Flirting With Forever (3 page)

“Take al the time you need.”

And Mertons, feeling more than his usual sense of trepidation, did. Though Robert de Manvil e, upon rigorous cross-examination, proved unremarkable and the woman with the crimson frock and pockmarks gave him no pause, the man with the hooded eyes beside her—her husband, or at least the man who
purported
to be—alarmed Mertons almost enough to announce Mr. Lely was accepting no more clients for the day. But he took down a thorough description of the man, so thorough, in fact, the elaborate chime of Peter’s Ottoman clock entered his consciousness as only a distant, barely noticed melody.

When he felt he’d observed enough to make a judgment on the security of the mission, he stepped back into the office and said, “I would like to offer a caution on—Peter?”

The desk was empty, and the door to the storage room was ajar.

“Er, I say, Peter,” he cal ed, raising his voice a degree, “I would like to offer a stiff note of caution on a man named John Howel and his wife. I’m not certain, of course, but you must not take risks.”

Peter did not reply. Mertons frowned and started to-ward the room. “Remember, this writer has enough heartless calculation to fool his readers, destroy the reputation of a gifted man and thus far elude the Guild. I would cal that more than a temporary irritant, Peter. I would cal that”—

Mertons entered to find nothing but curtains fluttering at an open window, and his warning sputtered to a close—“a cold-blooded machine.”

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM

OF ART, PITTSBURGH, PRESENT DAY

There are certain things that drive a woman to immediate action, Campbel Stratford thought as she heard the
pop
. A flesh-cutting panty hose run is one of them.

“Oh. My.
God!
” She shoved the manuscript pages aside, knocking over an orange Crush with one hand and a three-inch stack of security audit reports with the other. “How did I ever get a grown-up job?”

“Since when is curating a grown-up job?” Jeanne, her assistant and longtime friend, grabbed a nearby napkin.

Campbel found the scissors and flung her leg on the desk. A run the size of the Grand Canyon with the approximate pain-delivery power of an electrified garrote had laddered between her legs and, like Sherman’s army, was about to march down her thigh.

“Avert your eyes!” She thrust the blade under the taut nylon lashes and jerked. The pain stopped, but the laddering shot to her knee. “Wite-Out!”

Jeanne hooked the bottle out of her desk organizer with the efficiency of a surgical nurse and lobbed it across the room. “Cam, hurry,” she said, glancing down the hal ,

“Packard and Bal are on their way to the stairs.”

“Crap. Since when is noon ‘early afternoon’?” Wood-son Bal was the Mount Everest of potential donors, and according to his email to her, he shouldn’t have been here until at least one. Cam had planned to use her lunch hour to gobble a hot dog and scour reference books for the one detail about Anthony Van Dyck that would make her long-overdue manuscript spark to life. Spark sourcing at noon.

Mountain climbing at one.
Why can’t we stick to the
schedule, folks? I got a promotion I’m after here.

She whipped the top off the Wite-Out and pul ed the brush free, sending a fine spray of white across the year-end pledge report and most of the front of her pencil skirt.

Moaning, she applied the ooze to the hole now eating past her knee, then leaned in and blew for al she was worth.

“You haven’t seen Anastasia, have you?”

“I thought she traveled in a cloud of black smoke. That’s quite an image, by the way. It could definitely get you the spotlight on officesluts-dot-com.”

“Does it pay anything?” Cam wondered if she’d have time to eat the hot dog as she was racing down to the first floor.

“Hey, it covers the rent.”

Now Cam had a gummy clot of white at the end of a long, pale rectangle of exposed flesh. Actual y what she had was a gummy clot of white, an unfinished manuscript, a big donor who seemed to be working on Greenland time, a cutthroat rival with a pick ax and zip line where you’d expect her heart to be and a desk that smel ed like the game room of a Chuck E. Cheese’s.

No time now. She jumped to her feet and turned. “Does anything show?”

Jeanne frowned. “Depends what you mean by ‘anything.’

Officesluts would take a pass, but the folks at Hil bil y Hose are gonna love you.”

Cam looked down. Panic was seeping in. The hole in her panty hose was enormous. She looked like her thigh had been attacked by a meat grinder. What could she do?

She looked around the room for potential fixes. A scarf?

Too weird. A Sharpie? Too black. Her yoga pants? Too weird and too black. “Jeeeaaaaaannnnnne!” she wailed.

“Help!”

Jeanne sprang into action. She pul ed a spray can out of her purse and pul ed off the cap. Cam’s hands flew up instinctively to cover her eyes. “Mace!”

“Not Mace,” Jeanne said. “I used it before my date last night. He liked it.”

Cam spread her fingers. “It’s foundation,” Jeanne said.

“Spray-on.”

“It says ‘Spray-On Tan.’”

“Half the price.” Jeanne put the can in Cam’s hand.

“Here.”

Cam gazed down uncertainly. That run ran real y high.

“Er …”

“Just point and shoot. Like a camera.”

“I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but I don’t actual y point a lot of cameras down there.” She lifted her leg tentatively and gave the canister a squeeze. “There.

How’s that?”

“Great. So long as you’re tanning your desk.”

Cam looked. The spray had made a happy sunflower shape on the wood. “Oh, man.”

“Gimme, gimme, gimme.” Jeanne took the can and bent.

“I’m expecting to see this reflected in my performance review, by the way.”

“Ooh! Felt that one.”

“C’mon, you. That’s right, that’s right. Oh yeah. Beautiful.”

“Er,” someone said. “Am I interrupting?”

It was Jacket, Cam’s ex-fiancé, in dark jeans and a worn leather jacket, looking as sexy as someone could whom she’d kicked out of her bed six months ago. Sexier, actual y, which was not a good sign.

Cam closed her leg, then immediately flung it open. “Stil wet.”

“I’l bet.” He slouched against the door and smiled.

Jeanne gave Cam a private eye rol . “Steady, girl,” she said under her breath.

“Jeanne was helping me with a run in my panty hose.”

“
Mm
.”

God, what was it about that gritty London growl? Even an
mm
sounded like the whirr of some fantastic sex toy. Cam had to be careful. This was how she’d gotten in trouble in the first place.

“I came by to pick up the spare keys.”

Jeanne whipped her gaze in Cam’s direction. Jeanne was definitely not a Jacket fan.

“Er, wel , it is stil half your condo after al ,” Cam said, more for Jeanne’s benefit than for his. “You’re finalizing your stuff for the exhibit. Offering you the guest room seems like the least I could do, right?”

“Stil …” He gave her a smoldering look.

“Yes,” Jeanne agreed with a look for Cam that far out-scorched Jacket’s.
“Still.”

“I, uh, gotta run. The spare keys should be in my purse.

Jeanne can give you hers if you can’t find them.”

Jeanne gave him a bland look. “She means for her apartment, by the way.”

“Hang on.” Jacket touched Cam’s arm.

She felt a twinge of the old familiar foolishness as wel as a tinge of the old familiar despair.

“Can you stay for a minute?” he said.

“Um …” She tried to avoid Jeanne’s eyes. “Yeah, sure. A minute.”

Jeanne found the keys and dropped them into Jacket’s hand. “Careful,” she said. “One of them unlocks when it shouldn’t.” She gave Cam a look and marched out.

Cam immediately wished she’d worn a different outfit.

Nothing screamed
needy
like navy gabardine and Wite-Out. “What’s up?”

“I meant what I said.” He pocketed the keys. “That was real y nice.”

She could smel the faint scent of his skin. She could also smel the Kleenex into which she’d wept half her body weight last June.

“I brought something for you. I’d cal it a peace offering, but it’s yours, so it’s not, real y, but stil , I’d like it if you thought of it that way.”

He opened his palm. In it was the ring she’d designed, the ring that had been their engagement ring. Blue-black enamel; a flat, round pearl like the moon and a spattering of diamonds across the wide band like the night sky.

She held up a hand. The last time she’d seen the ring was when she’d cracked his tooth with it that fateful afternoon. Those sorts of memories she could do without.

“No thanks.”

“Please,” he said. “You loved the ring. I feel bad enough about what happened. Take it back. Enjoy it. Consider it entirely desanctified.”

She
had
loved that ring. And if she hadn’t found him in bed with the artist who’d designed it, she would have never let it go.

“I had the guy who repaired it add an extra diamond.” He turned the band to show her.

“Repaired it?”

“Tooth mark,” he explained. “Oh, right. Sorry about that.”

“Yeah, wel …” His eyes went to his boots, then back to her. “I deserved it.”

“That’s for sure.”

He laughed and lifted a finger. The ring dangled from a sparkling chain, the way she’d always worn it.
Guess he’d
had that repaired, too
.

“May I?” he said.

Cam considered, then nodded. He came behind her and she lifted her hair. Suddenly the room felt much smal er. He brought the chain around to the front, then clasped it behind her.

“Thanks.”

He made a low rumble, a cross between a laugh and a sigh.

“I gotta run,” she said. True in so many ways.

“What’s up?”

“Woodson Bal .” Jacket knew him as wel as she did.

Bal col ected a lot of modern art, and Jacket’s famous Lucite, fruit and everyday object assemblages had been very col ectible once.

“Buying or sel ing?”

“Giving, I hope. A fantastic Van Dyck. Two-point-one mil ion, at least. That is, if I can reel it in. And in time for the appointment of the new executive director.”

Jacket lifted a brow. “Packard’s out?”

Lamont Packard had announced he’d be retiring in six months. The board had just begun the process of interviewing candidates. Both she and Anastasia were being considered. Which is why she needed to sel her manuscript and bring in the biggest gift to the museum this year.

“Yep. Retiring.”

He looked at her and smiled. He wasn’t tal , but he had the bearing of a double-O spy. Taut, chiseled, ready to act.

And, of course, as an artist, that came with an ego the size of the Louvre.

“You’l get it,” he said. “You think?”

“You’d have my vote.”

Whoa! Who knew the room could get so smal ? He was about one tablespoon of nitroglycerin away from blowing the top off a Pandora’s box that had been nailed shut and dipped in steel six months ago. She touched the chain, flustered. “Okay, wel , good luck with the condo—”

“Cam?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think, I mean, would it ever be possible for us to try things again?”

Boom!
A mil ion feelings exploded in her head and heart. Sorrow, anger, lust, forgiveness, fear—and hope.

Anger,
her ego said firmly.

Hope,
her heart replied.

“Jacket …” Her face burned. “I-I don’t know.”

“I know.” He touched her wrist. A crack of lightning shot straight to her bel y. The last thing she wanted was her bel y weighing in on this. Her bel y was a body part of very few words.

Lust
.

Lust
.

Lust
.

Lust
.

Cam touched his waist, that hard, hard waist, and he pul ed her into a kiss.

Such a bad idea. Such a good bad idea.

Reluctantly she extricated her mouth. She felt like she’d been sucking lust-flavored Pop Rocks.

“I was thinking you might want to take a short leave of absence.”

“A short leave?”

“Or a longer one.” He grinned. “Maybe come to London with me for a while.”

London. She loved London. “I couldn’t.”

“Anytime. Now. After the gala. To celebrate your new directorship. They let you take a holiday sometimes, don’t they?”

He could be very charming when he put his mind to it.

Just ask the explosions in her mouth. “I, uh …”