Page 99 of Flirting with Forever

“Because you said it.”

“I did not.”

Jeanne made a deep sigh and rolled her eyes. “Could you please sleep with one of them again? I think your brain is turning into mashed potatoes.”

“Is that the sort of thing you’re learning in that online biology class of yours?”

“Yes, the teacher has asked us all to come to the next webcast dressed as naughty little lab assistants. Do you think that’s a problem?”

“I think you’re going to have more fun than I am tonight.” Cam pressed the Catterman square next to Bolton, then picked up Ball and put him and his wife on either side of Sister Rose. Sister Rose was the city’s biggest Pitt Panther fan. She and Ball could talk college football to their hearts’ content.

Cam rubbed her eyes and reached for the mail. A large manila envelope slipped off the top of the stack. Probably another book. She grabbed a corner and tore. It was an ancient copy of The Burlington Magazine, a much-revered British fine arts monthly. This was the issue from 1932 that had the image of Peter and the four Ursulas. She prayed the picture would be clearer than the tiny blurred scan she’d received. The painting, long held by a wealthy private collector, had not been seen in public for several generations. Cam herself had never seen it, even in print. This would provide her first real look at one of the most revealing of Peter’s paintings.

She pushed the table diagrams to one side and slipped a finger under the cover carefully. The yellowed paper crackled. The cover had no picture, only the words “The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Illustrated & Published Monthly” in a turn-of-the-century font and, below that, a table of contents, which she scanned for a reference to Peter.

The author of the article was a viscount, likely the man her research said had owned the painting in the thirties, and the title nearly made Cam fall off her chair: “Lely’s Love Story.”

Cam flipped to the first page of the article, leaned back in her chair, and began to read. By the time she reached the end, everything she thought she knew had changed, and the one thing she did know was that she had to find Peter.

Forty-five

Peter flung the brush down in disgust. The painting he’d begun the day before was flawless from a technical standpoint but lacked the spark that would lift it from the realm of craft to that of beauty. The word his teacher had used was hout—“wood” in English. No life. And he knew why. He was wracked with guilt. No matter what Campbell had done or was about to do, she hadn’t deserved what he’d just done to her. He hadn’t been the one to expose her to the reporter. That was her doing. It was clear her life was something akin to a platter full of spinning tops, perennially ready to explode into chaos. But her life was also her own, and if what Mertons said was true, Peter had changed it for the worse.

Was losing a child you had never known the same as losing one you had? Was there a gradient to such a loss? He kicked himself. Who was he to judge?

Peter had told himself he’d come to this time to protect Ursula, but he had also come to protect his reputation. And he’d been willing to go so far as to put a woman’s good name at risk for it. He looked at the small sketchbook and the letter it contained. In truth, he had been willing to do more than that. And now, no matter what he had been willing to do or not, he’d changed her future. The realization sickened him.

He couldn’t change the past, no matter how fervently he might wish to, but he certainly had no business playing God with Campbell’s future. He must return to the Afterlife and accept his fate.

But before he left, he had one final deed to perform. He must beg Campbell Stratford’s forgiveness. He picked up his coat and scarf, grabbed the sketchbook, and left.

Forty-six

A block from my building? Cam looked in disbelief at the address on the paper clutched in her hand. Peter’s been living a block from my building all these weeks?

Desperate to see Peter after finishing the article, she’d driven halfway to Shadyside before she’d been able to raise Mr. Ball on the phone and had only scored Peter’s current address after reassuring him she was traveling without a weapon. She’d written down the address, aghast, at a stoplight, and had turned around and driven to Mt. Lebanon in her gala outfit.

She swung the car into the first space open on Alfred Street, hopped out, locked the door, and hurried toward Washington Road, holding her long skirt above the sidewalk. She knew the number but wasn’t sure in which direction the number was, so she started south. She made her way past the frozen yogurt shop in the quaint faux medieval building, then realized this was the address and stopped. She almost laughed. He not only was staying just a block from her, he was staying in the only building in Mt. Lebanon that was crenelated like a castle.

She doubled back to the residential door to the left of the shop windows and, with a sigh, began to scan the names next to the bells. Ball had not given her an apartment number and, in fact, had only been able to come up with the address by rifling through the papers on his desk to find the delivery slip from the company he’d hired to transport the paintings to his house.

Three bells, three names. “Joshua Smith,” “M. Curran,” and—Oh, very funny—“K.T. Holmes.”

Jerk, she thought then bit her tongue in guilt.

She rang the Holmes bell and waited. No response. She was just about to walk away when the door swung open. Peter was throwing a wool scarf around his neck. He started when he saw her.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

“That’s odd. I was just coming to talk to you.” He tucked the scarf in his coat meekly and followed her out onto the sidewalk.

The December wind blew down the street, lifting the curls of hair over his ears. He slipped his hands in his pockets and moved automatically between her and the gusts. “What is it?”

How could she have missed it? That fathomless depth that was always present in his eyes wasn’t laughter or mocking or even desire. It was pain. She should have recognized it. She’d had opportunity enough to examine such a thing, after all.

“I found an article about you,” she said.

The depth disappeared, like the lens of a camera, hidden behind a protective cover.