Page 5 of Flirting with Forever

“I, uh, gotta run. The spare keys should be in my purse. Jeanne can give you hers if you can’t find them.”

“Hang on.” Jacket touched Cam’s arm.

She felt a twinge of the old familiar foolishness as well as a tinge of the old familiar despair.

“Can you stay for a minute?” he said.

“Um…” She tried to avoid Jeanne’s eyes. “Yeah, sure. A minute.”

Jeanne found the keys and dropped them into Jacket’s hand. “Careful,” she said. “One of them unlocks when it shouldn’t.” She gave Cam a look and marched out.

Cam immediately wished she’d worn a different outfit. Nothing screamed needy like navy gabardine and Wite-Out. “What’s up?”

“I meant what I said.” He pocketed the keys. “That was really nice.”

She could smell the faint scent of soap on his skin. She could also smell the Kleenex into which she’d wept half her body weight last June.

“I brought something for you. I’d call it a peace offering, but it’s yours, so it’s not really, but still, I’d like it if you thought of it that way.”

He opened his palm. In it was the ring she’d designed, the ring that had been their engagement ring. Blue-black enamel; a flat, round pearl like the moon; and a spattering of diamonds across the wide band like the night sky.

She held up a hand. The last time she’d seen the ring was when she’d cracked his tooth with it that fateful afternoon. Those sorts of memories she could do without. “No thanks.”

“Please,” he said. “You loved the ring. I feel bad enough about what happened. Take it back. Enjoy it. Consider it entirely desanctified.”

She had loved that ring. And if she hadn’t found him in bed with the artist who’d designed it, she would have never let it go.

“I had the guy who repaired it add an extra diamond.” He turned the band to show her.

“Repaired it?”

“Tooth mark,” he explained.

“Oh, right. Sorry about that.”

“Yeah, well…” His eyes went to his boots, then back to her. “I deserved it.”

“That’s for sure.”

He laughed and lifted a finger. The ring dangled from a sparkling chain, the way she’d always worn it. Guess he’d had that repaired too.

“May I?” he said.

Cam considered, then nodded. He came behind her and she lifted her hair. Suddenly the room felt much smaller. He brought the chain around to the front, then clasped it behind her.

“Thanks.”

He made a low rumble, a cross between a laugh and a sigh.

“I gotta run,” she said. True in so many ways.

“What’s up?”

“Woodson Ball.” Jacket knew him as well as she did. Ball collected a lot of modern art, and Jacket’s famous Lucite, fruit, and everyday object assemblages had been very collectible once.

“Buying or selling?”

“Giving, I hope. A fantastic Van Dyck. Two-point-one million, at least. That is, if I can reel it in. And before the board chooses the new executive director.”