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

pink on the knuckle of her big toe. Oh, crap. She’d given herself a pedicure this morning—Moorea Dream Mango—and was hoping that wasn’t a smear. She leaned into the kneehole to get a better look when the sound of a crash made her jerk upright.

Her head smacked hard into the underside of the desk, and she flung herself back and shot upright.

Trying to catch his balance in front of Cam’s laptop was a long-haired man in a ruffled linen shirt, silk stockings and puffy brown pants. Holy shit. It’s Hammer time.

“Who are you?” he asked, stil clinging to the desk for support.

“Jeanne Turner.” Dazed, she moved across the floor and bumped the door closed. He looked like something out of Shakespeare, but he had a flesh-and-blood quality no actor could ever convey.

He made a low bow. “I apologize for the interruption. I—

What is that?”

“That, my friend, is a laptop.”

He tilted his head slowly. “’Tis a lamp of some sort?”

“For some people, yes.”

His gaze flicked around the room. The coffeemaker, her dress, the tubes of paint at Cam’s little practice easel, the telephone. He took a step backward, alarm on his face, then shook his head and brought his attention back to Jeanne. “I … I’m sorry. I’m—”

“Oh, I know exactly who you are.”

“You do?”

“Painter by the name of Peter Lely.”

His eyes widened. “I’m looking for a woman.”

“And I’m pretty sure I know who.”

28

“Oh my God. My sister decorates like a fifty-eight-year-old school nurse.”

“Hey, me mum’s a fifty-eight-year-old school nurse.”

“Then she’d love it here. Jesus, sprigged flannel.”

Anastasia kicked the leg of the bed that had been shoved into the corner of the makeshift studio.

Jacket, who had had no feelings for flannel one way or another, viewed the sheets with little interest.

Anastasia wandered to the window, her long legs disappearing under a tight black leather miniskirt.

“I can’t believe she came back here, to Mount Lebanon.”

He shrugged. “She always told me she liked being reminded of her childhood. Plus, she can take the bus to the museum. She likes that.”

“The bus? Jesus Christ, what next? Twinsets?”

Jacket saw no connection between these items and steered the conversation back on course. “Do you want to see it?”

“The latest Jacket Sprague? I do.”

He turned the easel so she could see. She pul ed out a pair of glasses and perched them on the end of her nose.

Leaving one foot at a right angle to the other, like a bal et dancer, she stepped back. A scent he could only describe as flowers in a harem hung on her shoulders.

“Bal sy,” she said at last. “Ironic. Postapocalyptic Duchamp

crossed

with

John

Singer

Sargent.

Congratulations, you’ve reinvented yourself.”

Jacket beamed. That was exactly what he’d wanted to hear. “I told you it was good.”

“You were right.”

“Did you get a chance to talk to Bal ?”

“I did. I don’t think this is what he’s looking for.”

“He hasn’t seen this.”

“True. Stil , the aesthetic is not—”

“It is true what I heard, then—that he’s buying big?”

“What you heard, my dear,” she said, touching his nose,

“is that he’s building a new postmodern house in Florida with an entry hal the size of a smal Eastern bloc country.

He wants a dozen pieces, same artist. He wants to make a statement. He’s wil ing to go as high as twenty-five mil ion.”

“Jesus, that’s a hel of a statement.” He took her arm.

“Listen, I want it.” Their eyes met, and he felt a tingle of excitement mixed with fear. It was like looking into the eyes of a hungry panther.

“I hope you get what you want, then.” She gave him a sly smile and walked past the loft’s floor-to-ceiling windows, her stilettos clicking out the bal -tightening code of a streetwalker. “Let me ask you something,” she said when she finished a long sweep of the skyline.

“Why is it you’re asking me for help with Bal and not Cam?”

He took a breath. He didn’t real y understand al the rules about women, but he had a sense talking about Cam in this way was crossing the line. “She doesn’t like to get involved in that sort of thing.”

“For her fiancé?”

“We haven’t quite gotten to that stage yet.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “We’re stil in negotiations.”

“Jesus. Are you fucking her, or are you actual y stuck in the guest room like it looks?”

He rubbed his hands on his jeans. “C’mon, Anastasia.”

She dug a cigarette out of her purse and held out a pack of matches. He struck one for her and lit the cigarette. The sound made his heart do a weird sort of jump step, even though he’d never been a smoker.

“What’s this?” She looked at the sketchbook on his work desk.

“Oh, that. A detail. For a portrait.”

“You’re going back to portraits?”

“Wel , just one. The last, probably.”

“The last portrait of Jacket Sprague,” she said with