Flirting With Forever (35 page)

“
That
is not your livelihood.” She pointed to the cyclorama of embarrassment that surrounded them. She began a silent inventory of the people to whom she’d have to explain this that began with her mother and Lamont Packard and ended with Rusty the maintenance man and the nice old lady at the dry cleaners. “Nor, might I add, is it the truth.”

“Which part?” Peter crouched to offer a vigorous two-handed scratch to Natasha, who dropped the woodpecker devotedly at his feet.

Cam glanced at each unexpurgated vignette, looking for the one that would prove him a liar, but at each detail a blurred memory of the evening they’d shared sharpened into embarrassing focus, a sort of Polaroid of carnal excess. And yet the details together gave the impression of a much different liaison than had occurred. Why, the title alone suggested secret meetings and a long, clandestine affair—the sort, she thought with a bitter shake of her head, she had actual y wanted to share with him once. But there was no one detail to which she could point and say, “That did not occur.”

Peter scooped up the bird and offered Natasha the other end. “Aye?”

Then it struck her. She turned, victorious. “I was dressed when we did it!”

The reporter stopped talking, the server sloshed coffee onto the Limoges platter and one of the col ectors, a slight man with a Mahatma Gandhi face and Lil y Pulitzer trousers, rubbed his hands together and said, “Now, that is what I cal provenance.”

Peter looked up from the tug-of-war in which he was engaged and said to Cam under his breath, “I suggest you stop talking about it. You are doing yourself no favors.”

“Stop talking about it? Stop talking about it?! I wil spend the rest of my life having to talk about this. How could you have done this to me?”

Peter let go of the woodpecker. He took Cam’s elbow and guided her into a smal alcove off the gal ery.

“I didn’t do this to you,” he whispered fiercely. “If you’l recal , I was chivalrously silent on the matter of my muse.

You’re the one who revealed yourself. I had no intention—”

“No intention, my
ass,
” she said, and caught Mahatma whipping around to see what part of the painting she was referring to now. “Fiction. Those paintings are fiction.”

“Al art is fiction, someone told me once. Mine more than most.”

Cam growled. “If you think for one minute this is going to stop me from writing my book, you’re mistaken. It only makes finding the ending a little easier.”

“The ending?” Peter’s eyes flashed lava sparks. “What ending do you mean?”

Suddenly the room felt far smal er than its eight-by-eight area. She crossed her arms. “I know al about Ursula.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” she said quickly, feeling the intensity of his gaze, “I do.”

“And?”

“It’s not a secret, Peter.” She heard the tone of researcher rise defensively in her voice. “There is very little written about your personal life. Because you are a painter of less reputation than Van Dyck or Vermeer, the record you have left behind is almost strictly about your work, a fact I imagine you’l be glad to hear.” He hadn’t been glad to hear “less reputation,” she noted, and made a gratifying wince. “Nonetheless, you left behind several portraits of Ursula, including,” she added, hoping her voice did not crack, “one entitled
Lady Lely
.”

The muscles in his jaw flexed, and his eyes took on the color of molten iron.

So, it real y was true, she thought, feeling the last brutal slap of betrayal. She didn’t need a marriage record. The look in his eyes was al the proof she needed. Ursula might have abandoned him, but he had been left not just bitter, but bitter and married, and for whatever sins Cam might have forgiven Peter, she would not forgive him for drawing her into infidelity without her acknowledged consent.

“There is one entitled
Lady Lely,
another
Ursula
and another,” she went on, “in which you are so enamored of your wife, you have painted her four times in one painting—

the maiden, the Madonna, the muse and the whore.”

The last word was a blow, and he seemed to double in bulk.

“And what did you make of this?” His voice was sharp as a blade.

“You mean other than the fact you lied to me?”

“Aye. Other than that.”

“What I made of it is a story—and a damned fine one, I might add. I was able to lay out a classic, Peter, a classic.

Wealthy painter meets woman of the street. He fal s for her face—the Cupid’s-bow mouth, the wide, childlike eyes, the porcelain skin—but he fal s for her body, too.” Cam thought of the slim, high-breasted form, so unlike her own, to which Peter had paid homage on canvas and undoubtedly in his bed, and hated herself for the black jealousy that poured into her heart. “He saves her, he marries her and, in his greatest ode to her, he paints her four times, surrounded by the cherubim of heaven, so great is his love for her.”

“They were not cherubim.”

She heard a note in his voice that was not there before, but his face was stil as cold and hard as steel. She wondered what it would take to break that damnable reserve.

“But his ego is too great. Samuel Pepys, a chronicler of the painter’s day, cal s him ‘a mighty proud man’—”

“Bounding little catchfart.”

“—and having won it, the painter tires of his prize and begins to pursue the women of the court, whoever warms his posing chaise, until broken-hearted and cast aside, Ursula, the girl he raised from the streets to the rank of Lady Lely, finds herself fal ing for—”

“
Stop,
” Peter cried. “She was not my wife.”

He said it with such a look of pained sorrow, Cam hesitated.

“I know you’re doing this because you are hurt about that night,” he said, “and I am sorry. But you must stop. She was not my wife. I never married her.”

Cam looked into his haunted eyes and saw the desperation there. “The way I see it,” she said slowly,

“either you’re lying now or you’re sacrificing her name to avoid being cal ed a liar. Either way, Ursula would not be proud.”

“You’re not fit to speak her name.” He was white-hot with anger. “And you’re certainly not fit to lecture anyone on the truth.”

The rebuke was too much. She brought her hand across his cheek, a gratifying
crack
that final y broke his infuriating calm.

Like a tempest unleashed, he took her by the wrists and kissed her, a bruising, searching kiss, and her body betrayed her, tel ing him her feelings hadn’t changed.

When he released her, his salty-sweet taste on her tongue and his crisp scent in her head, she saw him holding up something. It was her ring stil on its chain—the ring Jacket had given her—and she realized her shirt was agape.

“Perhaps,” he said, stil breathing like a runner, “when we write the summary of that fateful night, you’l consider the possibility that not every lie told then was mine.”

He opened his hand and the chain fel back against her skin.

The reporter stuck his head around the corner and cleared his throat. “I’d like to ask you a few questions,” he said in Peter’s direction.

“Nothing,” Peter said without turning. “I have nothing to say.”

“The reporter looked at Cam. “Would you like to—”

“
No
comment.”

“Yep, that’s about what I expected.”

Jake Ryan? Ha!
How could she have ever been so blind?

Peter’s brand of chivalry was far more in the line of, say, Henry VI I than anyone John Hughes had ever dreamed up.

Cam sat at her desk feeling like her world had been turned upside down—upside down, shaken like a maraca and kicked into the end zone of Peter’s infuriating game plan. Her face would be splashed across every newspaper in the world, irretrievably linked to a work of art that would excite prurient interest for years to come. She’d be the punch line of a joke. Her relationship with Jacket had set enough tongues wagging. Now she’d be seen as the woman passed around the art world, some paint-and-canvas groupie. She felt powerless. She hated that artists had held al the cards, and she real y hated that she’d brought it on herself by shoving Peter in front of the reporter. She might as wel have stood next to the painting and had LOOK AT ME, THAT’S MY PUBIC HAIR tattooed across her forehead.

Bal had managed to convince the
Pop City
guy to hold the story until Monday, long enough to al ow the board to meet and choose the next executive director. How he’d done it, she didn’t know, but she expected it required not only the promise of an exclusive interview, but a big check made out to the reporter’s favorite charity as wel .

She’d told Bal she thought she should withdraw her name from consideration, but he’d disagreed—vehemently disagreed. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to that place,” he’d said. “This
is
the world of art. They should b e
thrilled
to find themselves smack dab in the middle of the story. Once I buy the paintings, I’l be taking ’em on tour.

I’l start the tour there. That oughta quiet their complaints.”

But she noticed Bal ’s confidence hadn’t extended to notifying the board immediately. As certain as he was of her notoriety being seen as a benefit, he didn’t think it was a good idea to risk it in advance of the vote.

So Cam was safe for somewhat less than seventy-two hours, assuming no one who’d been in that carriage house talked. Bal had taken care of the reporter. She presumed his wife and friends could be trusted. And when Bal had asked Peter to keep the story under wraps until Monday, Peter had said only, “I have no intention of discussing the paintings ever.” But the art world was a smal one, even more so in Pittsburgh, and she wondered exactly how long anyone could be counted on to keep what would be such a monumental y satisfying secret to share.

She looked at the clock. The gala started in a few hours.

Her outfit was hanging on the back of her door. It was a gorgeous olive angora sweater with pearl buttons down the front and a shimmering ful white organza skirt that reached to the floor. She knew she should try to look forward to wearing it. It would probably be the last time people would remember her wearing clothes at al .

The door banged open and she jumped. It was Anastasia. She was wearing over-the-knee suede boots and what looked like a jacket of an officer in the Russian Imperial Guard.

“Nothing like casual Fridays,” Cam said.

Anastasia didn’t respond. She seemed preoccupied, which in many ways, Cam thought, was even scarier than her being mad. Anastasia sank onto the corner of Cam’s desk, tapping a blood-red nail on the stapler.

“I ran into that friend of yours the other day.”

Cam girded herself. “Friend?”

“Peter Lely.”

Cam nearly slid off her chair. “Peter?”

“That’s his name, right?”

“Wel , yeah, but—Wait, how did you know he was my friend?”

“He introduced himself,” she said quickly. “He’d heard me talking about the museum and said he knew someone who worked there, too. Smal world, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“We had a very interesting time.”

Anastasia’s gaze moved slowly from the stapler to Cam, and Cam immediately felt a disturbing change in the force.

A brisk slide show of potential sister betrayal flipped through her head. Anastasia slept with him. Anastasia found out about Cam’s time travel. Anastasia caught wind of the
Wednesday Afternoons
horror. Anastasia was part of the
Wednesday Afternoons
horror. Cam’s finger flew to her lashes. “Oh?”

“He’s an interesting fel ow.”

Gulp. “Real y? Where, um, was this?”

Anastasia’s eyes darted back to the stapler. “Can’t remember, actual y. A bar downtown, I think.”

Cam tried to picture Peter ordering a drink. “Rhenish”

would have earned him nothing but confused looks.

“Men seem to have a thing for you.”

Cam felt like she was being tested, though for the life of her she had no idea what the answer was. It was like one of those nightmares about the SATs. “I, uh—Pardon?”

“Men. You engender some primitive protectiveness in them.”

“Like Jacket?”

“Of course Jacket. Who did you think I meant?”

“Yes, I can see where screwing the woman who designed my engagement ring was the ultimate act of gal antry.”

“He loves you. Anyone can see it.”

Cam squirmed. It was true. Love and faithfulness occupied quite different gal eries in the complicated floor plan of Jacket’s head. “I’l admit he’s making progress.”