Sudden Pleasures Read Free Page A

perfect.”
    Ashley laughed. “TMI,” she told Nina, who just chuckled.
    “Do you want me to call Mr. Devlin and tell him his order is in?” Nina asked.
    “Yes, please,” Ashley said.
    The rest of the afternoon passed without incident. Two more brides-to-be came in to purchase items for their trousseaux. One of them was a girl Ashley remembered being the little sister of a schoolmate. She almost winced when the girl glowingly told Nina that Ashley and her sister used to baby-sit her when they were in their teens. Then Ashley made the mistake of asking after the girl’s older sister.
    “Oh, Claire’s been married over ten years now, and has three kids,” came the reply. “Can I tell her that you said hi?”
    Ashley nodded, smiling, but catching Nina’s sympathetic gaze. Bloody hell! she thought. Why is it that everybody but me can find a husband? I’m not looking for anything unusual. I want a nice guy with a good sense of humor with whom I can talk and share things. Is that so hard? Obviously it was. Being rich was both a blessing and a curse.
    At five p.m. on the dot she closed up Lacy Nothings for the day and bade Nina good night. Then, going around back, she got into her silver Solstice and drove home.
    “Good evening, Miss Ashley,” Byrnes, her butler, said as she entered the house. “Shall I tell Mrs. B. dinner at the usual time?”
    “Yes, but I’ll want to eat out on the porch tonight, Byrnes,” Ashley told him.
    “Very good, miss,” the butler replied with a bow, and went off to the kitchens to speak with his wife, who was Kimbrough Hall’s cook.
    Ashley went up to her bedroom suite. After stripping off her clothes she walked naked into her large bathroom. Opening one side of the double glass doors to her shower, she programmed it and turned the water on before stepping into it. A dozen water jets spurted forth from the marble enclosure as she turned herself about to get thoroughly wet. Reaching for a cake of olive oil soap a friend had brought her from Italy last year, she washed herself quickly. She didn’t want to be late for dinner, because Mrs. Byrnes usually did some sort of steak dish midweek, and dinner was served at six p.m. on the dot. She would want a little time for a glass of wine before she ate.
    Turning off the shower after she was well rinsed, Ashley stepped from the glass-and-marble surround and reached for a towel. The towel was warm from the heating rack. Once dried, she looked at herself critically in the full-length mirror. She wasn’t one of those tiny size-zero or size-two little girls. She was the average size of the American woman: size fourteen. But there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her body, her legs were long, and her breasts were high and softly rounded. Everything was in proportion, she thought smugly, even if she couldn’t be called dainty. That was one reason she had opened Lacy Nothings: so that every women from size two to size twenty-two could have sexy underwear and night wear.
    Pulling on a pair of soft, fleecy pale gray pants and a light pink cotton tee, Ashley padded downstairs in her bare feet and headed for the screened porch that overlooked the bay. Byrnes was waiting for her with a glass of red wine. Ashley took it from him and sniffed. “North Fork viticulture,” she said, and the butler nodded. She took a sip of the wine, swishing it about her mouth, breathing the fragrance. “Bedell Cellars Main Road Red,” she decided, and looked to him for confirmation.
    “Very good, Miss Ashley,” Byrnes said with a small smile.
    “Mrs. B. is cooking me a filet, isn’t she?”
    “Yes, miss. Shall I tell her to put it on now, or do you wish to wait?” the butler asked.
    “Now, please, I’m starving!” Ashley told him. “It’s been a long day, and Grandfather’s will cannot be broken.”
    “Mr. Kimbrough was a very careful and thorough man, Miss Ashley,” Byrnes observed, and then he hurried off to the kitchen.
    Ashley chuckled as she sipped her