Judy, the firm’s receptionist, stood waiting, and hurried out when she had been given orders for four coffees.
“Ryan,” Ray Pietro d’Angelo said, “this is my cousin, Joe Pietro d’Angelo.”
The men shook hands and chatted over the coffee that Judy had returned with for them. And then the intercom buzzed again, and Judy said, “Miss Kimbrough is here. I’m sending her in, sir.”
The conference door opened and Ashley came in, breathless from running from her shop. She was wearing white silk slacks and a red tee. “I am so sorry,” she apologized. “Did Nina tell you? Sister Marie Consuelo called from Madeira.”
“She couldn’t call back?” Joe asked.
“No, she couldn’t,” Ashley said. “There is no phone at the convent. I pay the tavern keeper in the village a yearly fee to allow her to call me when my order is ready and has been picked up by FedEx. They’re a pretty cloistered order, Joe, and she can’t keep running down the hill from the convent all the time. Then I have to have the bank transfer the funds I owe them immediately. The convent isn’t a wealthy one with a rich patrona. I want to make certain they have their money by the next day, and in order to do that I have to call the bank before noon.” She turned and looked at the men in the room. Then, walking over to Ryan Mulcahy, she held out her hand. “I’m Ashley Kimbrough, and since your companion looks like Joe, you must be Mr. Mulcahy.”
He was dazzled by her bright green eyes. She wasn’t at all what he had expected. Shaking her hand, he said, “My dad was Mr. Mulcahy. I’m Ryan, Miss Kimbrough.”
“I’m Ashley,” she responded, and then they sat down. If she hadn’t sat down, Ashley thought, she would have fallen down. He was nothing at all like she had expected. The picture she had briefly glimpsed on Google didn’t do him justice. For openers, no one had told her he would be six feet, five inches tall. Or that he would look like an Italian model. The brown eyes that had locked onto hers momentarily were like liquid chocolate beneath their dark, bushy eyebrows. His face was long, with a long, narrow, aquiline nose and high cheekbones. His mouth. Oh, God, his mouth! It was full and lush. It begged to be kissed. And then she pulled herself up. This was business, and she was already half in lust. This was what always got her in trouble. She drew a deep breath. “I suppose we should get started, gentlemen.”
She was all business, and it really turned him on, Ryan thought as he inspected Ashley from beneath half-lowered eyelids. But it shouldn’t turn him on, damn it! She was nothing at all like the kind of girl he wanted to marry. To begin with she was big. Not fat by any means, but big. She had to stand at least five feet, eight inches tall. She was a brunette with pale skin like ivory porcelain, not the petite peaches-and-cream blonde he had always imagined he would marry. But those green eyes! Mamma mia!
“Well, there’s no secret why we are all here today,” Joe began. “But let’s put our cards on the table. Ashley Cordelia Kimbrough is her grandfather’s only heir. The bulk of his estate is hers, but only if she marries by her thirty-fifth birthday, which is in December 2009. Unfortunately her business is part of the estate, and she will lose it if she cannot comply with the terms of Edward Kimbrough’s will. She has made Lacy Nothings so successful that she could not afford to buy back her own business if she lost it, and there are at least two companies who have expressed interest in having it if she were interested in selling. They do not, of course, know Ashley’s tenuous position. Ray?”
“Ryan Finbar Mulcahy has a similar problem. Although he made the business the financial success it is today, his father’s will states that if he isn’t married by the time he is forty—and that happens next spring—everything gets sold, and the proceeds parceled out to his sisters. His father was very generous in his will to those sisters, but they’re already looking for a buyer for R&R. The value of the business is as much in Ryan’s reputation as it is in the physical business itself. He could not outbid anyone else. Joe?”
“So,” Joe said, “since both of these people have to marry to retain what is really theirs, it seems only logical that they marry each other. It would be a business arrangement with a prenuptial agreement signed by both parties. The marriage would have to last at least two years, and then each would leave the marriage with what they brought into it. In other words, no one gets hurt. But I think before we go any further we should hear from Ryan and Ashley.” He turned to them. “What do you two think?”
“I think Ashley and I need to speak alone for a while,” Ryan said.
“Yes, we need to get to know a little bit more about each other before we make any decisions,” Ashley agreed. “Even if this isn’t a real marriage in the strictest sense, Ryan and I have to see if we can be together without grating on each other’s nerves.”
“Good!” Joe said. “I’ve ordered lunch in for you two. We’ll come together again at two thirty and see how it’s gone and what you think.” He stood up. “Ray, Rick, come on. I made reservations for the three of us at the inn.” Joe walked out in the company of the other two men, closing the conference room door behind him.
“He’s a decisive guy,” Ryan remarked with a small smile. “A lot like Ray.”
“I hadn’t planned to be away from the shop for so long,” Ashley said.
“What do you get from a convent in Madeira?” he asked her. “Lace,” she answered him. “Exquisite handmade lace. My first ex-fiancé found it for me when he and his partner were traveling in Europe.”
“You’re still friends with a guy you were once engaged to?” Ryan asked, surprised.
Ashley giggled. She couldn’t help it. “Carson is gay,” she told him. “I was young and didn’t realize it, and he had asked me to marry him. He says he was in his ‘I can beat this’ stage of denial over his homosexuality. But he couldn’t. He ran off with the best man a couple of days before the wedding. I thought it was so sweet that he wanted to wait until we were married to have sex.” And she giggled again.
He grinned at her. In retrospect it was pretty funny, and she was certainly being a good sport about it. It said a lot about her character that she could laugh at herself. “I’ve heard you had a couple of other fiancés,” he noted.
“Yep, number two was Chandler Wayne.”
“The pro quarterback for the Chicago Razorbacks?” he asked.
“One and the same,” she responded.
“Didn’t he die in Vegas after…Oh, yeah. Great tragedy.”
“If Chandler had to die young, and he did, he wouldn’t have wanted to go any other way. The guy loved sex. I’m a little surprised at the circumstances, however. He wasn’t the most creative guy in the sack,” Ashley said.
“You’re not a virgin,” he said.
“I’m thirty-three,” she answered him dryly. “How many thirty-three-year-old virgins do you know? But in answer to the unspoken question on your lips, I am not promiscuous. I have slept with only three guys in my thirty-three years, and two of them were going to marry me. The first was my college boyfriend. We did it twice, and then he broke up with me. I assume you’ve had a few adventures of your own, Ryan.”
He laughed. “You are one candid lady, Ashley,” he told her. “You haven’t answered my question,” she said.
“Am I a virgin?” he teased her. “Nope.”
Now Ashley laughed. “I think, to be fair, we should both have physicals if we decide to make this arrangement. Including tests for STDs. That okay with you?”
“Agreed,” he said as the door to the conference room opened and their lunch was brought in.
The two waiters quickly set hot mats before them, covering them with linen place mats. Next came the silver, perfectly folded napkins, water, and wineglasses. Salads were set in front of them, and a small dressing boat was put on the table.
“Your entrées and the desserts are on the cart, Miss Kimbrough,” one of the waiters said with a deferential bow. “I’ll pour the wine, and then we’ll be gone. Rick said you could serve yourselves.”
“That’s fine,
Artie,” Ashley said with a smile. “Thank you. The salad looks delicious, and you brought raspberry vinaigrette, my favorite.” She poured a dollop on her salad.
While Artie poured them glasses of Pindar Winter White, the other waiter filled the water glasses. Then the two men hurried from the room.
“All the comforts of home,” Ryan noted. “Your guys are pretty classy, considering you’re country mice. Lunch in the boardroom.”
“Usually it’s yogurt, salad, or sandwiches,” Ashley admitted as she ate the artfully arranged greens before her. “I generally eat at my desk. You?”
“Yeah, unless I have to take a client or a supplier to lunch. I try to keep those dates to a bare minimum. I don’t eat breakfast except for coffee and juice. Lunch is a waste of time, and time is money.”
“I eat three meals a day,” Ashley said quietly. “I try to keep the carbs to the healthy kind. Good breakfast. Light lunch. Nice, but not too filling dinner.”
“Do you cook?” he asked her.
“Actually I do, but not if I can avoid it. Mrs. B. cooks for me,” Ashley told him. “If I had to cook after a long day at work I probably wouldn’t eat, or eat all the wrong things. Having Mrs. B. to look after me is a great blessing.”
“You have a cook?”
“I have a married couple, and a housemaid,” Ashley told him. “When you came into town did you notice the large house on the hill overlooking the bay? That’s my home, Kimbrough Hall. When you own a house like that you need help to keep everything running smoothly. The hall is on the National Registry of Historic Places in the state. I’ve lived there my whole life.”
“Since you’re your grandfather’s only heir,” he said, “I’m going to assume your parents are dead.”
“They died in a boating accident when I was fourteen,” Ashley told him. “They were totally in love to the exclusion of everyone else, including my brother and me. My father grew up at the hall, as my grandfather had. When he married, of course, my mother came to live there. They had two children, and then flitted off to enjoy themselves traveling the world. My brother and I were always getting marvelous gifts from their travels, and listening to them talk about their adventures on their rare visits home was really quite fascinating. Actually, my brother knew them better than I did. He was eight when they decided to go off on an extended holiday. I was just three.”
“Who raised you then?” Ryan wanted to know. He was fascinated, and yet at the same time put off by the fact that she was so casual about a lifestyle that had left her virtually motherless. Would she, under the circumstances, have any maternal instincts herself?
“Well,” Ashley said slowly, “Grams was around until I was eleven and Ben sixteen. After that it was usually Mrs. Byrnes who kept an eye on me.”
“The cook?”
“Oh, no. The elder Mrs. Byrnes.” Ashley laughed. “She was the housekeeper back when I was a kid. The Byrneses have been with the family for centuries. Grandfather always said they came with the house. My Mr. and Mrs. Byrnes are the elder Byrneses’ son and daughter-in-law. But when they retire there’ll be no more Byrneses at Kimbrough Hall. Their son is on Wall Street, and their daughter married a dentist. But Byrnes says he and his missus are good for at least fifteen more years.” She chuckled. “I suspect they’ll die in service, the way Byrnes’s folks did. I just love them!”
Raised by servants. It just got worse, Ryan thought.
“Who brought you up?” Ashley asked him cheerfully, mopping the last of the salad dressing off her plate with a piece of roll.
“Our parents,” he said.
“You’ve got siblings? I really miss my brother, Ben. He died in Desert Storm,” she told him.
“I’ve got six sisters,” he replied. “Bride is the oldest of us. She’s fifty-three. Then comes Elisabetta, Kathleen, Magdalena, and Deirdre. There are four years between Dee and me. With five daughters my parents were reluctant to try again, but finally they did, and I was the result. They were so encouraged they did it one more time, but when my sister Francesca, Frankie, was born, they decided enough was enough.”
“I can’t help but notice your sisters’ names. Irish and Italian,” Ashley said.
“My mother’s from Rome,” he replied.
“That’s why you don’t look Irish despite your name!” Ashley exclaimed. “But you’re very tall,” she noted.
“My dad was tall,” he told her. “That’s the Irish part.”
He had finished his salad, and he saw that Ashley was standing up and taking the covered plates off of the trolley. Removing the covers she set one plate before him and the other at her place. The plates contained four perfectly cooked raviolis with a light meat sauce sprinkled with freshly sliced mushrooms. Next to the pasta was a spoonful of thinly sliced pale green zucchini.
“Artie’s Ristorante uses fresh local veggies. These must be the first zucchini of the season,” Ashley said as she dug enthusiastically into the food on her plate.
As he ate he watched her eat. Other than his family he was used to women who picked at the food on their plates, but hardly ate a morsel. Ashley was obviously not one of those women. She was actually enjoying her food.
“I’ll bet your mom makes great pasta,” she said between bites.
“She does,” he said with a smile, “but I have to admit Artie’s pasta ain’t bad at all. The sauce could use a bit more basil, but it’s good.”
When they had finished the pasta Ashley took their plates and returned them to the trolley. She came back with plates containing small meringue shells filled with fresh strawberries and drizzled with dark chocolate. “If you want coffee I can ask Judy,” she said, “but frankly I’m enjoying the wine.”
“Wine is good,” he agreed.
“So,” Ashley asked him as she ate her dessert, “do you have any bad habits? I’m not too good at tolerating fools. I’m a bit impatient. I tend to get sentimental over crazy things no one else would get sentimental over. I love animals. I’ve got two rescued greyhounds, Ghostly and Graybar. A very fat tortoiseshell tabby named Mr. Mittens. I feed the deer in the winter even though it appalls my neighbors. How about you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, considering. “My mother and little sister think I’m perfect. The five harpies who are my older sisters think I’m selfish because, now that they’ve all pissed through what Dad left them, I won’t finance their extravagances. I’ve got other responsibilities, and they’ve all got husbands.”
“Believe me, I understand,” Ashley said. “People think if you’re rich you can do anything. But you’ve got employees, and all the expenses that go with having employees. I’ve always paid my people what they’re worth, matched funds for their retirement, paid their Social Security, and I even have a health care plan in place. I pay half and my employees pay half. Of course, even with the new stores opening I probably don’t have as many employees as you do. But if people work hard they’re entitled to earn a decent living and have all that goes with it. And many of your people are craftsmen and artisans, aren’t they?”
“Exactly!” he said. Okay, so she was big and tall. She ate like a horse. She had been brought up by the help, and probably didn’t have a maternal bone in her body, but she sure as hell understood business and how it should be run. She had ethics, and ethics were important to him. A marriage between them was going to be strictly business. If something else came of it, okay, fine. But at least if they married neither of them would lose everything they had worked so hard for over the past few years. They had to marry. “We’ve got a lot of people depending on us, Ashley, don’t we?” he said seriously. “I’m told I’m not a bad guy, and I love animals too, although I don’t have any. I’m not able to take care of them. Will it bother you that I travel a lot? I’m always looking for exotic woods, good hardware sources, that kind of stuff. Sometimes I’ll go and oversee the packing of a client’s antique for shipping to my shop for restoration.”
“If we could live at Kimbrough Hall I wouldn’t
mind,” Ashley told him. “The Byrneses are there, my creatures are there. I know how to be a good hostess, so if you wanted to entertain there we certainly could. My grandfather used to give the most marvelous parties when I was growing up.”
“I could make Egret Pointe my legal residence,” he said thoughtfully, “but I will want to keep my apartment in the city, because I’ll have to stay in town three or four nights a week. This wouldn’t be an easy commute.”
“No, of course not,” she agreed. “Now, we had better get the sex thing straightened out before we go any further.”
“It’s a marriage of convenience,” he said. “If we get interested, fine. If we don’t, no problem. But I want absolutely no gossip or scandal because you’re sleeping with someone else. I assume you know how to be more than just discreet. And you’ll have no problem with me that way, I assure you.”
“Have you got a girlfriend?” she asked, curious, but then, even if he did he wasn’t serious, or he most certainly wouldn’t be considering a marriage of convenience.
“I don’t have time for anything other than an occasional casual relationship,” he told her. “I would have thought you’d figured that one out.”
“I did, but I had to ask.” Ashley swallowed hard. “And now here’s another question I have to ask. Are you gay or bisexual? I don’t want any surprises, Ryan.”
“Good point,” he said. “Nope. Straight as an arrow. Maybe we’ll get to find out together someday, Ashley.” He locked his gaze on her, and felt a small burst of satisfaction when she actually blushed.
“This is business, remember,” she said primly.
“I know. The business of saving our asses. But we are going to have to sleep together in the same bed to prevent any rumors,” he told her.
“My servants don’t gossip,” she said, irritated.
“All servants gossip, and these people have watched you grow up. They probably love you and want nothing but the best for you. You aren’t going to tell them the truth of this proposed marriage, are you? What the hell do you think they would think of you under such circumstances, even if they said nothing? And I can see that you care for your Byrneses so you probably won’t tell them what this is all about. That means we will have to share a bed, Ashley, on the nights I am out here. Am I wrong?” The brown eyes looked directly into her bright green ones.
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