The Complete Where Dreams

by M. L. Buchman

  Melanie rested a hand on Cassidy’s arm to stop her. “Russell and I were lovers. It didn’t take, for many and valid reasons. He married you and loves you. Let us simply leave it at that. N’est-ce pas?”

  Cassidy did her head nod thing again, nodding a couple too many times.

  “You know. I think that’s the first French you’ve spoken since last night,” she squinted her eyes as if concentrating. “Maybe not even then. It fits you. You sound uptown New York.”

  Melanie blinked in surprise. How had she been so relaxed to let down her shields? Last night, too? She thought back, but couldn’t be sure. What she did remember was immensely enjoying her inclusion in The Fabulous Five. And she couldn’t feel the slightest sense of an entry on her internal tally sheet. She’d simply been welcome, just for herself. That too was a new experience.

  “Joshua said the same thing, but he is a man, I’m not about to trust a man on such things.”

  “Like I think I said last night, Josh is a good guy. I’ve known him forever, since before he met his wife back when we were both upstart restaurant reviewers. Just friends, no spark there, then he met Constance. Who wasn’t so constant. I know, I’m rambling. If this coffee cup were bigger, I’d just put my face in it.”

  “Maybe I should start trusting Joshua,” Melanie topped up Cassidy’s coffee. Then she decided that if her instincts were relaxed enough to drop her accent around Cassidy that just maybe she should trust that feeling all the more. “Besides, he also greeted me very nicely last night, if a little bit differently.”

  “Joshua?”

  “He’s asleep in your guest bedroom.”

  “Joshua?” Cassidy was blinking hard trying to get her brain going. “Josh!? I sent you to bed with Josh? Oh no! I’m so sorry! It wasn’t planned. I swear it wasn’t. I—”

  Melanie had to laugh. It really was too funny. Joshua had been absolutely right. Russell and Cassidy were sincere friends, but not conniving ones.

  Melanie sat down across the counter and told her new friend about how her evening had ended.

  Joshua slept late into the morning and woke to the smell of frying bacon and coffee. He dragged on jeans and a t-shirt before padding out into the kitchen to find Russell battling the stove like a ship’s cook on a stormy sea.

  “Man, Russell. You look worse than I feel.”

  “Yeah. You sleep okay?” Russell tossed in some more bacon and nodded toward the coffeemaker.

  That’s when Josh remembered.

  He spun to look around but there were only the two of them. None of Melanie’s things had been in the bedroom. He doubled back to check. Nothing. Gone as if it had never happened.

  But it had. The other pillow was dented, the covers were mussed on both sides of the bed. Her pink bag from the dress shop was gone.

  The memories were slowly returning through his foggy brain. He’d held her for hours, imagining what it might be like to do so every night. He’d buried his nose in her hair for a long time—long enough to actually sober up—just in case he never had a chance like that again. His idea of heaven had been wholly redefined by simply holding a sleeping woman.

  “Huh,” he looked around the condo again as he returned to join Russell in the kitchen. She was definitely gone. Without waking him. Now what did that mean? “I slept great.”

  Josh made eggs and toast while Russell brought the bacon in for a landing. They took their plates to the balcony high above the bustle of a Pike Place Market morning.

  Chapter 9

  Melanie was determined. For the first time in days, maybe weeks, she felt as if she had Things to Do. Much more her natural state; she first went back to the Pioneer Square condo to change into her exercise clothes and do a virtuous workout.

  Melanie padded into the great room, cool and dim with the indirect morning light through the western windows. She liked that Maria and Angelo had left much of the main space open. Clearly, they’d only really cared about the kitchen. Even the dining table wasn’t much. They probably planned to only test recipes here; any entertaining would be at the restaurant. A couch and a couple of big chairs were all that defined the living room. A television sat off to the side, not at a comfortable angle to any of the furniture, so that too was unused.

  It left her a large open area of gleaming bare wood. From her point of view it was perfect. It gave a six-foot tall woman room to do her yoga stretches without fear of running into furniture or inopportune sections of wall. She’d become lax since the loss of the swimsuit photo shoot. In just one week she could feel the loss of flexibility and tone.

  That would never do. She did a double session until a sheen of sweat made it hazardous to continue until she had the chance to purchase a mat. Carlo’s hotel room had a large oriental carpet that worked well, but this expanse of shining oak was a slipping risk.

  She almost didn’t want to shower. When she did, she’d lose that scent of Joshua that…wasn’t clinging to her so much as following her around. A pleasant companion.

  But she had things to do, so into the shower she went. She grabbed the last bowl of Joshua’s minestrone soup for lunch, thanking him with each luscious spoonful. She considered feeling guilty about eating it without asking first. But if she wasn’t going to feel guilty for sleeping with the man, she wasn’t going to feel guilty for finishing his soup.

  And she certainly didn’t. Cassidy had sighed romantically when Melanie recounted how Josh had declared she’d be safe, then delivered on that promise.

  “I wouldn’t tempt him again though. You’d risk ruining a perfect story.” Cassidy had looked serious, as if the story was the most important part. Well, maybe it was. Josh was a writer, he would understand the importance of careful beginnings.

  Melanie had walked halfway up the First Avenue hill, opening an effortless path through the Seattle crowd with just a small dose of New York attitude, when she stumbled to a halt. If she’d stopped on a sidewalk in New York she’d have been trampled—you broke the Big Apple’s pedestrian flow at your own risk. In Seattle, one person bumped her lightly and immediately apologized.

  What had ground her to a halt was that word “beginnings.” She’d selected lovers, knowing that’s all they were. She’d fallen in love with only one of them. Dear Russell had also thought they were simply two people who enjoyed each other and the sensation they created on the New York scene. She was the one who’d broken that bargain and fallen for him. But their “beginning” had been like any other.

  A party. Did she remember whose?

  A passing brush on her shoulder got her moving again, though more slowly than before.

  It was the meet-and-greet party for her second season on the swimsuit photo shoot. He’d been handsome, charming, and acting very single. Melanie had googled him to make sure, leaving the other girls to fawn on one of the handsomest men she’d ever seen. He was indeed single. It was buried fairly deep, but she also found that he was a billionaire’s son as well as owning his own photo studio.

  That had caught her attention, but with a second shoot under her belt—and she hadn’t known it yet, but her first cover as well—she wasn’t doing badly herself. He’d hooked up with another of the models who knew nothing about him, and that had been fine.

  Whatever else Russell did or however he acted at parties, behind the camera he was both professional and masterful. He drew the very best out of his models. He had done the simplest things, which evoked emotions inside her that she didn’t know were there—buried or otherwise. After a session with Russell Morgan, a girl needed a cold shower simply to think clearly. He made it easy to lose herself in the role of alluring goddess; he made her believe it of herself.

  But their eventual “beginning” had been like any other of her affairs. More intriguing, more artfully played, more fun, but not so very different. He’d dragged it out over a year: a chance meeting here, hiring her for a small ad shoot there, finding out that he’d referred her to a shoot with an up-and-coming designer that no one had heard of b
ut had then burst on the scene.

  Then he’d taken her to lunch, and to bed. Or perhaps she’d done the taking. It had been as mutual as it had been expected.

  But with Joshua she already had stories and promises and steamy kisses. Zut! They’d slept together and held each other through the night, not like lovers, but like she imagined people in love did.

  She’d never had a real beginning even as a teen. At the time she’d discovered boys, or rather boys had discovered her, she’d been foolish and naïve, giving up her first kiss before her first handholding, her virginity for empty words. She’d wised up fast and remained that way ever since.

  Melanie didn’t feel wise around Joshua; she felt…

  Again she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, blinking in surprise to find herself outside of Perrin’s Glorious Garb with no memory of the last half dozen blocks. It was a wonder she hadn’t been killed in traffic crossing the street.

  Around Joshua she felt… Still the word eluded her.

  Melanie smiled to herself as she entered the shop, the doorbell jingling brightly.

  Maybe tonight she’d find out just how Joshua made her feel. She’d wager it would be incroyable and was a little surprised at how eager she was to win that bet.

  “You want me to what?” Joshua shook his head. “No way.”

  “C’mon man,” Angelo leaned forward over the plate of Baci—hazelnut and chocolate “kisses” Maria had made this morning—that they’d been pillaging since lunch. “I’ll even… I’ll even—”

  “He’ll even pay you,” Russell nursed an ice tea, looking a little less gray and bleary-eyed than he had this morning.

  Now it was Angelo’s turn to turn a bit gray, but he nodded.

  “No,” Joshua shook his head. “First, you can’t go on feeding me gratis no matter how much I’m enjoying it. Second, I don’t want to write any more food articles.”

  Russell slapped the table, and then winced showing his hangover was not wholly cleared.

  “That’s it,” he continued in a softer voice. “You don’t do this and Angelo cuts you off. You write for him, he goes on feeding you guilt free.”

  “But I don’t want to write any more of that—”

  “Don’t say it,” Russell stopped him suddenly clear-eyed.

  Joshua glared at him.

  “I did that for a while, called my photography superficial trash because it wasn’t what I thought it should be. I’d look at a Bourke-White print, and then my latest spread for Prada and feel like a total sell-out. But I’ve learned that I’m really good at what I do. Don’t call your art trash. You really don’t want to do it? Fine. You’re an idiot, but fine. But just from one artist to another, don’t put it down.”

  “So, you massive jerk, why am I an idiot?”

  “You’re staying in the same condo as Melanie. Have you at least kissed her yet?”

  “I have.” But no way was he going to tell Russell that there’d been more than that. Especially not that they’d slept together in his own condo.

  “Okay,” Russell sighed a bit sadly. “At least you’re not a complete idiot.”

  Joshua would keep his thoughts on that point to himself.

  “Write Angelo’s press release,” Russell made it a suggestion. “Give it the pizzazz that I can’t seem to find on this one. You get to keep eating Angelo’s totally awesome food.”

  “Smart of you to call it that,” Angelo pitched in.

  “And the words might prime the pump a bit. Maybe it gets your novel moving because it sure isn’t doing squat now, is it?”

  “How did you know?” It wasn’t—not even a little—but he hadn’t been advertising that.

  Russell simply looked at him steadily.

  “I didn’t think it showed that badly.”

  “It shows, buddy. So say you’ll write Angelo’s thing. Then you can tell us about when you kissed Melanie and why you didn’t mention a breath of it last night.”

  “Perrin,” Melanie traded a surprisingly warm hug with Perrin back in the workroom of her shop. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something different last night, but never got around to it.”

  “About you making it with Josh?”

  “No,” Melanie sighed. She doubted that Cassidy would have called Perrin to spread the news of last night’s adventure, but somehow the story of last night had traveled. Perhaps these three women were telepathic with each other.

  “Can’t blame a girl for trying?”

  That’s when Melanie noticed the fabrics Perrin was working with today. A pure silk Duchesse satin that breathed with the faintest pearlescent sheen and a medium-weight silk crepe back satin in the palest, most perfect sky blue. She couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to stroke the materials.

  “Soft, huh?”

  “Oh...my, Perrin. Aren’t these like forty dollars a yard?”

  “Fifty and fifty-five, wholesale. Sometimes a dress calls for the very best.”

  “Well, it is a lucky woman who will be wearing this dress.”

  “She won’t let me help her even measure it,” Tamara came in and dropped her school bag under the counter. She was a sharp contrast to her new mother, dark curly hair flowing to her shoulders versus Perrin’s short golden blond. Their skin was a sharp contrast as well, Tamara a permanent sun-kissed gold and Perrin almost as pale as the silk spread across the table.

  Perrin hugged Tamara hard in greeting and Melanie was glad to see it was fully returned. She felt a dozen different pulls inside. The pull of a mother and daughter who clearly loved one another and were happier together than apart, the exact opposite of her own maternal relationship. And the pull of mother with child. Melanie had never pictured herself with a child, but watching the two of them together, she could almost see it.

  “You,” Perrin leaned down to kiss Tamara on top of the head before letting her go, “can spend the afternoon on a project here if you promise to do your homework tonight.”

  Tamara offered an indifferent shrug, exactly as you’d expect from a teen.

  Perrin winked at Melanie before continuing. “First you have a clothing line to start designing.”

  “I do?” Any affectation of disinterest evaporated in that instant.

  Melanie did her best to hide her smile, but sliding on her model shield couldn’t suppress it. Tamara’s eyes had gone wide.

  “Yes. I showed your sketches to one of the best professionals in the business,” Perrin smiled at Melanie.

  Tamara’s jaw dropped as she turned to face Melanie for a moment then turned back to look up at her mom.

  “And she said that they were a great start, really pretty, and you needed your own youth line. You get to name it, brand it, and design it. I’ll help you with all of that and the business.”

  “TJPW!” she blurted out. “That’s what it’s called. Tam, Jasp—my little brother is named Jaspar,” Tammy told Melanie as if they didn’t already know each other. “P is for Perrin, and W for dad. I know. I know. Everyone calls him Bill. I thought about TJBP and got an oil company, the other way around I got Peanut Butter, so he gets W for William. The weird acronym will be cool. I’ve got a design for the logo at home. I really get my own line?” At the last she went from an effervescent rush back to breathy disbelief.

  At Perrin’s nod, the girl leapt into Perrin’s arms.

  Melanie had to look away from the sheer power of such joy. What might she have become with even that little bit of encouragement?

  A gentle touch on her arm drew her attention back. Tamara stood close beside her. She mouthed a silent thank you and hugged Melanie gently. Melanie returned it the best she knew how.

  Then, with a cry, “There’s so much to do!” Tamara turned back into a thirteen-year-old whirlwind, digging a sketchbook out of her pack and flipping to pages filled with more sketches. Without hesitation, she moved to the fabric wall, grabbed a pair of scissors and began trimming samples off the corners of different colors and materials to tape down beside her des
igns.

  Perrin leaned in close to Melanie and added a kiss on each cheek to add to Tamara’s thanks. “So much to do, she isn’t kidding.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Melanie had thought the moment had eluded her again, but instead it had returned reinforced. The time was now.

  When Melanie pulled out the file folder of letters and e-mails, Perrin grimaced. Then, she sat on the stool beside Melanie, close enough that their knees were brushing. Melanie was reminded of her lunch with Joshua and let that help her confidence.

  “Okay,” Perrin took a deep breath and tried to offer her a smile. “Okay. How do I survive what’s happening to me?”

  “Bon. At least you see the problem.” Melanie pulled out her notebook that she’d worked on at Elliot Bay Bookstore and Joshua’s notes of a few strategic enhancements.

  Chapter 10

  “What are you working on? And what is that divine smell?”

  Joshua jerked back up from typing, inhaling like a diver emerging from the depths after his air tank had run out. Once again he’d missed Melanie’s entry into the condo.

  He could only watch in stunned amazement as she crossed from the front door over to where he was set up on the dining table. She always walked like magic, every motion was a joy. But there was something more today. A lightness in her step, the woman shone like the springtime outside.

  That she came directly to him and hit him with a kiss as powerful as any Taser, left him stunned speechless.

  “Joshua? Melanie to Joshua? Hello. Anyone there?”

  “Uh-uh.” Definitely not. He didn’t trust himself to try words yet, even mustering up a grunt was a hard-won victory.

  She moved over to inspect the oven. His eyes continued to track her even if his brain couldn’t. He knew he was reacting badly, like some gobsmacked schoolboy, but he couldn’t stop.

  One of the most beautiful women on the planet had just greeted him as if they hadn’t spent last night curled up together. Or rather she greeted him as if that’s exactly what they’d done. He still couldn’t believe it.