Flirting With Forever (5 page)

“Oh God. Which one?”

“Rembrandt. The one in the north hal way.”

“Rembrandt. That’s your area, Anastasia. You’d better go with Tim.”

Anastasia gave Lockport a look usual y reserved for the phone receiver when talking to Bangalore help desk associates and released Bal ’s hand. “Wil do.”

Cam whistled as Anastasia clattered off. “Tough break.”

Jeanne, dynamo of efficiency, lodged herself in front of the suddenly unoccupied Bal with pen, permission form and clipboard.

“My gosh,” she said as Bal opened his glasses, “those are some bright stripes on your shirt. Do the colors stand for something?”

“They shore do. I’m a Flow-da Gatah.”

“A Flow-da Gatah?” She flashed Cam a wicked smile.

“Real y? And your parents? I suppose they were Flow-da Gatahs, too?”

He signed in one quick motion. “You bet. Big ones.”

“Of course, I’m from Alabama, so I’m a Crimson Tide fan myself, but I’ve heard practical y everyone in Gainesvil e is a shameless public—”

“Thank you, Jeanne.” Cam extracted the clipboard from Bal ’s hand and returned it to her assistant with a gentle shove. “I know you have to go. Mr. Bal , I’d be happy to show you the plans for the addition. There’s a gal ery entrance hal that wil quite literal y blow your socks off. And if you’ve got time, I’d love to talk with you more after lunch.”

Bal nodded. “I’l take you up on the plans, but I’m going to have to pass on lunch. Anastasia’s invited my wife and me to a gal ery opening tonight, and the three of us are meeting at Lucca for an early dinner. Peggy’s al excited because Anastasia promised to show her some fancy knitting stitch. So many talents. I don’t know how you ladies do it.”

It must be an afternoon for epiphanies. Cam had a blistering vision of Serena taking a tennis racquet and knocking Venus right out of her Nikes.

With Bal ’s thoughts on the new wing fresh in her head, Cam wheeled into the workspace she shared with Jeanne, closed the door and fel into a Melanie Wilkes swoon against the medieval coat of armor. “‘Oh God, the orange blossoms. I used to live and die for orange blossom time.’”

She growled. “Her backstory is so bogus. You know how long she was in Florida? Three weeks. Three weeks! She was there for a summer course in environmental studies until she’d added that to the long list of majors she couldn’t hack. After that it was either art history or clown col ege.”

“I’l refrain from the obvious comment,” Jeanne said.

“Thank you. Did I happen to mention her real name is Stacy?”

“Thirty or forty times.”

“
Eeeeerrrrgggg!
And now she’s stepping on my donor territory. What sort of a person does that?”

“I dunno. The same sort of person who would force someone to claim a guy drew on a Rembrandt when he didn’t?”

“Beside the point.” Cam started to finger her eyelashes, a reaction to stress she’d been unable to shake since childhood. She knew it made her about as attractive as a junkie six hours past hit time. “Do you think that Van Dyck painting is going to be enough? I mean, the donation’s practical y in the bag. Do you think that wil be enough to convince the board I’m the right person for the directorship?”

“I know they’l be bowled over by your granitelike self-confidence.”

“Oh God, I’ve got to get that book sold.”

“Thatta girl. Where do we stand on that rewrite?”

“‘There once was a man named Van Dyck.’”

“Oh boy. I’d say too many late nights IM-ing Britain’s favorite bad-boy artist, Mr. Lucite and Blueberries. I’m assuming that kiss was a thank-you for the help on a painting you gave him.”

Cam tucked the chain that held the ring farther inside her blouse. The last thing she needed was Jeanne thinking that she was stupid enough to consider Jacket’s offer to reconcile. Especial y now that she was considering it.

“It was nothing. And as far as the book is concerned, it’s done from a fact standpoint, but I don’t know. This editor wants me to sex things up a bit.”

“Sex and artists?” Jeanne shrugged theatrical y. “Wel , if you think you can find a connection …”

And it did not in any way mean she was fal ing for the guy again, despite that gravel y Brixton baritone that stil made her toes curl, and that kiss …

“Cam?”

“Huh? Oh, right. I mean, no. Not too many late nights.”

Jeanne was shooting a “Don’t tel me you were a fool and fel for his load of crap again” look in her direction.

Most important, however, kissing Jacket did not mean she was going to sleep with him. Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Hence the “I’m not as easy as you apparently think I am”

look she was firing right back at Jeanne. It was the kind of light saber clashing that could only come from two friends long accustomed to each other’s foibles, and Cam, with the moral high ground of having not actual y yet been a fool, clearly held the upper hand. Oh yeah, Jeanne was getting the message—she most certainly was getting the message.

“That mustard in your eye?” Jeanne asked. “Gah!” Cam stomped to her desk. “And stop cal ing him ‘Mr. Lucite and Blueberries.’ He does ‘reapings.’”

“Oh, is that what they’re cal ed?”

Jacket had wowed the art world ten years ago with his portraits that started on the upper corner of a canvas as a traditional oil painting then grew into pieces of fruit and other everyday items encased in smal cubes of plastic, bound together, extending outward toward the viewer and sometimes reaching the floor. Cam hadn’t loved it then, though she understood his vision. What she had loved was his motorcycle boots, tight jeans and damn-the-world attitude—especial y when he’d led her into the ladies’

lounge of the Fulham art gal ery where they’d just met for a

“Fourth of July meets the ‘Hal elujah’ Chorus” encounter in an empty stal .

His recent work had become almost a parody of itself, though, with the painting and canvas chucked entirely and the rest reduced to stacks or sometimes just single cubes of plastic. In truth, “Mr. Lucite and Blueberries” wasn’t that far from the truth.

Cam grabbed her mug and went to the coffeemaker, dejected. Then she remembered it had shorted out yesterday, right in the middle of the Caffè Verona. The sides had melted into a depressing shade of toasted marshmal ow brown and that corner of the room stil smel ed like burnt socks. Why did it always rain on the unloved?

“So he’l be bunking with you?”

Cam looked to see if Jeanne had served this up with a hefty side of judgment. She hadn’t.

“It’s only a month or so, just until the exhibit opens. He’s trying to finish one more piece for it.”

“I know what piece he’s trying to finish.”

“And don’t forget the loft is half his.”

“Just make sure he stays on his side of the line. Oh God!” Jeanne’s roving mouse had stopped.

“What?”

“An email from the board. ‘In anticipation of Lamont Packard’s revised retirement date—’”

“
Revised
retirement date?”

“‘—the board has made the decision to end the search for executive director early. The deadline for applications is now November twenty-sixth, interviews wil fol ow immediately, and the new director wil be chosen by the board at a special session to be held December fifteenth, the day after the gala opening of the new exhibit.’”

Cam’s heart sank as she looked at her calendar. It was November fifth. She had exactly three weeks to sel her book. A number of panic-fil ed visions rocketed through her brain—sleepless nights as she stuck in new chapters, standing in front of a table of twenty stone-faced rich people with the power to make or break her and waiting by her desk for the phone to ring with the decision—but the worst, the most horrible vision that passed through her mind, was that of reporting to her older sister.

Then a sound made both of them stop, a sound that could only be made by a pair of Christian Louboutin booties being driven down the hal like Herefords to the slaughter. Only the Herefords weren’t the ones about to get a bul et between the eyes. Cam dove under her desk just as the door flung open.

“You meddling, manipulative
bitch
! If you think you can have me dragged out of—Where is she? Where’s Cam?”

She could see Anastasia’s seething form reflected on the armor breastplate—a funhouse mirror in a medieval house of horrors. Jeanne straightened papers on her desk with the cool of an ice cube. You could sure tel she didn’t have a narcissistic older sister with a Darth Vader temper.

You could also tel she was trying not to look at Cam.

Jeanne said, “She’s under … a deadline.”

“What the hel ’s that supposed to mean?”

“Her book’s almost done, you know. Finishing touches.

Her editor’s talking the
New York Times
bestsel er list. First print run: a hundred thousand.”

Bless that woman!

Anastasia’s eyes narrowed to battleship gun ports.

“Wel , take a message for me. Tel her she’s to cal me the instant she sets foot in here, that if she thinks I wasn’t going to talk to Tim Lockport and figure out what the hel happened, she’s got another thing coming. And you can also tel her if they printed a mil ion copies of her stupid book, it stil wouldn’t get her one step closer to the executive directorship because that spot belongs to the woman who has demonstrated time after time that she can grow a complex col ection, manage the fund-raising needs of an organization, demonstrate academic excel ence and eat without getting condiments on her shoes. Did you get al that?”

Jeanne read back from the message pad. “‘Cam, cal your older sister.’”

Smal tendrils of smoke curled out of Anastasia’s ears, or maybe it was just the coffeemaker. She picked up Jeanne’s bowl of pink paper clips and reared back.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Stacy.” Cam crawled out of the kneehole and dusted herself off. “Get over yourself.”

“You heard al that?”

“Squirrel Hil heard al that.”

“You have a lot of nerve.”

Cam mimed an introduction. “Pot. Kettle. Kettle. Pot. By the way, Bal loved the new wing.”

Anastasia drew herself up into ful Hydra horror. “You don’t own Bal !”

“Wel , it’s not like I need the warning. You slept with my first boyfriend. You slept with my second boyfriend and told me he was gay. You stole my major in col ege, and now you’re working at my museum. I’d offer you an apology, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to take it whether I give it to you or not.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Campbel . Man up.”

“Yes, clearly I ought to keep a pretty deep inventory.”

Anastasia gave a howl of frustration, reared back again and threw the bowl, but not before half a dozen paper clips tumbled down her arm and attached to her bracelet. The bowl smashed into a dozen pieces, and Anastasia shook her arm like two attack dogs were hanging there. When the pink wire didn’t release, she stormed out.

“Wow,” Jeanne said. “It must have been a red-letter day for you when Anastasia left the house to start kindergarten.”

“Why does she have to be so mean? You know, I remember it kil ing me when she ignored me in high school.

Who’d have thought I’d look back on those days so fondly?”

She plopped in her chair and returned to the computer.

There, on her monitor, the manuscript she’d been kicking around for two months looked out at her. Sex it up, eh? She supposed there were a few ways to do that. She could add sex. Lord knows there was enough of that in the art world even then, and she knew Van Dyck had had a long affair with a woman named Margaret Lemon. She could add a competitive rivalry, going for the Shaquil e O’Neal/Kobe Bryant sort of thing. Even better, though, would be a competitive rivalry over a woman.

Hmmmm.

Cam scanned her memory banks. Surely there had been some woman somewhere who’d been shared by Van Dyck and another artist. Unfortunately most of Cam’s research had been about the man and his work. Sure, there had been the various bits of information about his life, but Cam had used that to flesh out the story of his painting. The sources she’d found had been somewhat dry regurgitations of where he studied and how he progressed to being the chosen painter of Charles I. If she was going to sex this puppy up, she needed something else. She was just starting to clear a path to her keyboard when her cel phone rang. She dug it out of her purse and checked the display. It was Joe. She hit the answer button. “How’s my favorite sibling?”