The Complete Where Dreams

by M. L. Buchman

  “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.

  They were just getting together for a date, which she was really too busy for anyway. She’d make them some tea in the office kitchen, they’d share whatever treat he’d brought and now set in her In Basket, then she’d send him on his way.

  “I got in here because your building guard is Manuel’s cousin, Manuel is my sous chef, and we feed her when she finds someone she wants to really impress.”

  “So you just bribe your way into any building you want?”

  “Oh,” he sat back and folded his hands behind his head looking perfectly relaxed. “We chefs have our ways. To answer the rest of your question, the outer door to your offices is unlocked and I found your office because it is the only one with the light on. And also, you know, the screams.”

  Jo fought the heat that rushed to her cheeks and reached for composure.

  “The door was unlocked because it’s a secure elevator so the last one to leave, tonight being me, actually usually being me, would lock up. But courtesy of Manuel’s cousin, her master passcard to the elevator, and your relationship with her…”

  “Don’t go there,” Angelo cut her off. “Won’t do you any good. Dora’s nineteen, good at her job, and a lesbian. Our relationship is purely caloric.”

  Jo would give good money to know how he looked so relaxed when she so wasn’t.

  It was a good thing Dora had been the security guard on duty or Angelo would have had no compunction about turning around and sprinting out the door when faced with the edifice that was the sixteenth floor entrance to Stanley, Tu, Rolfmann, and Thompson. Every single thing about their offices had reeked of intimidation and power.

  First, the thick glass doors with the four names in gold leaf, didn’t open like doors, with handles. They shot aside with a soft, “whoosh!” like they were from Star Trek. Not some clunky supermarket door either. One moment the things were there blocking him out. The next moment they were gone, and the fittings were so seamless it was hard to tell where they’d gone into the sides of the ebony archway that dared the intruder to pass beneath. He half expected a Stargate vortex to shimmer to life and swallow him whole.

  Five feet into the office, they’d magically reappeared behind him like an invisible cage. He’d considered returning to the elevator just to make sure he could escape if needs be, but he knew if he started down that road there’d be no turning back.

  The lobby was all dusky blues: the carpet, the leather furniture, the walls. Even when the lighting automatically came up, it was subtle and indirect. The ceiling appeared to be fathomless glass, as if you could look up into it forever and never find yourself. Behind the receptionist’s desk, a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows threatened to spill you over a dozen stories down into Elliot Bay. Even at night, it looked precipitous. A bad place for anyone who feared heights.

  Offices ranged right and left along the Sound-view face of the building.

  The only light had been at the end of the left-hand corridor, which is how he had arrived at Jo’s equally intimidating corner office. The walls were dark-smoked glass. The photographs of wilderness sunsets and morning vistas were framed in bright stainless steel which appeared to float off the glass walls like magic in some futuristic art gallery. They offered the only color other than the dark wood of Jo’s desk which was covered with a large, ocean-blue map. That was then buried deep in files that appeared to have been deposited in stages like layers of stone. There was no clock, but rather a projection of one from somewhere behind the glass. The clock face, very similar to the giant one looming over Pike Place Market that he could see many stories below through her window, simply shown deep red on the smoky glass.

  And in the middle of all the futuristic reek of power had been Jo with her head down in her hands.

  That’s when he’d found his equilibrium. No matter how high-powered she might be, no matter the trappings around her, she was a woman obviously deeply tired and frustrated.

  Somehow, her heartless office made her, by contrast, so much more human. A human Jo Thompson he could deal with. The power-suited Counselor Thompson, name partner of the law firm, that one scared him to death. So, he would just pretend that one wasn’t present. He glanced down at a glass coffee table and spotted a copy of something called the ABA Journal and the cover had a picture of Jo and three guys grouped around her but a half-step behind her. They were probably Stanley, Tu, and Rolfmann. Angelo absolutely was going to pretend that he hadn’t seen that.

  And she looked so distressed that he reset his agenda even as he watched her. Tonight she didn’t need an eager lover, he hoped that’s what she’d been suggesting. Tonight she looked as if she needed a friend.

  “So, what’s going on?” He’d just ignore her question about how he looked so relaxed, because if he thought about it, he wouldn’t be.

  “Everything. Nothing. It’s… I’m…” Then she scrubbed her face for a moment and flipped a fistful of hair back over her shoulder. “I’m a mess.”

  “But such a beautiful mess.”

  “You’re so Italian.”

  “Sue me,” he grinned at her.

  “Don’t tempt me, Angelo. At this point that might just cheer me up.”

  “So if you sue me, do I get to see more of you, or less?”

  She slipped a bright pink pen behind her left ear which held her hair back on that side, leaving the other side free to spill strand by strand forward over her right shoulder. He had to blink to resist the mesmerizing movement of sliding hair like liquid midnight.

  “I’d see you more because of depositions,” she tapped a stack of notes, “and discovery,” she slapped a tall stack of files then had to grab and re-center them to keep them from falling.

  “Sounds good. Let’s do it.”

  “But also much less socially, and never without opposing counsel in attendance to protect your rights.”

  “Ah, well. Now that doesn’t sound so good. Not unless she’s very cute.”

 
Jo laughed then scowled at him. He’d ignore that as well.

  “So what is all this mess?” He’d had Russell look over his restaurant lease renewal agreement a few weeks ago, because he didn’t understand such things. They’d made a few minor tweaks, but Russell had declared the thing really fair, so Angelo had signed. What Jo had ranged across her desk looked utterly meaningless. Overlong pages of paper had numbers running down the left side and strange blocky headings on the first page. The long, yellow legal pad already had a dozen pages folded under and the exposed page was mostly full of tightly spaced notes.

  “It was supposed to be the next year of my life, but I’m afraid it’s going to be the next five. I really don’t want to spend the next five years commuting to Alaska.”

  “Alaska?” Angelo did his best to hide his distress at the idea of her being so far away. Especially for so long.

  “North Slope mineral and oil exploration rights,” she patted one pile of files. Then another, “Fishing rights.” And a third, “International agreements. And disagreements.” A fourth.

  “All controlled by international law, superseded by case law, governmental protests, diplomatic letters, and U.N. negotiations.” She aimed a finger at various piles.

  “U.N.? As in United Nations?” Angelo could feel his cool slipping once again and struggled to find it and pull it over him like the cloak of baked mozzarella on an Eggplant Parmigiana.

  “Yes. It’s pretty exciting actually. I might get my first chance to argue a case in front of the U.N. Maritime Court.”

  She couldn’t have named anything more impossible. The White House made more sense than the U.N. The U.N. was the place he’d gone on a high school class trip, had a toured lecture while hovered over by a dozen security guards. It wasn’t technically in New York. It was in some weird International Zone that wasn’t even a part of the United States.

  “Whoa! We’re talking about that big building on the Eastside mid-town Manhattan? The one with the hundred and something flags around it?” He blew out a breath. “That’s too unreal. Let’s get you back down to Earth.” He nudged the white box still sitting in her In Basket.