Page 12 of Flirting with Forever

“That’s Anastasia to you, pal.”

“You guys still going strong?”

“You know I can’t get enough. What are you up to?” she asked lightly.

Joe had lost his wife and son in a car accident ten months earlier. It would be a long time before she’d feel him living inside their conversations again.

“You know. Same old. I just wanted to tell you I’m making my reservations for Christmas—”

“Oh, you’re coming up!” she cried happily and instantly regretted it. The accident had happened shortly after the holidays.

“Yeah, I want to do it. I-I can’t promise you a lot of Christmas spirit—”

“God, if you can just promise to sit between me and Stacy at dinner, that’ll be holiday enough.”

He laughed. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Me too.”

“Gotta run.”

“Yeah.” His conversations were often cut short by unexpected short waves of tears, and Cam had grown used to allowing it to pass without comment. “Love you. Bye.”

She clicked the phone and cursed the Fates for punishing such a great guy.

“Is he okay?” Jeanne asked.

Cam shrugged. “The same. It’ll be a while, I guess.”

She dropped the phone in her clutch and checked to see if she still had that half of a Mounds bar left over from breakfast yesterday. Nope. Oh boy. Not a good sign. No wonder those Spanx were getting tighter. With a sigh, she dropped the bag on her desk.

She pushed the folders off her keyboard, where she found her smashed hot dog. Sighing, she tossed it in the wastebasket. Then she pushed aside her tubes of paint and the little, half-finished still life of the stapler and pencil cup she’d work on when she wanted to be reminded that she’d once studied to be a painter, and called up Amazon.

She hated to resort to mass-market research, but if she found something that offered a meaty tidbit, she could count on having the book in her hand by tomorrow. If she ordered it from the library, it might take weeks.

She typed “Anthony Van Dyck” into the search box and got 241 results. Sighing, she began to page through. Most she’d seen before and either passed on or read. On the eighth page something caught her eye.

Inside the Artist’s Studio: A Glimpse into the Personal Lives of the Greatest European Painters of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Well, that certainly had an interesting ring to it. Cam clicked to open it and read the description. There was no review from Publishers Weekly, which surprised her, since they were usually all over that stuff, but the first reader review—the only reader review—was eye-opening.

“Everything I wanted to know about my favorites. Reads like Jansen’s History of Art meets Sex and the City. Felt like I was there. Hot, hot, hot.” From a “Madame K” in Sofia, Bulgaria.

This will definitely be worth the overnight delivery charge.

Cam added it to her cart. Her computer made a loud, angry buzz, like she’d given the wrong answer in Jeopardy! The screen didn’t change. Her cart was still empty.

Hm.

She tried again and got the same angry buzz. On the third try, Jeanne looked up.

“Something I can help you with there?”

“No.” Cam tried two more times with no change in outcome. She tried exiting the screen and returning. No luck. She tried another book site, but they didn’t have it listed. She went to the website of her local library and couldn’t find it there, either. She even tried the biggest used-book site she knew. No go.

Crap!

This book seemed like the answer to her prayers. She tapped her fingers. Well, there was a “Look Inside!” feature. With a little luck and a hell of a lot of patience, she might be able to find what she needed.

Cam ran her mouse over the cover of the book and the image of the book changed.