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

they’d sat down. It seemed more intrusive, somehow, for him to focus on a single part of her body. The thought was irrational, she knew, but that didn’t stop the rush of heat across her cheeks.

“Your fingers are slim and strong,” he said, defining a nail with a few quick curves, “yet without any of the coldness or implacability that can detract in such matters. There is a determined grace here which I find interesting.”

Immediately her fingers laced together in a nervous grip.

He caught the movement and bowed his head. “I beg your pardon. My attention has made you uncomfortable.

The cardinal sin of portraitists. May I have your leave to sketch the drape of the dressing gown? ’Tis less intrusive, and the contrast of the dark against the light is real y quite remarkable from this angle.”

Cam relaxed as he turned the page. “Aye.” The three tal windows in the room showed the purple-blue of the sky to the east and the orange-red in the west, reminding her of the view from her loft at twilight, the south hil s of Pittsburgh laid out like some sort of Tuscan landscape, with the towering squared spires of the Presbyterian church and the neighboring conical tower of the Catholic one sitting like a pair of medieval fortresses on the highest ridge of town. In the winter the structures were lit with spotlights and reigned triumphantly over the coming darkness.

It had been a December night four years ago when Jacket found her watching the same scene from the top of Mt. Lebanon’s open-air parking garage and had swept her into his arms, offered to move to the States and asked her to marry him. A month later he’d bought them the loft space, high atop the building across the street from the garage, having convinced the building’s owner to scrap plans for a floor of offices. As Jacket said when he handed her the keys, “I want to give you the night sky.”

It seemed like such a long time ago. But when he’d given back the ring, she’d felt some of the same sort of magic again. Her heart twinged. Would see ever see him again?

She knew where she was, but not how she’d gotten here or if she’d ever get back. She couldn’t even get a look at her phone for fear of Lely seeing it. While she couldn’t help but admit she was enjoying his company, she wished she could get just a moment or two alone in this room.

The phone buzzed to flag a new text. Oh God, she had service! But then she saw Peter’s eyes.

“Um.” She jerked the chair forward. “Sorry. Readjusting.”

He returned to his tablet.

Whew! She slowly moved her hand to her purse. His gaze lifted, and she stopped. If she could only get him to leave.

“Mr. Lely, might I have a glass of water. I find I am quite parched.”

“Certainly.” He went to the door, and she reached for her phone. But then he tugged a brocade pul beside the door, and in the distance she heard the faint ring of a bel .

and in the distance she heard the faint ring of a bel .

Crap! How hard was this going to be?

“Someone wil be here in a moment.” He lowered himself once again to the stool.

“Thank you.” She sighed and inclined slightly.“ ’Tis not the best light for sketching.”

He paused. “You are versed in an artist’s needs?”

She nearly laughed. An artist’s needs. Did she have the energy to do that again with Jacket? “A bit.”

“Do you draw or paint?”

Cam started. He meant her. It wasn’t uncommon for a woman in Lely’s time to have been tutored by a governess in sketching and even watercolor—Dürer had popularized the latter as a medium in Western Europe in the early sixteenth century—but from the time Cam had abandoned hopes of becoming a painter herself any direct question about her own artistic abilities made her self-conscious.

The door opened before she could answer. It was Moseby, who started visibly at the sight of Cam. The look of horror that fol owed suggested the rules about when the master may and may not be interrupted were wel known and strictly enforced. Poor Moseby. It just wasn’t his day.

“I do beg your pardon, sir, most humbly I do. I thought you had rung,” he said, and attempted to slip back into the hal .

“I had, Tom. Come in.”

Moseby reentered, cap in hand, looking as if he’d rather be carved into pieces and served en brochette. “Sir?”

Cam thrust her hand in her bag and jerked the phone into view. “WHAT THE HELL