The Complete Where Dreams

by M. L. Buchman

  They shared a smile over that. Angelo remembered the sweaty years working for one chef after another in New York, and several summers in Italy. The former had cared about time, the latter about flavor. However, both had beat on him enough on both points that he could really appreciate being his own master. And the fact that he drove his staff as hard as his mentors and himself harder was only par for the course.

  Angelo eyed the wall clock. It was barely seven-thirty. Right, that’s when they’d gone riding too. Jo was clearly a morning person. He was a night owl who’d learned to be awake for two hours every morning to do the restaurant shopping and a workout before sleeping three more hours.

  “After work?”

  She’d started to turn for the locker room, but turned back and did that appraising thing.

  Then she smiled, “Do you run?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m training for the Hagg Lake triathlon next month in Forest Grove, Oregon. Meet at five o’clock by your restaurant?”

  “Sounds great.”

  Angelo watched her head off, man that woman could walk. Then he pictured her in a sleek one-piece swimsuit and decided he’d better look into that triathlon himself and see if it was too late to sign up.

  He was already well stretched and warmed up as she trotted up to him. Again those legs killed him. She wore a loose black t-shirt and bright, fluorescent orange running shorts. The wrap-around shades and her hair back in a ponytail swinging easily side to side completed the picture. But she had legs of ruddy iron.

  He fell in easily beside her. They dropped down Stewart Street and, after a little judicious zig-zagging around tourists, they followed Western Ave. toward Broad Street.

  “You enter many tri’s?” He’d signed up for the Oregon event online. He’d been lucky enough to catch the last day of registration. He’d been relieved that it was a short one, a mile swim, twenty-five mile bike ride, and a ten-K run. There’d also been a shorter sprint tri, but he figured he could, depending on which Jo was doing, more easily choose to drop down to the shorter one than climb up to the higher one on race day.

  “No.” They jogged in place waiting for a light change where Alaskan Way cut uphill as Broad Street. “This is my first. Figured I’d embarrass myself where no one else would ever see me.”

  Whoops! Well, he could always just lose the entry fee.

  “Let me know if you want some company.”

  Again those impenetrable glasses inspected him.

  “Green,” he noted the light and trotted across the street.

  They dropped down through Myrtle Edwards Park and turned north along the shore of Elliot Bay. The water was busy with ferries and sailboats, a pair of container ships, and a ridiculously tall cruise ship. The wind off the water tasted of the ocean and the mountains beyond, crisp and fresh on the warm afternoon. The sun beat down on them from high in the west, heating his back.

  They ran in silence and Angelo worked on finding his rhythm. He used to run a lot, but this last year had been so crazy with the success of the restaurant that he hadn’t been out much. He knew that he’d have to push to be ready in a month, even for just a ten-K.

  At Roy Street, Jo turned and cut uphill. A dozen blocks later they were winding through the mansions that covered the western slope of Queen Anne Hill. The narrow twisting streets wound and climbed in a maze-inspired array and he was quickly as lost as the dumbest rat.

  “Holy— There’s some serious money here,” he managed to gasp out. He’d seen enough of that, growing up in Russell’s house. These places weren’t as big as the East Coast mansions owned by the New York magnates. The Morgan estate sat on a small island in Old Greenwich, Connecticut with only three other homes across the short causeway that separated them from shore. Their house had been a modest one by Old Greenwich standards, and would be a major one here, but not the biggest or best.

  Jo drove up the hills at a steady pace, and he had to struggle to keep up without dying on the slopes. At long last, they crested the hill and ran down along Queen Anne Avenue itself. He could feel his legs unknotting, though his lungs didn’t recover as she upped the pace.

  Either she was in as amazing shape as she looked, or she was trying to run him into the ground. Or maybe both. She ran as if a demon dogged her heels but as if winged Mercury, the Greek messenger god himself, had blessed her feet.

  They pummeled down the hill on Fourth Avenue. Only the one street clung to the steep north face of Queen Anne Hill, and it dropped straight down. At the bottom of the descent they crossed the Fremont Bridge and hit the Burke-Gilman Trail where they’d started their bike ride, this time on foot.

  “This is like the Oregon terrain.”

  “I knew it.” Jo ground to halt and Angelo doubled back to her. He kept jogging in place though she’d stopped.

  “Knew what?”

  “You signed up for the Hagg Lake Tri today, didn’t you?”

  Aw! Well, time to be a man about it. He shrugged a, “Yes.”

  “Are you stalking me, Angelo? What’s really going on here?” She was shaking out her legs. He knew they’d be vibrating with the interrupted run. He stopped running and gestured helplessly as his own legs began to vibrate with the sudden break.

  Should he try the truth? What did he have to lose? He’d met her barely a half dozen times and she was all he could think about. Fat lot of good it did him.

  “Since the first moment I saw you, I don’t see anyone else.” Angelo traced his hands through the air as if tracing her face.

  Jo loved watching his hands as he spoke, it was so, she searched for the right word. It was so Italian.

  “A pretty girl goes by,” he waved to indicate a long, lean, blonde running by them on the Burke-Gilman path with a graceful, gazelle-like stride. “I don’t even see her.”

  “But you just did.” She had to bite the inside of her cheek to not laugh at him.

  “I…” He turned to look, but the runner had already passed out of sight under the bridge. “She…” He smacked a palm against his forehead. He looked so perplexed.

  “Let me guess,” Jo put on her Counselor Thompson tone as Angelo seemed to find it so daunting. “If you were alone, you would have perhaps jogged up to that woman, greeted her in Italian, pretended you were new in town and only knew a little English. And then…let’s see...you’d have asked if she knew a ‘great gelato place’ somewhere nearby.”

  “Sure,” then he blushed a brilliant red, then shrugged in that eloquent way of his. “Probably.”

  He hedged, but she wasn’t buying it. He was too handsome to not know his power over women.

  “Last year, before I met you, no problem. Of course I would. She wore no ring, either.” He slapped a hand over his mouth. Then shrugged again and uncovered a boyish smile.

  “Okay, so I still notice. But since the first time I see you,” he flicked a finger against his own temple. “Nothing. I watch them run by and I don’t even think, ‘Angelo, you should chase that one.’ They just go by and I wonder when is the next time I will see Jo Thompson.”

  His voice was rising and Jo was having trouble swallowing. No one ever talked about her like that. And the faster he spoke, the more an Italian rhythm slipped in, making his voice even more engaging.

  “I just can’t win with you, can I? No matter what I do, I just mess it all up. I can’t sweep you away with the best food at the most romantic wedding I’ve ever been to. I can’t go running with you with not making myself an idiota.”

  “You can’t cook dinner for me, you proved that,” she couldn’t resist the tease. He was past hearing the tone. It struck home and his dark eyes flashed.

  “You come by without some out-sized, ‘I’m so gorgeous’ Russian and I’ll show you what I can cook.” His anger rolled louder still. “No! Bring him along and I’ll show you both what I can do. I’ll cook that devil under the table!” He made as if to hurl down a gauntlet.

  He took her breath away. No one had ever seen her as he did. Outs
ide of her legal expertise, all men ever saw was her body, but Angelo hadn’t glanced down once in his entire tirade.

  And he was so cute about it. So wound up that she could only think of one thing to stop him as he launched into a description of exactly what he would cook to show that Russian what was what.

  She clamped his face in her hands and kissed him, hard.

  If he hesitated even a second, she didn’t notice it go by. He didn’t drag her against him. He didn’t clutch or grab. He barely moved.

  In an instant he went from raging Italian to leaning ever so gently into the kiss. It floated through her like… She was so good with words, she should be able to attach some words to how she felt as he tipped his head in her hands and deepened the kiss. It floated through her like…a kiss. It sounded stupid inside her head, but it was all she had at the moment.

  He slid his hands over hers. Caressing them, then holding them in his, and finally sliding them from his face, then rocking back just enough for their lips to part.

  “Breathe, bella signora. Before you pass out.” His dark eyes sparkled so close.

  “I’d better take my own advice.” He stepped back, dropping her hands after a final gentle squeeze, and made a show of taking a deep breath that ended on a soft chuckle.

  Jo managed to drag in some much needed air and shared his laugh for a moment.

  “Okay,” his voice was a caress. “I expected that kiss to be strong, like a spicy Sicilian sauce, but…” He whooshed out another breath and scrubbed his hands over his face.

  She still couldn’t respond. Couldn’t quite tell if he was happy or upset. Couldn’t quite tell how she felt about it either.

  “Next time we try that,” Angelo grinned at her, “I want to be somewhere we won’t injure ourselves when our knees give out.”

  Jo looked down at the hard pavement of the trail then back up at Angelo.

  “Please tell me there will be a next time, Jo. Please tell me there will be.”

  Jo’s wits finally came back to her. She’d just received the best kiss of her life from one of the most handsome men she’d ever met.

  “Straight on there’s going to be another chance,” she assured both of them.

  Chapter 9

  Angelo and his mother arrived at the airport just before midnight. Cassidy’s somewhat frantic e-mail had popped up while Angelo had been out running with Jo. They were on a direct flight home and could Angelo or someone pick them up?

  She’d been less than clear about why they were aborting their honeymoon after only a week and Angelo feared the worst. Their first trip to Italy had been a four-alarm relationship disaster, but Russell had assured him that everything that had caused that was resolved. After all, he’d married her rather than setting off to sail alone around the world in anger and misery, which was a good thing. Angelo wondered if he should have hidden Russell’s boat.

  Mama had insisted on coming with him to the airport even though the plane was arriving near midnight. She’d known Russell as long as Angelo had and was just as worried. They’d driven the car down as the van had no back seats.

  Now they waited at the head of the escalator for international arrivals. It was a leftover from the days when you could meet arriving flights at the gate, and no one had ever updated it. International flights landed at the secure southern terminal. After people wended their way through customs, they boarded the underground train to the main terminal and rode up the escalator at the end of the secure zone.

  That was all well and good. But the escalator popped out in the middle of baggage claim where a total of three uncomfortable seats had been bolted to a gray wall well off to the side. Other than that, you just had to stand in the busiest and narrowest corridor of the whole airport, among a vast array of baggage claim carousels, and wait.

  Angelo sucked at waiting.

  He’d settled into pacing down past the first couple baggage claim conveyors and back while his mother settled in one of the three awkward seats. Some installation artist had mounted dozens of pieces of abandoned luggage with a massive iron pipe rammed through their centers. Suspended above the baggage conveyor were skewered leather suitcases, punctured nylon carry-ons, a guitar hardshell case pithed like a giant black beetle, a garment bag bullet-shot through the heart, and many more. Like this was supposed to instill confidence in the airlines? He was halfway down the art piece wondering if any of these was the suitcase that had never followed him back from his last trip to California to teach, when he heard the twin cries of “Mrs. Parrano!”

  He spun to see his mother embracing Jo and Perrin. Cassidy’s plea for help must have gone to them as well.

  Darn! He kept forgetting to tell Jo about his mother’s moving in with him, never mind that she was making him insane at the restaurant. Already the three of them were talking so fast he couldn’t begin to follow. How in the world did women all talk at once and still hear everything? He’d never understood that.

  Jo barely broke the flow as she shot him her hotshot attorney look with one raised eyebrow. Well, the news of his mother’s move had just come out, probably the retirement would be only seconds behind it.

  He tried a shrug to say, “Okay, you caught me. I blew it. I’ll never do it again. Trust me.”

  Her laugh informed him that she’d read right through his smoke shield of best intentions.

  The woman made him absolutely crazy. All he’d been able to think about was when he’d get a chance to kiss her again. And more. But she’d gone shy at the end of their run, leaving him quickly when they reached his restaurant. He didn’t even know where she lived, though by the direction and that she’d walked rather than jogged away without looking back, he figured it was somewhere downtown.

  He’d managed not to follow her, but had broken down and Googled her. All he got back was her law offices two blocks from his restaurant and a daunting list of lawsuits. He didn’t even understand what most of them were about, corporate craziness of some breed or other, but he poked through them enough to learn that she never lost a case, at least not that he could tell.

  He was lusting after one of the top corporate lawyers in the city, one who could slice and dice a corporation or a government lawsuit before breakfast without breaking a sweat. He usually went for the simplicity of a vapid, no-strings kind of women. Workout girls were a nice bonus, though he’d learned the hard way to never pick up a woman at the gym he used. It made things awkward after the breakups. He’d tried dating other chefs, but between their mutually workaholic schedules and his generally superior cooking skills, those never lasted. Now he was chasing a woman who was probably smarter than most of the people on the planet. He should be running full tilt the other direction.

  Then why had her kiss rooted him to the ground? One moment he’d been raging against something he still couldn’t quite recall and the next his world had gone quiet. All he’d known were the cool touch of her hands and the burning heat of her lips. He’d always been the one in calm control and he wasn’t liking the change.

  Jo continued to chat with his mother as if they were long lost friends.

  Oh no! His mother hadn’t only become friends with his butcher and his seafood supplier. She was also charming the woman he wanted to date. If she did become his girlfriend… Maybe he should just leave quietly, go back to his restaurant, and throw himself on a chef’s knife. Then he’d be comfortably dead and the craziness in his head would stop. Bene!

  Another train must have unloaded downstairs as a fresh flood of passengers flowed up the escalator. That’s when he spotted the friendly face. A friendly male face.

  “Sanctuary!” He hustled past the three women, through the crowd streaming off the escalator, and over to the elevator where he’d spotted Russell Morgan.

  He stopped, put his hands on his hips, and looked down at him.

  “And what in the world happened to you?”

  Chapter 10

  The three women enveloped Cassidy and it was left to Angelo to keep a leve
l head and roll his friend’s wheelchair to the side, freeing a blockage in the flow of traffic when the next elevator load spilled out. He considered trying to also move the four women, now catching up on news, out of the way, but decided that his long-term survival would be improved if he left them to their own devices.

  He rapped his knuckles sharply on Russell’s leg cast, noted the slight wince and rapped it once more with a little more force.

  “How did you break that?”

  “It was Cassidy’s idea.”

  “Was not.” Somehow she’d heard despite the half-dozen paces and stream of tired tourists that separated them. She came over to stand beside her husband’s wheelchair. The hand she stroked over his head and down his neck was gentle and told Angelo that at least the relationship hadn’t blown up unlike their last trip to Italy.

  “Mr. Athlete here decided he just had to try parasailing behind a power boat.”

  “You said it looked like fun.”

  “No,” Cassidy rested a hand on his shoulder. “I said it looked like stupid fun.”

  Russell just harrumphed.

  Angelo rapped his knuckles on the cast again and would have received a sharp jab in the ribs if he hadn’t dodged quickly.

  “How long?”

  “Cursed thing itches. It’s already too long.”

  “Six weeks,” Cassidy kissed him on top of the head. “And he’s already got three weeks of complaining in during the first forty-eight hours. I can’t begin to tell you how much fun this is going to be.”

  “That does it. I’m never going back to that stupid country.”

  This time Angelo’s mother rapped her knuckles sharply on Russell’s cast and he caught his breath sharply.

  “You no say that about my country or I no make you my special biscotti.”

  Russell looked up at her, “Yes, Nana. What are you doing in Seattle?”

  “Good boy,” she leaned down and kissed him on top of the head just as Cassidy had. “And no making Cassidy crazy. I know you.”