Nat kissed her before they left the restaurant. As he put his hand up the left leg of her culottes, Carrie felt incredibly naughty, though the waiters didn’t bat an eyelid. They saw this kind of thing every night.
• • •
“Where are you staying?” Nat asked, as he scanned St. James’s for a cab.
Carrie told him the name of her hotel in Earls Court. Nat didn’t know it, but he knew from its location that it wouldn’t be great. The Earls Court Road was lined with fleapits. For a moment he considered inviting Carrie back to his place, but that was always a risky proposition. It was unlikely his wife would come back in the middle of the night, but she was friendly with half the fishwives on the street, and inevitably, one of them would be peeping out from behind her net curtains when Nat ushered Carrie into or out of the house. The possible fallout was unthinkable. And then there was the potential horror of undressing Carrie, discovering that he didn’t want her after all, and being unable to do a runner … But a hotel in Earls Court? Was a shag with Carrie really going to be worth the risk of catching scabies? Nat weighed up the pros and cons and decided that it might be.
And it wasn’t bad. Beneath her terrible clothes, Carrie had a reasonable body. She was carrying a few extra pounds, but from the neck down her skin was so young and smooth and springy that the overall effect was rather nice. In any case, Nat had always secretly wanted to go to bed with a big girl. His wife seemed to get bonier by the day, and there was nothing sexy about bones no matter what the fashion mags said.
And Carrie was enthusiastic. God, that made a nice change. Sex with Miranda had become so bloody perfunctory, offered and performed as though it were some great favor that cost Miranda dearly. As Carrie shrieked and sighed each time he touched her, Nat soon became reassured of his own greatness as a lover, and the thought of his own greatness made him very hard indeed.
Carrie was tight. Perhaps, the thought passed through Nat’s mind briefly, it was because she was overweight. He’d heard that was the case. Fat girls had tighter snatches. Harry Brown swore that it was true, though Nat always thought Harry was trying to pretend that he went after the big ones because he wanted them, rather than because they were the only ones who would have him.
Carrie let out a sound of slight surprise as Nat pushed into her. A sound of slight protest, perhaps, but she didn’t make it again, so Nat carried on shoving. In, out, in, out. In and out. He was grateful that his right knee seemed to be behaving itself for once. Ever since he’d torn the meniscus in a skiing accident, it had been bloody agony for him to go on top, but since he hadn’t had sex with his wife for the past three months, it seemed his knee had had time to recover somewhat. It felt all right. And if it stopped feeling all right, he would just flip Carrie over and have her go on top instead. The thought of her breasts dangling in his face popped into his mind. It was swiftly replaced by the thought of his wife’s breasts dangling in his face. Miranda’s tits were tiny. But those big nipples! Where had they come from? Had they always looked like a couple of cigar butts? He couldn’t think why he had ever found that attractive.
In danger of losing his hard-on at the thought of his wife’s chest, Nat swiftly brought his attention back to the matter in hand. Sort of. He closed his eyes. Carrie’s tight pussy on his cock felt magnificent, but in his mind’s eye he attached her genitalia to another girl’s body. There was a rather pretty girl who worked in the contemporary art gallery across the street from Ludbrook’s. She had long brown hair and a neat little arse, which she showed off in a pair of obscenely tight black trousers. Nat hated to see a girl in trousers, but he made an exception for that pair. She’d smiled at him once. He’d immediately pictured her naked and had been doing so periodically ever since. Now, in his imagination, she was smiling up at him from the pillows while he pounded into her superbly exciting fresh little vagina.
It worked like a charm.
“Oh, God,” Nat cried out. “I’m coming!” It all happened much more quickly than he’d expected, but it was an impressive orgasm that seemed to last longer than it ordinarily would. As he fell onto Carrie’s pillowy breasts, Nat felt as though he had been hit on the back of the head with a plank of wood. It hadn’t been his best performance ever, he decided. But it had been great fun for him, and that was what mattered. He was soon fast asleep, leaving Carrie looking up at the ceiling, wondering if that was what it was always like.
The following morning, Nat’s charm had completely deserted him. His head thumped. His mouth was as dry as a camel’s armpit. His eyes were pink and framed by impressive pouches. He was formulating his excuses for a swift exit even as he woke. But there was no need.
“I’ve got to go,” said Carrie. “My flight leaves Heathrow at eleven. I ought to leave now. To be sure.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Nat waved his hand at her. “Just leave me here. I’ll show myself out.”
“I think you’ll have to check out of the room when I do,” said Carrie.
“What? Oh, fuck.” For a moment he’d forgotten they were in a hotel.
Nat sat up. Two small men with anvils clanged in unison on the inside of his skull.
“Thank you,” said Carrie. “Thank you for everything. I mean, not just for last night but for the whole two weeks. I feel like I’ve learned so much. You’ve been really kind to me. And, well, last night.” She blushed and looked down at her feet. Big feet for a girl, thought Nat. “I have to say that I didn’t expect what happened to happen. In fact, can you believe that I was saving myself …”
Nat looked confused.
“For marriage,” said Carrie shyly. “I signed a pledge with the other girls in my sorority. But, well … I’m not sure how many of them have kept the promise. And it just felt so right.”
Nat was aghast as he realized what she was trying to tell him. Carrie read his expression as something else.
“This is my number and address,” she said, handing him a piece of paper covered in her neat rounded script. “I have another six weeks at school before my next break, but then I could come and see you again. Or maybe you could come and see me.”
“No, no, no.” Nat put his head in his hands. “Noooooo.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Carrie. “It’s okay. Really. I’m glad it happened the way it did. It was just right. You know.”
“It wasn’t right,” said Nat.
“Why not?” Carrie asked.
“Because I’m married.”
The rest of that morning in Earls Court was just terrible. He got dressed quickly and carried Carrie’s bags downstairs. He paid her bill. It was the least he could do, though it meant he would have to hide his credit card statement from Miranda. Nat’s wife had an eagle eye for any possible infidelity-related expenditure. Nat did try to give Carrie a little consolatory kiss good-bye, but she wouldn’t have it. By the time he bundled her into a taxi fifteen minutes later (why can you never find one when you really, really need one), she was sobbing uncontrollably.
“It’ll be okay,” he said. “We only did it once. Your future husband need never know. I’m sure you’re still largely, er, what’s the word … Intact?”
Carrie whacked Nat in the solar plexus with her handbag, leaving him doubled over in pain.
Miranda was already at home when Nat got back. She didn’t want to hear his excuses.
“I’ve had a long talk with Daddy,” she said. “And we’ve decided that I want a divorce.”
That was the last time Nat had seen Carrie Klein before she’d walked into his old masters reception. The early nineties had been a bad time in Nat’s life in so many ways. But oh, God, hadn’t Carrie Klein grown since he’d seen her into a taxi on Earls Court Road? Angry as he was that he hadn’t recognized her (and that she must have taken such pleasure in deceiving him, the silly bitch), Nat couldn’t help but be impressed by the transformation of the frumpy little brunette into the ice-cold killer blond she was now. An ice-cold killer blond who probably had her heart set on ruining him …
CHAPTER 20
Carrie wasn’t actually spending half as much time thinking about Nat Wilde as he liked to imagine she might be. Sure, it had been fun to see his face when he’d finally put two and two together, but there had been other, better moments at that party. A week after the Ehrenpreis launch, Carrie was still on a high. The coverage of the event had been fantastic. There had been enough famous faces at the party—old Frank Ehrenpreis was a very popular guy—to ensure that the launch made the party pages of all the best magazines. It was all over the Evening Standard and the calendar pages of the Telegraph and The Times. Looking at the photographs, Carrie was very pleased that Jessica had persuaded her not to cancel that appointment at Jo Hansford.
The mousy little Carrie who had been an intern at Ludbrook’s would never have guessed that one day she would be mentioned in a glossy U.K. magazine as a “woman to watch.” But Carrie knew she could not rest on her laurels quite yet. The fantastic opening party had to be followed up with real results. Her bosses had given her a helping hand for the first few sales, shipping over jewelry that would ordinarily have been sold through the office in New York. There were some magnificent pieces that Carrie hoped would generate even more publicity.
Ehrenpreis didn’t have the history of Christie’s or Sotheby’s or Ludbrook’s. That was something Carrie could never emulate. Instead she had decided to work on making it the fashionable place to go. Like Nat, Carrie knew that death, divorce, and debt were the most common reasons why people brought their property to auction. Ludbrook’s concentrated on “death,” courting the elderly. Carrie concentrated on divorce. She had Jessica put together a luncheon for some of London’s most fashionable ladies. They dressed it up as a charity event in support of a women’s refuge. Carrie’s team of bright young women circulated professionally, forging friendly new relationships. The divorce rate being what it was, some of the relationships would pay off.
Carrie also cultivated her own relationships with the big London dealers. She knew that they were important clients, buying speculatively or for collectors who were too nervous to buy at auction themselves. She made it her mission to get to know every middleman in town.
Every mealtime was an opportunity to schmooze a potential new client or work on her professional connections. Carrie never took a coffee break without wondering if she could use the time to get to know one of her staff better. She was very pleased with the way her team seemed to be gelling.
Carrie certainly didn’t have time to get lonely. Night after night she got home from the office far too late to call anyone in Europe and too tired to catch up with friends in the States. That included Jed. At first he called her religiously every two days. But a month later, the calls were coming every four nights. And two months after Carrie had arrived in London, Jed stopped calling at all.
In fact, he sent an email telling her that he would not be coming to London as promised. He said it was clear to him that Carrie was not invested in keeping anything going. A long-distance relationship was impossible if she couldn’t even return a phone call. Carrie felt a mixture of regret and relief. But far more relief than regret.
“I don’t have time for this,” she told herself.
Carrie’s career was the most important thing in her life. Though these days she was considered a beauty by anyone’s standards, as a young girl she had quickly learned that she wasn’t going to get anywhere on looks alone. Her older sister, Bella, was the beauty of the family, born with all the best elements of her mother and her father arranged in perfect harmony. When she’d looked at herself in the mirror, Carrie had decided she must have been fashioned out of the leftovers. Bella had been the archetypal blond bombshell; Carrie had been a mouse. As the girls were growing up, their parents had reinforced the differences, referring to Bella as “the beautiful one” and Carrie as “the clever one.”
So Carrie had done the only thing she could do. She’d played up to her stereotype. She spent long hours in the library, signing up for anything that would keep her from having to be out on the playing fields. She excelled in all her academic subjects. She was the first person in her family to go to college, and she aced that, getting scholarship offers from the very best schools. She chose Princeton.
Years later, Bella admitted to her younger sister that she had spent her entire childhood envying her. Bella had struggled at school and had worried—since it had been drummed into her every day that her face was her fortune—what would happen when she started to age.
At the time, Carrie looked at Bella’s life and couldn’t see why she was worried. She had a great husband, a successful wealthy man who seemed to adore her. She had two beautiful children who had inherited Bella’s looks and would inherit the earth when their father passed on. Bella seemed set for life. But perhaps Bella already knew what was around the corner. Of course the perfect husband was fucking one of her friends.
Bella’s divorce was bad enough, but the family was dealt another blow less than a year later when Carrie’s father walked out on their mother after forty-five years of marriage, leaving her for the housekeeper. Her mother was an emotional wreck and discovered soon afterward that she was poverty-stricken too. Ed Klein had taken out a secret mortgage on the family home to fund his affair. After that, Carrie vowed she would never allow herself to rely on a man.
• • •
However, while Carrie knew that looks weren’t everything and certainly couldn’t protect you from heartache, she soon came to realize that appearances were important. As a single woman, it was vital she take care of her health. That was a given. The side effect of working hard to take care of her body was that she started to look better in her clothes. Looking better in her clothes gave her more confidence. It was a virtuous circle. She soon became more adventurous with the way she looked, swapping glasses for contacts, brown hair for blond. Just over two years before she left for London the transformation was complete. Carrie was virtually unrecognizable.
The day she went blond, she walked into a bar to meet a girlfriend for cocktails and met Jed while she was waiting for her friend to arrive.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked.
Carrie did a double take. She had never been offered a drink by a stranger before. Her immediate reaction was to refuse his kind offer.
“I shouldn’t,” she said.
“Shouldn’t?” said the guy. “Well, at least it’s not a ‘won’t.’ Please, let me buy you a cocktail. You are an exceptionally beautiful woman, and such beauty must be appreciated.”
Carrie rolled her eyes. She had never been called beautiful in her life. The old Carrie, buried deep inside, expected to find out that this was some kind of joke. This man had been dared to approach her by one of his friends. Some of the guys Carrie had known at college had made a game of bedding ugly chicks. They even had a scoreboard in their fraternity house. Carrie had heard that her name was on the board, though thankfully she had never given any of the assholes a reason to score any points out of her.
And so, faced with a guy who was so good-looking he could have had any woman in that bar, if not any woman in Manhattan, Carrie was immediately suspicious.
“Hey, Jed!” Both Carrie and Jed turned to see who was calling him, and to Carrie’s surprise, she discovered it was the friend she was due to be meeting.
“I see you guys have already met,” said Laney as she kissed first Carrie and then Jed hello. “I met Jed in my yoga class,” Laney explained.
“I’m very bendy,” Jed elaborated.
Carrie granted him a smile. All at once he had become much less threatening. He knew Laney. He did yoga.
Laney was obviously enamored of Jed. She insisted that he join them for dinner. But unfortunately for Laney, it was clear that Jed’s interests lay elsewhere. He had eyes for only Carrie. He peppered her with questions about her work. Many of them stupid, she thought. Her low opinion of his intelligence was compounded by the news that he was a model and a part-time masseur. Carrie’s attention
began to drift. She was used to men who spent their days in offices or laboratories, finding cures for cancer or solutions for world peace.
“I’m going to Paris in a couple of days,” said Jed. “Fashion week.”
Before Carrie could stop her, Laney jumped in. “Carrie is going to Paris next week too. You guys should meet up.”
Carrie shot Laney a look, but Jed didn’t notice and was already making plans. He picked up Carrie’s cell phone from where it lay on the table and used it to call his own, so that he had her number.
“I’m going to be working,” said Carrie. “I’m attending a conference on techniques for dating Renaissance work at the Louvre.”
“I’m going to be working too,” said Jed. “But if I just keep calling you, there’s bound to be a moment when we’re both free to play.”
To play? Carrie winced at his choice of words. She wasn’t the kind of girl who “played” even when she did have downtime, which wasn’t often since she’d been promoted to head of her department.
“Well, I hope you won’t be disappointed if we don’t manage to find that time,” she said.
Laney rolled her eyes this time. “Carrie,” she said later, “go for it. If only so you can report back to me.”
Carrie flew to Paris two days later, and sure enough, Jed began bombarding her with phone calls as soon as her plane touched down in Europe. He was persistent. And in the end it worked. Carrie had just one night off, and somehow, much as she resisted, Jed claimed it.
They met at her hotel, the Hyatt Vendôme. They drank champagne in the incredibly dark bar. It being the fashion show season, the bar was full of beautiful people who might otherwise have made Carrie feel dowdy, but Jed kept laying on the compliments until she had to believe that he meant them.
Jed had booked a table in a small restaurant in the fifth arrondissement called Itineraires. The minimalist bistro was buzzing with locals. Carrie was impressed that Jed had researched the restaurant scene rather than take her somewhere obvious, like a brasserie on the Champs-Elysées. She’d spent all week eating croque monsieur.
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