Fundraising the Dead by Sheila Connolly Read Free Book Online Page A

cold. He moved on to the kitchen, and I followed.
    “Champagne?” He had already pulled a bottle out of the refrigerator and was peeling away the gold foil, twisting off the wire cage that held the cork. “I thought that went very well. Several of the board members said that they were going to write us nice checks—in fact, several did, and I had them left on your desk.” He mentioned that one new local CEO whom we had been courting for some time, who had come as the guest of a board member, had hinted at six figures, as long as we put his name on something. “Actually, I think it’s his wife who’s pushing him—thinks he needs a bit of class, now that he’s established here. I’m sure we can accommodate him.” He poured two glasses of champagne and handed me a flute threaded with lacy trails of minuscule bubbles—only the best French champagne, of course.
    “No problem. Let me know what he’s interested in, and I can work up a proposal. This tastes wonderful,” I said, sipping the wine, savoring the delicate tingle on my tongue. “God, I’m tired—it’s been a long week, and it’s going to be an early morning tomorrow with the staff meeting at eight.” I wandered toward Charles’s living room, then slipped off my party shoes and wiggled my toes happily, sinking them into the lush carpet.
    “Not too tired, I hope,” he countered. On anyone else, the look Charles gave me could best be described as a leer. On him, it looked like aristocratic passion. Intense, brooding, lascivious—what was it about Charles that made me want to multiply my syllables?
    “Not hardly, sir,” I responded flirtatiously. “Shall we go up?” Charles was already leading the way up the narrow but highly polished walnut staircase.
    “Would you like to use the bathroom first?” he asked.
    “You, sir, are a gentleman.” In his bedroom, I stripped down to my slip and made my way to the pseudo-Victorian bathroom. To an inexperienced eye, it would have looked exactly like an 1880 bathroom, which was the intent; to someone like me, who had put in many hours refinishing my own period bathroom, searching for replacements, stripping, sanding, and so on, it was clear that everything was a modern reproduction. But the ensemble drew on the best of the old and the new, and it worked. I washed my face and decided I could wait until morning for a shower. “Charles, where’s my nightgown?” I usually left one—an absurdly expensive Victoria’s Secret silk number that I devoutly hoped made me look slinky—hanging on the hook in the bathroom, where, tonight, it was not.
    “Hmm? Perhaps Maria moved it.” Maria was the latest of his cleaning women, who all seemed to be called Maria. “Check in the drawers in the guest-room chest.” I padded down the short hall, barefoot, and found the nightgown neatly folded in the third drawer I checked, along with my toothbrush. Apparently this new Maria had issues with unmarried ladies spending the night.
    I returned to Charles’s bedroom, suitably clad, or rather unclad, to find him comfortably ensconced in the king-size bed with a plethora of pillows, reading glasses (which he was far too vain to wear in public) perched on the end of his aquiline nose, reading a weighty tome. He put down the book as soon as I entered.
    “I see the lost is found—just in time to lose it again,” he said, carefully removing the reading glasses and pulling me to him. There followed a pleasant interlude. Well, more than pleasant. Charles approached sex the same way he approached all other aspects of his life: with grace, elegance, and charm. We were well matched in bed, and we both knew it. That was one area I didn’t question, although sometimes on a dark night, I wondered what he saw in me—I was smart and competent but not exactly young, nor exactly svelte or hard bodied. Charles professed to appreciate my maturity, however, and what he labeled “the opulence of my flesh.” Who was I to argue?
    It seemed