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

He touched her wrist. A crack of lightning shot straight to her bel y. The last thing she wanted was her bel y weighing in on this. Her bel y was a body part of very few words.

Lust.

Lust.

Lust.

Lust.

Cam touched his waist, that hard, hard waist, and he pul ed her into a kiss.

Such a bad idea. Such a good bad idea.

Reluctantly she extricated her mouth. She felt like she’d been sucking lust-flavored Pop Rocks.

“I was thinking you might want to take a short leave of absence.”

“A short leave?”

“Or a longer one.” He grinned. “Maybe come to London with me for a while.”

London. She loved London. “I couldn’t.”

“Anytime. Now. After the gala. To celebrate your new directorship. They let you take a holiday sometimes, don’t they?”

He could be very charming when he put his mind to it.

Just ask the explosions in her mouth. “I, uh …”

“Cam, I—Oh God, sorry.”

It was Jeanne, and her voice snapped Cam’s ego into action. She broke away and wiped her mouth, embarrassed. “What’s up?”

“Anastasia. On the stairs. In a puff of vampire-colored smoke.”

3

Peter knew why he’d taken the long way to Maiden Lane.

Maiden Lane was where he’d find the king, but the smal patch of green behind St. Paul’s—Old Pauly, as the residents of Covent Garden referred to it—was where he’d find Ursula.

He crossed the piazza tentatively, ignoring the carriages that passed on either side of him. He made his way past the sanctuary he would never enter again and down the path that ran the length of the church’s north wal . When he saw her, his throat began to tighten. He scanned the space, but it was late afternoon, and the only witnesses to his shame would be the wrens, foraging among the tree roots.

He dropped to a knee.

“I failed you, my love. ’Tis the worst thing a man can do, and I shal live with the pain always.”

If he wanted absolution, there was none. Only the dim reflection of light on this headstone and the one beyond it.

Peter hung his head and let the tears fal down his cheeks.

4

Cam flew down the improbably long treads of the Carnegie’s staircase with Jeanne on her heels.

“You don’t think she’s there already?” Cam said. “That painting’s nearly mine, and I don’t want her ruining it or, worse, somehow getting credit.”

“When you’re a successful author, wil we be done with al this?”

“Oh, sure. ’Cause you know how many people buy art biographies. I could have them over for cocktails and stil manage to be the worst-dressed person in the room.”

“Especial y with Wite-Out on your hose. So, do you think he’s going to say it again?”

“What?”

“You know.”

Cam shot her a pointed look. “Mr. Bal is from a very old, not to mention very rich, Gainesvil e family. Just because some of his words are, wel , a little hard to understand doesn’t mean he’s not sharp as a tack.”

“I grew up in Mobile, Alabama. You got any trouble understanding me? Do I go around tel ing people I’m a fornicator?”

“It’s not fornicator. It’s Florida Gator.”

“Oh, I know what it is. It stil makes me laugh to hear it.”

Cam ignored this. She hit the cavernous entry hal and looked left and right. Bal had arrived in Lamont Packard’s office five minutes ago and by now they could be anywhere.

They weren’t in the little café dominated by Warhol’s fluorescent portrait of Andrew Carnegie—“Care for some worker uprising with your Chicken Basil Farfal e?”—nor lounging by the reflecting pool outside.

She turned. Lamont Packard, her boss and the soon-to-be ex-executive director, was emerging from the interior courtyard a step or two in front of Bal , who had Anastasia hot-glued to his arm.

Drat. She had to think fast.

“Remember the Picasso strategy?”

Jeanne gave her a questioning look. “Yes, but I’m not sure how your favorite ‘Get me outta this blind date’

strategy is going to work here.”

“Wel , this time it’s a Rembrandt strategy, and you need to cal Tim Lockport—anonymously.”

After a beat, Jeanne’s face lit. “You’re bril iant—and scary.”

“Family survival tactic. Lie or die.”

Jeanne angled off toward a museum phone, and Cam headed toward her quarry.

They were an odd threesome, she thought,