“Look, Ray, if I can’t drum up enough money to buy the business from the estate, then I’ll start all over again, and screw my sisters,” Ryan said stubbornly. “Five spoiled little bitches. Only one of them worth anything is Frankie.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Ray replied. “R&R has a reputation. You willing to give that reputation away to someone else? Especially a son of a bitch like Jerry Klein? Right now he’s the high bidder, and he’s going to stay the high bidder because he wants R&R. And all you have to do to save your ass is get married.”
“I don’t like being told what to do,” Ryan answered irritably.
“Funny thing—neither does my cousin Joe’s client. But unless she gets married by the time she’s thirty-five she loses everything she’s worked for, because her grandfather thought a woman had to be married to be happy and safe,” Ray said candidly. “You see? Already you’ve got similarities.”
“She’s thirty-five?”
“She’s thirty-three.”
“Why isn’t she married? Fat? Ugly? Warts?”
“She’s been engaged three times, and each time it’s fallen through,” Ray remarked.
“Difficult, huh? A diva.”
“No, unlucky. She’s smart in business, but not in men. They wanted her money,” Ray said. It was the easiest explanation to offer right now.
“Is she pretty?” Ryan asked.
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met her. She lives in a small town called Egret Pointe about a hundred miles from the city,” Ray said.
“What kind of business?” Ryan wanted to know.
“She has a lingerie shop,” was the answer.
“Doesn’t sound like big business to me.”
Ray chuckled. “It’s upmarket, many one-of-a-kind things. She started small; then came the catalog, and now she’s opening two new stores—one here in town, and the other in an elegant suburban mall. It’s called Lacy Nothings.”
“Geez, Frankie buys stuff from that catalog. It’s as expensive as hell, and since there’s very little of it I don’t know why,” Ryan said.
Ray laughed. “My cousin—he’s her lawyer—says she’s a very nice girl. What could it hurt to meet her? She’s got no illusions about any arrangement that you two would make. Joe says her house is gorgeous and filled with antiques. It would be a great place to entertain, and she would be a terrific hostess. She’d know how to speak to your fancy-shmancy clients, Ryan. Her grandfather was probably one of your father’s clients.”
“Has Miss Lingerie Shop got a name?” Ryan asked. The truth was, his interest was piqued. The girl Ray was describing was young enough to be a mother, and he did want kids; and she probably had people running her business for her, so she could be a wife and mother. She had her own money. Her own house. And she needed to get married in order to keep them. Actually it could be a perfect solution to his problems too.
“Her name is Ashley Kimbrough,” Ray said.
“Pretty name,” Ryan allowed. “So when do you want to set up this meeting?”
Ray smiled. “Let me talk to Joe. You’re not due to fly off anywhere soon, are you? I know your schedule is pretty frantic these days.”
“I’ll make time, and no, I’m not going anywhere at the moment,” Ryan said. “Why don’t we make our first meeting in Egret Pointe. Miss Lingerie—Ashley—would probably be a bit more comfortable there than here,” he suggested.
“Thoughtful,” Ray teased him. “Shows your sensitive side.”
“Bite me!” Ryan shot back, and then he unfolded himself from the chair. “If that’s it, I gotta go. Bill me for the time.”
“Bite me!” Ray laughed. “You’re going to get a big fat bill from ASK when this is all over, buddy. I may even get the senior partners to start up a new department. Matchmaking for Millionaires.” And he laughed harder as he waved Ryan from his office. Then, clicking his intercom button, he said, “Nancy, get me Joe in Egret Pointe.” And a minute or two later his assistant signaled him, and he picked up the phone. “Joe, Ray. We’re coming shopping. Any one day better for you than another?”
Joe Pietro d’Angelo masked a deep sigh. “Where do you want to meet?” he said.
“Ryan wants to come out to Egret Pointe,” Ray answered him. “He thought it might be easier on Ashley. Nice, huh?”
“Yeah, very nice,” Joe acknowledged. “We could make it Friday, and you and Rose could stay the weekend with Tiff and me.”
“Sure, why not? I can get Ryan back without having to go into town myself,” Ray said. “Yeah, Friday. Eleven a.m. okay with you?”
“Hang on, and let me call Ashley,” Joe replied. He pulled his cell from his pocket and dialed Lacy Nothings. “Morning, Nina. Would you put Ashley on, please? You still there, Ray?”
“I’m here,” his cousin’s voice responded.
“Ash, listen, my cousin and his client would like to meet here in our offices on Friday at eleven. That okay with you?”
“So soon? Gee, Joe, this guy must really be desperate,” Ashley said.
“No more so than you, honey. Bring a sandwich and eat with Tiff and me in an hour. I’ll fill you in, okay? Eleven Friday, then?”
“Why not?” Ashley said. “Best to get it over with. See you in an hour.”
Joe flipped the cell shut and turned back to his office phone. “Okay, we’re on, buddy. I’ll see you Friday.” Hanging up the phone, he buzzed his wife in her cubicle and waited for her to come in, and when she did he said, “We’ve got a first meeting Friday.”
Tiffany clapped her hands together. “That’s just terrific, Joe.” And throwing her arms around his neck she gave him a quick kiss. “Now,” she said, stepping back, “tell me all about the guy. Is he tall, dark, and handsome? Does he have family? What’s his name? Give! I want to know everything.”
“Ashley is coming over to have lunch with us,” Joe said. “I’ll tell you both everything I know then, and not before,” he told her.
Tiffany shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not happy,” she said glowering.
He grinned. “Go get a chocolate bar,” he teased her.
“I’m going to need a quarter-pound box of Godiva to bring my mood back up,” she grumbled. “Or maybe a bag of truffles.” Tiffany considered. But she waited because there was no other choice until noon, when Ashley arrived carrying a carton of Columbo Light Key Lime Pie yogurt, and a little silver spoon. “You keep a silver spoon in your desk?” Tiffany said, impressed. “Now that is cool.”
They were in the little conference room of the firm. It had big windows that overlooked Main Street with its big trees lining it. Rick had come in to listen and, spreading their lunches on the big table, which was an elegant old door covered with a glass top, they all now turned to Joe, who was thoroughly enjoying a meatball hero from the local pizza place.
“Nobody makes sauce like Angelo,” he said, licking his lips.
Ashley dipped her spoon into the pale green yogurt.
“Yeah,” Rick agreed. “He got the recipe from his grandmother in Rome.”
Tiffany fished a crouton from her salad and ate it. “Talk,” she said.
Joe took another bit of his hero and then, grinning, put it down, looking at Ashley. “His name is Ryan Finbar Mulcahy. He owns an outfit called R&R—Restorations and Replications, Inc. His father started the business and did nicely. Ryan graduated college and took over the company to build it into a multimillion-dollar establishment. But it was still the old man’s company. When he died a couple of years ago the old man left each of his daughters a quarter mil, and the wife the house and a good income. Everything else went to Ryan on the proviso that he be married by the time he was forty. He’ll be forty next spring, and he hasn’t even come close to getting married,” Joe said.
“What’s the problem?” Ashley wanted to know.
“The guy is a workaholic,” Joe said. “His old man was the craftsman, the artisan. Ryan knows what good is, but his head is more for the business. It was his idea to add the re
productions branch of the business. There’s a lot of money out there today, and new money wants to look like old money. But there are only so many antiques to go around. So R&R designs seventeenth-and eighteenth-century repros that look every bit as good as the real thing. The business is booming. And Ryan hasn’t had a moment to get a relationship going with any woman. But if he isn’t married by forty, he’s out, the business is sold, and his sisters get the benefit of the sale.”
“What if he doesn’t like me?” Ashley asked.
“What if you don’t like him?” Joe countered. “Look, Ash, life is at best a crapshoot. You toss the dice and hope you don’t hit snake eyes. You’ve hit snake eyes three times now. I think it past time for you to make craps. Ray is bringing him out tomorrow for an initial meeting. No promises. No obligations. You’re just both going to take a look at each other to make certain you’re human.”
“Let’s Google him,” Tiffany said.
“Of course!” Ashley agreed. “Now that we know his name and his business name we can look him up.”
“In my cubicle,” Tiffany replied, standing up from the conference table. “Come on, Ash. Enjoy your lunch, boys!” She hurried out with Ashley following with her yogurt.
“What do you think?” Rick Johnson asked his partner.
“I think we’ve got a shot,” Joe responded, “if they click.”
“An arranged marriage. It sounds so cut-and-dried. So loveless,” Rick said. “I thought people had to fall in love to get married. What are they going to do about the sex, I wonder?”
“That’s one matter they’ll have to negotiate themselves,” Joe said, grinning. “We can set up the prenups with Ray, but the rest of it is going to be up to them.”
“What do you think he’s like, this Mulcahy guy? Is he really so busy he can’t make time to go courting?” Rick wondered.
“Want to check out what the girls have found?” Joe said as he picked up the second half of his hero.
“And let them know we’re as nosy as they are? I think not,” Rick said. “I’ll wait till I get home to Google him. Carla’s filling in tonight at the hospital for one of the night nurses. She won’t be home until around eleven thirty. God, I hope she likes him. We gotta get Ash settled, and soon. Old Kimbrough will come out of his grave if we let his wealth go to SSEXL.”
“Then he shouldn’t have been such a smart-ass and added that clause to the will. I told him not to do it,” Joe grumbled. “Mulcahy is probably all right. Have you ever seen an ugly Irishman, Rick?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact I have,” Rick replied. He cocked his head to one side. “Did you just hear a ‘woo-woo’ from Tiff’s cubicle?”
“Oh, my God!” Tiffany Pietro d’Angelo stared at the computer screen. “Well, he ain’t ugly,” she said. “You’re going to have beautiful babies, honey.”
But Ashley wasn’t really looking at the face on the screen. She had given it a quick passing glance to ascertain whether he was normal-looking, and then she had moved on to his biography. He had gone to Catholic school first, done his undergrad work at one of the state universities, then gotten a second degree from the Wharton School of Business. Smart, Ashley thought. The state school was cheap, and good for a bachelor’s. It was the grad school that had to be the best, and it was.
“Will you look at that face!” Tiffany enthused.
“He’s nice-looking,” Ashley said, “but I’m more interested in his background.”
“Nice-looking?” Tiffany said, surprised. “He’s a god.”
“Look at how fast he brought his father’s business from just a restoration house making a nice bottom line to a restoration and reproduction business with an incredible bottom line. Boy, I would love to do that myself for Lacy Nothings. Think he would give me some advice, Tiff?”
“I don’t believe you,” Tiffany said, exasperated. “Here is this gorgeous man whom you will probably marry, and all you’re interested in is his business acumen?”
“Tiff, if—and it’s a big if—Mr. Mulcahy and I decide to marry, it’s just a business arrangement. We’ve both been the recipients of bequests that will screw us out of our inheritance unless we get married. I’ve got lousy luck picking men, and he’s too busy to properly look for a wife. And time is running out on both of us.”
“Marriage isn’t a business,” Tiffany said, not certain whether she should be shocked.
“Sure it is,” Ashley told her.
“What about love?” Tiffany asked.
“What about it? Three times I thought I was in love. I obviously don’t know what love is, and any man willing to marry to keep his money doesn’t know either. Love will not be part of the equation here.”
“Sex?” Tiffany said weakly.
“I’ve got all the sex I can handle on the Channel with Quinn and Rurik,” Ashley said. “Tiff, this isn’t happily ever after. It isn’t personal. It’s business. If he wants to have a girlfriend it’s fine with me, as long as it’s discreet.”
“My God!” Tiffany said. “What have I done?”
Ashley laughed and patted Tiffany’s hand. “You’ve probably saved me from a fate worse than death—poverty! Now, I’ve gotta go. Nina has a dental appointment at one fifteen, and I’ll need to be in the shop. Brandy doesn’t come in until after school.”
Tiffany Pietro d’Angelo watched her go, and then walked back into the conference room, where her husband and his partner were just finishing their lunches. “This is terrible,” she said, plunking herself into a chair.
“What’s terrible?” Joe asked.
“Ashley said any arrangement made will be business, no sex, and he can have a girlfriend if he’s discreet,” Tiffany said.
Rick snickered.
“Good,” Joe replied. “I’m glad Ashley understands, and doesn’t have any silly romantic ideas in her head about Mulcahy.”
Tiffany looked at her husband as if he had just returned from the moon.
“Is the guy hot?” Rick wanted to know with a grin.
“Yes, he’s hot,” Tiffany snapped. “Joseph Anthony Pietro d’Angelo, where has your heart gotten to, and don’t you see how awful this will be for Ashley if she isn’t loved by her husband? And what about kids? What the hell good is all that money going to do either of them without kids to share it with or help out?”
Joe reached across the table, took his wife’s hand, and kissed it. “My own little romantic,” he said with a smile. “Listen, honey, Ashley and Mulcahy have a problem, and getting married will solve that problem for them. If they like each other, maybe something good will come of it. But for now it’s just business. An arrangement like this can’t be anything else but business.”
“I think this is so sad. When I suggested it I wasn’t considering the reality of it all,” Tiffany responded with a deep sigh.
“What would be sad would be if these two hardworking people lost everything because some damned fools added dumb clauses to their wills in order to get their own way even after death,” Rick remarked. “I don’t know about Mulcahy’s father, but why the hell Edward Kimbrough thought Ashley couldn’t survive without a big, strong man to keep her safe I’ll never know. She is one competent girl.”
“Yeah,” Joe agreed.
Tiffany got up from the conference table and looked at both of them with a jaundiced eye. “Well,” she said, “at least you guys understand that women are capable of managing alone if we have to or choose to, or whatever. Now I’ve got to think about what I’m going to wear tomorrow.”
The two men laughed as she left them.
When she had gone Rick Johnson looked at his partner. “Do you think they’ll like each other?” he wondered.
“They have to,” Joe said. “I don’t see that either of them has a choice except to give up everything they’ve gotten or worked for, and that’s just plain crazy.”
The following morning the two partners stood in the conference room window looking down at the silver-gray limousine that had just pulled up in f
ront of their building. Joe had already told Rick that his cousin had never learned to drive, and used a car service on a regular basis. Normally he would have arrived in a Town Car, but as his wife would also be with them he would want a bigger vehicle. The driver jumped out and ran around the car to open the door. Two men stepped out.
“That’s Ray,” Joe said, pointing to the shorter of the two men. “He’s older than me by a couple of years. He was always good to me when I was a kid.”
“That why you went into law?” Rick asked.
“Yeah, I guess it was. I’ve always admired him. He’s a senior partner at ASK. When Joshua Alexander retired a couple of years ago he handpicked Ray for his place. But Alexander’s name remains on the letterhead,” Joe explained.
“Where’s the limo going?” Rick asked. The two men had disappeared into the building, and it was pulling away from the curb.
“Out to the house. I made Tiffany stay home. I didn’t want he R&Rose hovering while we were trying to make a deal. Where’s Ashley? She should be here by now,” Joe said as the intercom buzzed, announcing their two visitors, who were then ushered into the conference room.
“And Nina’s here from Lacy Nothings,” the receptionist said. “She needs to see you, Mr. P. Shall I send her in too?”
“Yeah,” Joe told her. What the hell was going on? If Ashley was going to try to pull out of this he would no longer represent her. Hell! He’d represent SSEXL. “Ray!” he greeted his cousin, and the two men embraced warmly. “Sit down. You know my partner, Rick Johnson. Just give me a minute, will you?” He turned to Nina. “Where is she?” he asked.
“She’s going to be late. Madeira called, and I don’t speak Spanish,” Nina said. “It shouldn’t be any more than ten minutes.” Then she turned and hurried out.
“Sorry about that,” Joe said. “Ashley is going to be a few minutes late, and she sends her apologies. She had to take an overseas call. Could I offer everyone some coffee? Water?”
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