And then she felt it like a breath of fresh air. As hypnotized as the proverbial deer in the headlights, she was mesmerized by the spectacle of Seattle slipping away from them. It was a visceral rush that coursed through her body as if they were leaving the world behind. Parfait! Absolutely perfect!
“This must what it’s like to go into space,” Joshua’s voice mixed with the engine’s deep rumble.
It truly felt as if she was leaving the planet. There was a heady sense of liberation. Any worries or memories she’d been having were now back there on the land. And with each passing second, this great steel behemoth of a boat was taking them farther and farther away, out of trouble’s easy clutches. She felt light, free.
Melanie took Joshua’s face in her hands and kissed him, really kissed him. Not that intriguing brush of lips in the condo last night. This was a toe-curling kiss and his need was no less than hers. But what had started as a first burst of joy, grew deeper, gentler, but more intent. She was soon wondering just what the other men she’d kissed in her life had been up to, because this was like none of them.
Finally Joshua pulled her into a hug too close to kiss. They simply wrapped their arms around each other, leaned their cheeks together, and held on.
He whispered in her ear, “I was right. Your kiss. One hundred percent lethal.”
“Guess we’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“If it isn’t, don’t tell me, because I don’t want to know.” Then he took her hand in his before turning to look at the boat. “Now we should go explore.”
Chapter 6
They wandered about the ferry from one end to the other. Josh led Melanie up into the wind of the mostly open upper deck where her hair streamed behind her like a great banner, dancing in the brisk wind. He pointed out the Alki lighthouse perched at Seattle’s westernmost point with Mount Rainier soaring skyward as a glorious backdrop and joked that they were beyond anyone finding them now.
“Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we’re free at last!” he shouted to the shining sky as Melanie sparkled the air with her laughter. She made him feel a dozen feet tall.
As if her kiss hadn’t already done that.
For just this afternoon, for just this moment, he would allow himself to simply enjoy the company of a gorgeous and fascinating woman. He wouldn’t be Mr. Food Writer. Nor would he permit Mr. Divorced Loser in either. Not even Mr. Wanna-be-novelist who kept writing drivel.
He’d be simply Josh, who had just received a life-changing kiss that simply couldn’t be real. No one gave of themselves the way Melanie had just given to him. If he didn’t know he was on the rebound, he could start thinking some pretty amazing thoughts about the woman who had yet to relinquish his hand.
For their arrival at Bainbridge Island, he led her to the very bow of the boat in time to be at the forefront of the crowd. That gave them prime viewing space along the front rail as the boat cruised into Eagle Harbor and snuggled up to the ferry dock.
“I only had an hour to explore this town when I was here. Bainbridge Island, both the town and the island are actually called B. I., has a lot of money. High-end rural but within commuting range to Seattle. So there’s a lot of tasty eating and shopping here.”
They wandered the streets, actually the street. Most of Bainbridge was on a single street a few blocks long. They stopped at a wine store, where Josh was talked into a local loganberry wine. Then the shop owner went on to sell him a local artisanal blue cheese to go with it for a dessert.
“Wine and food shops are as dangerous to me as hardware stores to most guys. Just,” he made a point of opening the shopping bag once they were out of sight of the shop and looking down in overdramatic disbelief. “Just stop me if I ever do that again.”
“Deal. If you’ll…” Melanie came to a halt beside him and looked in a bookstore window. “You can’t let me go in there.”
Melanie didn’t look the least bit like a bookworm, but her near lust for the bookshop was impossible to mistake. Then he recalled that she’d hauled five novels out of her handbag last night, one still sporting the charge slip. He held the door for her and shooed her inside.
“Hey!”
“I can’t be the only weak-fish on this outing. Go find a book.”
She did come away with a book on Northwest weavings. But he ended up being the big spender with two new thrillers, a mystery, and four books on the history of Seattle.
“Okay, we just have to get off this street,” he complained when they were back in the sunlight. “How’s the peckishness level?”
“Rising. I saw that cute diner by the ferry.”
“The Streamliner. Yep, they’re tasty. I have their cookbook too. I’m going to do you one better.”
Melanie stared at the bright blue sign on a stainless steel diner two blocks off the main drag.
“The Madison Diner, founded in 1953? This looks like the sort of dîneur that hasn’t changed the grease in its fryers since 1953,” she teased him, though it did smell splendid; comfort-food smells wafted through the doors so thickly she could taste them on the air.
She wore her French accent in public like a second skin. It kept people at a distance, though Joshua simply ignored such barriers and continued to treat her the same. She was having a terrible time this afternoon remaining focused on any one thing that wasn’t Joshua. She turned firmly away to inspect their diner.
It did look as if it had been teleported right out of the fifties. Stainless steel as far as the eye could see with metallic blue panels. The roof and building corners were all rounded. Once inside, she wasn’t the least surprised to find round steel stools along the counter with red leatherette padding. Small booths that really were perfect for shooting greaser movies.
It all looked…cozy.
For an instant, the outside world was juxtaposed. Perrin’s beautiful and quirky store was also a 1950s diner motif. Take away the tables and the cook line, replace the chattering tourists with fashion-forward mannequins… She shoved the image aside hard. She didn’t want to think about the real world. She wanted to remain here, in the present, with Joshua.
Melanie closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in deeply. It smelled heavenly. Not as heavenly as Josh, but enough to make her stomach rumble a little. The waitress, a pretty brunette, obviously recognized Melanie but made no big deal of it which was a surprising change from the standard.
Soon they were tucked in their own booth, he with a fresh-squeezed lemonade and her with ice tea.
“Let me guess,” Joshua was using the little-bit-too-full-of-himself teasing tone of his, “a bowl of soup or a salad.”
“Non. With such a menu, there are too many choices. But I see one something, so there is only one choice for me.” He made many guesses, but none were even close. “You however, would appear to be a mushroom Swiss cheese burger guy. Extra fries.”
“Nailed.”
He snorted with laughter when she ordered the Blazing Buffalo Chicken Burger marinated in Buffalo chicken-wing hot sauce, with no bun but an extra side of hot sauce.
“I may have to eat French and une très petite portion when the reporters find me, but I think we are sufficiently far from any reporters here.”
“Don’t know. The Bainbridge Island Review could be desperate for a front page story. They’re sending some poor stringer this very moment to interview the most beautiful woman to ever mosey through their shops.”
She ignored him. Well, not entirely. The booths weren’t designed with two people six-feet tall in mind. Their knees kept bumping as Joshua decently tried to move his aside. She finally leaned her knee against his and left it there. Not as connected as holding hands, but far more welcome than unwelcome.
She’d never been one to hold hands. Melanie had deigned to parade on many a man’s arm, though rarely with any of the benefits that the paparazzi always assumed. This was the first moment all day that she’d thought about her hands. They were one of her highest paid features and she protect
ed them assiduously. Her first million had been made on her hands alone.
Even as she surreptitiously inspected them, she knew that she would hold hands with Joshua again if he offered the opportunity, despite the risk of an unsightly stretch or crease.
“So, are you ready yet to talk about what freaked you out this morning?”
“Non!” But he’d surprised her. She gently tested her emotional state. No sign of the looming depression that had her scurrying back to New York. Instead, she had been quite enjoying herself. Was still enjoying herself.
“If you don’t, it’s just going to lie in there and fester.”
“That does not sound so enjoyable, does it?”
“Non!” he replied clearly to tease her again about her chosen accent.
“Hey!” She gave it full Jersey-twang which earned her the laugh she’d been hoping for. It also made her feel just kindly enough toward him to begin the story of the last week.
“They dropped you from the swimsuit issue? Really? I always looked forward to—” Josh tried to stop his mouth, but it was a moment too late.
Melanie lowered her fork slowly back to her plate of half-finished chicken burger. If he didn’t stop the ice shield descending like a cloak from above before it covered her, Melanie would be as surely gone as if she’d run straight to the airport.
“Wow! Did that ever come out wrong or what?”
“Oui!” Her accent was back in full force.
“Don’t I get one stumble? You admitted to ogling my restaurant reviews.”
“Mon dieu! ‘Ogling’ is not the operative word and you know it.” She was carefully dabbing her mouth with her napkin; her eyes no longer focused on him, instead inspecting the cook line as if the fry cook who clearly sampled too much of his own wares was suddenly of greatest interest. Soon her knee would no longer be against his and he’d be a goner.
“Hey, if I can’t admire your art, why is it okay for you to admire mine?”
“Because, it was not my art you were admiring.”
Josh saw his one thin chance of recovery and leapt for it like a man drowning.
“But it is.”
The cloak’s descent paused, but it had already covered her perfectly still hands.
He took a bite of his burger to appear casual, but didn’t taste it. With a single phrase, he’d become just like every rutting goat out there. Which he really wasn’t. The chance to see that much beauty in one place had always stunned him. There was something else…but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“How is it my art?”
“You have studied how to place yourself, how to present yourself in such a way that you create an emotion. Lust in some. In others, and I like to think I’m one, it creates a deep appreciation for the beautiful, the powerful, and—” The thought that had skittered aside moments before crashed back in on him and he stopped, unable to continue, unable to think. If he didn’t swallow soon, he’d choke and he couldn’t manage even that except by great conscious effort.
“It creates what?”
He looked up at Melanie and tried to make sense of her question, but he couldn’t.
“It creates—” she must have finally noticed his shock.
Josh knew the shock was there. He could feel it. A wall that momentarily locked him safely away from the worst of his own emotional storm.
“Joshua?” Melanie had dropped her accent and reached her hand tentatively toward his arm.
He shook his head. “I never bought a single swimsuit issue. I saw them. Enjoyed them. Enjoyed you in them. But I didn’t buy them.” His voice sounded so neutral, so perfectly normal.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I.” His ex-wife was the one who’d always bought them, year after year.
“So,” Josh leaned back on the bow railing of the ferry. They had their own little section of the foredeck to themselves. Slouching back, facing away from the view, provided him the perfect position to watch Melanie as she watched the approaching city.
She’d caught her hair back in some intricate French braid that appeared effortless to create and was exotically beautiful to look at. But from his vantage, what it did was keep her hair—as much as he liked it down—clear of her face. Her emotions were so visible against those fine features, it was incredibly intimate.
Especially after talking through his marriage and divorce in such excruciating detail. That she still looked on him at all was a wonder.
And he liked that intimacy, ignoring that it couldn’t last once they were ashore. For once they landed, she would again be the world’s most sought after supermodel—one blip did not destroy a career like hers no matter what she thought—and he would continue to be an unholy mess who couldn’t write.
“So,” he started again, hoping he could recover his train of thought when faced with such breathtaking beauty. “You never did explain what upset you this morning.”
“Non, I did not explain such a thing and now I shall not, not to such a cur.”
“Why am I a cur now?”
“Because you did not buy your own issue of the magazine. If you had, instead of mooching your wife’s copy, I might still have been in this year’s issue. Tant pis!”
“Say what?”
“ ‘Too bad!’ Loser.”
“Can’t win for losing.”
“Precisely. And you, my tall and handsome chien, have lost this round.”
“At least you didn’t call me chienne.” Being called a female dog would be even worse.
“You may be a dog, Joshua, but you are definitely a very male one.”
He could spar words with her forever, she made it so much fun. Though he’d definitely need to work on his high school French if they were going to spar in two languages.
A glance over his shoulder showed the half hour crossing was about fifteen minutes gone.
“Okay. From here to the shore is a quarter hour. If you answer the question, I promise I won’t ask again.”
“Ever?”
“At least not for tonight. Best offer I’ve got.”
She grimaced and turned her back on him, leaving him to admire other features of her. With her hair back in its thick braid, the line of her neck was revealed. A trim waist his hands actually ached to touch again. And her curves continued not as emaciated waif, but rather as elegantly feminine.
He was about to do something to let her off the hook when she spoke, it was soft enough he had to start forward to hear it over the brisk wind and the rumble of the ferry’s engines.
“I was sitting with Perrin. And I knew what to do. I knew what she would need to be a huge success rather than be closed within a year without knowing what hit her. There is no third path, no safe middle ground. Her talent will have too much impact.”
“Wonderful. Take the high road,” he spoke over her shoulder because she didn’t turn and he didn’t dare touch her.
“You don’t understand, Joshua. I said that I knew what to do. She doesn’t. She couldn’t; not even if I were to explain it all. And she wouldn’t want to. But I could.”
Josh waited. They were so close. He knew the shore was sliding near, but he didn’t look away; couldn’t risk her changing the topic.
“But I don’t know this woman, the one who thinks she knows what it would take to launch Perrin. I know the model. Her I invented. Her I know how to control. I don’t know this other person. I don’t know her any better than…”
She didn’t need to finish the sentence.
He knew that the person she didn’t know was the one that was sweeping him off his feet—the one that was Melanie and not the model and business superwoman. He took her gently by the shoulders and turned her to face him. There were tears starting from her eyes.
“Melanie.”
She nodded uncertainly.
He kissed her.
She kissed him back, but there wasn’t any heat behind it, nor did he expect any. “What was that for?”
“Because I w
anted to.”
She scowled at him through her silent tears. He brushed them aside with gentle strokes of his thumb.
“Melanie.”
“Kiss me again and I just might get around to actually Tasering you.”
“You are the most magnificent, powerful, exceptional woman I’ve ever met. The mere idea that you could lose yourself while you’re doing something you love is laughable. It’s so laughable and fallible that it takes you down from the ridiculously high pedestal you live on and makes you momentarily accessible to us mere mortals. When you’re down here, I get to kiss you.”
“So,” Melanie blinked into the wind. “You’re saying I have to keep tripping up to get a kiss.”
“It’s one way.”
Melanie could see the shore fast approaching, the Seattle skyline once again towering above them.
Melanie was no closer to making a decision about how to help Perrin. Working for her temporarily wouldn’t be enough. Stepping in and making sure Perrin was a success would be throwing away a career that Melanie had spent two decades building, and she wasn’t about to do that.
She did know one thing though.
So she threw herself at Joshua and drove him back against the thankfully stout railing hard enough for him to grunt. And then she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him the best she knew how.
Kissed him until the madness in her head quieted enough for her to relish the heat and the power of this man in her arms.
Kissed him until she no longer feared she’d shatter and be dispersed to the four winds. Until she felt totally present and there was only the here and now and their shared need for each other.
It was heady, breathtaking, and it left her torn between singing and laughter, both of which she only rarely did, and then did it alone—until Joshua had pulled the laughter out of her and into the open.
The Complete Where Dreams Page 93