Page 33 of Flirting with Forever

The look on her face did not match the pronouncement.

“When is the happy day?” he asked.

“What? Oh, I don’t know. His offer was very recent.”

Which is why, Peter thought, she came to me. The portrait would be her answer.

In the face of this burning disappointment, he had two choices. He could tell her his diary was full, thus ensuring this foolish misadventure would be stopped before it began. Or he could paint her and accept their time together for what it would be: a stupidly painful crush played out in a series of sittings in which Peter would lose himself in her image if not the woman herself while the flames of intimacy licked painfully at his heart.

It had been a long time since he’d felt anything in that stony organ except despair, so it was with some surprise he found himself willing to trade one punishment for the other.

His shoulders relaxed. The terms, as it were, had been negotiated. He would burn and twist, like a pig on a spit, but he would possess her metaphorically. And no woman who had ever been possessed by Peter Lely left without the stamp of him on her somewhere.

“Come,” he said, jumping to his feet and offering his hand. “Let me take you to the portrait studio.”

“But why not stay here?”

“The studio has better light.”

“But…”

“Come. The room is just upstairs.”

“Over this one, you mean? Directly over this one? At the top of the house?” She clutched her bag possessively.

He looked at her, confused. “Aye.”

She put her hand in his. “I should like to see it.”

Sixteen

Cam gazed around the small space in surprise, her hand still warm from his touch. He had led her up a short flight that reversed at a landing, to a long but narrow room. The space was lit by a row of windows angled above them, following the line of the slanted roof overhead. Four bars, here we come, she thought. Through the diamond-paned glass, the orange-red rays of the sun spread like the layers of a tequila sunrise. Across the room, a set of double doors were opened to a narrow balcony. An easel stood against the south wall, next to shelves of brushes and jars. In the center of the room a double-sided fireplace, beside which Peter now crouched, rose from the floor to the roof. An upholstered chaise sat across from the easel.

“This studio is for my evening work,” he said. “We have light full west.”

The room’s sensibility differed immensely from that of the lower rooms of the house, partly because of the smaller scale of the elements—a lantern instead of sconces and chandeliers, shelves instead of a workbench—and partly, Cam realized when she turned, because of a low, wide settee that stretched out in the darkened space on the other side of the fireplace.

Covered in etched velvet, the settee’s cushion was perfectly flat and long enough to seat four with ease. Several plush throws lay folded near one arm, and a dozen or more cushions in various silks and Far Eastern prints camouflaged the settee’s odd depth and high-backed frame.

When she spotted the decanter of pale yellow wine and glasses on a low side table, she realized with a small gasp that it wasn’t just a settee. It was a seducing couch.

His evening work, eh?

She turned and crossed her arms. “My fiancé says he despises an evening light.”

As she’d hoped, Lely flinched at the word fiancé. Nonetheless, he continued his arrangement of dry grass and kindling beneath the grate.

“Why is that?” he said.

“He says it makes every brushstroke lie.”

Peter stopped and turned, and Cam instantly realized her error.

“Your fiancé is a painter?”

“He is…” The wheels of her mind spun but nothing came. “…a painter, aye.”

“Would he not prefer to paint you himself?”