Page 83 of Flirting with Forever

Then she’d rushed by the kitchen and into her room.

When he heard the door close, he stuck his head out for a look. The insurance guy stood in front of the elevator with a canvas frame under his arm. The door opened, and the man hesitated. He held the door with his foot, put his cases on the floor, and placed the painting down, front side against the wall. Then he picked up the cases and got in. The door closed.

Jacket ventured from the studio, not sure what to think. He went to the row of windows in the dining room, the ones that faced down onto Washington Road. He saw the man exit the building, cross the street, and head into Orbis Coffee Shop.

Then Jacket crossed to the elevator and turned the painting. Jesus, it was Cam, and worse, it was good. He wondered if she’d keep it. He wondered if she wanted him even to know about it. He looked to see if Cam’s door was open. It wasn’t. He pulled his cell phone out and took a snap.

What the hell was going on?

Thirty-five

“Did you ever hear from that weird guy again?” Anastasia asked, tucking the sheet around her. Jacket had been still so long she wondered if his heart had given out. Was it her fault orgasms required somewhere between twenty-four and thirty-eight minutes of hammering friction? She’d done it once in nineteen minutes, but that had been with a vibrator and the sex scene from Wild Things, and she could hardly ask Jacket to incorporate anything more into his already overloaded routine.

“Wh-what weird guy?”

Christ, he sounded like her eighty-three-year-old grandpa waking from a nap. “Rusty the repairman-slash-millionaire.”

“Ahhhhhh, no. Not really.”

“Not really?” Anastasia had wondered about the guy. Despite the lowbrow togs, there had been something incredibly sexy about him, that capable, workingman sexy, the kind of guy that could pound you over the breakfast counter while he’s digging out the nail file that accidentally chewed up your garbage disposal—not that that had happened to Anastasia, of course, except that once, and then the guy had still insisted on being paid, the Neanderthal. She had wondered what Rusty was doing with Cam. Cam was not exactly known for sexy boyfriends, a generalization that firmly included Jacket, whom Anastasia found to be too plain-faced to be good for anything except proving she could get whatever her sister had.

“Well, his ‘associate’ was over the other day talking to Cam.”

“An associate? Plumbers have associates now?”

“He’s not a plumber. Apparently he’s a painter.”

“Really?” Not that painters had associates, either, as far as she knew. Nonetheless, this was getting interesting.

“Yeah, come over here and look at this for a minute.”

Jacket dragged himself up to sitting and pulled himself out of bed. She padded over beside him.

He grabbed his cell phone from the easel and opened the photo album icon.

Jesus, it looked like a Peter Lely!

“It’s supposed to be a Peter Lely,” Jacket said.

“No shit.” But what was infinitely more amazing was that it was a Peter Lely–style portrait of Cam. Or so it seemed to be. Anastasia grabbed the phone and expanded the image with her fingers as much as she could. The artist had captured his sitter in a timeless, ethereal glow and, typical of Lely, who had nothing of the realist about him, her face was idealized, as if the veil of imperfection had been entirely lifted. She could have been Cam, an English queen, or even Venus.

The woman in the painting wore an olive-gold dressing gown that hung off one shoulder, the folds of the fabric falling gracefully down her arms and across her lap. Her hair was loose, hanging in tousled waves over flawless, pale shoulders and a hint of bosom that disappeared into the gentle curve of the gown’s neckline. But it was the expression on her face that set it apart from the usual Lely. The woman’s eyes were crinkled in pleasure, as if he’d captured the moment after shared laughter. With its mix of formal and intimate, it was exactly like Lely.

“It looks like him,” she said, “but I don’t know.”

“I saw it. Trust me. The overpainting, the glazing could have come straight out of Vermeer. The draping and use of light was remarkable. Hasn’t been anything like it in the last century except maybe Hopper.”

“Where did she get it?” Anastasia asked, but Jacket did not answer. He was staring at the painting, obviously distressed. “What is it?”

“Look at it,” he said. “The painter loves her.”

Anastasia looked again. Jacket was right. Taken as a whole, the painting was an ode, a paean, and if the woman did not love the painter in return, then she was on the verge of it. Her eyes glittered, her carriage was loose and open, like that of a woman who’s letting herself go for the first time.

“C’mon,” she said. “If it’s a Peter Lely, it can’t be Cam.”

Jacket moved the screen until the woman’s hand showed. “The ring,” he said. “It’s hers.”

“How do you know?”