Flirting With Forever by Gwyn Cready Read Free Book Online Page A

reached to his shoulders. A strong nose led to a pliant mouth with ful lips that looked capable of both an easy smile and something more complicated.
    The gentlest curve of cheek hung by the corners of his mouth, a signal of middle age in an artist unafraid of such trivialities. The shadow of a late-day beard burnished his cheeks and chin, but it was his eyes that struck her most.
    Cam eased her glasses out of her purse and slipped them on. She didn’t like to wear them and only needed a little magnification, but for this she would endure the potential embarrassment.
    Lely’s eyes were dark and liquid—Sierra Nevada Porter on a warm summer’s night. And the single dot of cream in the irises—a painter’s trick, she knew, but in Lely’s capable hand a trick for which she wil ingly suspended disbelief—
    signaled such a potent mix of pain and joy it made her heart cramp.
    She exhaled, unaware she’d been holding her breath.
    “Wow.”
    “Wow again ?”
    “It’s Lely.” Cam’s gaze returned involuntarily to the self-portrait. “He was, uh … uh … uh …” Those eyes seemed to be looking right at her.
    “Such a wel -nuanced argument. I don’t understand why you’re not on the lecture circuit.”

    Cam ran her finger across the portrait’s glossy surface, recal ing her grad school reading. “He was German, I think.
    No. No. Born in Germany to Dutch parents. That’s it.”
    “Who? Van Dyck?”
    “No, Lely. And he moved to England young, I think. Like twenty-one or twenty-two. After being admitted to the Guild of Saint Luke, the trade association for painters in Hol and.”
    “Have we changed the subject of the book? Because I’d sure hate to lose that first sentence. It’s a kil er.” Jeanne picked up the Lely exhibition catalog and returned to her desk with it.
    With an effort, Cam returned her gaze to the screen. Sex and Van Dyck, she reminded herself. You’re here for sex and rivalry, and ran the mouse past the picture on the screen, to where the large “LOOK INSIDE!” was perched, and when she did, a menu popped up. “‘Front Cover,’
    ‘Back Cover,’ ‘Table of Contents’ or ‘Surprise Me!’?”
    The choice was obvious. She let the cursor hover over the words and pursed her lips, saying a quiet prayer that the click she was about to make would deliver her directly into Van Dyck’s bedchamber, with a tale of sex, lies and oil paint that could be knitted directly into her biography. Oh God, please surprise me.
    As she brought her finger down, Cam’s gaze slipped to the cover of the Lely catalog in Jeanne’s hand, wondering once again what sort of man it took to earn such a bemused, smoky look from an obviously entranced subject.
    Click .

    A noise like a giant vacuum cleaner fil ed the room, so loud Cam clapped her hands over her ears, and wind blew everything off her desk, flinging her purse like a rugby bal into her lap and her chair into the radiator behind her. It was like the blast of a jet plane, only Jeanne, who looked at her, horrified, didn’t seem to be affected by it at al . Cam was on the verge of dropping to the floor for protection when the wind stopped, the room went black and the edges of her laptop stretched out like arms to envelop her.

6
    Boom.
    Cam exploded into the doorway of a high-ceiled, rococo-trimmed room fil ed wal to wal with naked women
    —a good thing, she thought with a part of her brain that apparently processed input even in the face of chaotic upheaval, since she, too, was naked. She flung her arms around herself and gasped for air.
    A thousand questions flew through her head. Where am I? Who are these women? Where’s my laptop? Am I dead?
    She felt confused, slightly nauseous and hugely exposed.
    “My apologies,” she said as the women’s heads swiveled. “I, ah, tripped.”
    Several had been playing cards on a heap of cushions, two were admiring a horned hat, one was leaning on a carved club, another was dangling a loop of yarn over the