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

She took a step back to try to let the sense of the work come to her. She had been taken in by the enormity of the effort, then her observation had cut from detail to detail.

She wanted to clear her head to see the col ection as a whole.

She closed her eyes and opened them.

This time her gasp reflected a sensibility struck to its core. The paintings weren’t simply a col ection of variations on an abstract theme. In a gestalt of understanding that nearly knocked her off her feet, she saw the lines transformed into the rise of a hip, the sensual extension of an arm, the peak of a nipple, an eye, the lacing of fingers. It was a woman—or the semblance of one—stretched over many canvases, first in the act of love, a hand over her head, gazing, half lidded, in primal rapture at her lover, then, postcoitus, resting languidly, and final y, locked in her lover’s protective arms as she slept, peaceful and secure.

The room grew warm—hot, even—and her breath quickened. She could feel the heat of the desire, the plain, unspoken need, and afterward, the joy in closeness. This artist—clearly a man, but not just any man—knew what it was to possess and to be possessed, by sex, by love and by joy. Cam, who had seen many an untoward canvas, found herself almost uncomfortable to be witness to such unfettered emotion, and especial y to be sharing the experience with a reporter she hardly knew. It was like peeking into the bedroom of happily married close friends without

their

knowing—the

image

embarrassing,

pornographic, yet in some way immeasurably reassuring.

As a work of art, it was amazing—breathtaking in its scale and knee-shaking in the range of emotions it portrayed, from lust and desire to pleasured weariness to deep love. And everything sprang from no more than a few dozen expertly scribed lines. She thought of Wyeth’s Helga paintings, the last time she had seen such an affecting opus, and as she did, she heard Bal enter the room, talking. She pushed that aside momentarily, though, too engrossed in the thought of Wyeth’s paean to his neighbor, the Scandinavian Helga Testorf, whom he painted scores of times, standing and lying down, dressed and nude, over the course of fifteen years, keeping the paintings secret until he sprang the whole col ection on an amazed art world.

In fact, it was Helga’s Teutonic red hair that—

Cam froze. The flashes of orange were not just an artistic embel ishment. They were patches of hair—long waves fal ing graceful y over shoulders or shorter coarse patches slipping intimately between pale thighs. And in a single heart-stopping instant she realized the patches, al of them, were hers. The slightly lopsided mouth, the upturned nipples, the beauty marks on the neck and cheek.

Everything was hers, hers, hers.

“… amazing, isn’t it? Why didn’t you tel me, Cam? How long have you known? It’s such an eyeful. And from a complete unknown.”

Bal was talking to her, though she couldn’t begin to summon a response, so horrifying was this assault on her privacy. She wanted to run, but her legs felt like they were made of rubber. She wanted to cry out, but her tongue was paralyzed.

“He won’t sign it,” Bal went on blithely, “but at least he titled it. It’s cal ed Wednesday Afternoons.”

Suddenly she felt prickles on her neck and knew with complete certainty Peter was behind her, watching her reaction.

“As for more details,” Bal said, “I have nothing to contribute. That’s just what I was tel ing this reporter, here. I know he thinks it would be a huge story in the art world, but our friend is quite insistent that the identity of the woman—”

“How dare you!” Cam wheeled around and shoved Peter hard.

“—was not to be revealed.”

Bal ’s eyes widened, but not as much as the reporter’s.

The Pop City guy looked at Cam, then said into his phone,

“Put me through to Reuters.”

41

“What in God’s name are you doing?” Cam demanded.

Chaos had exploded in the gal ery. The reporter reeled his story into