Sudden Pleasures Read Free

Devlin order come in?” she asked Nina, her assistant, as she entered the store.
    “Yep, just while you were gone. I didn’t open it. I thought you would want to do that,” Nina said with a smile. “But I have to admit I’m dying to see it. It’s in the back.”
    “Have we been busy?” Ashley wanted to know.
    “Sure we have,” Nina replied. “Bridal season, and they all want sexy underwear.”
    Ashley smiled and went into her office, where Nina had placed the small package. Carefully she tore off the paper wrapping. Then she opened the box and lifted the exquisite silk-and-lace nightgown from the tissue wrapping. It was the palest pink, with the most delicate lace Ashley had ever seen. Carson had discovered the lace while vacationing with Peter on the island of Madeira, ferreted out its source, and brought the information to her. She had paid the nuns for a year’s supply of their lace, and put it with her seamstress to use on certain garments. Part of her shop’s success was being able to offer unique, one-of-a-kind items. The nightgown in her hands was certainly beautiful.
    “Nina, come and look,” she called out, and her assistant hurried in.
    “God, it’s beautiful!” Nina said. “She’s going to love it, but I wonder if he knows it will be Christmas before she can wear it. I mean, it isn’t something you put on when you’re nursing. Breast milk would really stain such delicate silk, and she’ll nurse exclusively for six months, like they all do now.”
    “It’s the thought that counts,” Ashley said softly. “And he thought of it. Now, why can’t I find a guy like that?”
    “You want to talk about it?” Nina asked sympathetically. She was a motherly but fashionable woman in her early fifties.
    “What’s to talk about?” Ashley said gloomily. “Three weddings planned. Three weddings canceled. Three florists, three caterers, three bands, all paid for and canceled. Three wedding gowns and twelve attendants’ dresses, all paid for and then donated to the hospital’s secondhand shop. And let us not forget the hundreds of wedding gifts that have all had to be packed up and returned with a handwritten note of regret. ‘Dear Mr. and Mrs. Van Buren: I’m so sorry to tell you that the wedding has had to be canceled because the groom turned out to be gay, dead, a con man. I am returning your beautiful and most thoughtful wedding gift via Federal Express. Fondly, Ashley Cordelia Kimbrough, who has sucky taste in men.’”
    Nina couldn’t help it: She laughed. “Oh, honey,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
    “I’m sorrier,” Ashley replied. “But it really is getting to be rather comical, isn’t it? I wonder if ‘three strikes and you’re out’ applies to situations like this?”
    “I think you just haven’t met the right man,” Nina, a widow, said cheerfully.
    “I’ve got eighteen months,” Ashley said softly, “or I really will be out. Out on the street. Damn! I will not lose everything to an organization called SSEXL, even if I have to marry a monkey in the zoo!”
    “Speaking of monkeys, Lila Peabody came in today to pick up her new bras,” Nina murmured. “That boob job she got looks great. And at her age, too. She said she was just seventy.”
    “Seventy-five,” Ashley corrected. “Perky boobs, and a face like a leather satchel. She has the money. Why she didn’t do the face too, I don’t know. I suppose it’s because her skin is so damaged from her constant tanning.”
    “Rumor has it she has a new beau,” Nina said.
    “I heard. Old Paul Hilton,” Ashley replied.
    “No fool like an old fool,” Nina remarked.
    “Do you ever think of remarrying?” Ashley asked her assistant.
    “No. I don’t want to break another one in, thanks. Besides, who needs a man when you have the Channel, my dear? I can’t thank you enough for introducing me to it. I can have sex anytime, and any way I want it, and at four a.m. I’m back in my own bed. It’s just too