Page 127 of Flirting with Forever

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s get it over with.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ball.”

Packard gave Cam a grateful look. “Excellent. Should we head down to Cam’s office?”

She glanced at the clock. Her only thoughts were with Peter. How long would he stay? Could she say good-bye?

The group exited Packard’s office in single file, Cam last. Anastasia stood with a drink, halfway down the hall. She gave Cam a sorrowful look. Cam thumped her on the back.

“Anastasia,” Packard said. “Let’s go.”

Then Cam saw Peter, and her heart sunk. He stood in an archway, nearly out of sight, with the grave look of a man facing down his fate. He motioned her toward him, and the movement was so poignant, her eyes began to fill.

“Cam,” Packard said. “Are you coming?”

“What? No.” Her lip started to tremble and a tear ran down her cheek. “I have to do something. Go without me.”

“Cam—”

“Let her go,” said Ball, who was looking down the same archway.

She ran to Peter and threw her arms around him. He hugged her back, hard. The tears ran freely now, and she didn’t care. For one last time she could bury herself against Peter’s broad chest.

“I want to say good-bye,” he said.

Her shoulders heaved as a new round of tears overtook her. “I know. I know.” She laced her fingers at his back, trying to keep time from moving.

“I want you to wear this.” He pulled away and opened her hand. Without ceremony, he dropped the emerald ring onto her palm. Shaking and uncertain, she slipped the ring on her middle finger, where it towered, enormous, over her knuckle.

“Careful,” he said, “there may be paint on it.”

She wiped her eyes, confused.

“I want to say good-bye, Cam, but not to you. To Ursula. Mertons warned me once that if I put my mark on any piece of art outside my true place in time, I would be captive there forever. Cam, I know Ursula wouldn’t have wanted me to live our life over—to hold it in some bell jar, like a Bartholomew Day’s Fair curiosity, to gawk at, mesmerized, as Bonnard did. Our life had life, a life of its own that can never be again, though I loved it—loved it—when I lived it.”

“Oh, Peter.” She could barely breathe.

“I want to be with you. I want to paint you. I want to be your Alex Katz.”

She hugged him. “I’ll be your Ada.”

Mertons appeared, scanning the air with his computer pen. “Peter,” he said, “something just happened. The variables went haywire.”

“I struck it,” Peter said. “The painting. I have struck my mark upon it.” He held up Cam’s hand and pointed to the ring. Instantly the sound of Ball’s triumphant hoot reached their ears from the direction of Cam’s office, followed by Anastasia’s happy “I told you. Curators make mistakes all the time. Look, that’s Lely’s mark. I’d recognize it anywhere.”

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” Mertons cried.

“I don’t,” Peter said. “But I’m willing to find out.”

Sixty

“’Tis good of you to do this.” Peter laid in some vermillion and watched it spark in the light. The early morning sun flooding in from Washington Road cast a beautiful pink-gold gleam on his canvas.

Cam shifted on Peter’s long brocade couch, still giddy from the night before, tilting her head toward the window as Peter had directed, but also to see the fat, gleaming emerald on her finger. “Well, when Mertons agreed to sneak the painting of Nell out of your Covent Garden studio for a night, impact on the tangent arcs aside, I could hardly say no.”

“That was a brilliant idea. With the painting in hand, Charles will sign the edict and Ursula will get my name. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

“I’m glad you told me,” she said. “I wish I’d known before.”