Thirty-five
“Did you ever hear from that weird guy again?” Anastasia asked, tucking the sheet around her.
Jacket had been still so long she wondered if his heart had given out.
Was it her fault orgasms required somewhere between twenty-four and thirty-eight minutes of hammering friction?
She’d done it once in nineteen minutes, but that had been with a vibrator and the sex scene from Wild Things, and she could hardly ask Jacket to incorporate anything more into his already overloaded routine.
“Wh-what weird guy?”
Christ, he sounded like her eighty-three-year-old grandpa waking from a nap. “Rusty the repairman-slash-millionaire.”
“Ahhhhhh, no. Not really.”
“Not really?” Anastasia had wondered about the guy.
Despite the lowbrow togs, there had been something incredibly sexy about him, that capable, workingman sexy, the kind of guy that could pound you over the breakfast counter while he’s digging out the nail file that accidentally chewed up your garbage disposal—not that that had happened to Anastasia, of course, except that once, and then the guy had still insisted on being paid, the Neanderthal.
She had wondered what Rusty was doing with Cam.
Cam was not exactly known for sexy boyfriends, a generalization that firmly included Jacket, whom Anastasia found to be too plain-faced to be good for anything except proving she could get whatever her sister had.
“Well, his ‘associate’ was over the other day talking to Cam.”
“An associate? Plumbers have associates now?”
“He’s not a plumber. Apparently he’s a painter.”
“Really?” Not that painters had associates, either, as far as she knew. Nonetheless, this was getting interesting.
“Yeah, come over here and look at this for a minute.”
Jacket dragged himself up to sitting and pulled himself out of bed. She padded over beside him.
He grabbed his cell phone from the easel and opened the photo album icon.
Jesus, it looked like a Peter Lely!
“It’s supposed to be a Peter Lely,” Jacket said.
“No shit.” But what was infinitely more amazing was that it was a Peter Lely–style portrait of Cam.
Or so it seemed to be. Anastasia grabbed the phone and expanded the image with her fingers as much as she could.
The artist had captured his sitter in a timeless, ethereal glow and, typical of Lely, who had nothing of the realist about him, her face was idealized, as if the veil of imperfection had been entirely lifted.
She could have been Cam, an English queen, or even Venus.
The woman in the painting wore an olive-gold dressing gown that hung off one shoulder, the folds of the fabric falling gracefully down her arms and across her lap.
Her hair was loose, hanging in tousled waves over flawless, pale shoulders and a hint of bosom that disappeared into the gentle curve of the gown’s neckline.
But it was the expression on her face that set it apart from the usual Lely.
The woman’s eyes were crinkled in pleasure, as if he’d captured the moment after shared laughter.
With its mix of formal and intimate, it was exactly like Lely.
“It looks like him,” she said, “but I don’t know.”
“I saw it. Trust me. The overpainting, the glazing could have come straight out of Vermeer. The draping and use of light was remarkable. Hasn’t been anything like it in the last century except maybe Hopper.”
“Where did she get it?” Anastasia asked, but Jacket did not answer. He was staring at the painting, obviously distressed. “What is it?”
“Look at it,” he said. “The painter loves her.”
Anastasia looked again. Jacket was right. Taken as a whole, the painting was an ode, a paean, and if the woman did not love the painter in return, then she was on the verge of it. Her eyes glittered, her carriage was loose and open, like that of a woman who’s letting herself go for the first time.
“C’mon,” she said. “If it’s a Peter Lely, it can’t be Cam.”
Jacket moved the screen until the woman’s hand showed. “The ring,” he said. “It’s hers.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve seen her wearing it almost every day for the past four years. It was your mother’s.”
“Nothing personal, but I think you’re imagining things. In any case, though, if it is Cam, it’s not a Peter Lely.” Anastasia frowned. “The technique… It just looks so much like a Peter Lely.”
Jacket snorted. “Maybe it is, just a different Peter Lely. Did I tell you that this Rusty guy told me his real name was Peter Lely.”
“He did?”
“Yeah, that day he was here. I didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
“And what’s even weirder is what the guy who brought the painting here said.”
“Yeah?”
“Apparently he was trying to give it to Cam, and he said to her, ‘Sentiment aside, do you have any idea how much a Lely is worth in today’s market?’”
“He said that?”
“Yeah.”
“And what did Cam say?”
Jacket sighed. “‘Not enough to tempt me a second time.’ She didn’t want it. The guy left it next to the front door, which is when I took a snap of it. And it’s a good thing I did because it was gone an hour later.”
Well, the answer to how much it would be worth, Anastasia knew, was more than a million dollars—that is, if it were a real, undiscovered Lely. The question now was, what the hell was it really, and more important, what were Cam and the associate up to?
“So now Peter-slash-Rusty sits over in Orbis there across the street every afternoon.” Jacket jerked his thumb toward Washington Road.
Anastasia peered down into the lighted streetscape. Orbis Coffee Shop was directly across from the building. “How do you know?”
“Well, the associate headed there after he met with Cam, so, just to find out, I went down to look. And there they were. That’s how I figured out he was working with the guy.
Then I started to check. He—Rusty, Peter, whatever his name is—is there every day.
Just like clockwork. Jesus, I’d swear to God he and Cam were having an affair, but I don’t know how since I’m here all day and she’s at work. ”
“Poor Jacket. Infidelity is such a trial.”
Jacket didn’t reply, and the look in his eyes, still locked on the portrait, suggested he hadn’t heard.
“‘Not enough to tempt me a second time,’” he said. “That goddamn well means there was a first.”