Flirting With Forever by Gwyn Cready (books for 20 year olds TXT) 📗

“No, she passed away, actual y.” Her face clouded, and he regretted the question. “My brother wanted me to have it.

I think he felt it would keep a piece of her alive for him.”

Aye, Peter thought, to send both a bolt of joy and sorrow through him each time it came into view. How tiringly predictable the despairing are. He touched his emerald and wondered what sort of bittersweet treasures Mrs. Post kept of her dead husband.

“You have seen a world of unhappiness,” he said. “A husband, a sister … ’Tis a comfort, I suppose, you have a brother with whom to share—”

She held up a hand, wrenching discomfort on her face. “I have a confession to make.”

“Oh?”

“I am not a widow. I have misled you.”

Peter, who had anticipated the revelation of her real name, felt his stomach lurch. “I see. You are married.”

A beat. “No.”

But this was not the “no” of a maiden. He steadied the pencil and waited. You fool.

“There is a man—”

Peter’s heart clenched.

“—though we are not married.”

“You are lovers?” The words were as natural as if he were asking about the tides or the upholstery on a carriage.

He finished the drape of the gown and flipped the page in the book. He would not deny himself at least a smal sketch of that hair, even if it were the only way he might possess it.

“Yes,” she said with a hard, crimson flush. “Wel , no, not now. We were once. We were engaged to be married, though it ended badly, and I left him. That was in June. He has asked me to reconsider.”

The blood howled in Peter’s ears, though he noted instantly she did not say she’d accepted. He brought the pencil in an untamed curve across the page, fol owed by another, and another. “Tidings of joy to you, then,” he said, trying to keep the question from his voice.

“Aye.”

The look on her face did not match the pronouncement.

“When is the happy day?” he asked.

“What? Oh, I don’t know. His offer was very recent.”

Which is why, Peter thought, she came to me. The portrait would be her answer.

In the face of this burning disappointment, he had two choices. He could tel her his diary was ful , thus ensuring this foolish misadventure of his would be stopped before it began. Or he could paint her and accept their time together for what it would be: a stupidly painful crush played out in a series of sittings in which Peter would lose himself in her image if not the woman herself while the flames of intimacy licked painful y at his heart.

It had been a long time since he’d felt anything in that stony organ except despair, so it was with some surprise he found himself wil ing to trade one punishment for the other.

His shoulders relaxed. The terms, as it were, had been negotiated. He would burn and twist, like a pig on a spit, but he would possess her metaphorical y. And no woman who had ever been possessed by Peter Lely left without the stamp of him on her somewhere.

“Come,” he said, jumping to his feet and offering his hand. “Let me take you to the portrait studio.”

“But why not stay here?”

“The studio has better light.”

“But …”

“Come. The room is just upstairs.”

“Over this one, you mean? Directly over this one? At the top of the house?” She clutched her bag possessively.

He looked at her, confused. “Aye.”

She put her hand in his. “I should like to see it.”

16

Cam gazed around the smal space in surprise, her hand stil warm from his touch. He had led her up a short flight that reversed at a landing, to a long but narrow room. The space was lit by a row of windows angled above them, fol owing the line of the slanted roof overhead. Four bars, here we come, she thought. Through the diamond-paned glass, the orange-red rays of the sun spread like the layers of a tequila sunrise. Across the room, a set of double doors led to a narrow balcony. An easel stood against the south wal , next to shelves of brushes and jars. In the center of the room a double-sided fireplace, beside which Peter now crouched, rose from the floor to the roof. An upholstered chaise sat across from the easel.

“This studio is for my evening work,” he said. “We have light ful west.”

The room’s sensibility differed immensely from that of