Page 13 of Flirting with Forever

Now, that’s a little weird.

What had been a bland detail of a Rembrandt painting became a full portrait of a red-haired woman in a gorgeous olive satin frock. Cam looked closer. If she didn’t know better, she’d almost have to say the woman looked like, well, her.

“Wow.”

“What?” Jeanne asked.

“Nothing.”

Cam didn’t recognize the painting, which didn’t surprise her, though she certainly recognized the artist. It was a Peter Lely, a minor painter of the late-seventeenth century—interestingly, the successor to Van Dyck as royal portraitist to the English court—whom the professors in grad school had only touched on.

She had to admit, though, the painting—what she could see of it—was exquisite. Like Van Dyck, Lely had had a way of rendering fabric that made it practically jump off the canvas. But there was something else about Lely that stuck in her head. What was it? Something that made him a bit out of the ordinary in the art world.

She went to the bookcase and scanned the volumes of art books, looking for the exhibit catalog. And there it was. It had been in the office when she moved in. Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of Charles II. She pulled the book off the shelf and instantly gasped.

On the cover was a portrait by Lely. She recognized it now, had seen the original at the Yale Center for British Art a few years back. The young woman, a courtier of some sort, face framed in light auburn ringlets, gazed at Lely with a look of relaxed and bemused understanding, as if she’d shared her innermost secrets with him and knew they’d be safe. Her frock, if one could call it that, was rendered in a stunning pumpkin silk that draped in gleaming folds so realistic Cam could almost hear the rustle. In the woman’s left hand was a pale peony, open and tinged with pink. She held it toward the viewer. But the most eye-catching part of the portrait was the woman’s porcelain white breast, curving upward to a firm rose nipple that sat unashamedly above the neckline of the silk.

Cam put a hand to her cheek. “Wow.”

“You’ve been using that word a lot,” Jeanne observed.

Taken as a whole, the portrait packed a hell of a punch. A woman of the court, whose hair, makeup, and clothes suggested a position of wealth and importance, yet who gazed upon her portraitist with unveiled sensuality, and who, more important, let her portraitist gaze upon her in dishabille. Even in the licentious court of Charles II, this would have excited the attention of viewers—heck, Cam’s own belly was tingling. And yet the portrait was not pornographic or leering in any way. It was a masterfully executed study of classic beauty: the proportions of the woman’s face, the gleam of her skin, the delicacy of the blossom, the living, moving silk. But it was something beyond mere craft that provoked Cam’s admiration. It was the trust the artist had built with his subject and the obvious appreciation with which he had portrayed the woman’s assurance.

Cam found herself wondering with some intensity what sort of man was capable of seeing a woman like that.

“Look at this,” she said and turned the book toward Jeanne.

Jeanne’s head tilted slowly. “Wow.”

“I told you. It’s by Peter Lely.”

“Was he her lover?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.”

“Look at the way she looks at him. I mean, jeez. It’s like they just…”

Cam nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“Her eyes, that smile.”

“And let’s not forget that breast. Amazing, isn’t it?”

“But what sort of woman…”

“Peels the papaya? Yeah, I don’t know. A damned at-ease one, I guess.” Cam opened the book and began to page through it. “Holy moly. There’s more.”

Lely’s women didn’t all have a breast on display, though a decent—indecent?—proportion of them did. But every one of them beheld their portraitist with the same worldly, self-assured, half-lidded gaze.

Jeanne squeezed in next to her. “Did he do all of them?”

“Probably,” Cam said. Painters generally considered themselves the absolute center not only of their own universe, but everyone else’s as well. She had to admit, though, this was like thinking-women’s porn—being adored from across the room by a man, master at his art, who saw you, fat or thin, beautiful or plain, as the most stunning, empowered, attractive woman on Earth. “He’s Jake Ryan,” Cam said.

“Pardon?”

“Jake Ryan, the hero of Sixteen Candles. The man who falls for Samantha Baker even though she isn’t cheerleader beautiful. Lely is the man who loves the woman posing for him for what’s on the inside.”

Jeanne flipped a page and found a woman with both breasts on display. “That’s what’s on the inside?”