Page 90 of Flirting with Forever

Peter jumped to his feet, fully expecting to greet the lad’s mother, but instead found himself eye to eye with the thin, dark-haired woman who had been in bed with Jacket. He hadn’t seen her arrive and wondered how long she’d been in the shop.

“Good afternoon.” He bowed.

“Evening, really, at this point.” She tilted her head toward the darkening streetscape outside. In her hand was a cup similar to his own, and she sipped it abstractedly, keeping her feline eyes on him. And then it struck him. How could he have missed the resemblance to Cam?

He tore the page out of his book and handed it to the boy, who took it and ran to his mother.

“Peter, right?” the woman said.

He nodded warily. “Yes.”

“I don’t think we were ever formally introduced. I’m Anastasia.” She gave him a smile as breathtaking and elegantly formed as a horse taking a fence on the fields of Hampton.

Peter took her hand and shook it. “How odd. Cam has a sister named Anastasia.”

The smile caught like a shoe in a stile and nearly unseated its rider. Mertons had been working his information sources nearly as hard as Peter had been working the canvas this last week and had provided Peter with Cam’s sister’s name recently.

Anastasia dropped onto a chair, curled a leg beneath her, and gave him a friendly, self-effacing shrug. “Shit happens.”

He sat down. “Indeed.”

“I like you better in these clothes,” she said. The smile returned.

Peter was wearing what Mertons called dungarees, but Peter had been watching the men each day on his walk between the studio space Mertons had let for him and the coffee shop, or, more specifically, he had been watching the women watching the men, and yesterday he’d had Mertons take him to a place where he’d purchased the silk shirt as well as the tailored aubergine jacket he now wore.

He didn’t answer. He doubted his sartorial choice was at the bottom of her appearance here. He wondered how she’d found him.

“Jacket tells me your name is Lely. Peter Lely.”

“Like the painter, yes.”

“You know Cam’s writing a book about Peter Lely?”

“I’ve heard that. Do you think it’s an allegory of some sort?” He gave her a forced smile.

“Were your parents admirers?”

“Of Peter Lely?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to think so.”

Another long silence.

“Are you a painter as well?” She nodded toward the speckles on his hands.

“I am.” He stole a glance over her shoulder, out into the street in which the first snow of the season swirled in the lamplight of the waiting cars. The day had grown colder—unexpectedly colder, according to the proprietor here—and the snow seemed to have taken the town by surprise. Anastasia was here on an expedition of some sort, and he hoped she’d get to the point quickly and then be on her way.

“That’s, uh, quite a ring.”

He had been twisting the emerald without even noticing.

“May I?” She held out a palm.

He pulled off the ring reluctantly and handed it to her. His other choice had been to put his hand in hers, and the notion of touching her made him slightly ill. She was in every conceivable way the opposite of her sister. Cool. Coiled. Deceptively nonchalant. It was like sharing a table with a cobra.

She examined the ring closely. He thought of the Latin words he’d had engraved in the band at Ursula’s suggestion—Per varios usus artem experientia fecit, which translated roughly as “It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity”—and shifted uncomfortably. He felt as if Anastasia were perusing his personal diary.