Flirting with Forever

by Gwyn Cready

  “You have a considerable line out there.”

  “Excellent,” said Peter, who, in fact, couldn’t have cared less. “But…”

  “But what?”

  “I admit I am concerned, most concerned, about the appropriateness of each patron as far as our limits are concerned. Might you be willing to size them up, so to speak, from a jump risk point of view?”

  Mertons’s forehead creased, and he shuffled through the papers before finding one in particular. “I assume they’re the same people you saw when you lived this day in your life before.”

  “Quite likely, aye.” Peter carried the prints to the storage room. “But the point is one can’t be sure. We assume the writer will be disguised, but what if there is more than one man with access to the unsecured time tube? What if there is a conspiracy to unravel the time fabric?”

  Mertons paled. “You’re right. There’s a Robert de Manville on this list here whose name is giving me pause.”

  “Robert de Manville.” Peter frowned. “I don’t remember him. Seems a very likely candidate, Mertons.”

  Mertons sighed. “I explained you wouldn’t remember everyone. It is just as if you were seventy, and returned to the neighborhood in which you lived when you were a child. Some faces you’ll remember. Some you won’t. It is not a reliable means by which to judge. You must exercise caution and foresight at all times—all times, Peter. Give me a moment. I shall examine the group versus the appointments you had for the day from our records and offer you my thinking.”

  “Take all the time you need.”

  * * *

  And Mertons, feeling more than his usual sense of trepidation, did. Though Robert de Manville, 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 raised his voice a degree. “I would like to offer a stiff note of caution on a man named John Howell and his wife. I’m not certain, of course, but you must not take risks.”

  Peter did not reply. Mertons frowned and started toward the storage 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 call that more than a temporary irritant, Peter. I would call that”—in the storage room Mertons found nothing but curtains fluttering at an open window, and his warning sputtered to a close—“a cold-blooded villain.”

  Two

  Administrative offices of the Carnegie Museum of Art Pittsburgh, present day

  There are certain things that drive a woman to immediate action, Campbell Stratford thought as she felt 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?” said Jeanne, her assistant and longtime friend, as she grabbed a handful of napkins.

  Campbell found the scissors and flung her leg on the desk. A run the size of the Grand Canyon with the approximate pain of an electrified garrote had laddered between her legs and, like a hosiery 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. “Better hurry,” she said, glancing down the hall. “Packard and Ball are on their way to the stairs.”

  “Crap. Since when is noon ‘early afternoon’?” Woodson Ball 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 pulled 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 all 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 front page on officesluts-dot-com.”

  “Does it pay anything?”

  “Hey, it covers the rent.”

  Now Cam had a gummy clot of white at the end of a long, pale rectangle of exposed flesh. Actually what she had was a gummy clot of white, an unfinished manuscript, a big donor who seemed to be working on Greenland time, and a desk that smelled like the game room of a Chuck E. Cheese’s.

  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 Hillbilly 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. She scanned 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 pulled a spray can out of her purse and pulled 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 really high. “Er…”

  “Just point and shoot. Like a camera.”

  “I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but I don’t actually 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, actually, which was not a good sign.

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

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

  Jeanne gave Cam a private eye roll. “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 whir of a 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. It’s really nice of you to let me use the condo.”

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

  “Er, well, it is still half yours, after all,” 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?”

  “Still…” 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.”

  “Hang on.” Jacket touched Cam’s arm.

  She felt a twinge of the old familiar foolishness as well 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 really nice.”

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

  “I brought something for you. I’d call it a peace offering, but it’s yours, so it’s not really, but still, 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, well…” 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 smaller. 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 Ball.” Jacket knew him as well as she did. Ball collected a lot of modern art, and Jacket’s famous Lucite, fruit, and everyday object assemblages had been very collectible once.

  “Buying or selling?”

  “Giving, I hope. A fantastic Van Dyck. Two-point-one million, at least. That is, if I can reel it in. And before the board chooses the new executive director.”

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

  “Yep. Retiring.” Lamont Packard had announced he’d be gone 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 sell her manuscript and bring in the biggest gift to the museum this year.

  Jacket looked at her and smiled. He wasn’t tall, 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’ll get it,” he said.

  “You think?”

  “You’d have my vote.”

  Whoa! Who knew the room could get so small? 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, well, 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 million 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 belly. The last thing she wanted was her belly weighing in on this. Her belly was a body part of very few words.

  Lust.

  Lust.

  Lust.

  Lust.

  Cam touched his waist, that hard, hard waist, and he pulled 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…”

  “Cam, I—Oh God, sorry.”

  It was Jeanne, and her voice snapped Cam’s ego into action. She broke away and wiped her mouth, embarrassed. “What’s up?”

  “Anastasia. On the stairs. In a puff of vampire-colored smoke.”

  Three

  Peter knew why he’d taken the long way to Maiden Lane. Maiden Lane was where he’d find the king, but the small patch of green behind St. Paul’s—Old Pauly, as the residents of Covent Garden referred to it—was where he’d find Ursula.

  He crossed the piazza tentatively, ignoring the carriages that passed on either side of him. He made his way past the sanctuary he would never enter again and down the path that ran the length of the church’s north wall. When he saw her, his throat began to tighten. He scanned the space, but it was late afternoon, and the only witnesses to his shame would be the wrens, foraging among the tree roots. He dropped to a knee.

  “I failed you, my love. ’Tis the worst thing a man can do, and I shall live with the pain always.”

  If he wanted absolution, there was none. Only the dim reflection of light on this headstone and the one beyond it.

  Peter hung his head and let the tears fall down his cheeks.

  Four

  Cam flew down the improbably long treads of the Carnegie’s staircase with Jeanne on her heels.

  “You don’t think she’s there already?” Cam said. “That painting’s nearly mine, and I don’t want her ruining it or, worse, somehow getting credit.”

  “When you’re a successful author, will we be done with all this?”

  “Oh, sure. ’Cause you know how many people buy art
biographies. I could have them over for cocktails and still manage to be the worst-dressed person in the room.”

  “Especially with Wite-Out on your hose. So, do you think he’s going to say it again?”

  “What?”

  “You know.”

  Cam shot her a pointed look. “Mr. Ball is from a very old, not to mention very rich, Gainesville family. Just because some of his words are, well, a little hard to understand doesn’t mean he’s not sharp as a tack.”

  “I grew up in Mobile, Alabama. You got any trouble understanding me? Do I go around telling people I’m a fornicator?”

  “It’s not fornicator. It’s Florida Gator.”

  “Oh, I know what it is. It still makes me laugh to hear it.”

  Cam ignored this. She hit the cavernous entry hall and looked left and right. They could be anywhere. They weren’t in the little café dominated by Warhol’s fluorescent portrait of Andrew Carnegie—“Care for some worker uprising with your Chicken Basil Farfalle?”—nor lounging by the reflecting pool outside.

  She turned. Lamont Packard was emerging from the interior courtyard a step or two in front of Ball, who had Anastasia hot-glued to his arm. Drat. She had to think fast. “Remember the Picasso strategy?”

  Jeanne gave her a questioning look. “Yes, but I’m not sure how your favorite ‘Get me outta this blind date’ strategy is going to work here.”

  “Well, this time it’s a Rembrandt strategy, and you’ll need to call Tim Lockport—anonymously.”

  After a beat, Jeanne’s face lit. “You’re brilliant—and scary.”

  “Family survival tactic. Lie or die.”

  Jeanne angled off toward a museum phone, and Cam headed toward her quarry.

  They were an odd threesome, she thought, hurrying toward them: Old School Packard with his investment banker suit; Ball in his linen trousers and orange-and-blue golf shirt; and, of course, Anastasia, towering over everyone as usual with her willowy, mock-Eurotrash body, purple Christian Louboutin booties, architectural “Oh this? I knit couture in my spare time” dress, and a stainless-steel cuff bracelet so thick it looked like it had come off the brakes of a German Wehrmacht tank. Cam, despite Rubenesque curves, tumbling masses of red curls, and a penchant for tight skirts and zebra-striped pumps, felt she looked more like Frodo’s long-lost country cousin when she stood next to the dreaded Anastasia.