Ruthless Husband, Convenient Wife

by Madeleine Ker

  ‘That makes two of us, then.’

  Penny stroked the rippling muscles of his stomach. ‘You’ve lost so much weight. You used to be sleek, like a well-fed lion. Now every muscle and sinew is showing.’

  ‘Don’t I please you any longer?’ he demanded.

  ‘You will always be the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,’ she said simply. ‘And the most impossible.’

  ‘Untie your hair,’ he pleaded. ‘Let me see it.’

  She had pulled her dark red hair back into a pony-tail. Now she reached up to unloose the ribbon. His eyes followed the way her breasts lifted with the movement. She unfastened the band and shook her pretty head. Her silky hair fell around her smooth face in two dark waves. As if in a dream, he reached up and stroked the silken tresses.

  Penny leaned forward and kissed his parted lips. She felt her soft breasts swing against his muscular chest.

  Ryan’s manhood was swollen and hard against her body His strong hands cupped her slim waist and guided her hips over him so that he was poised to enter her.

  ‘I need an early answer, Miss Watkins,’ he said, the tension audible in his voice. ‘I can’t keep waiting for much longer.’

  ‘Why? Will you lose interest?’

  ‘No. I may just have to push ahead on my own.’

  ‘You’re known for being a very pushy man. But I advise you not to try that approach with Watkins Productions. Make sure you have my personal approval before going ahead!’

  ‘Please, Miss Watkins,’ he said softly.

  Penny heard her own whimper of desire as he pressed his erect body against the swollen sensitivity of her own. All she had to do was move slightly, and he would be able to enter her. But he waited. He was leaving it up to her, that all-important decision.

  Penny took it without thinking.

  She heard him call her name as she sank down slowly on him. He pierced her deep inside, a fulfilment that was at once shockingly intense and profoundly familiar. She was panting, her eyes half-closed as she watched his face. ‘How does that feel, Mr Wolfe?’ she whispered, her voice thick with desire as she pressed down on him with her hips.

  ‘Penny, I need you so much.’

  She cried out, longing and desire mingled in an inarticulate sob. He rocked her against him, so that with each movement her most sensitive zones thrust against his solidity.

  At first she was fiercely demanding, digging her fingertips into his shoulders, her hips thrusting into him. Then, as she knew that they were both rushing towards an inevitable climax, her movements gentled, became slower and more languorous, surer of purpose.

  She watched his face intently, wanting to release at the precise moment he did. And then they were there. He called her name a dozen times as he surged within her, heat exploding deep between them.

  When their shuddering ceased, Penny’s head was drooping like a lily on a broken stem. She sank into his arms and he held her close, his mouth buried in her fragrant hair. The moonlight was bright at the window and the snowflakes kept drifting down.

  The owners of Northcote had stripped the great house of most of its furnishings. In particular, they had removed most of the paintings and furniture that had once graced the imposing rooms. One of the most daunting tasks facing Penny was replacing these.

  ‘It’s not like ordering curtains or deciding on the colour walls should be painted,’ she told Ryan one morning over coffee. ‘The art in a house like this is a collection, built up by different people over generations. It’s very hard to replace that, especially in just a few months.’

  ‘If anyone can do it, you can,’ Ryan told her. ‘You have a wonderful eye, Penny.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Oh, Ryan—you have such unbounded faith in my abilities.’

  ‘You’re an artist. I’m not. That was why you left me in the first place, wasn’t it? Because I didn’t let you spread your artistic wings wide enough?’

  ‘Something like that,’ she said with a grimace.

  ‘Well, now you can spread them all you want,’ he said. He looked at her over the rim of his coffee-cup, his grey eyes amused. ‘This is building up to something. What?’

  They were sitting in the projection room. It had just been completed, and was one of the few rooms in Northcote that held peace, being free of workmen and activity.

  As a matter of fact, Penny loved this room, the only one Ryan himself had designed. She loved the maple panelling, the rich leather seats, the sumptuous carpeting. She loved the big screen and the surround speakers, which always gave her a tingle of anticipation, the same feeling she’d had as a child at her first movies.

  It was the perfect place to screen films for select audiences, and it also made an elegant rendezvous in a house where almost every room was filled with strangers, so they had taken to meeting here for coffee and discussion. Nobody ever disturbed them here.

  They were sitting in the back row, where the control panel was. Penny was going through her briefcase, Ryan checking his email on his laptop computer.

  ‘Well,’ Penny said, leaning back in the luxurious seat, ‘you know I’ve been on the look-out for good quality pieces for Northcote?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I came across something quite exciting last week. There’s going to be an auction sale at a country house in North Yorkshire next week. The place is called Havelock Hall, and it dates from the same period as Northcote. They have lots of exquisite things. In fact, it’s a wonderful collection, all under one roof.’

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ he commented.

  ‘I’ve been looking through the catalogue.’ She opened her briefcase and passed him the auctioneer’s catalogue, which was an inch thick. ‘There are paintings, marbles, bronzes, clocks, carpets, silver, furniture, garden statuary—’

  ‘Stop,’ he laughed, flicking through the catalogue. ‘I get the picture.’

  ‘The house is being demolished, so everything has to be sold. One of the big London houses is doing the auction. The thing is, darling, it’s a unique opportunity to pick up whole rooms-full of beautiful things that match. I could spend months buying pieces separately, but—’

  ‘Hold on a moment,’ he said, looking up from the catalogue.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you just call me “darling?”’

  ‘No, you must have heard wrong.’

  ‘I could have sworn you did.’

  ‘Maybe some problem with the acoustics in here.’

  ‘Maybe. Go on.’

  She smiled at him. The truth was that they had been getting on so well lately that it frightened her and thrilled her at the same time. ‘Well, it’s a terrific opportunity. The only problem is—money. Together with what we’ve bought so far, we could furnish Northcote at practically one swoop from the Havelock collection. But it means a huge expenditure.’

  Ryan nodded. ‘And you want to know if I’m committed enough.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see you’ve marked several lots in this catalogue. Are these the pieces you’re interested in?’

  ‘Yes.’ She leaned forward so she could point to some calculations she had made. ‘They’re all pieces in the same rooms. They go so perfectly together, do you see? My idea is we could transplant whole rooms from Havelock to Northcote. But to get the pieces we want, we might have to outbid some determined buyers. These are the auctioneer’s estimates.’

  Penny was leaning close to Ryan, and the silky drop of her hair was brushing his cheek.

  ‘That perfume you’re wearing is delicious,’ he murmured, inhaling her scent. ‘Is it new?’

  ‘Yes, it’s new. I found it on my bedside table. I think my fairy godmother must have left it there.’

  ‘She has excellent taste.’

  ‘Oh, she shops in Paris. At least, that’s what the label says.’

  Ryan touched the warm skin of her neck with his lips, sending shivers of pleasure down her spine. ‘And how much would she have to spend to buy all these antiques you want?’r />
  Penny reached over to the catalogue in his hands and flipped some pages. ‘This is what I work out. I’ve calculated what we might have to spend using the high end of the estimate for each lot, in case we meet determined bidding.’

  He looked at the figure. ‘How many noughts is that?’

  ‘It’s horrendous, isn’t it?’ she agreed. ‘But if we get lucky, we might spend much less than that. And even if we do pay the full amount, we’ll be getting a marvellous collection at well below dealer prices.’

  ‘So even if I spend this much, I’m actually saving money?’

  ‘Got it. You should have been an economist.’

  ‘And when is the sale?’ His arm had somehow slipped round her waist and was drawing her close to him.

  Penny rested her head on his broad shoulder and nestled close to him. ‘Next Saturday.’

  ‘Well, why don’t we go up together?’ He was trailing warm kisses across her closed eyelids and down the velvet of her cheeks towards her lips. ‘North Yorkshire is beautiful.’ He kissed the smiling corner of her mouth softly. ‘Just like you.’

  Penny’s businesslike efficiency was dissolving under the tender onslaught. She lifted her chin so he could kiss her full on the lips. Ryan’s tongue touched hers. She drew it into her mouth, feeling his hand slide into her shirt and cup the swell of her breast.

  ‘What are you doing to me?’ she whispered, her bones seeming to melt.

  ‘We’re making out in the back row of the movies,’ he replied, deftly unfastening her bra.

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait until the lights go down?’ she asked, looking up at him with drowning eyes.

  ‘Your wish is my command, my darling.’ He reached out and touched a switch on the control panel. The room lights dimmed into darkness.

  And then she was lost in his arms.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THEY drove up to North Yorkshire on Friday in Ryan’s sports car. The weather was bright and cold. As Ryan had predicted, the scenery was beautiful, not the sometimes bleak landscape of the moors, but a richly forested patchwork of little villages and green fields.

  They took a suite at a hotel in the pretty market town of Barnard Castle. Havelock Hall was some ten miles’ drive from Barnard Castle. It was a large house on more or less the same scale as Northcote, but in a very poor state of repair. As they walked to the hall through the ranks of other cars parked on the lawns—the auction was evidently drawing a lot of attention—there were obvious signs of neglect and decay.

  ‘I hope the contents aren’t as badly run-down as the house,’ she said to Ryan, looking at the crumbling fabric of the once great building, ‘or I’ll have led us on a wild-goose chase!’

  They signed in at the door and walked into the house.

  ‘I don’t think you need to worry,’ Ryan said to her, looking around. ‘These things are magnificent!’

  It was true. The owners of Havelock Hall had collected splendid art works over the generations, and had clearly cherished their collection. As they walked from room to room, Penny felt her pulses racing with excitement. It was a wonderland of desirable things, each bearing a numbered tag.

  Here were sets of Sheraton and Hepplewhite furniture, perfectly in tune with the neoclassical style of Northcote; fine oil paintings from the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries; Italian marbles and French bronzes; display cases filled with fine English china, collections of clocks, antique firearms, Persian carpets, Chinese and Indian objects d’art—rooms filled with beautiful objects that matched each other in that indefinable way that it took centuries to achieve.

  ‘Oh, Ryan.’ She grabbed his arm, her fingers biting into the hard muscles under his silk jacket. ‘Those are the two paintings of the Lake District I told you about—they would look so wonderful in the dining room. And those exquisite marble busts are Florentine, late eighteenth century.’

  ‘You should go on the Antiques Roadshow,’ he smiled.

  ‘I know there was a similar pair at Northcote, but the owners sold them years ago. I’ve seen pictures of them in a book about English country houses. These are just as good, if not better.’

  ‘They are lovely things.’

  ‘All the dealers are here,’ Penny whispered to Ryan, looking around at the well-heeled viewers. ‘Competition is going to be stiff!’

  ‘How many noughts do I need to add to that figure you scribbled in the catalogue?’ he asked wryly.

  ‘Depends how serious you are about making Northcote into something truly special,’ she replied.

  ‘Hmm. Fighting talk. I’ll tell you what. You can do the bidding tomorrow. If the price gets too rich for my blood, I’ll nudge you in the ribs.’

  She felt his biceps. ‘God, you’re so strong. Do you sneak off to the gym when I’m not looking?’

  ‘I keep fit by punching Hollywood moguls in the nose.’

  ‘Well, don’t nudge too hard,’ she commented, ‘you might break one of my ribs.’

  By midday on Saturday, when the auctioneer halted for lunch, she had bid successfully on two dozen lots, and Ryan had not prodded her in the ribs once.

  Penny was in a state of euphoria. The things she had bought were so exquisite that she was as happy as though she had bought them for herself, rather than for Ryan.

  ‘And we haven’t had to really push the price once,’ she exulted as they carried their paper plates to a quiet corner to eat. The lots for sale might be sublime, but the catering had only run to pies, sausage rolls and chips.

  ‘I’m so relieved to see all the money we’re saving,’ Ryan said drily. ‘That last pair of serpentine columns cost as much as a small car.’

  ‘But when you see them at Northcote, with those alabaster figurines on them, you’ll be glad you didn’t stick me in the ribs!’ She was exhilarated, bubbling. ‘And we got those bronze garden statues! They just need to have the oxidation cleaned off, and then they’ll be spectacular, on either side of our entrance hall.’

  ‘Ask the tea-lady for a couple of mugs of this stuff,’ he commented, wincing as he sipped his tea. ‘It’d take the paint off a garden gnome.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We should have brought a bottle of champagne!’ Eating quickly, she ran through her list. ‘I can’t believe we’ve got all these things, Ryan. We’ve done so well.’

  ‘What else is on your list?’ he asked.

  ‘Poor baby,’ she said, kissing him with a mouth flecked with flaky pastry, ‘are you shell-shocked?’

  ‘I’m just being dragged along behind your chariot,’ he said with a smile. ‘What are we going for this afternoon?’

  ‘I’ve marked all sorts of things. But the lot I really want is this one.’ She tapped the catalogue. ‘The two paintings of the Lake District.’

  Ryan glanced from the catalogue to the paintings in question, which stood by the auctioneer’s rostrum, in preparation for the afternoon sale. They were very large, quite magnificent Victorian oil paintings, which made a matching pair, in heavy gilt frames. ‘The one on the left looks like Grasmere,’ Penny said, ‘with the mountains in the background. The other one might be Coniston, with the islands in the lake. They’re both very beautiful.’

  ‘They could be very valuable, too. The work is as good as early Constable, though they’re unsigned. I’d be prepared to bet that, with a little research, they’ll turn out to be by a major artist.’

  ‘I love them,’ Ryan said. ‘Whoever painted them was a master.’

  ‘There might be a lot of competition for them. The price could go way past the estimate.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘See those two?’ She pointed to a very expensively dressed couple who were standing near the big landscapes. ‘They’re London dealers. They keep going to look at the paintings. I know they’re going to bid for them.’

  ‘They look as though they mean business.’

  ‘So do I.’ She glared at the dealers through narrowed, amethyst eyes. ‘That blonde hair isn’t real. An
d she’s had a face-lift.’

  Ryan was watching her with a smile. ‘If you glare at them like that, they’ll catch fire.’

  ‘Are you laughing at me?’ she demanded.

  ‘No. I’m just filled with admiration. I didn’t know you had so much nerve. I’m seeing a new side of you today.’

  ‘Scary, isn’t it?’ she giggled.

  ‘Impressive, I would say.’

  ‘Did you think I could spend your money this fast?’ The tension and excitement of the morning were fizzing inside Penny—she really didn’t need champagne. In a few hours she had purchased wonderful things for Northcote. Her hunch was proving to have been an inspiration. ‘I’m so pleased with myself!’

  ‘I can see that. Well, I hope you get your lake paintings. Those two seem to have plenty of money.’

  ‘You’re not going to dig me in the ribs, are you?’ she demanded. ‘I really, really have to have those paintings.’

  ‘We’ll have to see,’ he grinned. ‘Maybe my nerve will give way. I’m probably not as brave as you.’

  ‘You are so cruel. I want those oil paintings,’ she told Ryan. ‘They’re masterpieces. I’m sorry to be so obsessed. You’d think I was buying them for myself.’

  ‘I hope you are,’ he murmured.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Penny asked.

  He paused before answering. ‘Northcote is your home if you want it. You know that.’

  She met his eyes, and felt her heart turn over in her breast. ‘Let’s just get through the auction,’ she replied awkwardly.

  ‘I offered to marry you last year. I want you more than ever now. You are buying these things for yourself—and Northcote belongs to you—as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘They would be wonderful in the dining room,’ she said distractedly, trying to ignore what his words were doing to her. ‘One on each side.’

  ‘I love your breasts,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ she blinked.