Priceless (15 page)

“Dinner?” Carrie put her hand on her heart as she repeated the word.

Nat nodded. He was faintly pleased with her reaction. Even though he didn’t fancy Carrie Klein, it was good to see that she was as excited at the prospect of dinner with him as any other girl.

“Wiltons,” he told her. “Eight o’clock. Wear a skirt.”

Carrie had been in a trouser suit most days that week.

“I don’t have a skirt,” she said. “Though I do have a pair of culottes.”

“Anything,” said Nat. “Anything but those bloody slacks.” They were a total abomination.

Nat felt quite pleased with himself as he got ready to go out that night. He was doing a nice thing for sweet little Carrie Klein. A charitable thing, almost, making her feel appreciated. It would be good to have half a bottle of wine and be in bed early. Nat could very nearly see the attraction of a quiet life.

But at seven-fifteen, just as he was about to walk out the door, the telephone rang. It was his wife, Miranda.
Much-Admired Miranda
, as he had called her when they were courting. He didn’t call her that very often now. She sounded in a bad mood. She so often was these days. Her father and grandfather had been very big in investment banking, and Miranda had settled into a permanent state of disgruntlement when she’d realized that Nat wasn’t going to be pulling down anything like the same money.

The conversation began badly.

“What are you doing?” Miranda asked.

“Nothing,” said Nat automatically.

“Nothing? What do you mean ‘nothing’? You can’t be doing nothing,” Miranda parried. And a row ensued. As he thought back on that fateful evening, almost twenty years later, Nat couldn’t remember what he and Miranda had argued about. It had probably, like all their arguments, ranged far and wide and brought in transgressions that he thought had been forgiven months earlier. He had a vague recollection of Miranda saying she should have followed her mother’s advice and married Piers Mackesy,
the tosser wine merchant Nat had seen off with a punch on the nose outside Brooks’.

Whatever they argued about, the result was that Nat left the house in a very different mood from the one he had been luxuriating in before Miranda’s call. Gone was the sense of calm benevolence. Now he was angry with his wife and wanted to make her pay for having called him all those names. By the time Nat got to Wiltons, Carrie’s fate was sealed. It no longer mattered that she wore glasses as thick as the bottom of a champagne bottle and was dressed in a shirt with a piecrust collar that kept everything to the imagination.

Nat ordered two glasses of champagne.

“I don’t normally have an aperitif,” Carrie began. “I find that a glass of wine over dinner is enough for me.”

“Well, it’s not enough for me,” said Nat grimly.

Carrie sipped in quiet astonishment as Nat swallowed his glass of champers down in one. Mood and charm restored by the bubbles, he became much more the Nat that Carrie had nursed a small crush on. A whole bottle of burgundy later, he had his hand on her knee.

Poor Carrie. The last thing she’d intended to do on her trip to London was sleep with a married man, but she had been working so hard at impressing Nat with her expertise in art, she hadn’t listened to enough in-house gossip to even know that he was married. And so she was unduly flattered when Nat removed her glasses and told her that she had nice eyes (even though she couldn’t stop blinking with her specs off).

Nat kissed her before they left the restaurant. As he put his hand up the left leg of her culottes, Carrie felt incredibly naughty, though the waiters didn’t bat an eyelid. They saw this kind of thing every night.

•          •          •

“Where are you staying?” Nat asked, as he scanned St. James’s for a cab.

Carrie told him the name of her hotel in Earls Court. Nat didn’t know it, but he knew from its location that it wouldn’t be great. The Earls Court Road was lined with fleapits. For a moment he considered inviting Carrie back to his place, but that was always a risky proposition. It was unlikely his wife would come back in the middle of the night, but she was friendly with half the fishwives on the street, and inevitably, one of them would be peeping out from behind her net curtains when Nat ushered Carrie into or out of the house. The possible fallout was unthinkable. And then there was the potential horror of undressing Carrie, discovering that he didn’t want her after all, and being unable to do a runner … But a hotel in Earls Court? Was a shag with Carrie really going to be worth the risk of catching scabies? Nat weighed up the pros and cons and decided that it might be.

And it wasn’t bad. Beneath her terrible clothes, Carrie had a reasonable body. She was carrying a few extra pounds, but from the neck down her skin was so young and smooth and springy that the overall effect was rather nice. In any case, Nat had always secretly wanted to go to bed with a big girl. His wife seemed to get bonier by the day, and there was nothing sexy about bones no matter what the fashion mags said.

And Carrie was enthusiastic. God, that made a nice change. Sex with Miranda had become so bloody perfunctory, offered and performed as though it were some great favor that cost Miranda dearly. As Carrie shrieked and sighed each time he touched her, Nat soon became reassured of his own greatness as a lover, and the thought of his own greatness made him very hard indeed.

Carrie was tight. Perhaps, the thought passed through
Nat’s mind briefly, it was because she was overweight. He’d heard that was the case. Fat girls had tighter snatches. Harry Brown swore that it was true, though Nat always thought Harry was trying to pretend that he went after the big ones because he wanted them, rather than because they were the only ones who would have him.

Carrie let out a sound of slight surprise as Nat pushed into her. A sound of slight protest, perhaps, but she didn’t make it again, so Nat carried on shoving. In, out, in, out. In and out. He was grateful that his right knee seemed to be behaving itself for once. Ever since he’d torn the meniscus in a skiing accident, it had been bloody agony for him to go on top, but since he hadn’t had sex with his wife for the past three months, it seemed his knee had had time to recover somewhat. It felt all right. And if it stopped feeling all right, he would just flip Carrie over and have her go on top instead. The thought of her breasts dangling in his face popped into his mind. It was swiftly replaced by the thought of his wife’s breasts dangling in his face. Miranda’s tits were tiny. But those big nipples! Where had they come from? Had they always looked like a couple of cigar butts? He couldn’t think why he had ever found that attractive.

In danger of losing his hard-on at the thought of his wife’s chest, Nat swiftly brought his attention back to the matter in hand. Sort of. He closed his eyes. Carrie’s tight pussy on his cock felt magnificent, but in his mind’s eye he attached her genitalia to another girl’s body. There was a rather pretty girl who worked in the contemporary art gallery across the street from Ludbrook’s. She had long brown hair and a neat little arse, which she showed off in a pair of obscenely tight black trousers. Nat hated to see a girl in trousers, but he made an exception for that pair. She’d smiled at him once. He’d immediately pictured her
naked and had been doing so periodically ever since. Now, in his imagination, she was smiling up at him from the pillows while he pounded into her superbly exciting fresh little vagina.

It worked like a charm.

“Oh, God,” Nat cried out. “I’m coming!” It all happened much more quickly than he’d expected, but it was an impressive orgasm that seemed to last longer than it ordinarily would. As he fell onto Carrie’s pillowy breasts, Nat felt as though he had been hit on the back of the head with a plank of wood. It hadn’t been his best performance ever, he decided. But it had been great fun for him, and that was what mattered. He was soon fast asleep, leaving Carrie looking up at the ceiling, wondering if that was what it was always like.

The following morning, Nat’s charm had completely deserted him. His head thumped. His mouth was as dry as a camel’s armpit. His eyes were pink and framed by impressive pouches. He was formulating his excuses for a swift exit even as he woke. But there was no need.

“I’ve got to go,” said Carrie. “My flight leaves Heathrow at eleven. I ought to leave now. To be sure.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Nat waved his hand at her. “Just leave me here. I’ll show myself out.”

“I think you’ll have to check out of the room when I do,” said Carrie.

“What? Oh, fuck.” For a moment he’d forgotten they were in a hotel.

Nat sat up. Two small men with anvils clanged in unison on the inside of his skull.

“Thank you,” said Carrie. “Thank you for everything. I mean, not just for last night but for the whole two weeks. I feel like I’ve learned so much. You’ve been really kind to me. And, well, last night.” She blushed and
looked down at her feet. Big feet for a girl, thought Nat. “I have to say that I didn’t expect what happened to happen. In fact, can you believe that I was saving myself …”

Nat looked confused.

“For marriage,” said Carrie shyly. “I signed a pledge with the other girls in my sorority. But, well … I’m not sure how many of them have kept the promise. And it just felt so right.”

Nat was aghast as he realized what she was trying to tell him. Carrie read his expression as something else.

“This is my number and address,” she said, handing him a piece of paper covered in her neat rounded script. “I have another six weeks at school before my next break, but then I could come and see you again. Or maybe you could come and see me.”

“No, no, no.” Nat put his head in his hands. “Noooooo.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Carrie. “It’s okay. Really. I’m glad it happened the way it did. It was just right. You know.”

“It wasn’t right,” said Nat.

“Why not?” Carrie asked.

“Because I’m married.”

The rest of that morning in Earls Court was just terrible. He got dressed quickly and carried Carrie’s bags downstairs. He paid her bill. It was the least he could do, though it meant he would have to hide his credit card statement from Miranda. Nat’s wife had an eagle eye for any possible infidelity-related expenditure. Nat did try to give Carrie a little consolatory kiss good-bye, but she wouldn’t have it. By the time he bundled her into a taxi fifteen minutes later (why can you never find one when you really,
really
need one), she was sobbing uncontrollably.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “We only did it once. Your future husband need never know. I’m sure you’re still largely, er, what’s the word … Intact?”

Carrie whacked Nat in the solar plexus with her handbag, leaving him doubled over in pain.

Miranda was already at home when Nat got back. She didn’t want to hear his excuses.

“I’ve had a long talk with Daddy,” she said. “And we’ve decided that I want a divorce.”

That was the last time Nat had seen Carrie Klein before she’d walked into his old masters reception. The early nineties had been a bad time in Nat’s life in so many ways. But oh, God, hadn’t Carrie Klein grown since he’d seen her into a taxi on Earls Court Road? Angry as he was that he hadn’t recognized her (and that she must have taken such pleasure in deceiving him, the silly bitch), Nat couldn’t help but be impressed by the transformation of the frumpy little brunette into the ice-cold killer blond she was now. An ice-cold killer blond who probably had her heart set on ruining him …

CHAPTER 20

C
arrie wasn’t actually spending half as much time thinking about Nat Wilde as he liked to imagine she might be. Sure, it had been fun to see his face when he’d finally put two and two together, but there had been other, better moments at that party. A week after the Ehrenpreis
launch, Carrie was still on a high. The coverage of the event had been fantastic. There had been enough famous faces at the party—old Frank Ehrenpreis was a very popular guy—to ensure that the launch made the party pages of all the best magazines. It was all over the
Evening Standard
and the calendar pages of the
Telegraph
and
The Times
. Looking at the photographs, Carrie was very pleased that Jessica had persuaded her not to cancel that appointment at Jo Hansford.

The mousy little Carrie who had been an intern at Ludbrook’s would never have guessed that one day she would be mentioned in a glossy U.K. magazine as a “woman to watch.” But Carrie knew she could not rest on her laurels quite yet. The fantastic opening party had to be followed up with real results. Her bosses had given her a helping hand for the first few sales, shipping over jewelry that would ordinarily have been sold through the office in New York. There were some magnificent pieces that Carrie hoped would generate even more publicity.

Ehrenpreis didn’t have the history of Christie’s or Sotheby’s or Ludbrook’s. That was something Carrie could never emulate. Instead she had decided to work on making it the fashionable place to go. Like Nat, Carrie knew that death, divorce, and debt were the most common reasons why people brought their property to auction. Ludbrook’s concentrated on “death,” courting the elderly. Carrie concentrated on divorce. She had Jessica put together a luncheon for some of London’s most fashionable ladies. They dressed it up as a charity event in support of a women’s refuge. Carrie’s team of bright young women circulated professionally, forging friendly new relationships. The divorce rate being what it was, some of the relationships would pay off.