Where Dreams Reside

by M. L. Buchman

  “He still…”

  “Angelo, buddy,” Russell swung through the kitchen door on crutches. The few mid-afternoon diners startled at Russell’s bull-in-china-shop shout. “You gotta save me. I’m bored to dea—”

  He came to a halt when he spotted Melanie, all of his bluster gone. As far as Angelo knew, they’d never spoken since that awful day a year ago February.

  Melanie had pulled back her hand from Angelo’s arm and hunched her shoulders a bit. It didn’t look good on her.

  Though his heart ached, he didn’t know how to help them. Melanie had fallen in love with Russell, who had neither understood nor returned the emotion, though they’d been lovers at the time. Involved. “The Season’s Hot Item” according to the tabloids. The flashy heir to the Morganson shipping empire, and the molten supermodel. No one but Angelo knew that both their emotions had been caught up as well, that not only the glamour had kept them together as long as they were.

  “Hi Russell,” Angelo reached deep for some tiny bit of casual. “Melanie’s in town for an ad shoot for the Market. They decided to drop in and use my restaurant for one of the ads.”

  All they did was stare stone-faced at each other and Angelo didn’t know what to say. Couldn’t figure out how to help them out of their mutual pain and embarrassment.

  “It was my idea,” Jo came up beside Russell and laid a friendly hand on his arm as if nothing were amiss.

  Didn’t the woman have any sensitivity in that severe suit of hers?

  “You and Angelo did such a beautiful job of redecorating. And your art on the walls. It was irresistible.”

  “Uh, thanks.”

  She was doing it. By avoiding the subject of their mutual pain entirely, Jo had gotten Russell to relax a half-inch, though his hands still clamped around the crutch handles as if holding on for dear life. But that little bit of easing on his part had in turn removed some of the hunch from Melanie’s shoulders. Angelo would have tried stepping straight into the breach, whereas Jo just circled around it as if it wasn’t even there. It was as artful as the muted paintings and crystalline photographs on his walls.

  “I thought over by that table, the one by the central hearth, would look really splendid.” Claude had clearly recognized Russell, but his tone clearly said, this is my shoot, that is my choice.

  Russell’s gaze begrudgingly shifted from Melanie’s face to the room about them.

  “No.”

  Claude blinked and suddenly looked like a fish out of water.

  Angelo could see Russell swallow hard, then it became a bit too obvious that he wasn’t going to look back at Melanie now that he’d looked away, but there was nothing Angelo could do about that.

  “No,” Russell cleared his throat and tried again. “That’s a four-topper. It’s the right position, Claude, but for the photograph you’ll want a two-person table even though she’s the only one seated there. It’s an ad. She’s waiting. Waiting for the viewer of the ad to come join her.” He swung off on his crutches to direct the change.

  Melanie turned to Angelo and mouthed a “Thank you” before bending down to lean her cheek against his. He could feel her hands in his squeeze long and hard, then steadier. She stood, her shoulders back and nodded once.

  Angelo turned to Jo to thank her as well, but she was no longer beside Melanie.

  “None of these clothes are right,” Russell was riffling through the rack by the front door.

  “It’s all I brought,” the clothier was complaining.

  Jo had moved over beside Russell. Angelo watched her turn that appraising attorney gaze on Melanie and slowly inspect her from shoes to hair. Her eyes didn’t track over to Angelo even in the slightest flicker.

  She pulled out her phone and dialed.

  He moved closer to hear the conversation.

  “Perrin? This is Jo, I’m at Angelo’s and we have a bit of an emergency. Could you bring over your dress from last Saturday, the one you wore? A pair of heels, not platform, but spike. In,” she glanced at Russell, “red.”

  Russell nodded.

  “Fingernail red. Thanks.”

  “No lipstick. Only a little makeup,” Russell told the man who’d set up his kit on a side table. “You shouldn’t be able to see it at all.”

  Then the room kicked into action.

  Chapter 13

  “I fall for zis…” Melanie pointed an elegant finger negligently at Russell. “Zis fool and you are the one who marries him. How does this happen?”

  Cassidy grinned at Jo and squeezed her hand beneath the dinner table. No one knew better than she how many potholes and pitfalls Cassidy had discovered along that particular road.

  “Just my punishment, I suppose.”

  Melanie threw back her head and laughed. Any easy, joyous sound.

  Jo marveled at how the tone of the room had changed over the last few hours.

  First, it had all been a great rush of preparation. Part of it clearly to distract from the tension in the room.

  Then Perrin had roared in from her design store a couple blocks up the hill. Not only with the green bridesmaid dress, but also with about a third of her shop on a long rolling rack, just in case, which added to the mayhem. They’d shot four different outfits, but Jo was pleased that her instincts had been right. Perrin’s dress with its long lines and surprising reveals had fit Melanie perfectly with only a few minor adjustments, and had been the star of the shoot. Thankfully they were of a size, even if Melanie was taller. The height had revealed a little more arm and a fair amount more leg while hugging her body perfectly. Melanie still wore it and swore she was never giving it back, much to Perrin’s vocal protests and obvious delight.

  Russell had coaxed a camera from one of Claude’s assistants and, somehow without offending the notoriously irritable photographer, had taken what everyone, including Claude, had agreed were the best shots.

  Renée, on discovering Russell’s previous ownership of one of the top boutique ad studios in New York, had somehow coaxed him into agreeing to build the ads based on his and Claude’s photography. Claude, being a purist, photographer only, had managed to not be offended after only minimal coaxing on Jo’s part.

  Cassidy had arrived in search of her errant husband and soon they were all gathered around one of Angelo’s exquisite meals.

  Jo was relieved by that. She worried that she’d become a curse for him. But he produced amazing food in unbelievable quantities despite how shabbily she’d treated him earlier this afternoon. It was Cassidy who’d straightened her out over the appetizers.

  “Remember the first time we saw them, that Valentine’s Day?”

  And now Jo did. She, Cassidy, and Perrin had been out drinking. Celebrating Jo’s partnership in her new firm if she remembered correctly. And Cassidy breaking up with the drip she’d been seeing. Melanie and Russell had breezed through the bar on the way to the restaurant. Her back had been toward the entrance and she’d caught just a brief glimpse, no wonder she hadn’t been able to place the moment.

  “I got the story out of Angelo because Russell wouldn’t tell me.” Cassidy confided so that the others at the table wouldn’t hear. “The three of them were close friends in New York. Can you believe that my husband used to date her but ended up with me? It makes no sense.”

  Jo thought it made perfect sense, at least as soon as you saw the way Russell looked at Cassidy. She was the center of his world, perhaps even more than he was the center of hers. If that were possible.

  Jo had finally registered that it wasn’t Angelo who was thrown by Melanie’s sudden appearance, it was Russell. And something about it had hit him far deeper than “they used to date.” Yet Russell had managed to move past that, even if he wasn’t quite back to his usual blusterous self. He might sound it, but to Jo’s trained ear the testimony of his bravura didn’t quite ring true.

  She had also overheard him at one point during a break in the shoot whispering to Melanie. Whispering that he was so sorry.

  “I h
ave a suggestion.” Jo hugged Cassidy for a moment so that she could whisper in her friend’s ear.

  “What?”

  Angelo hadn’t been so much flirting with Melanie as trying to help his friends. And he’d done it so well that it had mostly worked. He was such a good man, it was hard to credit.

  “I think,” Jo told Cassidy, “that when you take Russell home tonight, you should be especially nice to him. He’s a very good man.”

  Cassidy had smiled and nodded. And she hadn’t looked the least bit upset by the burden.

  “You are in rare form tonight, my son.”

  Angelo’s mother patted his back as he fussed over the final plating of the desserts.

  “I tried. I really tried.”

  “I quote that short thing to you, ‘You no try, you do’.”

  “Yoda,” Angelo supplied.

  “Yes, whatever. Finish that and you deliver it. Manuel and me, we finish the dinners. You go be with your friends and with the bicycle lady.”

  Angelo wiped the edge of a spotless plate and tried to calm his nerves.

  Jo was pissed at him about something. He knew that much. When Russell had drifted through the kitchen at one point, he’d asked, but his friend had no idea. He’d tried to offer Angelo a warning scowl of poaching on his honorary sisters, but Angelo was too worried about what he might have done to care.

  It was like whenever he was with Jo, she was the most amazing woman he’d ever met. And then the lawyer would appear and he felt like an undereducated slob who couldn’t do anything right.

  “Go. You fussing like an old woman. I’m an old woman, you are not. So you are not allowed to fuss like one.”

  “Yes, Mama.” He kissed her cheek, then picked up the tray and tried to breeze through the door.

  He served the dessert, describing it as he went around the table. Practiced diners like these would absolutely want to know what they were eating.

  “This is my mother’s Panna Cotta recipe, with a few twists. Atop her Italian cream, I floated Tarocco-blood-orange-infused eighty-five-percent dark cocoa sauce topped with honey-glazed strawberries. Rather than a grappa, I’ve paired it with espresso. Though I would suggest Marolo Barolo Grappa if you’d prefer that.”

  Only as he finished serving did he dare look at the people around the table. Russell, with his broken leg propped on a chair, and Claude were busy discussing ad composition at one end. Renée was listening closely, making occasional suggestions. The four other women sat down the table, Melanie and Perrin on one side, Cassidy and Jo on the other.

  He looked at Jo last, trying to be careful about gauging her temperature. He took the last Panna Cotta and espresso for himself and hesitated. Jo slid her chair slightly toward Cassidy and pulled her dessert over as well, opening just enough room for him at the end of the table.

  He’d take that as a good sign.

  He set his dessert in the cleared space and pulled over a chair from the next table as he fielded all of the compliments about the meal and the dessert that rippled up and down the table.

  Jo was silent as she took one bite, then another.

  He settled enough to try his own. It was the best he’d ever done. Even his mother had not tried to alter what he’d added to her old recipe. She’d simply tasted it then turned away to walk to the sink. At first he’d thought she was going to spit it out.

  She’d run a little water over her fingertips then patted them dry on her apron and brushed them lightly over her eyes. If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect her of blinking back tears before she turned clear-eyed to tell him how wonderful it was.

  “Thank you for the rose. It’s beautiful.”

  Jo wasn’t looking at him. It was if she were speaking quietly to her dessert.

  “You’re welcome.” The second word came out on a dry rasp despite the chocolate and cream coating his tongue.

  Then she looked at him with those dark, amazing eyes and he almost fell forward. They were so clear that their depth felt infinite, and their gaze cut clear through him until his soul lay bare before them.

  She looked back down at her dessert but didn’t take another taste.

  He waited, barely hearing the buzz of laughter over something that enveloped the rest of the table but left them alone together.

  “I have to work late tomorrow.” Again that quiet comment in the direction of her dessert.

  “How late?” He held his breath not really daring to understand what he thought he understood.

  “How late do you have to work?”

  Angelo struggled to get his thoughts moving. “On a Wednesday, I can be done by nine.”

  Jo looked up at him again.

  For the length of three breaths she said nothing, merely studying him.

  “That sounds good,” was all she said and returned to her dessert.

  Angelo looked down at his own Panna Cotta, then up the table.

  He was pretty sure that someone was asking him a question, but he couldn’t hear it over the pounding in his ears.

  Chapter 14

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!” Jo wanted to pound her head on the desk. Not that it would solve anything.

  The whole discovery process had been completely messed up. A dozen filings with the court would be necessary to straighten it out before she could even initiate a serious review of the key case documents. And she should really start writing those now. She’d need at least five interrogatories, and probably more. She already had a deposition list going and it was only the fifth or sixth day she’d been working on the case.

  Muriel would know what else she needed to do to fix this mess. Jo hated it when they didn’t bring her in right at the start of a case. This one had muddled along for months in the lower courts before anyone realized that it was going to become a major piece of litigation with ramifications easily reaching into the billions. Arctic Ocean mineral rights, oil reserves, fisheries, Northwest Passage navigation... The list was rapidly growing.

  Some idiot in Juneau, with no real knowledge of Maritime Law and apparently wholly unaware of the applicability of International Sea Law, had advanced the case to Alaska’s Supreme Court. It should have gone straight to Federal. Instead, there were now dozens of interest groups suing and countersuing with no idea that most of their noise was meaningless but would take months of work to sweep aside.

  Why had she sent Muriel home? Just because the woman had a date was no excuse. Muriel had remained uncomplainingly until Jo had used up very possible second, including her time to go home and change which was just plain cruel on Jo’s part. It was only in a fit of martyrdom that she’d told Muriel to finally go and have fun. What had Jo been thinking when she did that?

  Then there was Renée Linden’s parting comment last night still churning about in Jo’s brain like a nasty little whirlwind wreaking destruction upon any line of reasoning.

  Not once in all of yesterday afternoon and evening that they’d been together had Renée mentioned that she was recommending Jo for the position, making it especially hard for Jo to turn down something that hadn’t been offered. Nor had Jo found a way to even once intimate that she’d discovered that is what the woman was planning. Because Jo would sound like a fool if she were wrong.

  Yet, at the end of the evening, Renée had rested a gentle hand on Jo’s forearm and said, “I knew you would be wonderful at this. So many think it is about doing the job. You and I know that it is about finding the right people to do the job.” And then she’d disappeared into the dark Seattle evening before Jo could get her verbal-acuity feet back under her and even consider forming an intelligent response.

  And then there was Angelo.

  Okay. Somewhere in the middle of the night she’d finally understood the ugly emotion that had swamped her at seeing Angelo and the beautiful Melanie together. Jealousy. What did she have to be jealous about? One kiss. Okay, two if you counted the ice cream kiss from the bike ride. Being a guy probably meant that he did, but being a sensible member of the female
gender, she definitely didn’t.

  Yet she did.

  Okay! Two kisses.

  They’d shared two kisses totaling something on the order of ten seconds. Perhaps longer. She wasn’t so sure about how long that second kiss had lasted. Hard to estimate time when your mind blanked beneath the electric-shock wave of sensation.

  But none of it should be enough to justify jealousy.

  And then once she’d absolved him from the crime of flirting with Melanie, beyond his being male and Italian and Melanie being drop-dead gorgeous and a close friend, what had she done? She’d invited him out on a date.

  What kind of a date started at nine on a weeknight? When she wasn’t working, she’d normally be in bed with a good book by nine. That Grisham novel still sat there untouched. That wasn’t like her either.

  If she wasn’t herself, who was she turning into?

  She flashed momentarily on the opening of Alice in Wonderland. The part where Alice can’t make sense of her world or remember her multiplication tables and decides she must not be Alice after all, but rather a sad little girl named Mabel and she weeps a pool of tears.

  “I must be Mabel.”

  “Really? I thought you were Jo Thompson. Did I bring these to the wrong office?”

  Jo jerked upright in her chair to see Angelo leaning against the doorjamb of her office holding a small white box.

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Long enough to find your office by your screams. Strange thing to do all alone in the night.”

  “How did you get in here? And what’s in there?”

  “One question at a time, counselor.” He moved easily across the room to sit in one of the client chairs across from her desk. He looked gorgeous. His faded jeans were tight fitting, not because they were tight, but because he had such good muscle under them. His shirt was unbuttoned only two buttons from the neck, but that was at least one too many as it hinted at his strong chest and raised her temperature in an unseemly fashion. She almost asked him to stand and turn around for a moment just to see that wonderful taper from shoulder to hip, then lectured herself sharply to behave.