Flirting With Forever Gwyn Cready (best book series to read txt) đź“–
- Author: Gwyn Cready
Book online «Flirting With Forever Gwyn Cready (best book series to read txt) 📖». Author Gwyn Cready
“I did sleep with him,” Cam yel ed. “The nothing that happened happened after we slept together.”
“Oh. Oh.” Jeanne winced.
“Right. A big, honking awkward mistake. One of those
“Right. A big, honking awkward mistake. One of those horrible miscalculations where the only upside is the laughs you get when you tel your friends about it two decades later.”
“Worse than the photographer you were dating who said you reminded him of an older Lindsay Lohan?”
“Ugh. Yes.”
“Worse than the guy from the Planning Commission who was so thril ed when he realized you and he wore the same size jeans?”
“Oh God! Yes, yes, okay. I make bad decisions when it comes to men. That’s why I haven’t dated in six months.
That’s why I’ve been holding off on giving Jacket an answer.
Only this one seemed different. This one seemed … Oh, Jeanne, you should have been there. There was this woman whose married lover had broken up with her, and the married lover had told Peter privately he was canceling the painting he’d commissioned of her, but when the woman arrived, Peter carried on as if nothing had changed.
He told her that even though she and her paramour had parted ways, the man had said he stil wanted to remember her just as she was.”
“Wow.”
“Exactly. And when he heard that Jacket had never done a portrait of me, he was so careful not to say anything that might make me think that was odd, but I could tel by the look on his face, he was angry with Jacket.”
“He’s your Jake Ryan.”
“Yes! That’s what I thought. But I was so wrong. Oh, Jeanne, I was so wrong.” Cam col apsed against the back Jeanne, I was so wrong.” Cam col apsed against the back of her chair. “He had to have known I was coming. I don’t know how. Mertons—the second cross-century FedEx package—said they’d been watching me. Not that Peter let on, of course. And then he let me …” Cam shook her head as if trying to shake the horrible memory out of her brain.
“Cripes, you saw how I was dressed. So, the whole time I think I’m pumping him for information—”
“He’s actual y pumping you.”
“Bingo. And it turns out he fed me a load of crap, which is why the Van Dyck book was withdrawn. And now I find out he’s married. And look at this. Came in in my email this morning.”
Cam turned her monitor and showed Jeanne a bucolic painting of a man, clearly Lely, surrounded by four women.
He had a large cel o between his knees and was fingering it.
“Symbolic,” Jeanne almost said, but swal owed the jest at the sight of her boss’s face. Closer inspection showed the women to be four versions of the same person—a woman with downcast eyes in a simple gown; a woman in a frock almost religious in its plainness whose hair was tucked under a headscarf; a graceful, barebacked model, gazing at the painter from over her shoulder; and a seductress with breasts bared, daring the man to possess her.
“Wel .”
“Exactly,” Cam said.
“They’re al , uh …”
“Ursula, yes.”
“He was apparently quite taken with her.”
“Apparently. Look, he even added cherubim, so much the goddess she was.”
Jeanne squinted. The image was blurred and only about four inches by four inches on the screen, but there they were, two child angels, one with a flute, keeping time with Lely and his muse. “What’s the title?”
“Dunno. It’s just a picture from the catalog. That’s al the guy was wil ing to scan. He’s overnighting the actual print.”
Jeanne rol ed her eyes. If Cam’s book ever made a profit, she’d be dumbfounded.
“So he’s married.”
“Yep.”
“To Ursula?”
“Lady Lely,” Cam said archly.
“That shit.” A lady, huh? Jeanne remembered al of the princess gear she’d had as a kid. “Just think. You could have been like Lady Diana.”
Cam crossed her arms. “You’re missing the point here.”
“Oh no, I’m getting the point. Your Van Dyck lark has turned into a
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