Priceless (2 page)

The way he said “good pure heart” made Maria wonder if Ricasoli really thought such a thing was an asset.

While he dabbed away at something on the canvas, a crooked line or a smudge of color gone awry, Maria regarded him closely, grabbing the chance to stare as closely as he had stared at her.

He was handsome. And he had a sophistication rarely seen in the local men of her little fishing town. When he wasn’t dressed in his artist’s smock, grubbily colorful where he’d wiped his brushes clean, he was adorned in the finest silks, the latest fashions from Florence and Rome. Maria had often spied on him from her bedroom window, which had a good view of the road down to the harbor where he took his evening promenade. Of course, it hadn’t occurred to her that that was how he had first
noticed her with her shining blond hair, and had chosen her for his innocent Mary.

What was it like to be ruined? Maria wondered. How did it happen? As Ricasoli turned his back to her while he mixed more pigment, Maria regarded the artist again. He had a way of carrying himself that made him seem lithe and slim, but as he bent over the pot of ground lapis with which he was to paint her robes, she could see that his shoulders were wide and strong. His buttocks, in their tight buckskin trousers, were square and powerful. Maria had a sudden flashing vision of what they might look like naked. Pumping. She had seen two people making love once, in a field behind the village. The woman’s small heels pressed into the man’s buttocks as he thrust into her. Suddenly Maria found herself imagining her own feet against the artist’s flesh.

He had finished mixing his paints. On the couch, her aunt was still fast asleep.

“Are you ready to continue?” he asked.

Maria nodded as she gave one last stretch to get the blood back into her limbs. Ricasoli’s eyes traveled the length of her body as she did so, and Maria luxuriated in his look for as long as it took her to remember that such vanity was almost certainly a sin. She sat back down at the table and picked up the fig she had held in her hand for the last three days. The fruit was warm and sticky; its ripe skin was stretched tight and ready to burst. Maria assumed the position as closely as she remembered it.

“Not quite,” said Ricasoli. He stepped up onto the podium on which the table had been placed to make the best of the light coming through the window. “A little more to your left,” he told her. Maria shifted in her seat. “No. Too far. Wait. You were here. More like this.”

Very gently, he took her chin in his hand and tilted her face toward him. But when he had her where he
thought she should be, he did not immediately take his hand away. Maria looked at him with huge unblinking eyes. He had never before laid a hand on her to help her into her pose. Ordinarily, her aunt would be standing right beside him, ensuring that such a thing didn’t happen. From the back of the studio, the sleeping chaperone let out an enormous snort.

Maria and the artist jumped apart. Was that snore enough to have woken her up? It seemed not.

“You moved,” Ricasoli said to Maria. “Now I will have to put you into position all over again.” Once more he took her chin in his hand and tilted her face toward the light. But this time he did not stop when she was in the perfect position for the painting. He kept on tilting her face until they were almost nose to nose. She let out a small gasp of surprise as he said, “I’m going to do it.”

“Do what?” she squeaked.

“This.”

He kissed her.

Maria had never been kissed by a man before. Not like that. She had wondered if she ever would be and, if she were, whether she would be good at it. It turned out that her older sister had been right. It came to her as though she had always been kissing. Maria let herself fall into the tender trap.

The artist’s lips were so warm and gentle. His fingers explored her long, fine neck, her bare shoulders, her soft décolletage that had never been touched before.

Maria felt a blush rise on her skin. Her heart beat faster. Her head and stomach felt light. As Ricasoli continued to touch her, she realized she wanted to throw her clothes off and feel his hands on every part of her. She trembled as she felt her body begin to unfurl for love. At the same time she squeezed the fig so hard it split open in her palm.

On the couch in the corner, her aunt slept on. Ricasoli held out his hand and invited Maria to step behind the screen where she changed out of her own clothes and into the Virgin’s robes each morning.

“What if she wakes up?”

“We’ll say you were washing your hands,” said Ricasoli, as he sucked fig juice from her forefinger.

I’m going to be ruined
, thought Maria.

And it was wonderful.

CHAPTER 1

I
t was the moment he sucked whipped cream from her fingers that Lizzy Duffy realized her relationship with her boss had changed irrevocably. Subsequently, losing her virginity to him was either the best or the worst career move she could possibly have made. As she lay on her back in Nat Wilde’s bed, worrying at a cuticle and examining a cobweb in the corner of his bedroom ceiling, Lizzy decided that it was probably her worst move. And staying the night had compounded it. She remembered something she’d read in some magazine: don’t act clingy after the first time you have sex. It was clingy, wasn’t it, staying the night in the hope of a reassuring cuddle? Nat had fallen asleep right after he’d come. Lizzy knew she should have gotten straight up and caught a taxi home right then to prove she wasn’t bothered. Beside her, Nat slumbered on, seemingly unmoved by the same dilemma.

What on earth had possessed her? Fact was, Lizzy knew exactly what had possessed her. Nat Wilde had possessed her the moment she’d first laid eyes on him at her interview for a position in the Old Masters and Nineteenth-Century department at Ludbrook’s, the auction house on New Bond Street. Fresh from her master’s degree in art history at the Courtauld, Lizzy had prepared
a pretty speech about her passion for nineteenth-century British watercolorists. But she hadn’t had an opportunity to deliver it. Nat Wilde had been running late. He’d breezed into the Ludbrook’s office fifteen minutes after the interview had been due to start. He’d been slightly inebriated, having lunched with his best friend, Harry Brown, head of Ludbrook’s department of fine wines, at their gentleman’s club on St. James’s. Nat had picked Lizzy’s CV up from the desk and had seemed unable to focus on it. Then he’d looked at her, focused very well on the hem of her skirt, and said, “You’ve got the right degree, you’re passably pretty, and you wear short skirts. You’re hired.”

The right thing at that moment would have been for Lizzy to take offense, but before she could open her mouth to protest at such a superficial and sexist dismissal of her proper talents, Nat Wilde had smiled at her. And it had been the kind of smile that had made her feel he had been joking about her being “passably pretty.” That was an understatement, of course. He found her far more attractive than that. Lizzy couldn’t help but smile back. She’d been smitten.

“Your first assignment,” Nat had said. “Tell me about this little painting right here.”

Her heart still fluttering like a hummingbird with the hiccups, Lizzy had followed Nat across the room. Balanced on a shelf had been a small watercolor of a farmer bringing cows in from the field at the end of the day.

“Artist?”

“Easy.” Lizzy had trotted out the name.

“Real?”

Lizzy had peered closely. “I think so. The only way to know is to see the signature. But he wouldn’t have signed a piece this small on the front. You’d need to turn it over and—”

“Already done that,” Nat had said. “Put a reserve on it of ten to twelve grand. What do you think?”

“I think that’s just about right,” Lizzy had said. “How about you?”

“I think you and I are going to work together very well.”

And they did.

Never before had Lizzy found getting up for work to be such a pleasure. She was thrilled to be working with the art that she loved, surrounded by fellow enthusiasts. She had long been determined to have a great career in an auction house, but now she had an added incentive to sparkle. Each morning she veritably sprang out of bed at the sound of her alarm. She spent at least an hour getting ready, blow-drying her fine blond hair into something resembling a do. And oh how her efforts were rewarded. Nat Wilde could make her day with a wink, and the winks were plentiful. They’d flirted like crazy for the past six months. And now here she was. In his bed.

That afternoon’s sale at Ludbrook’s had been a barnstormer. Lot after lot had busted through the ceiling prices Nat had predicted. And finally, Nat had achieved a price of seven figures for an early nineteenth-century oil. It went to a Russian collector. All the good papers would cover the news.

After such a successful day, Nat announced that the entire team deserved a treat. He utilized his direct line to the maître d’ at the Ivy and booked a table for eight o’clock.

“Sit here,” said Nat to Lizzy, patting the seat beside him. “You’re my right-hand girl, and I want you at my right hand.”

Lizzy settled into the seat, catching the envious glances from the other girls in her department—Olivia
and Sarah Jane—as they found themselves at the other end of the table, between the two bespectacled boys, Marcus and James.

“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.