“Is he the one? I mean, are you going to move in with him?”
“He lives somewhere else, so no, I guess. This is”— was, she thought—“just for now.”
He gave her a gentle smile. “I’d better get down there.”
“I have this.” She pul ed the ring out of her pocket and held it out to him. He opened his hand, and she dropped it in, letting the chain fal into a heap beside it. He closed his fingers around hers for an instant, then pul ed his arm back and looked. “Keep it. It never belonged to me, not in that way. It’s what you designed. I’d like you to have it. Anyhow, it makes my tooth throb whenever it’s close.”
She laughed.
He handed it back to her, and she unhooked the clasp, slipped the ring off the chain and placed it on her finger.
“Thank you, Jacket.”
He reached out and pul ed her into a tight embrace. “I love you, Cam.”
“I love you, too.”
With a final squeeze, he shook himself loose. He started for the door, then stopped himself. “Do you need help with Bal ?”
She shook her head. “Nah. I’l be fine. What’s a couple She shook her head. “Nah. I’l be fine. What’s a couple mil ion between friends, right?”
He smiled. “Right. I’l see you downstairs, then.”
“Yep.”
When he reached the hal , he turned. “He’d better fucking deserve you.”
I hope.
53
Peter stumbled blindly out of Anastasia’s office, ashamed of the trouble he’d caused and furious at his impotence to rectify it.
No one—not the lowest brute—deserves what I’ve wrought.
He’d devised the plan with the sangfroid of a spider, dictating the wording to Van Dyck and placing the letter in his pocket sketchbook before going to Mertons’s workshop. That he regretted the plan as blackguardly almost as soon as he’d begun it and changed his mind about going through with it before arriving on Cam’s doorstep carried no weight to him in the moral calculation now. If it hadn’t been in his sketchbook, Anastasia would not have had the opportunity to steal it that day at the coffee shop. His selfish maneuvering had deprived Cam of a future and her profession. Mertons had been right when he’d said traveling to his future was akin to yel ing “fire” in a crowded theater. He’d destroyed her happiness, and she didn’t even know the extent or the cause—that is, until he could tel her and beg her forgiveness.
He stopped, surprised in his distracted state to find himself at Cam’s door.
His breath caught. Jacket had Cam in his arms. It was not a lover’s embrace, but it was fil ed with an abiding affection, and Peter convinced himself to be glad. This, after al , was the man who would care for her when he was gone.
He pul ed himself away from the door. One thing settled.
But there was more he needed to do for her. He turned and headed for the stairs.
54
Alone, Cam slumped against the desk and stared, unseeing, at the smal unfinished painting on her desk. The events of the day were threatening to overwhelm her, and the gala hadn’t even begun. Saying good-bye to Jacket had felt like a door had closed in her life with an abrupt slam.
She felt adrift, rudderless, uncertain of Peter or her future.
More than anything, she longed to see Peter, to find out what he knew about that letter and to be reassured that what she had jettisoned everything for stil existed.
She sensed a presence in the doorway and wheeled around expectantly.
But it was Mertons, who regarded her with curiosity.
“Good evening, Miss Stratford. Do you know where I might find Peter?”
There was an undercurrent there she didn’t like. Her time with Peter couldn’t be over after only a few hours. It would be too cruel. “No,” she lied. “I haven’t seen him. Why?”
But the effusive, deferential Mertons of a few days ago was gone. He entered her office as if she were not present and scanned each of her bookshelves in succession. He was a man on a mission, and Cam could guess what it was. She had to work hard not to look at her laptop.
“Something I can do for you?” she asked.
“Miss Stratford, I’m going to be honest with you. We know how you’re traveling.”
“You
