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‘Forget it, Graydon. You don’t take me seriously!’
Graydon James lay back against a riot of purple and peach silk cushions on his vintage B&B Italia daybed and watched Guillermo, his latest toy boy, pack. If by ‘pack’ one meant strutting around Graydon’s apartment naked, pouting and tossing one’s long, blue-black, Indian Brave mane of hair with gloriously theatrical panache while occasionally throwing a T-shirt into a Louis Vuitton Weekender.
‘Don’t be a drama queen, William,’ Graydon drawled in his famously deep, gravelly, smoker’s voice. ‘You know I value your talent.’
‘Yeah, right,’ the young man grumbled. ‘All eight inches of it.’
‘Don’t sell yourself short.’ Graydon grinned. ‘Closer to ten, I’d say. When you make an effort.’
‘Piss off,’ the boy hissed.
He’s even more magnificent when he’s angry, Graydon thought. At sixty-five, Graydon James’s libido was not what it used to be, but his artist’s eye could still appreciate the male form, especially when presented in such an exquisitely chiselled package as Guillermo.
Graydon knew people mocked him for his young lovers. That they saw him as a sad old queen, desperately clinging to the vestiges of his own, long-lost youth. Those people could all go fuck themselves. Graydon knew the truth: he was a huge success; rich, famous, preposterously talented. The rules of the hoi polloi did not apply to him. If he wanted a twenty-year-old lover, he would buy himself one, just the same way he bought himself a slice of chocolate cake or a couture smoking jacket or anything else that brought him pleasure.
Graydon James lived for pleasure. Yet, at the same time, he enjoyed a challenge, romantically as much as professionally. It wasn’t Guillermo’s young, perfect body that made Graydon feel alive so much as moments like this one. The drama. The tension. The passion. Sex was all well and good, but nothing beat the addictive thrill of romance. Hope and despair. Agony and ecstasy.
Graydon patted the seat beside him. ‘What do you want, William? Exactly? Come and talk to me.’
‘It’s Guillermo,’ the boy smouldered. ‘And you know what I want.’
Graydon patted the seat again. Guillermo narrowed his eyes briefly, then trotted to his master’s side like a chastened puppy.
‘I want the London job. The castle.’
Graydon shook his head. ‘It’s impossible. Hanborough’s a huge project. You can’t possibly manage it alone.’
‘I wouldn’t be alone though, would I?’ Guillermo put a hand suggestively on the old man’s thigh. ‘You could come with me.’
‘Only part time.’ Graydon closed his eyes as the boy’s fingers crept higher. ‘I can’t leave New York for too long. Besides, I’d go mad. I loathe the countryside. You do realize Hanborough Castle isn’t actually in London? It’s in the middle of nowhere. You’d hate it.’
‘I want that job.’
Guillermo’s dark brown eyes locked with the great designer’s. A challenge. Graydon’s pupils dilated with desire.
‘I’m a good designer, Graydon.’ Guillermo coiled his fingers around the old man’s hardening cock and squeezed gently.
No, you’re not, thought Graydon. But it was hard to hold on to the thought as Guillermo’s fingers began to move and the waves of pleasure built.
Flora Fitzwilliam was a good designer, perhaps a great one. Flora was Graydon’s protégée, and he had already as good as promised the Hanborough job to her.
He’d first come across Flora’s work by chance when an important client, a minor member of the Rockefeller clan, had dragged him along to some ghastly charity event at the Rhode Island School of Design. Flora was one of the graduating class whose portfolios were being showcased. Graydon only had to see her fabric prints and a single chaise longue to realize he’d found a pearl among swine, a rare and precious diamond in the rough. The bold simplicity of Flora’s designs, her eye for light and her pure aesthetic, elegant and classic but with a wonderful youthful twist, reminded him of his own, best early work. Flora Fitzwilliam had something that Graydon James had once had, but lost. That was the brutal truth. Graydon could choose to be envious, or he could harness Flora’s magic and use it to revivify his own vast but flagging brand. He could subsume her talent, polish it up a little, and present it to the world as his own. Better yet, if he managed the girl properly, she’d be grateful to him for doing it.
A few cursory enquiries into Flora Fitzwilliam’s background told him all he needed to know. Born wealthy and privileged, Flora’s family had lost everything when her father had been sent to jail for fraud. The penury and shame that had followed had destroyed Flora’s mother. But the teenage Flora was made of stronger stuff, and had turned to art and ambition to drag her out of the morass. She was a girl after Graydon James’s own heart: ambitious, artistic, and profoundly insecure. She knows what it’s like to have a good life and then lose it, Graydon thought. She won’t want to risk that again.
He was right. By artfully combining carrot and stick – the dangled chance of promotion and responsibility, along with the constant threat of being replaced – Graydon had managed to tie Flora’s star to his own over the last three years, with a nigh on unbreakable bond.
It wasn’t so much that she had earned the job restoring the magnificent Hanborough Castle (although she certainly had done that). It was more that Graydon knew Flora would hit the ball out of the park, then roll over meekly when he, Graydon, took the lion’s share of the credit for her work. Well, perhaps not meekly. But she’d accept it in the end. There were other advantages too. Flora had been to boarding school in England, and understood the English upper classes and their tastes far better than Graydon. Henry Saxton Brae, Hanborough’s new owner, was closer to Flora’s age. Plus, if Flora was on site at Hanborough, Graydon didn’t need to worry about rushing straight back to New York, a city it pained him to leave as much as it hurt to abandon a lover.
Unquestionably, Flora Fitzwilliam was the best person for the job.
On the other hand, Flora was not able to do the things to his dick that Guillermo was about to.
Decisions, decisions …
Running his hands through the boy’s hair, Graydon murmured, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Then he pulled Guillermo’s head down into his lap, groaning with satisfaction as his young lover got to work.
Mason Parker looked up from his Mac when he heard the key in the lock.
‘Flora? Sweetheart? Is that you?’
‘No. It’s an axe murderer.’ Flora dropped her suitcase in the hallway with a loud thud and walked into the bedroom.
Sprawled on top of the bed in his immaculate bachelor pad on Broadway and Bleecker, wearing a pair of Ralph Lauren boxer shorts and a faded James Perse T-shirt, and with his blond hair still slick from the shower, Mason looked as preppily handsome as ever. He did, however, close his computer hurriedly when Flora walked in.
Flora grinned. ‘Was that a porn slam?’
‘Of course not.’ Mason blushed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘You won’t mind if I take a look then,’ Flora said archly.
Before Mason could stop her she’d reached across the bed and grabbed his MacBook Air, flipping it open to reveal a screenshot of some very boring-looking graphs. ‘Bloomberg? Really? Wow. I guess it’s true what they say: While the cat’s away, the mouse will check out bond yield curves.’
‘You sound disappointed.’ Mason looked hurt. ‘Would you rather I were watching porn?’
‘Of course not. I’m only teasing.’
Wrapping her arms around his neck, Flora kissed him on the mouth. He tasted of toothpaste and his skin smelled of soap, the same Roger & Gallet variety he always used.
The truth was, Flora sometimes wished that Mason would watch porn. Or lose his temper, or wear the wrong kind of shirt to an event, or forget to clean his teeth. Something, anything, to make him more normal, more fallible – more like her. Other Wall Street bankers spent their days manipulating the Libor rate or insider trading. Why did Mason always have to be so good?
But of course she was being silly. Flora loved Mason, and she knew how lucky she was to have him. He was smart, handsome and kind, not to mention loaded. Manhattan’s pretty, blonde, gold-digging socialites had always been drawn to him like moths to a flame. But he chose me, Flora reminded herself. The girl with no money, no family, no connections. He loves me.
Mason’s family, the Parkers, were old East Coast money, with estates in Westchester County and an impressive portfolio of real estate in the city. OK, so Mason wasn’t wild and rebellious and unpredictable, like Flora’s beloved father Edmund had been. But Edmund Fitzwilliam had wound up in jail at forty and dead at forty-six. Hardly an example Flora wanted her future husband to emulate.
‘I wasn’t expecting you back till next weekend,’ Mason said, extracting himself from Flora’s embrace and climbing into bed, pulling back the covers for her to slide in next to him. ‘What happened to the Wicked Witch of Nantucket?’
‘Oh, she’s still there. Probably sending out her flying monkeys as we speak,’ said Flora, stripping off her clothes and leaving them all in a pile on the floor, earning herself a disapproving look from Mason, although he quickly cheered up when she climbed naked into bed, coiling her slender legs around him like a snake and pressing her magnificent, soft breasts against his chest.
‘Actually, Lisa’s all right,’ Flora said, while Mason pulled his T-shirt over his head, revealing a taut, athlete’s body. ‘She saw sense on the pool in the end, and she let me go early because there’s really nothing for me to do on site right now, other than keep her company.’
‘Hmmm,’ Mason murmured, burying his face in Flora’s ample cleavage. He’d missed having her around these last few weeks, and he really didn’t care about her Nantucket client, or anything other than getting inside her.
This time next year they would be husband and wife, and Flora would be too busy with babies and running a household to worry about her so-called ‘career’. Fannying about with cushions and paint swatches was all very well as a hobby, but Mason struggled to take Flora’s ambitions as an interior designer seriously. If she wanted an outlet for her artistic, feminine side, she could redecorate their Hamptons beach house to her heart’s content.
‘The poor woman’s terribly lonely,’ Flora went on. ‘Her husband did such a number on her. I think she’s lost all her confidence since the divorce. It’s sad.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Mason murmured, slipping an eager hand between Flora’s thighs. ‘She knew what she was getting into. No one marries a guy like Steve Kent for love.’
This was probably true, but it still made Flora wince to hear Mason say it.
‘That’s a bit cynical, isn’t it?’
Mason looked up from her breasts. ‘Flora?’
‘Yes.’
‘Please stop talking.’
Swinging his leg across Flora’s tiny body, Mason positioned himself above her, propped up on his elbows. Then, with no further foreplay, he eased himself inside her, closing his eyes and thrusting his hips in the familiar rhythm. Flora closed her eyes too and tried to return his excitement. Mason wasn’t a bad lover. And she had missed him, a lot. But for some reason she was finding it hard to get into the mood. Probably because Graydon had called earlier and left her a cryptic message. Something about ‘shifting priorities’. Flora couldn’t say why, exactly, but his voicemail had left her with a sinking feeling. Despite her position as Graydon James’s protégée, insecurity dogged her constantly, gnawing away at her happiness like a persistent rat chewing its way through an elevator cable. One day, Flora feared, the rat would triumph, the cable would break, and she would fall from the dizzy heights of her present position and plummet back into utter oblivion. Where you belong,a voice in her head added spitefully.
‘You OK, honey?’ Mason murmured, flushed from a climax that Flora hadn’t even noticed.
‘Hmm? Oh, yes. Of course.’ She kissed him. ‘Wonderful.’
She would be tough with Graydon this time. She wasn’t going to let him dick her around. After dumping her on Nantucket for the last month, he damn well owed her, and he knew it, ‘shifting priorities’ or not.
‘No way, Graydon. No fucking way!’
Graydon watched Flora Fitzwilliam pace in front of his desk like a caged lion, her oversized breasts heaving up and down with indignation as she stalked back and forth. With her elegantly coiffed blonde hair, bright red lipstick and killer heels, Flora had made an effort to look businesslike this morning. She’s trying to project confidence, Graydon thought, almost pityingly. To appear in control. It was a touching effort, but quite doomed, and deep down they both knew it. There would only ever be one captain of this ship, and it wasn’t Flora.
‘You promised me Hanborough Castle,’ she seethed. ‘You promised.’
‘I know I did, my dear,’ Graydon conceded. ‘But this is a business. And in business one must be pragmatic. Lisa Kent simply adores your work. She’s hinted at multiple future commissions, but only if you’re at the helm.’
‘I’ll talk to Lisa,’ Flora protested. ‘She’ll be fine.’
Graydon’s face hardened. ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. For heaven’s sake, Flora, you should be flattered.’
‘Well, I’m not,’ Flora hissed. ‘I’m not flattered and I’m not stupid either, Graydon. This is a total stitch-up. It has nothing to do with business.’
‘What on earth do you mean by that?’
‘Who’s doing the Hanborough job?’ Flora demanded accusingly.
‘I don’t see what that’s—’
‘Who have you given it to, behind my back?’
‘I’ll be working on Hanborough myself,’ Graydon muttered. ‘At least to start with.’
‘Oh! To start with. And after that?’
Graydon James glanced out of the window at the New York skyline. He did at least have the decency to look sheepish when he answered Flora’s question.
‘After that Guillermo’s going to be keeping an eye on things.’
Flora looked as if her head might be about to fly off her body.
‘Guillermo? That would be Guillermo with no experience, not to mention no bloody talent, would it? Guillermo who you just happen to be sleeping with?’
‘That’s enough, Flora.’ Graydon’s voice was like ice. ‘My private life is not your concern. I’m prepared to make a lot of allowances for a talent like yours. But you needn’t start thinking you’re indispensable.’
Flora turned away from him. She was shaking, but now it was as much from fear as from anger. This was unfair. This was so unfair. Graydon’s private life shouldn’t be her concern. But he made it her concern when he stole jobs from under her nose and handed them on a plate to one of his toy boys.
On the other hand, this was his company, his brand. He could sack her in an instant if he wanted to. She knew she’d gone too far.
‘I’m sorry.’ When she turned back around there were tears in her eyes. ‘You’re right, I shouldn’t have said that. But Hanborough Castle … It’s the project of a lifetime.’
‘A lifetime is a long time. There’ll be other Hanboroughs, my dear,’ Graydon said, handing her a tissue, sympathetic and avuncular again now that Flora had been suitably brought to heel. ‘It might not seem that way now, but there will.’
Flora looked at him, stricken. ‘No, there won’t,’ she said quietly. ‘Other projects, maybe even other castles. But not like this.’
Graydon James said nothing.
Flora was right. Hanborough Castle was the most romantic, most stunning house he had ever come across in his long and illustrious career. Restoring it truly was a once-in-a-lifetime commission.
If only it were in New York, he’d have done it himself.
Flora left the room, and Graydon did his best to stop the nagging doubts from creeping in.
That intoxicating little slut Guillermo had better be worth it.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_3d661097-bc8b-59e8-b314-188907c64f7d)
Eva Gunnarson stood by the drawing-room window at Hanborough, watching Henry stride across the lawn, followed by the two Americans.
It was hard not to laugh looking at the three of them: Henry, so masculine and handsome and English in his dark green corduroys and brushed cotton shirt, leading the way, while Graydon James and his pretty-boy sidekick, Guillermo, scurried along behind him like two gaudily dressed puppies.
Working as a model, Eva spent much of her professional life around gay men. But it was a long time since she’d met anybody quite as camp as Graydon. He’d arrived last night, wearing what could only be described as a rhinestone boiler suit and shoes with a little heel, like a flamenco dancer’s. He was only staying a week – after that the younger designer would be overseeing things for a month or two – but had nonetheless arrived with eight matching suitcases in hand-stitched leather, his initials stamped on to each one in solid gold.
‘Have you ever seen such a flamer?’ Henry asked Eva in bed last night, in a distinctly horrified tone. Henry was very old-school when it came to things like that. Time was when men were men, and pansies things that grew in the field …
‘What did you expect?’ Eva smiled. ‘This is Graydon James. Everyone knows he makes Elton John look macho.’
‘Do you think he’s … you know? With that other chap?’
Eva laughed loudly. Henry’s face was hilarious. As if he’d just seen a particularly revolting spider crawl out from under the covers.
‘I have no idea. But try not to think about it, darling. Just remember why you hired them. Graydon James is the best in the world.’
This was true. It was Brett Cranley who’d recommended Graydon for the Hanborough Castle job, but Henry had known Graydon by reputation long before that. The whole world knew Graydon James. Just having his name attached to your project gave a property a cachet that translated into millions of dollars of added value.
Graydon was the best, and Henry Saxton Brae only ever worked with the best.
Watching Henry now, pointing out some architectural feature or other to the great designer, Eva felt a surge of love for him. It had been a difficult week. She’d been so cross with him for bailing on the village fete that they’d ended up giving one another the cold shoulder for days.
Work was Henry’s excuse for everything. As he was the one who’d moved them all the way out here, Eva felt that the least he could do was to help her in her efforts to fit in.
