“Champagne!” Nat announced. He ordered a bottle of Champagne Arsenault’s Clos Des Larmes, which Lizzy understood was the good stuff. It certainly went down easily. They polished off six bottles among them, the restaurant’s entire stock.
“It’s on old John Ludbrook’s account,” Nat reminded them. “And you deserve it!”
He toasted the team, as one and individually.
“Olivia,” he said, “you are the goddess of typing. Sarah Jane, without you, my mailing list would be nothing.”
Lizzy felt herself color crimson when Nat praised her pretty blue eyes. “Which are so good at spotting a masterpiece!”
Dessert arrived. Lizzy chose sticky toffee pudding with cream, getting some on her finger as she pulled the dish toward her. Quick as a flash Nat grabbed her hand and stuck her finger into his mouth.
“Don’t want to waste any,” he said.
Lizzy almost crawled under the table for shame. She was hugely relieved no one else seemed to have noticed.
“How are you getting home?” Nat asked as they were collecting their coats.
“I’ll get a cab,” she said.
“Where to? Hammersmith, isn’t it? My place is on the way there. We’ll share a ride.”
They started kissing as the cab sailed past the roundabout at Hyde Park Corner. By the time they got to Nat’s flat in South Kensington, Lizzy knew she wouldn’t be taking the taxi on.
“Do you have any cash?” Nat asked. “I left my last tenner as a tip.”
Lizzy duly dug out her last twenty and handed it to the driver.
“Thank you. You’re a dear. I’ll pay you back tomorrow.”
Nat took her by the hand and led her into the shared lobby of the mansion block in which he lived. They continued to kiss in the mirrored lift. Nat’s tongue flickered inside her mouth like an eel in a bucket. Lizzy smiled at her reflection over Nat’s shoulder as he nibbled at her neck. She sighed with delight as Nat slipped his hand up her cashmere sweater and started to fumble with the clasp at the back of her bra.
Once inside the flat they went straight to the bedroom. Lizzy’s nerves were as taut as violin strings as her clothes fell to the floor. Would Nat still want her when he saw her naked body? Nat’s growl told her that he did.
“Oh. Yes,” Lizzy sighed as he cupped his hands around her bare breasts and fiddled with her nipples. As he sucked each one of them in turn, he somehow managed to slide her little white cotton panties down as far as her knees. While Nat turned his attention to Lizzy’s buttocks, the panties dropped to her ankles and Lizzy kicked them off. Now she was completely in the raw but Nat was still fully clothed. He soon remedied that.
While Lizzy arranged herself on the sheets in what she hoped was an alluring manner, Nat divested himself of his tie, his shirt, his trousers, and underpants as though the clothes were on fire. There was a brief and awful moment when Lizzy thought Nat might actually be intending to ravage her with his socks still on, but he remembered just in time and pulled them off as well. They went flying across the room. One ended up dangling from the standard lamp.
Nat dived onto the bed, narrowly avoiding head-butting Lizzy in the nose as he did so. Lizzy hadn’t really thought about what would happen next. More kissing, she hoped. She wanted to be covered in kisses from head to toe. Top to bottom. Indeed, it seemed that Nat was already very fond of her bottom. It wasn’t long before he flipped her over onto her tummy and was bestowing naughty little love bites to her shapely pink buttocks. So far, so silly. Lizzy giggled as Nat jiggled the spare flesh on her bum. But then things turned rather more serious. He stuck his hand between her legs. She felt his fingers groping for a way inside. And then, suddenly, he lay fully on top of her, squashing her face into the mattress. She felt his erection, which she hadn’t really seen yet or gotten to know, pressing hard against the place where his fingers had been moments before.
“Nat, I …”
She meant to tell him, but before she knew it, the inevitable was already happening. Lizzy drew breath sharply at the first thrust. Fortunately, there were only five more of those before Nat came with a terrifying bellow that made Lizzy respond with a cry of her own.
“Good for you?” he asked as he pulled out.
Good? Well, it hadn’t hurt as much as she’d expected. And there was no blood. If she were honest, most of Lizzy’s enjoyment of the moment had been stymied at the thought that she might leave a dirty red stain on Nat’s pure white sheets. But she didn’t. She checked. There was no evidence whatsoever that anything monumental had taken place.
Fact was, Nat hadn’t even known she was a virgin. Lizzy thought he might have guessed, but, if he had, he didn’t say anything. He just rolled off her and fell asleep. His face as he lay dreaming was youthful and perfectly untroubled. Unlike Lizzy’s.
She lay awake all night, staring at the bare walls of Nat’s bedroom (utterly typical for the home of a fortysomething divorced guy), replaying the event over and over, wondering and worrying if she had done what was expected. And then, of course, there was the question of contraception. They hadn’t used any. Would her local pharmacist stock the morning-after pill? What were the rules about taking it? How had she gotten to twenty-six without actually knowing this stuff? How had she gotten to twenty-six without losing her virginity anyway? She shook her head in disbelief as the disapproving face of her only serious boyfriend came to mind. He had been president of the Christian Union at university and had flat-out refused to have sex outside marriage. They had broken up when Lizzy was twenty-five. There had been opportunities since, but by then Lizzy had decided that getting to your midtwenties without having done it was just plain weird, and she didn’t want to have to explain so she avoided the issue. And after all that, she lost it to her boss. In just eleven minutes from taxi to finish. Was that it?
Finally, at seven in the morning, Lizzy decided it was time to go.
“See you in the office at nine,” she said brightly. Nat nodded groggily. Lizzy bounced out of bed and headed for the tube and a change of clothes in her grotty flat in Hammersmith. She was borne all the way there on a tide of regret. And so preoccupied was she with her big faux pas that it wasn’t until she got to the office that she remembered it was a Saturday.
CHAPTER 2
Up.”
Carrie Klein issued her first order of the day.
“Wha …?”
The young man in her bed sat up against the pillows and rubbed his eyes.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Seven-thirty,” she said.
“Seven-thirty? But it’s a Sunday.”
“Makes no difference to me. I have things to do today, and I need you out of the apartment while I’m doing them.”
“Carrie.” Jed opened his arms. “There is nothing that really needs to be done at seven-thirty on a Sunday morning. You need to chill out more, babe. Let me help you. Come back to bed.”
Carrie eyed Jed’s firm chest dispassionately. He was a male model. There was no doubt that he was beautiful, but lately Carrie had been wondering if this relationship was working for her. It was a funny thing. A female model was the holy grail as a partner for a high-flying guy, but what high-flying woman should be with a man who pouted for a living?
“Jed, I have a position of responsibility,” she reminded him as he tried to slip a hand inside the folds of her dressing gown.
“I can think of several irresponsible positions I’d like to see you in …”
“Not now,” she insisted. Jed never seemed to understand when she was being serious.
Carrie Klein was second in command in the Old Masters department at Ehrenpreis. Of all the auction houses in New York, Ehrenpreis was the newest. Founded in the 1960s, it didn’t have centuries of history like Christie’s, Sotheby’s, or Ludbrook’s, but it already had a reputation for excellence. Recently, the house had held some very high-profile sales that had set tongues wagging. The older houses had at last admitted they had something to worry abou
t.
Carrie had begun her career at Christie’s. When she’d moved to Ehrenpreis at age thirty-one, leapfrogging many of her peers, some of her former colleagues had tried to belittle the appointment, saying that there was no way Carrie would have gotten such a senior position in any “proper house.” She was determined to prove them wrong. And that meant working hard. Working on the weekends if she had to. And she did have to. Still did, eight years and several more promotions on.
“Jed, please don’t make this difficult for me,” she said. “I have a big auction coming up next week. There are people I need to talk to. People in different time zones. You do realize that they’re already halfway through Monday in Asia?”
“Then call them on their Tuesday. They can wait.”
“They won’t wait.” Her mobile phone vibrated to let her know she had voice mail. “See?” she said. “I’ve got to get going.”
She tugged on a turtleneck sweater, then sat down on the edge of the bed and began to roll her stockings up over her long slim legs. Jed moved so that he was right behind her. He started to knead her shoulders, and as much as she didn’t want to, Carrie found herself responding to his expert touch. To supplement his income as a model-cum-actor, Jed had learned the art of Swedish massage. He made home visits to society ladies all over Manhattan and was very much in demand. He had a real talent for touch.
“Jed …,” Carrie began to protest, but now he had moved from massaging her shoulders to kissing what small part of her neck he could reach. Before she knew what was happening, Carrie lifted her arms and let Jed pull her turtleneck sweater off over her head.
“Oh, all right.… I guess it is the weekend. But just thirty minutes, okay?”
“I can do a lot in thirty minutes.” Jed grinned at her. She knew it.
Carrie let Jed unpin her long blond hair. She shivered as the silky soft tresses settled on the bare skin of her back above her dove-gray slip.
“Arms up again,” Jed instructed.
Soon her slip was on the floor, too.
“Lie down,” he said.
Carrie lay back on the pillows and tried to look a little more relaxed, even if she wasn’t exactly feeling it. Jed, who had often told her that he worshipped every inch of her, seemed determined to prove it that morning. He started at her feet.
“You have the most beautiful feet,” he told her as he kissed the arch of each perfectly pedicured foot. Then he placed another kiss on each ankle. He laid a little path of kisses up her shins to her knees.
“Great knees,” he said with a smile.
“Behave,” Carrie warned him. “You know I’m self-conscious about my knees.”
“They are my favorite part of you,” Jed responded.
“Just keep kissing me.”
Jed moved on to her thighs. He traced a line from her left knee to her hip with his tongue, and then repeated the move on the other side. With gentle hands he parted her legs. He dipped his head and nuzzled the soft triangle of her pubic hair.
“Feeling better yet?” he asked.
“Much,” she said, as she felt his warm breath on her clitoris. “I might let you have forty-five minutes instead.”
“I’ll make the most of it,” Jed promised.
But then the telephone in the hall started ringing. Carrie immediately tensed up.
“Ignore it,” said Jed. “Just ignore it.”
Carrie tried. She lay back on the pillows again and closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on nothing but the feeling of Jed’s tongue on her clitoris, but it was no good. Soon she was biting her lip with anxiety. She had turned the ringer on the phone beside the bed to silent, but the set in the hall rang loud enough to keep her from all thoughts of the erotic. And then her cell phone joined in, vibrating urgently on the nightstand.
“Stop!” She pushed Jed away.
“For fuck’s sake.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But whoever it is has been trying every way they can to get hold of me. It must be important.”
“What?” Jed snapped. “What on earth can be more important than letting me pleasure you?”
“Jed, I will make it up to you,” she said as she simultaneously pulled on her dressing gown and checked the messages on her cell phone.
“I don’t know if you’ll have the chance,” said Jed, hopping out of bed and searching the floor around it for his own clothes.
Carrie nodded vaguely. Already absorbed in her voice mail messages, she didn’t hear Jed’s threat. She waved him in the direction of the kitchen.
“There’s juice in the refrigerator,” she said.
“I’ll get some on my way home.”
He left, slamming the door as he went.
Carrie hardly noticed. She was already calling her boss.
“I’m sorry. I would have picked up, but I was on a call to Asia,” she lied.
“Don’t worry about that,” said Andrew Carter. “But I need you in the office right away. There’s an emergency. You know that small Constable in next week’s sale?”
“The one with the sheep in the stream?”
“Exactly. I just got a call from a guy in England, tells me he’s looking at the exact same painting hanging on the wall in the study of a stately home where he’s on a shooting weekend.”
“F—” Carrie swallowed a swear word. “And he thinks it’s real?”
“He does. And as long as I’ve known him, he’s never been wrong.”
Carrie sat down heavily on her sofa as though she were receiving bad news about her health, while Andrew ran through the nightmarish details. His informant was one of the UK’s most respected experts on the artist in question. If anyone knew the real thing, it was he.
“Shit.” This time Carrie couldn’t keep the expletive in.
“Exactly,” said her boss.
Jed’s attempt to get Carrie’s morning off to a good start was all but forgotten now. She closed her eyes and let the horror wash over her. She had taken on a fake.
CHAPTER 3
Serena Macdonald could only dream about waking up next to some hot young guy who wanted to give her a shoulder massage. That morning, as had been the case most mornings for the past few months, she awoke to the sound of a small pink puppet making farting noises. She opened one eye to see her five-year-old daughter, Katie, sitting on the end of the bed, absorbed in CBeebies on the television.
“Morning, Mummy,” said Katie, without turning around.
“Morning, sweetheart.”
“Breakfast?” Katie suggested.
Serena glanced at the clock. It was half past six. “Jeez,” she sighed. As an artist, Serena had always considered people who deliberately got up before ten to have lost the plot. But it was Monday. And a school day. And now she was one of those people.
Serena snaked one bare arm out from beneath the duvet and felt around on the floor for the jeans and sweater she had been wearing for the past four days. There was no way she was getting out of bed without dressing first. It was icy cold in that farmhouse. Cornwall? It may as well have been Siberia.
Serena had grown up in Cornwall. She’d had what anyone would describe as an idyllic childhood, but all the same, she’d been only too eager to leave the county and head for London at the first possible opportunity. She’d gone to the Chelsea College of Art and Design and after that had worked in the art departments of a few private schools. And London was where she’d met Tom, her soon-to-be ex-husband. Serena often thought about that moment when Tom walked into her life. The second she laid eyes on him, she had a feeling that he was going to play a big part in it from that day forward. How had she failed to foresee that ten years after Tom had asked her to marry him (on their first passionate date), he would be shacked up with someone else?
It was worse than that. It transpired that the woman Tom had fallen in love with was his boss’s wife. Serena had been stunned when she’d discovered her rival’s identity. They’d met a few times at the bank’s corporate functions, and Tom had always
been quite scathing about the woman: a social X-ray transplanted from New York who spent her days shopping and meeting her superannuated “girlfriends” for lunch. Donna Harvey was always immaculately groomed—hair, nails, whiter-than-white teeth … She dressed in that way only American women of a certain social status do. It seemed she had exchanged her jeans for a Chanel suit and pearls the moment she’d left grad school and would not change out of them again until they were fitting her up for her shroud.
“She makes me feel so unkempt!” Serena had said after one particularly torturous dinner party. “You must be so ashamed of me.”
“Nonsense,” Tom had said that night. “You are a thousand times sexier than she will ever be. I bet she’s the kind of woman who takes a shower before and after she shags.”
Well, now he would know for sure, thought Serena bitterly.
Naturally, Tom’s boss hadn’t taken the news all that well either. Though technically he couldn’t sack Tom for shagging his wife, he’d made it practically impossible for Tom to stay at the bank. Tom had leaped at the chance to be laid off. But there had been no fabulous severance package. Tom’s boss had moved back to New York as soon as he could, leaving Donna in the house in South Kensington. Tom had moved in.
“We can’t afford to keep the house in Fulham, Serena. I’m sorry. I’ve got no money coming in. We’ve got to put it on the market. Start looking for something else for you and Katie. You should be able to get two bedrooms in Stockwell.”
Serena had quailed at the thought of such a rough neighborhood. “You want me to live in Stockwell while you’re living it up in your love pad in South Ken? For fuck’s sake, Tom, ask her for the mortgage money.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry. It could prejudice her settlement. I’m doing my best.”
“Well, if this is your best … I hope you can hold your head up when you explain to your daughter that she had to move into some flea-infested pit because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants.”
There was no way that Serena was going to move into some two-bedroom flat on an estate she was afraid to walk through in the daylight, but she couldn’t afford anything big enough somewhere nice. After viewing a couple of shoe boxes in SW6, Serena bowed to the inevitable. The only option was to move out of London altogether. She started looking around Guildford, thinking she should try to stay within an hour’s distance of Tom so that he could see Katie whenever he wanted. But the sad truth was that, even though he lived just a couple of tube stops away and, in theory, had nothing to do all day in his state of unemployment, Tom wasn’t making much effort to see Katie at all.
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