'You haven't answered my question,' she said.
'Am I a virgin?' he teased her. 'Nope.'
Now Ashley laughed. 'I think, to be fair, we should both have physicals if we decide to make this arrangement. Including tests for STDs. That okay with you?'
'Agreed,' he said as the door to the conference room opened and their lunch was brought in.
The two waiters quickly set hot mats before them, covering them with linen place mats. Next came the silver, perfectly folded napkins, water, and wineglasses. Salads were set in front of them, and a small dressing boat was put on the table.
'Your entrees and the desserts are on the cart, Miss Kimbrough,' one of the waiters said with a deferential bow. 'I'll pour the wine, and then we'll be gone. Rick said you could serve yourselves.'
'That's fine, Artie,' Ashley said with a smile. 'Thank you. The salad looks delicious, and you brought raspberry vinaigrette, my favorite.' She poured a dollop on her salad.
While Artie poured them glasses of Pindar Winter White, the other waiter filled the water glasses. Then the two men hurried from the room.
'All the comforts of home,' Ryan noted. 'Your guys are pretty classy, considering you're country mice. Lunch in the boardroom.'
'Usually it's yogurt, salad, or sandwiches,' Ashley admitted as she ate the artfully arranged greens before her. 'I generally eat at my desk. You?'
'Yeah, unless I have to take a client or a supplier to lunch. I try to keep those dates to a bare minimum. I don't eat breakfast except for coffee and juice. Lunch is a waste of time, and time is money.'
'I eat three meals a day,' Ashley said quietly. 'I try to keep the carbs to the healthy kind. Good breakfast. Light lunch. Nice, but not too filling dinner.'
'Do you cook?' he asked her.
'Actually I do, but not if I can avoid it. Mrs. B. cooks for me,' Ashley told him. 'If I had to cook after a long day at work I probably wouldn't eat, or eat all the wrong things. Having Mrs. B. to look after me is a great blessing.'
'You have a cook?'
'I have a married couple, and a housemaid,' Ashley told him. 'When you came into town did you notice the large house on the hill overlooking the bay? That's my home, Kimbrough Hall. When you own a house like that you need help to keep everything running smoothly. The hall is on the National Registry of Historic Places in the state. I've lived there my whole life.'
'Since you're your grandfather's only heir,' he said, 'I'm going to assume your parents are dead.'
'They died in a boating accident when I was fourteen,' Ashley told him. 'They were totally in love to the exclusion of everyone else, including my brother and me. My father grew up at the hall, as my grandfather had. When he married, of course, my mother came to live there. They had two children, and then flitted off to enjoy themselves traveling the world. My brother and I were always getting marvelous gifts from their travels, and listening to them talk about their adventures on their rare visits home was really quite fascinating. Actually, my brother knew them better than I did. He was eight when they decided to go off on an extended holiday. I was just three.'
'Who raised you then?' Ryan wanted to know. He was fascinated, and yet at the same time put off by the fact that she was so casual about a lifestyle that had left her virtually motherless. Would she, under the circumstances, have any maternal instincts herself?
'Well,' Ashley said slowly, 'Grams was around until I was eleven and Ben sixteen. After that it was usually Mrs. Byrnes who kept an eye on me.'
'The cook?'
'Oh, no. The elder Mrs. Byrnes.' Ashley laughed. 'She was the housekeeper back when I was a kid. The Byrneses have been with the family for centuries. Grandfather always said they came with the house. My Mr. and Mrs. Byrnes are the elder Byrneses' son and daughter-in-law. But when they retire there'll be no more Byrneses at Kimbrough Hall. Their son is on Wall Street, and their daughter married a dentist. But Byrnes says he and his missus are good for at least fifteen more years.' She chuckled. 'I suspect they'll die in service, the way Byrnes's folks did. I just love them!'
Raised by servants. It just got worse, Ryan thought.
'Who brought you up?' Ashley asked him cheerfully, mopping the last of the salad dressing off her plate with a piece of roll.
'Our parents,' he said.
'You've got siblings? I really miss my brother, Ben. He died in Desert Storm,' she told him.
'I've got six sisters,' he replied. 'Bride is the oldest of us. She's fifty-three. Then comes Elisabetta, Kathleen, Magdalena, and Deirdre. There are four years between Dee and me. With five daughters my parents were reluctant to try again, but finally they did, and I was the result. They were so encouraged they did it one more time, but when my sister Francesca, Frankie, was born, they decided enough was enough.'
'I can't help but notice your sisters' names. Irish and Italian,' Ashley said.
'My mother's from Rome,' he replied.
'That's why you don't look Irish despite your name!' Ashley exclaimed. 'But you're very tall,' she noted.
'My dad was tall,' he told her. 'That's the Irish part.'
He had finished his salad, and he saw that Ashley was standing up and taking the covered plates off of the trolley. Removing the covers she set one plate before him and the other at her place. The plates contained four perfectly cooked raviolis with a light meat sauce sprinkled with freshly sliced mushrooms. Next to the pasta was a spoonful of thinly sliced pale green zucchini.
'Artie's Ristorante uses fresh local veggies. These must be the first zucchini of the season,' Ashley said as she dug enthusiastically into the food on her plate.
As he ate he watched her eat. Other than his family he was used to women who picked at the food on their plates, but hardly ate a morsel. Ashley was obviously not one of those women. She was actually enjoying her food.
'I'll bet your mom makes great pasta,' she said between bites.
'She does,' he said with a smile, 'but I have to admit Artie's pasta ain't bad at all. The sauce could use a bit more basil, but it's good.'
When they had finished the pasta Ashley took their plates and returned them to the trolley. She came back with plates containing small meringue shells filled with fresh strawberries and drizzled with dark chocolate. 'If you want coffee I can ask Judy,' she said, 'but frankly I'm enjoying the wine.'
'Wine is good,' he agreed.
'So,' Ashley asked him as she ate her dessert, 'do you have any bad habits? I'm not too good at tolerating fools. I'm a bit impatient. I tend to get sentimental over crazy things no one else would get sentimental over. I love animals. I've got two rescued greyhounds, Ghostly and Graybar. A very fat tortoiseshell tabby named Mr. Mittens. I feed the deer in the winter even though it appalls my neighbors. How about you?'
'I don't know,' he said, considering. 'My mother and little sister think I'm perfect. The five harpies who are my older sisters think I'm selfish because, now that they've all pissed through what Dad left them, I won't finance their extravagances. I've got other responsibilities, and they've all got husbands.'
'Believe me, I understand,' Ashley said. 'People think if you're rich you can do anything. But you've got employees, and all the expenses that go with having employees. I've always paid my people what they're worth, matched funds for their retirement, paid their Social Security, and I even have a health care plan in place. I pay half and my employees pay half. Of course, even with the new stores opening I probably don't have as many employees as you do. But if people work hard they're entitled to earn a decent living and have all that goes with it. And many of your people are craftsmen and artisans, aren't they?'
'Exactly!' he said. Okay, so she was big and tall. She ate like a horse. She had been brought up by the help, and probably didn't have a maternal bone in her body, but she sure as hell understood business and how it should be run. She had ethics, and ethics were important to him. A marriage between them was going to be strictly
