'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 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 babysit 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.
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 wine and gazed out over the bay. Byrnes knew her late grandfather probably better than anyone. He had grown up at Kimbrough Hall, as his father had been the previous butler. And he knew all about the clause that had been added to her grandfather's will at Lila's behest. Byrnes had not liked Lila Peabody, but he would have thought it presumptuous to voice an opinion on the matter. But Ashley had heard him speaking to his wife on the subject one day, and the butler had not spoken well of her grandfather's last girlfriend, stating most bluntly that Lila was no lady. Ashley smiled to herself as she remembered the butler's disapproving tone. But, of course, he was right: Lila Peabody had not been a lady, which had amused Ashley's grandfather.
Hearing Byrnes rolling in the dinner cart, Ashley seated herself at the little table that had been set up for her. Byrnes placed to her left a small salad plate of endive dressed lightly with a raspberry vinaigrette. Next came the dinner plate, which held a very rare piece of filet mignon, three small potato puffs, and several slender stalks of asparagus with a splash of Hollandaise sauce. The butler stood in attendance while Ashley ate in silence. When she had finished he cleared the dinner and salad plates from the table, replacing them with a dish of freshly hulled local strawberries dusted with sugar, and a tiny pitcher of thick cream.
'The berries were picked this afternoon, Miss Ashley. The strawberry patch is quite bountiful this year,' Byrnes said. 'Mrs. B. will be making jam and freezing some whole berries for the winter.'
'They're delicious, and still warm with the sun,' Ashley noted.
'Are there plans for this evening, Miss Ashley?' the butler wanted to know.
'No, I'll be going up to my quarters after I've finished,' Ashley told him.
'If you don't mind my mentioning it, Ghostly and Graybar could use a good run on the beach, Miss Ashley.'
'I have been neglecting them, haven't I?' Ashley said. 'It won't be dark for a while. I'll take them out. Thanks, Byrnes.' Finished with her dinner, she stood up. 'Are they in the kitchen with Mrs. B.?'
'Yes, Miss Ashley. Shall I bring them up?' the butler asked her.
'No, I'll go and fetch them myself. I want to thank Mrs. B. for such a wonderful dinner. The potato puffs were marvelous, even if I do try to stay away from those hard carbs,' Ashley said with a smile. She hurried down to the kitchen, where she found her two greyhounds sprawled beneath Mrs. B.'s large wooden kitchen table. 'The puffs were heaven,' she told the cook. 'Thanks, even if I shouldn't have them.'
'Nonsense!' Mrs. B. said with a smile. She was a small, round woman with fading strawberry blond hair that she wore in a bun. She was a perfect contrast to her tall, thin husband. 'You're too thin, Miss Ashley, as it is.'
Ashley laughed. 'Bless you!' she said. Then she whistled to the two dogs, who roused themselves and ambled over to her. Ashley took their leads from a hook on the wall where they were hung, fastened them about the dogs' collars, and led them out of the house through the kitchen gardens. Once on her private beach she released Ghostly and Graybar, and let them run as she strolled along.
The sun was getting lower and lower on the horizon when she finally decided to turn back. Whistling for the two dogs, she turned about. She wanted to get well settled before she turned on the Channel. They had done some upgrades in the last year. Now you could simply subscribe to it the way you would any other premium channel. And the remote had a terrific new feature on it: You could have two fantasies ready to go if you wanted, and Ashley
