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

the phone at double speed, like he was afraid it might slip away, while Bal , who knew how much the directorship meant to her and the deleterious effect this story would have on her chances, essayed a series of urgent, low-toned and undoubtedly fruitless pleas as to why the story, or at least the revelation that the subject was Campbel Stratford, should be buried. Three art col ector types trooped in on the heels of Bal ’s wife, who could be heard saying, “… It’s absolutely the Mount Everest of public fornications.” They were fol owed by a server carrying a tray of coffee and pastries who cal ed, “Careful, Natasha, careful,” as she tried not to trip over the family dog, and Natasha herself, who in true Labrador fashion bounded among the humans with a mouth ful of plush woodpecker as if she were the only creature on Earth.

“Painting is what I was doing,” Peter said irritably. “It is my livelihood, you may recal .” He wore a suit the color of midnight, a pale blue shirt open at the neck and a meticulously groomed three-day growth of beard that brought to mind an older Clive Owen. His hair had been cut short, bringing out the curl, and the dog made a beeline for him as if he had a pork chop in his pocket. Dogs, she thought philosophical y, should be taught not to reward the wicked.

“That is not your livelihood.” She pointed to the cyclorama of embarrassment that surrounded them. She began a silent inventory of the people to whom she’d have to explain this that began with her mother and Lamont Packard and ended with Rusty the maintenance man and the nice old lady at the dry cleaners. “Nor, might I add, is it the truth.”

“Which part?” Peter crouched to offer a vigorous two-handed scratch to Natasha, who dropped the woodpecker devotedly at his feet.

Cam glanced at each unexpurgated vignette, looking for the one that would prove him a liar, but at each detail a blurred memory of the evening they’d shared sharpened into embarrassing focus, a sort of Polaroid of carnal excess. And yet the details together gave the impression of a much different liaison than had occurred. Why, the title alone suggested secret meetings and a long, clandestine affair—the sort, she thought with a bitter shake of her head, she had actual y wanted to share with him once. But there was no one detail to which she could point and say, “That did not occur.”

Peter scooped up the bird and offered Natasha the other end. “Aye?”

Then it struck her. She turned, victorious. “I was dressed when we did it!”

The reporter stopped talking, the server sloshed coffee onto the Limoges platter and one of the col ectors, a slight man with a Mahatma Gandhi face and Lil y Pulitzer trousers, rubbed his hands together and said, “Now, that is what I cal provenance.”

Peter looked up from the tug-of-war in which he was engaged and said to Cam under his breath, “I suggest you stop talking about it. You are doing yourself no favors.”

“Stop talking about it? Stop talking about it?! I wil spend the rest of my life having to talk about this. How could you have done this to me?”

Peter let go of the woodpecker. He took Cam’s elbow and guided her into a smal alcove off the gal ery.

“I didn’t do this to you,” he whispered fiercely. “If you’l recal , I was chivalrously silent on the matter of my muse.

You’re the one who revealed yourself. I had no intention—”

“No intention, my ass, ” she said, and caught Mahatma whipping around to see what part of the painting she was referring to now. “Fiction. Those paintings are fiction.”

“Al art is fiction, someone told me once. Mine more than most.”

Cam growled. “If you think for one minute this is going to stop me from writing my book, you’re mistaken. It only makes finding the ending a little easier.”

“The ending?” Peter’s eyes flashed lava sparks. “What ending do you mean?”

Suddenly the room felt far smal er than its eight-by-eight area. She crossed her arms. “I know al about Ursula.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” she said quickly, feeling the intensity of his gaze, “I do.”

“And?”

“It’s not a secret, Peter.” She heard the tone of researcher rise defensively in her voice. “There is