew of the artist’s reputation. Wasn’t it true that five angry fathers had chased Ricasoli out of Florence? But then the artist had told Maria’s father how much he would pay for the privilege of painting his daughter. It was more than her father could hope to make in a year. And the priest had vouched for the artist, saying that he was a changed man since he’d come to their little village by the sea. “I believe he is a good and proper man at heart,” the priest had said after beating Ricasoli at cards. So it was agreed that Ma
ria would sit for the painting that had been commissioned for the walls of a church near Naples. Her aunt Stefania, her father’s sister, would chaperone.
Right then, however, Maria’s aunt was doing a poor job. Ricasoli had offered the older woman a glass of wine with their simple lunch, and she had taken it. And another. Now Stefania was snoring lightly on a couch at the other end of the studio, in a most undignified position—shoes off, bare legs akimbo, and her skirts hiked up to her thighs.
“I should make a sketch,” Ricasoli joked. “I need someone posed like that for my depiction of the fallen in purgatory.”
“Don’t you dare,” said Maria. “She would be so upset.”
“Ah, sweet Maria,” Ricasoli sighed. “Always thinking of other people. I hope that I can capture your good pure heart in this painting of mine.”
The way he said “good pure heart” made Maria wonder if Ricasoli really thought such a thing was an asset.
While he dabbed away at something on the canvas, a crooked line or a smudge of color gone awry, Maria regarded him closely, grabbing the chance to stare as closely as he had stared at her.
He was handsome. And he had a sophistication rarely seen in the local men of her little fishing town. When he wasn’t dressed in his artist’s smock, grubbily colorful where he’d wiped his brushes clean, he was adorned in the finest silks, the latest fashions from Florence and Rome. Maria had often spied on him from her bedroom window, which had a good view of the road down to the harbor where he took his evening promenade. Of course, it hadn’t occurred to her that that was how he had first noticed her with her shining blond hair, and had chosen her for his innocent Mary.
What was it like to be ruined? Maria wondered. How did it happen? As Ricasoli turned his back to her while he mixed more pigment, Maria regarded the artist again. He had a way of carrying himself that made him seem lithe and slim, but as he bent over the pot of ground lapis with which he was to paint her robes, she could see that his shoulders were wide and strong. His buttocks, in their tight buckskin trousers, were square and powerful. Maria had a sudden flashing vision of what they might look like naked. Pumping. She had seen two people making love once, in a field behind the village. The woman’s small heels pressed into the man’s buttocks as he thrust into her. Suddenly Maria found herself imagining her own feet against the artist’s flesh.
He had finished mixing his paints. On the couch, her aunt was still fast asleep.
“Are you ready to continue?” he asked.
Maria nodded as she gave one last stretch to get the blood back into her limbs. Ricasoli’s eyes traveled the length of her body as she did so, and Maria luxuriated in his look for as long as it took her to remember that such vanity was almost certainly a sin. She sat back down at the table and picked up the fig she had held in her hand for the last three days. The fruit was warm and sticky; its ripe skin was stretched tight and ready to burst. Maria assumed the position as closely as she remembered it.
“Not quite,” said Ricasoli. He stepped up onto the podium on which the table had been placed to make the best of the light coming through the window. “A little more to your left,” he told her. Maria shifted in her seat. “No. Too far. Wait. You were here. More like this.”
Very gently, he took her chin in his hand and tilted her face toward him. But when he had her where he thought she should be, he did not immediately take his hand away. Maria looked at him with huge unblinking eyes. He had never before laid a hand on her to help her into her pose. Ordinarily, her aunt would be standing right beside him, ensuring that such a thing didn’t happen. From the back of the studio, the sleeping chaperone let out an enormous snort.
Maria and the artist jumped apart. Was that snore enough to have woken her up? It seemed not.
“You moved,” Ricasoli said to Maria. “Now I will have to put you into position all over again.” Once more he took her chin in his hand and tilted her face toward the light. But this time he did not stop when she was in the perfect position for the painting. He kept on tilting her face until they were almost nose to nose. She let out a small gasp of surprise as he said, “I’m going to do it.”
“Do what?” she squeaked.
“This.”
He kissed her.
Maria had never been kissed by a man before. Not like that. She had wondered if she ever would be and, if she were, whether she would be good at it. It turned out that her older sister had been right. It came to her as though she had always been kissing. Maria let herself fall into the tender trap.
The artist’s lips were so warm and gentle. His fingers explored her long, fine neck, her bare shoulders, her soft décolletage that had never been touched before.
Maria felt a blush rise on her skin. Her heart beat faster. Her head and stomach felt light. As Ricasoli continued to touch her, she realized she wanted to throw her clothes off and feel his hands on every part of her. She trembled as she felt her body begin to unfurl for love. At the same time she squeezed the fig so hard it split open in her palm.
On the couch in the corner, her aunt slept on. Ricasoli held out his hand and invited Maria to step behind the screen where she changed out of her own clothes and into the Virgin’s robes each morning.
“What if she wakes up?”
“We’ll say you were washing your hands,” said Ricasoli, as he sucked fig juice from her forefinger.
I’m going to be ruined, thought Maria.
And it was wonderful.
CHAPTER 1
It was the moment he sucked whipped cream from her fingers that Lizzy Duffy realized her relationship with her boss had changed irrevocably. Subsequently, losing her virginity to him was either the best or the worst career move she could possibly have made. As she lay on her back in Nat Wilde’s bed, worrying at a cuticle and examining a cobweb in the corner of his bedroom ceiling, Lizzy decided that it was probably her worst move. And staying the night had compounded it. She remembered something she’d read in some magazine: don’t act clingy after the first time you have sex. It was clingy, wasn’t it, staying the night in the hope of a reassuring cuddle? Nat had fallen asleep right after he’d come. Lizzy knew she should have gotten straight up and caught a taxi home right then to prove she wasn’t bothered. Beside her, Nat slumbered on, seemingly unmoved by the same dilemma.
What on earth had possessed her? Fact was, Lizzy knew exactly what had possessed her. Nat Wilde had possessed her the moment she’d first laid eyes on him at her interview for a position in the Old Masters and Nineteenth-Century department at Ludbrook’s, the auction house on New Bond Street. Fresh from her master’s degree in art history at the Courtauld, Lizzy had prepared a pretty speech about her passion for nineteenth-century British watercolorists. But she hadn’t had an opportunity to deliver it. Nat Wilde had been running late. He’d breezed into the Ludbrook’s office fifteen minutes after the interview had been due to start. He’d been slightly inebriated, having lunched with his best friend, Harry Brown, head of Ludbrook’s department of fine wines, at their gentleman’s club on St. James’s. Nat had picked Lizzy’s CV up from the desk and had seemed unable to focus on it. Then he’d looked at her, focused very well on the hem of her skirt, and said, “You’ve got the right degree, you’re passably pretty, and you wear short skirts. You’re hired.”
The right thing at that moment would have been for Lizzy to take offense, but before she could open her mouth to protest at such a superficial and sexist dismissal of her proper talents, Nat Wilde had smiled at her. And it had been the kind of smile that had made her feel he had been joking about her being “passably pretty.” That was an understatement, of course. He found her far more attractive than that. Lizzy couldn’t help but smile back. She’d been smitten.
“Your first assignment,” Nat had said. “Tell me about this little painting right here.”
Her heart still fluttering like a hummingbird with the hiccups, Lizzy had followed Nat across the room. Balanced on a shelf had been a small watercolor of a farmer bringing
cows in from the field at the end of the day.
“Artist?”
“Easy.” Lizzy had trotted out the name.
“Real?”
Lizzy had peered closely. “I think so. The only way to know is to see the signature. But he wouldn’t have signed a piece this small on the front. You’d need to turn it over and—”
“Already done that,” Nat had said. “Put a reserve on it of ten to twelve grand. What do you think?”
“I think that’s just about right,” Lizzy had said. “How about you?”
“I think you and I are going to work together very well.”
And they did.
Never before had Lizzy found getting up for work to be such a pleasure. She was thrilled to be working with the art that she loved, surrounded by fellow enthusiasts. She had long been determined to have a great career in an auction house, but now she had an added incentive to sparkle. Each morning she veritably sprang out of bed at the sound of her alarm. She spent at least an hour getting ready, blow-drying her fine blond hair into something resembling a do. And oh how her efforts were rewarded. Nat Wilde could make her day with a wink, and the winks were plentiful. They’d flirted like crazy for the past six months. And now here she was. In his bed.
That afternoon’s sale at Ludbrook’s had been a barnstormer. Lot after lot had busted through the ceiling prices Nat had predicted. And finally, Nat had achieved a price of seven figures for an early nineteenth-century oil. It went to a Russian collector. All the good papers would cover the news.
After such a successful day, Nat announced that the entire team deserved a treat. He utilized his direct line to the maître d’ at the Ivy and booked a table for eight o’clock.
“Sit here,” said Nat to Lizzy, patting the seat beside him. “You’re my right-hand girl, and I want you at my right hand.”
Lizzy settled into the seat, catching the envious glances from the other girls in her department—Olivia and Sarah Jane—as they found themselves at the other end of the table, between the two bespectacled boys, Marcus and James.
Priceless Page 1