Sudden Pleasures by Bertrice Small Page B

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 business. If something else came of it, okay, fine. But at least if they married neither of them would lose everything they had worked so hard for over the past few years. They had to marry. “We’ve got a lot of people depending on us, Ashley, don’t we?” he said seriously. “I’m told I’m not a bad guy, and I love animals too, although I don’t have any. I’m not able to take care of them. Will it bother you that I travel a lot? I’m always looking for exotic woods, good hardware sources, that kind of stuff. Sometimes I’ll go and oversee the packing of a client’s antique for shipping to my shop for restoration.”
    “If we could live at Kimbrough Hall I wouldn’t mind,” Ashley