The destinies of three vibrant women, each as stunningly beautiful as they are dangerously ambitious, intersect at Burghley's, the oldest and most venerated auction house in the world - and a seething hotbed of greed, sexual passions and cut-throat intrigue.
MacKenzie Turner - threatened by boardroom and bedroom machinations over which she has no control, whose rampant erotic appetite has her juggling two lovers. Dina Goldsmith - the social-climbing wife of Burghley's new owner, taking the express elevator to the pinnacle of fifth Avenue society. Zandra von Hohenburg-Willemlohe - an impoverished runaway noblewoman who sells herself to the lord of a vast fortune to save the life of her dissolute brother.
But MacKenzie, Dina and Zandra discover the summit of privilege and glamour of Burghley's to be fraught with danger, a glittering prize targeted for the crime of the century - and only MacKenzie can stop the scythe of evil from cutting its deadly swath. But first she must uncover the conspiracy - and then survive the countdown to terror. As the drama races from Manhattan to Mustique to its tension-packed climax, all learn the high price of living the good life, that there really is such a thing as being Too Damn Rich....
Praise for the novels of Judith Gould
"[a}] page-turning plot and deliciously evil villains. A delight." PUBLISHER"S WEEKLY
"A romp…a smash success!" NEWYORK DAILY NEWS
"Judith Gould is a master." KIRKUS REVIEWS
"Mouthwatering." CHICAGO TRIBUNE
"Plenty of shocking surprises." COSMOPOLITAN
"[a] great escape. A tale filled with suspense…and exotic characters." BOOKLIST
Novels by Judith Gould
Sins*
Texas Born
LoveMakers
Second Love
DAZZLE- The Complete Unabridged Trilogy *:
Dazzle The Trilogy Vol. I: Senda
Dazzle The Trilogy Vol. II: Tamara
Dazzle The Trilogy Vol. III: Daliah
Never Too Rich*
Forever
Too Damn Rich*
Second Love
Till the End of Time*
Rhapsody*
Time to Say Good-Bye
A Moment in Time
The Best Is Yet to Come
The Greek Villa
The Parisian Affair
Dreamboat*
The Secret Heiress*
*(Available as an e-book)
www.judithgould.com
Too Damn Rich
By Judith Gould
Copyright 1999 by Judith Gould.
Published by Vesuvius Media, LLC at Smashwords
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Publisher's Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used ficticiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
"It is better to live rich,
than to die rich."
—BOSWELL, Life of Johnson
"No one should come to
New York unless he is
willing to be lucky."
—E. B. WHITE (1899-1985)
Once Upon a Time, In the City of London...
A man by the name of Charles Burghley established an auction business. The year was 1719 and His Majesty, King George I, was on the throne. Burghley dealt in silver and porcelains.
His company flourished.
In 1744, a bookseller named Samuel Baker decided to expand his business by turning to auctioneering. His enterprise, too, proved successful, although it was his nephew and successor, John Sotheby, who gave the company its legendary name.
In 1766, James Christie opened the doors to yet another auction house. Since he concentrated on selling pictures and furniture, and did not infringe upon Burghley's area of silver and porcelains, or Sotheby's of books, his venture also thrived.
For nearly two centuries, the three auction houses coexisted happily. When the contents of a major country house were sold, Christie's would send the libraries to Sotheby's, and relegate the silver and ceramics to Burghley's. And although nothing became of it, Christie's and Sotheby's actually considered merging, first in 1934, then in 1940, and again in 1947.
But by 1964 such harmony was a thing of the past. It began with Sotheby's acquisition of the Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York, which in a single stroke established it as the first truly international auction firm. In no time, Christie's and Burghley's had gained Manhattan footholds of their own and, like Sotheby's, began to expand operations to dozens of other cities around the globe.
Now, with the entire world's treasures as possible merchandise, competition between the three houses grew fierce. Each expanded voluminously and added departments and experts to handle furniture, art, rugs, books and manuscripts, wine, photographs, musical instruments, coins, arms and armor, and jewelry.
The age-old tradition of sharing the spoils became a relic of the past.
In the heyday of the eighties, with art prices skyrocketing, Burghley's, Christie's, and Sotheby's was each seeing between two and three billion dollars in annual sales—and reaping a hefty twenty percent profit in double-ended commissions from both sellers and buyers. Even with the softening of the art market in the recessionary nineties, when annual sales plunged a billion dollars or so, the profit at all three auction houses was still enormous.
Naturally, with such vast sums involved, the dowdy, genteel auction house went the way of the Edsel.
Auctioneering had entered the era of Big Business. And that is where this story begins....
PROLOGUE
Macao, September 13
The meeting took place in a remote seaside villa far from the outskirts of this teeming city of gamblers, prostitutes, thieves, and adventurers.
One person arrived by stolen car and used the front entrance.
The other came by sea and docked a stolen speedboat at the jetty out back.
Each was dressed in black, and wore a bulky jumpsuit, gloves, and shapeless hood. Thus, neither would recognize the other if they happened to run into each other by accident.
The same held true of their voices. For added protection, electronic distorters were strapped around their mouths, reducing their words to deep, robotic monotones.
There was safety in stealth, protection in remaining but a code- named entity.
As planned, their paths converged in a windowless marble anteroom, where the rheostat on the crystal chandelier was turned down to a weak glow. Even in the dimness of that shadow-strewn light, their eyes were invisible. For added anonymity, both wore black sunglasses under their hoods.
For a moment they stared at each other with wary respect. Each knew that the other was one of the two most dangerous individuals alive.
The taller one spoke first. "I shall require the ten best specialists in their field," the electronically distorted voice squawked monosyllabically. "I have a list here. Six are laying low. They will have to be found. Four that I know of are serving life sentences. They will need to be sprung. Do you think you can do it?"
"What is the timetable?" the other's identically distorted voice asked.
"There is none yet."
"Good." The hooded head nodded once, the gloved hand took the list, shone a penlight down it, and memorized the names. After a mome
nt, a lighter flared and the list burned and was dropped, the charred remains shredded under a crepe heel. "I will need four months."
"You have it. The job could be soon after, or it might be a year or more from then. Our people will need safe houses and patience."
"And their incentives?"
"Ten million dollars each. After the job is completed."
There was a pause. "And mine?"
"One half share of the remainder."
"Which will be?"
"The same as I get. Approximately half a billion dollars. I take it you find that acceptable?"
The other hooded figure nodded.
"Good. We will meet again in exactly two months' time. I will get in touch by the usual method."
Before the first light of dawn, two "accidents" occurred at opposite ends of the island.
One involved a car which went out of control, hit a stone wall, and exploded upon impact. By the time the fire department arrived, it was but a furiously burning shell.
The other occurred almost simultaneously and involved a speedboat that rammed one of the docked hydrofoils which made the Macao- Hong Kong run. Again, a massive explosion and an enormous fireball rent the night.
Zhang Gu, the island's fire chief, was baffled after he visited the scene of each fire. His investigators and scuba divers had combed every square inch of both accident scenes, and had only come up with wreckage.
"It's impossible," Zhang Gu told Lin Zhu, the assistant fire chief.
"What is, sir?" Zhu asked.
"We have two major accidents, and yet not a shred of human bone or tissue."
"It could have been vandalism, sir."
"I suppose so," Gu sighed. "But I do not like it. Something smells of three-day-old fish."
"So do we continue our investigation?"
Zhang Gu thought for a minute and then shook his head. "No," he decided wearily. "Call the men off. We will not find anything. It would only be a waste of time."
Zhang Gu didn't know how right he was. Both perpetrators had long since vanished.
One of them was already a thousand miles away, on board a Qantas flight bound for Sydney, Australia.
The other was on the first leg of a Northwest flight putting down in Tokyo. Headed for Honolulu and the warm waters of Waikiki.
Book One
"CLUB MET"
GoldMart Chairman Wins Bid for Auction House
Special to the New York Times
NEW YORK, Oct. 12—Robert A. Goldsmith, the chairman of GoldMart, Inc., has invested nearly a billion dollars in Burghley's, Inc., in exchange for a major stake in the corporation, Wall Street sources said yesterday.
In the transaction, Mr. Goldsmith has obtained over 50 percent of the company's stock, or about 32.5 million shares in the venerable auction house, which was founded in 1719 and is the world's oldest. This deal represents a financial coup on the part of Mr. Goldsmith, who obtained the stock at what analysts consider a bargain-basement price in the current recessionary climate.
Chapter 1
New York City, October 12
MacKenzie Turner awakened wanting to take a bite out of the Big Apple.
It was one of those clear, brisk mornings in Manhattan. Even the sky was polished, and not a wisp of cloud or so much as a tinge of smog marred its perfection. But the weather had nothing to do with the way she felt.
That was entirely due to the method by which she was being awakened, surfacing from sweet dreams to an even sweeter reality by the delicious nibbles of her delicious lover, who had his mouth on one of her breasts and a hand down between her soft thighs.
"Mmmmm ..." Moaning dreamily and half smiling, she changed position without opening her eyes, her body, like a sunflower turning toward the sun, instinctively seeking the radiating warmth of his.
Between her legs, he gently worked two fingers up inside her.
"Mmmmm!" Her luminous amber eyes snapped open.
"Thought that might wake you up." He grinned raffishly.
"Never start a job you can't finish!" she said, narrowing her bright eyes challengingly. "So what are you going to do about it, buster?"
"How about this?" Even as his lips closed around her nipple once again, bringing it to its fullest and hardest, his eyes were upon her. Eating her up.
Although their on-again, off-again, no-strings-attached relationship had been sailing along for over a year now, he still couldn't help but feel slightly dazed whenever he was confronted by her mesmerizing, energy-packed reality. Everything about Kenzie Turner seemed to charge the very air around her.
Physical beauty had nothing to do with it. Kenzie would never grace a pinup calendar or Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition—not with her sable hair, worn in a Louise Brooks cut, framing a mischievous elfin face with high cheekbones, winged brows, and small pointy chin. It gave her a vulnerable and gamine, somehow waiflike, rather than sexually smoldering, look.
But there was something definitely disturbing and at odds about that small, fine-boned face resting atop the ripe female phenomenon that was her body. For from the neck down, everything added up to just the right figures.
It was the sum of these disparate, individual parts which made men want to ravish her and yet at the same time protect her.
Her blissful smile widened as she lazily watched his tongue flick a moist, ticklish path over her sumptuous, blue-veined breasts, and down her latticed rib cage and softly muscled hollow of belly to the generous thatch of her sable-furred mound. A shudder rippled through her as his face disappeared between her legs to plunder her sweetness.
Her wetness spoke for itself, and it was all she could do to keep from going crazy. She absolutely loved his tongue—no one, but no one, could feast on female flesh quite like Charley Ferraro!
"Not now, Charley," she begged weakly, trying halfheartedly to push him from between her splayed thighs. "You know I've got to go to work ..."
His head popped up, black eyes shining. "Sure you do." Then, balancing himself on his forearms, he raised his hips high off the mattress and slowly lowered them, entering her just the way she liked—face-to-face and hip-to-hip.
She let out a whinny of triumph and wonder. Then, as he began to thrust with a very slow, very deliberate rhythm, she let herself go, giving in to glorious depravity as his tempo and breathing intensified.
"Faster!" she whispered eagerly, raising and lowering her pelvis to match his rhythm. Her eyes glowed like an animal's caught in the wash of sudden headlights, and she dug fierce fingers into his buttocks.
"Faster!" she demanded.
"Hey, take it slow, babe," he said softly. "We're not in a race, you know. Take it slow ..." he repeated. "Just lie back and enjoy the ride ..."
"Yes!" She inhaled deeply the heightened muskiness of his fragrant male flesh; shivered deliciously at each exhalation of his warm breath against the sensitive heated skin of her breasts. Slowly, the rhythm of his thrusts increased, and she matched them by thrusting her body savagely up to meet him. Greedily she contracted her muscles around him, grinding a circular motion before lowering herself again. Concentrating fully, she kept repeating the maneuver, gasping each time she held him captive. Filling her completely.
Possessing her.
Faster and faster they moved in perfect harmony, as if each of them were an intrinsic, indispensable part of the other.
"Oh, God," she moaned. "Oh, it's so good! So good, Charley, so—"
Abruptly his hands gripped her buttocks brutally, and he half lifted her off the bed. She gasped in surprise. He was jackhammering now, relentlessly speeding up his pounding.
Faster, faster! His tempo was increasing, his testicles slapping against her.
Harder, harder! Her every nerve ending sang hosannas until, suddenly, the world tilted and went topsy-turvy and she was flying off over the edge—cartwheeling out into a whole new dimension, where up was down and down was up and inside was out and outside in and—
Her face contorted in agony and her sc
ream was primordial as the first spinning wave of orgasm came rushing.
"Oh, God! I'm coming!"
Suddenly she tensed and arched herself half off the bed.
And then he, too, was unable to hold back any longer. Tightening his arms around her, he reared up and drove himself into her as deeply as he could.
Sensing his climax, she clamped herself even tighter around him. Inside her, she could feel him twitch as his own circuits blew, and the orgasm burst out of him in an explosion as they came together in a mind-blowing, body-wrenching, thundering climax of magnificent release.
Her fading scream became a long, drawn-out sigh of marveling wonder. "Oh, Charley!" she whispered breathlessly. "Charley ..."
He shuddered once more as the last of his juices drained into her, and then, together, they collapsed on the bed. Between drawing deep, ragged lungfuls of air, he managed a lopsided grin. "Good morning," he croaked.
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