Page 73 of The Forgery Mate

The question deserves honest consideration. Forgery has been my life, my inheritance, my only real skill. “I’m not sure. It’s all I’ve ever known.”

“What if I offered you a job?” His voice shifts, the businessman emerging beneath the lover. “A legitimate one, using your skills.”

I twist in his arms to face him, staying within the warm circle of the blanket. “Doing what?”

“Art authentication.” His eyes spark with an idea clearly formed long before this moment. “Finding forgeries instead of creating them. Recovering lost works. Using your talents to preserve beauty rather than replicate it.”

The concept blooms in my mind, a future I’d never considered, a path that uses what I know without requiring me to hide. A life in the light rather than the shadows.

“Would we work together?” The question carries all my uncertainty and hope.

His smile unfurls with a hunter’s satisfaction as his prey willingly walks into his arms. “Every day.”

The dying fire casts an orange light across his face, highlighting the angles that first drew me to him. The blanketflutters around us in the morning breeze, a fragile shelter from the world. Within its confines, I turn from the ashes of my past to lean against my future.

“Then, yes.”