Flirting with Forever

by Gwyn Cready

  “Or the Jumbotron from Madonna’s Truth or Dare Tour.”

  “Cam, it’s a helluva tribute. I don’t think the Taj Mahal is too far from the mark. Will I get to meet him?”

  “Ah, yes, actually,” she said, feeling her heart skip. “He’s here tonight.”

  “Interesting.” Packard nodded. “Then you’ll be…all right?” His country club green eyes had softened to a grassy gray. He meant without her job.

  “Yeah,” she said quickly. “You know me. Sure. Absolutely.”

  “That’s good. And you’ve got the book to work on, right?”

  “Uh, no, actually.”

  “What? You’ve canceled another one?”

  “Yeah, um, the Lely thing didn’t pan out.”

  “Are you kidding? What about the muse? The woman he raised from the streets? C’mon, Cam. Sex, drugs, and the King of England?”

  “Um, you know me. I like to work with as clean a slate as possible. Turns out there’s more known about the woman than I realized. Facts, it seems, only complicate my stories.”

  “Well, the next one, then?” He gave her an encouraging look.

  “You bet.”

  Cam stood too, dreading the thought of Ball’s face when she told him the news. She handed the page back to Packard. Then it struck her.

  “Wait a second. I totally forgot to ask. Where did you get this?”

  “It arrived this morning in the mail.” Packard pointed to an opened envelope on his desk. “No attached note. No return address. Strangest thing. It was almost as if Van Dyck mailed it in himself.”

  Mailed it himself? Only one person could make it look like that.

  “Cam? What is it?”

  She ran for the door. “I need air.”

  Fifty-one

  With the gala’s string quartet warming up in the background, Anastasia found herself nearly skipping down the administrative office hallway, though four-inch heels and her chain-mail tunic made the going a little tricky, even by her standards. By Monday she’d be director and Cam could go to London or not, it really didn’t matter anymore. She checked her cell. Fifteen minutes before the first guests arrived. She’d just duck into her office to snag her mink poncho and then—

  “Well, howdy, stranger,” she said, covering her surprise in the most high-voltage smile she possessed.

  Peter Lely sat at her desk, looking straight at her. He wore a charcoal suit in a subtle pattern that spoke of old money and swirled a generous Scotch, which meant he’d helped himself to the bare-bones bar on her coffee table. That was okay. She liked men who helped themselves. In fact, she wondered if this unexpected visit meant he intended to avail himself of some of the office’s other charms, such as the couch and a locking door. She assessed the couch with a quick sideways glance and saw the poncho, which in itself offered some interesting possibilities. She let the door glide close with a quiet click, and he stood, though his movement felt more like a first move than a courtesy.

  “Mind if I join you?” She tilted her head toward the decanter on the table.

  “Suit yourself.”

  His eyes were so smoky she wondered if they might actually ignite. She made her way to the table and angled herself toward him over the bottle, offering the inquiring eye, should he possess one, a fine view of everything from her neck to her navel. Even with her eyes downcast, she could feel the presence with which he filled the room.

  A notebook dropped into view.

  She froze. It was his sketchbook, the one he’d had at Orbis that day. She picked up her glass, settled onto the couch, and met his gaze.

  “I guess you’re wondering about the letter.”

  He didn’t reply, just stared.

  She recognized the look in his eye now. It was a look she’d gotten a number of times over the years, mostly from women, rarely from men, and it left her feeling dirty and calculating.

  “It’s too late,” she said. “Packard’s read it.”

  “It’s a lie.”

  “It hardly matters now.”

  “Why would you do it?”

  “Isn’t the more important question—and the one Cam will eventually ask: What were you doing with the letter?”

  He slammed the glass into her wire wastebasket, where it exploded into a hundred glittering shards. “I expect your position is just as dependent as Cam’s on the ability to distinguish the authentic from the false. Know this: there will never be a major acquisition in your tenure that will escape doubt. Your word will be poison—if it isn’t already.”

  Though she had anticipated the brutality of the sentiment, she was surprised to find her eyes welling with wetness. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  “Someone who loves your sister, a position you yourself may want to consider at some point. You should be ashamed.”

  And she was.

  Fifty-two

  Cam walked down the hall, stunned. Could Peter have been involved in this? She didn’t want to believe it. But he had come here to stop her. He’d admitted as much himself. And who was more likely to have had access to an old Van Dyck letter? How would she know? Had everything been a lie?

  Calm down. You’re blowing this out of proportion.

  “Whoa!”

  Jacket caught her by the waist in an effort to keep them both from spinning off their feet.

  “What’s up, babe?”

  She turned her face away and burst into tears. “I’m not going to be the director.”

  “Oh, Cam.” He took her in his arms and held her tight. “Who needs that stuffy old job anyway? You’re too smart for this place.”

  “But I wanted it,” she cried into his soft lapel, then shuddered under another wave of emotion.

  “I know.” He patted her head.

  “And they’re going to give it to Anastasia.”

  “Jesus, they’ve lost the plot, then. It’s the only way to explain it. You’re so much smarter than she is, so much more capable, so much more equipped to lead.”

  “It’s not fair. Nothing is.”

  “It’s not. It’s absolutely not. C’mon, let’s get you into your office.”

  He took her by the hand and led her down the hall and through the door.

  Cam hurried to the box of tissues and tried to mop her eyes and cheeks. No job, no book, and no more Peter—that is, if she’d ever had him. She knew she’d be okay—she always was—but three blows at once was too much for even her, and a fresh round of tears began to well.

  “The painting,” she said, gazing out the window. “It’s not a Van Dyck. I mean, I’m sure it is, but Packard has a letter or a page of a diary or something, and it’s clearly Van Dyck’s handwriting, and it says the painting was done by one of the apprentices in his studio. So now I have to tell Ball, the poor guy, and I have to resign. I have to. It’s a huge embarrassment to the museum. And in any case,” she said, turning, “if Anastasia is going to be the new director, I don’t really want—Oh, God.”

  Jacket had found a seat, and now he stared, dazed, at a dozen photos arranged around her desktop. The photos of the Wednesday Afternoon paintings. In his hand were the interview notes from Ball. She recognized his tight block printing.

  “Jacket…”

  If he heard, he didn’t acknowledge it. He ran a hand over his forehead, opened his mouth to speak, but whatever it was seemed to catch in his throat. She knew what it must look like.

  “Jacket, I’m sorry. I meant to tell you.”

  “‘The reporter,’” he read from the paper in his hand, “‘will be most interested in the lover angle. The paintings reveal a relationship that goes far beyond the usual rhetoric of artist and subject, seemingly beyond that of artist and lover. Was Stratford Lely’s lover or just his muse? Does this relationship have any connection to Stratford’s recently announced fictography of Restoration painter
Peter Lely? And why is Stratford intent on keeping the paintings a secret?’”

  The letter dropped, and he touched the photos hesitantly, only at the edges, as if respecting some imaginary boundary.

  “They’re good,” he said, honestly. “Very good.” Then he dropped his head in his hands.

  “Jesus, Jacket. I am so sorry. I…” She hadn’t posed for the paintings, but she had been Peter’s lover. “I should have told you. Once you came back in my life, even if we weren’t officially a couple, I owed you that much, at least. I know this must hurt. And I know it’s going to be embarrassing. I’m sorry.”

  He leaned back in the chair, rubbing his mouth with a fist, and gave a faint, amused chuckle. “I wish we’d had the chance to start over. God knows I haven’t made it easy for you.” He sighed and stood. “You don’t owe me an explanation, but I’m grateful for it, anyway. I don’t want to lose you from my life, Cam, and I hope someday we can figure out how to make it work for us.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”

  He gazed down at his boots. “Are you lovers?”

  Her cheeks warmed. “Yes.”

  “Is he the one? I mean, are you going to move in with him?”

  “He lives somewhere else, so no, I guess. This is”—was, she thought—“just for now.”

  He gave her a gentle smile. “I’d better get down to the party.”

  “I have this.” She pulled the ring out of her pocket and held it out to him. He opened his hand, and she dropped it in, letting the chain fall into a heap beside it.

  He closed his fingers around hers for an instant, then pulled his arm back and looked. “Keep it. It never belonged to me, not in that way. It’s what you designed. I’d like you to have it. Anyhow, it makes my tooth throb whenever it’s close.”

  She laughed.

  He handed it back to her, and she unhooked the clasp, slipped the ring off the chain, and placed it on her finger. “Thank you, Jacket.”

  He reached out and pulled her into a tight embrace. “I love you, Cam.”

  “I love you too.”

  With a final squeeze, he shook himself loose. He started for the door, then stopped himself. “Do you need help with Ball?”

  She shook her head. “Nah. I’ll be fine. What’s a couple million between friends, right?”

  He smiled. “Right. I’ll see you downstairs, then.”

  “Yep.”

  When he reached the hall, he turned. “He’d better fucking deserve you.”

  Yep. He’d better.

  Fifty-three

  Peter stumbled blindly out of Anastasia’s office, ashamed of the trouble he’d caused and furious that he was powerless to rectify it.

  No one—not the lowest brute—deserves what I’ve wrought.

  He’d devised the plan with the sangfroid of a spider, dictating the wording to Van Dyck and placing the letter in his pocket sketchbook before going to Mertons’s workshop. He’d regretted the plan as blackguardly almost as soon as he’d begun it and changed his mind about going through with it before arriving on Cam’s doorstep, but that carried no weight with him in the moral calculation now. If the letter hadn’t been in his sketchbook, Anastasia would not have had the opportunity to steal it that day at the coffee shop. His selfish maneuvering had deprived Cam of a future and her profession. Mertons had been right when he’d said traveling to his future was akin to yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. Peter had destroyed her happiness, and she didn’t even know the extent or the cause—that is, until he could tell her and beg her forgiveness.

  He stopped, unsurprised even in his distracted state to find himself at Cam’s office door.

  His breath caught. Jacket had Cam in his arms. It was not a lover’s embrace, but it was filled with an abiding affection, and Peter tried to convince himself to be glad. This, after all, was the man who would care for her when he was gone.

  He pulled himself away from the door. One thing settled. But there was more he needed to do for her. He turned and headed for the stairs.

  Fifty-four

  Alone, Cam slumped against the desk and stared, unseeing, at the small unfinished painting sitting there. The events of the day were threatening to overwhelm her, and the gala hadn’t even begun. Saying good-bye to Jacket felt like a door had closed in her life with an abrupt slam. She felt adrift, rudderless, uncertain of Peter or her future. More than anything, she longed to see Peter, to find out what he knew about that letter and to be reassured that what she had jettisoned everything for still existed.

  She sensed a presence in the doorway and turned expectantly.

  But it was Mertons, who regarded her with curiosity.

  “Good evening, Miss Stratford. Do you know where I might find Peter?”

  There was an undercurrent there she didn’t like. Her time with Peter couldn’t be over after only a few hours. It would be too cruel. “No,” she lied. “I haven’t seen him. Why?”

  But the effusive, deferential Mertons of a few days ago was gone. He entered her office as if she were not present and scanned each of her bookshelves in succession. He was a man on a mission, and Cam could guess what it was. She had to work hard not to look at her laptop.

  “Something I can do for you?” she asked.

  “Miss Stratford, I’m going to be honest with you. We know how you’re traveling.”

  “You do?” She forced her eyes forward.

  “Yes. We’ve fixed the time tube to a book. Inside the Artist’s Studio.”

  Cam felt a faint sweat rise on her scalp. “Really?”

  “We believe there’s a time tube linked to a book in Romania. But we’ve had that copy under observation for years, so we thought you were relying on some other method, some hole we hadn’t yet discovered. However, the most recent calculations show a very similar Brown coefficient. Obviously you have found a way to get a copy.”

  “Yes, because I like to do all of my reading in Romanian.”

  “This isn’t a laughing matter.”

  “Do you see me laughing? I would think the Guild has bigger fish to fry.”

  Mertons frowned.

  She said, “It means having more important—”

  “I know what it means, Miss Stratford. I was thinking about where else you might keep your books. I’ve been to your apartment.”

  “I do a lot of research at Chuck E. Cheese’s as well. I find the quiet helps me concentrate.”

  He narrowed his eyes, sensing a jest, but dutifully wrote the name down in his notebook.

  “I recommend the pizza,” she added. “Close your eyes. You’ll swear you’re in Naples.”

  He flipped the pen over, clicked a button, and it started to flicker, like a small computer monitor. He ran it across the note he’d just taken. Then he held it up like a thermometer and read, “‘Cheese, Chuck E. Indoor playground-slash-restaurant designed for kid parties. Best known for humanlike rat mascot and terrifying animatronic theater performers. Issues own coinage. Key words: headache, noise, heartburn, juvenile ululation.’” He gave Cam a look.

  “I didn’t say it was for everyone.”

  He clicked the pen again and the display went dark. “Miss Stratford, I’m about to lose my patience.”

  “Hey, it’s not my job to assist you every time you decide to go on a fishing expedition. Yes, I know,” she said, realizing she was beginning to sound like a one-trick pony as far as metaphors were concerned, “we’re big on fish here.”

  “Would you be interested to know that the Guild has finally decided to invoke the O’Janpa Convention? Yes, Peter is about to be jerked back like a bad dog on a very short leash.”

  “Even if I knew what the O’Janpa Convention is, which I don’t, why would I be interested?” As far as Mertons knew, she was still at odds with Peter.

  He waved the pen up and back across the plane
in front of her face, then held it up and read. “Stratford, Campbell. Author, curator, art historian, time-tube criminal, subject of a series of paintings entitled Wednesday Afternoons. Former life partner: Jacket Sprague. Nurtures a deep and nearly overwhelming love for Restoration-era painter Peter Lely, despite a several-century difference in time spans and her petty jealousy over his long-dead—”

  “I am not jealous!” She flushed so hard her ears seemed to crackle with the intensity of deep-fried bologna.

  He continued to read. “—a feeling Lely returns.”

  The bologna reached flash point. “I-I—He returns it?”

  Mertons lifted a brow and smiled.

  “Yes, fine,” she said. “I have feelings for him. He returns it?”

  “‘Feelings’? Feelings one might refer to as love?”

  “Yes, love, dammit. Mertons!”

  He nodded. “He returns it. I believe I practically spelled it out for you when I came to visit.”

  “Is that pen up-to-date? I mean, like, as of this minute?”

  He cleared his throat awkwardly and held up the object in question for her to observe. No lights. He hadn’t turned it back on.

  “Bastard.”

  He shrugged. “We can’t do mind reading. Not even in the Afterlife.” He slipped the pen back in his pocket. “Does this knowledge by any chance change your answer? Do you know where Peter is?”

  She shook her head. She never, ever wanted Mertons to find him.

  “Whether you tell me or not, the Guild will find him, and if I can bring him back before they do, he’ll face better odds.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means they’re extremely angry, Miss Stratford. No one has ever defied their commands before, so flagrantly and for so long, though I must say, you’re getting close. Look, I don’t know how you think you ended up in your current life. But it wasn’t a matter of the former you just deciding you were going to be an accomplished art historian in your next reincarnation.”