Flirting With Forever by Gwyn Cready (new books to read TXT) 📕

“Yeah, that’s right. I forgot how trend intensive seventeenth-century paintings were. Last season it was lace-up Rembrandt stil lifes. This season it’s plum-colored Vermeer portraits.”

“Cam, I’m trying to be a good older sister here. Mom said you’re always landing in shit.”

“That was the petting zoo when I was five, and you were the one shoving me out of the way to get to the feed dispenser.”

“There was a bil y goat about to attack.”

“There was a guy from Mt. Lebanon Magazine with a camera, and you were afraid you weren’t going to be the girl in the picture.”

“Cam, al I’m saying is it’s not going to turn out as you expected. Wouldn’t it be better to come up with a graceful bow out?”

Cam gazed into her sister’s steely gray eyes. Crap, how was it fair Anastasia got their father’s poker face and Cam, was it fair Anastasia got their father’s poker face and Cam, her mother’s “I even lose at Go Fish” eyes?

“I don’t think so. I’m sticking with it to the end.”

“You’re sure?”

“I guess I’m just going to have to listen to my heart.”

Anastasia nodded. At the door, she paused. “Then listen to it, Cam. You know what it’s saying.”

43

Mertons landed in the smal studio and straightened his coat. Peter, he noted, hardly looked up from his painting. It seemed to be al the man ever did.

“The Guild has asked me to make a final plea.”

“No.”

“Peter—”

“We’re not done here.”

“We. Ha. Do you ever get tired of having the rest of us focused on your needs?”

“It’s not about my needs. It’s about Ursula.”

“That’s a lie. It’s about revenge. You’re hurt, and you want to hurt her in return.”

“No. No. I wanted to stop her. I did not tel the reporter her name. I would never have hurt her wil ingly.”

“Real y? Then maybe you’l want to look at this.” He dropped a sheaf of papers on the table.

Peter regarded them suspiciously.

“I told you messing about in the future was dangerous.

The most recent calculations have come through. You’ve changed her future—and I don’t mean the stupid canvases.

I mean something important.”

“What?”

“A child.”

Peter stil ed.

“That’s right. There is supposed to be a marriage and a child in her future.”

“Of course there is. She’s a young woman. ’Twould be natural to expect such things.”

“But that marriage is gone now, Peter. Don’t you see?

That child is gone. The original calculations on her future, the ones I ran after I found you here, showed them.” He tapped the papers. “Today’s do not. That’s what this nonsense has gotten you. Is that what you were planning?

To take away her future?”

Peter sunk into his chair. “No.”

“You of al people should know what that’s like. You must leave this place. You must leave before you hurt her more.”

44

Cam moved the little name cards around the diagram of tables distractedly. Today had been a Calamity Deathmatch. What was going to bring Cam to her knees first— Helga: The Swimsuit Issue or Doctor Zhivago-ess, the Russian tormentor from hel ? Cam had a vision of herself as Cat-woman, sliding perilously down the side of the crevasse, her nails dug like knives into the edge to keep from fal ing, with Anastasia, standing over her in a far better Catwoman suit, tapping the toe of her boot on Cam’s slipping fingers and shouting for Cam to throw her the keys to the director’s office in order to save herself. And somehow Jacket is dangling below her, clutching her foot, trying to save her or pul her down with him, Cam can’t tel which.

“Cam?”

She jumped. “What?” Jeanne had arrived unnoticed with an armload of mail.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No problem.” She returned to the seating chart. Micki Catterman regularly got drunk enough to spil ful glasses of wine into her purse or fal into her dinner companion’s lap.

A little self-control, Cam lectured silently as she tapped the sticky note that held Catterman’s name. We’re talking a museum gala here, not a fraternity rave, okay? It was probably not a good idea to seat her next to Sister Rose McNair, either. Cam picked up Catterman and let her hover over the empty seat next to Dick Bolton, the insufferable bore