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Priceless
Chapter one
It was the moment he sucked whipped cream from her fingers that Lizzy Duffy realised her relationship with her boss had irrevocably changed. Subsequently losing her virginity to him was either the best or the worst ever 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 a passage 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 got 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 first laid eyes on him at her interview for a position in the fine art department at Ludbrooks, 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 water-colourists. But she didn’t have an opportunity to deliver it. Nat Wilde was running late. He breezed into the Ludbrooks office fifteen minutes after the interview had been due to start. He was slightly inebriated, having lunched with his best friend Harry Brown, head of Ludbrooks’ department of fine wines, at the Carlton Club. Nat picked Lizzy’s CV up from the desk and seemed unable to focus on it. Then he 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 offence but before she could open her mouth to protest at such a superficial and sexist dismissal of her proper talents, Nat Wilde smiled at her. And it was the kind of smile that 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 was smitten.
‘Your first assignment,’ said Nat. ‘Tell me about this little painting right here.’
Her heart still fluttering like a hummingbird with the hiccups, Lizzy followed Nat Wilde across the room. Balanced on a shelf was a small watercolour of a farmer bringing cows in from the field at the end of the day.
‘Artist?’
‘Easy,’ Lizzy trotted out the name.
‘Real?’
Lizzy 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,’ said Nat. ‘Put a reserve on it of ten to twelve grand. What do you think?’
‘I think that’s just about right,’ said Lizzy. ‘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. 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 blonde 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. Nat and Lizzy had flirted like crazy for the past six months. And now here she was. In his bed.
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