The Complete Where Dreams

by M. L. Buchman

“The J&M Café. Oldest bar in Seattle.” Melanie read in wonder. “The J&M Mutual Admiration Society now has a base of operations.”

  They drank one beer each, laughed like they’d had a dozen, and rocked out to the live band right up to the two a.m. closing time.

  Chapter 14

  Russell had called them to come early to Maria’s Tuesday night dinner. Cassidy and Russell lived a few blocks north of the Market in Belltown. Maria and Hogan lived in a building that looked directly down on the cobbled streets, booths and the waterfront. The apartment was cozy for a couple rather than spacious and begging for expansion like the Pioneer Square condo.

  They’d decorated it with a tasteful eye and an old-world elegance that fit them. Kitchen, bedroom, and office all opened off one wall. The living room boasted a large brown leather sofa facing the view and several comfortable-looking armchairs to either side. Bookcases down the left wall. The back of the living room was the domain of a massive oak table that could easily seat a dozen.

  Josh hadn’t been sure what to bring. Just a bottle of wine seemed lame. And going up against a patissier of Maria’s skill also kept desserts off the list of possible things to bring. He’d settled on a platter of build-it-yourself bruschetta. He premade and toasted the thin rounds of French baguette and rubbed them all lightly with garlic. Then he’d made a large plate with a pile of fresh-made mozzarella cheese at the center and surrounded it with mounds of slivered olives, chiffonaded basil, diced sun-dried tomatoes, and a half-dozen other toppings.

  It had earned him a hug from Maria and had earned Russell a swat from her when he’d tried to grab a fistful of the toasts to munch on. So, Joshua would count that as a two-fold success.

  “You know,” Russell absently flexed his sore knuckles as he turned to Melanie. “I won’t use any image without your approval. But I think you’ll like these. I really hope so, because I didn’t have time to make any other variations. I already ran them by Perrin and she’s over the moon.” He rubbed his mouth where Josh would bet she’d planted a smacking kiss of thanks.

  “But no pressure to like them,” Melanie had laughed that beautiful laugh of hers then tugged Josh along to go look at them. The four prints were laid down on the bright oak of the big dining room table.

  Josh had never really looked at Russell’s work, except the landscapes on the walls of Angelo’s restaurants. Those evoked a specific, soothing emotion making it a comfortable place to dine rather than merely eat. But these fashion photographs were something else again. Even to his untrained eye each was a straight-shot punch to the gut.

  Melanie was posing—with herself! That’s why he’d had to stand in to help her find the right poses. Rather than four images of her, there were a total of nine on the four pages. In the first, the pantsuit clad Melanie was resting a casual hand on a friend’s shoulder, except the friend was also Melanie, dressed for a night on the town and laughing at a joke just told.

  In the next, she leaned against her own back, clad once in a dynamo black powersuit of jacket and skinny spring-green dress, the other in the slacks, blouse, and loosened tie of waterfall silk of a woman supremely competent and confident—enough so to not need the powersuit. Each appeared to be scoffing at the other’s presumption.

  Sportswear was clearly the subject of a grudge match between two ponytailed Melanies somehow glaring at each other but also, just as clearly, giving the camera a nudge-and-a-wink look that made him want to laugh.

  The last page. He wanted a life-size poster of that last image. Melanie three ways. Three brilliant evening gowns the color of new leaves—each radiating allure in its own way. But it wasn’t just allure, it was the raw power of the incredibly feminine form within. One with deep cleavage and soft flowing folds, the second with a form-hugging sleekness, and the last dress so thoroughly covering her body that it was impossible to avoid imagining the woman beneath.

  Separately they were beautiful, together they were astonishing.

  Josh could pick out each woman. Could see the powerful, the shy, the playful, and all of the others she’d told him about and walked for him. But there was something more, if he could only identify it.

  Melanie gave Russell hands-down approval. They went to the computer in Hogan’s small home office to sign the model releases and send them off to the magazine.

  Josh stayed to study the pictures and see if he could figure out what he wasn’t seeing.

  “She loves you so very much.”

  He startled to see that Maria had come up beside him to look down at the images of Melanie. Then Maria’s words registered. “She what?”

  “Look,” she nodded down to the nine figures looking back at him. “If you can’t see it in how she looks at you, it is right there in all of the pictures. Russell is very skilled, but even he couldn’t have done that if it weren’t in her to give.”

  And now Josh could see it. He could see that all nine of the women before him were also the final woman. It was a woman Melanie hadn’t shown him before. It wasn’t the lioness who had devoured his heart. It was the beautiful woman who had offered hers to him.

  She reentered the room from the office door not ten feet away, laughing about something with Russell. Then she turned to him and her face shifted. It was subtle. If he hadn’t been studying the images before him, if Maria hadn’t pointed out the common thread, he wouldn’t have understood the change.

  There was no question, Maria was right.

  Melanie loved him.

  Just maybe she loved him as much as he abruptly realized he loved her.

  “What is it?” Melanie had asked Joshua three times during dinner, but he had only shaken his head and looked away. Something had shifted after he’d seen those wonderful ads Russell had made.

  He took another bite of his Italian cheesecake, clearly to avoid answering her question.

  “You begin to scare me, Joshua.” She kept her voice low. She really hoped he wasn’t somehow seeing her again as the supermodel. He was the only one who saw past the external beauty; past the make-believe she presented to the world. At first it had scared her, but she had come to cherish that about him.

  Russell had indeed made her look fabulous. These ads were going to, as Perrin would say, totally trounce. But if they’d made Joshua lose that unique perspective he had of her, it wouldn’t have been worth it.

  Maria and Hogan had propped up the first three images for display along one of the bookcases and tacked the fourth on the wall which was covered with candid shots, mostly of the people in this room. The photo shoot was definitely the news of the evening and the images were a near constant topic. Only now did it strike her that Maria might intend to add that image permanently to the family collection.

  To keep Russell’s ego in check, Perrin and Tammy had started a campaign of teasing him horribly about anything they could come up with. Cassidy had joined in on the side of her husband and Jo was refereeing in such a way as to make it more lively. Cassidy had been right; Jo was sneaky.

  As the sun had set beyond the Olympics, candlelight had replaced the sunlight. The room was crowded and loud, filled with the sounds of friends simply glad to be together.

  And no one was treating her strangely at all. Not because of the photos, not because she was a supermodel. No one, except Joshua.

  Maria and Hogan sat at either end of the main table, but with the restaurant staff and other friends, there were sufficient numbers that they spilled over into the living area, returning to the table only to restock plates from the vast trays of food that had been prepared and to add a tease to the merry battle surrounding Russell. It was cheerful mayhem.

  She became aware that Joshua was studying her closely. The noise around the table was sufficient to create something of a bubble around them.

  “You,” Joshua whispered softly enough that only she would hear it, “are the one who is scaring me.”

  He must have seen her confusion.

  His answer was to lean in and give her a kiss that reassure
d her more than any words could have done. It was a kiss flavored of ricotta, chocolate, and strawberries—Maria’s Italian cheesecake. It lingered, tested, and asked. She didn’t know the question, but she answered and felt the shift inside her as she did so. Her heart didn’t pound, instead it beat as smooth and silky as the texture of the dessert. Joshua’s kiss was a place she could go to be lost forever. Time, sound, the external world stopped. Nothing existed but them, their connection, their being together in this lingering moment.

  When the kiss ended, her ears were buzzing. And that was the only sound in the room. From one end of the table to the other, everyone was looking at them. Even those sitting in the living room chairs and sofa were silent. Cassidy and Perrin actually had tears in their eyes. Jo had rested her head on Angelo’s broad shoulder.

  Tammy broke the silence with a thirteen-year old’s sigh that sent a ripple of laughter around the room. Then Jaspar offered a ten-year-old boy’s view with a loud, “Eww!” which shifted the sound of the laughter yet again and slowly rekindled conversations.

  Melanie didn’t blush when she was kissed. More than one of her clinches had ended up on the cover of People and a fair number had graced the cover of the National Enquirer. But now the heat roared to her face.

  She considered facing the laughter in defiance. But it was a friendly sound that made her feel both welcome and fortunate. So, rather than pulling on her imperious cloak, she did as Joshua did and turned her full attention to her dessert—only too aware of how closely their legs pressed together beneath the table.

  Chapter 15

  Josh had wanted to help, but Melanie only let him do so when she was stuck on some particular aspect of Perrin’s business strategy.

  “Your job, Joshua, is to write. You wrote those two press releases for her, which were wonderful, thank you. But that is not your passion. You have quit your job to write a novel. Go, write your novel.”

  As if he could just wave a wand and the typed pages would appear. So, he’d gone alone to his usual table at Angelo’s and sat down to write.

  He tried waving a fork of the boar-sausage pasta that Graziella had served him for lunch, but all it did was waft the delicious smell of garlic, sausages, and fresh basil; no novel magically appeared on the table or under it. He checked.

  So he ate the pasta, ignored the gentle conversations of the late lunch crowd, and, as he’d done all week, turned back to his computer. He had his fictional world built. It was a crazy one that was nothing like he’d imagined.

  He’d thought it might be a cozy murder mystery, a poisoning, half the people in the house guilty, the other half wishing they’d thought to kill the victim themselves, no one knowing who to trust. Not just cliché; way overdone cliché.

  Melanie had pointed that out and he’d thrown away almost five thousand words.

  Hard-boiled had been another dead lead. The Sam Spade of the culinary world, still referring to women as “dames” and guns as “heaters” though he lived in the modern world. It simply hadn’t come together. That had only cost him a thousand words or so.

  He’d tried to force it to be a police procedural: CSI does Pike Place Market. So not. Another thousand.

  But this? He didn’t know where it had come from. It was as much political thriller as anything else.

  It had Shelley his female soldier, a television celebrity chef with Hubert Keller’s graying ponytail, and the first female President. The cast reminded him of last night’s second dinner at Maria’s, just as diverse and off-the-wall fun as the first. Melanie’s triptych, now framed, had still hypnotized him and he still hadn’t found a way to talk about his revelation. In love, both of them, and neither daring to say it aloud.

  That’s all his novel’s plot needed to make it a complete train wreck—a love story.

  Josh stopped with another forkful of pasta halfway to his mouth and stared at his screen.

  He’d built his world: a tableau of people rife with quirks and shortcomings. He had a cool opening murder, there were so many interesting ways to kill off a chef.

  But what if it wasn’t a mystery? That’s how these people fit together! It wasn’t a foodie mystery, it was a foodie thriller.

  And a love story.

  He couldn’t think the words without thinking of Melanie. All week, they still hadn’t spoken a single word of the future. Telling her that he loved her could ruin that. With love went commitment. Not just committing to relationship, but the mere act of loving meant connection.

  And that had worked out so spectacularly badly for each of them. With their track record they shouldn’t even start. There was a thought that hurt more than anything else.

  Rather than speaking—rather than forcing a conversation neither of them had wanted to have—they lived the future one day at a time. They went for walks, made dinner plans, lunched with friends, and worked hard. Perrin’s business was consuming Melanie’s days and the novel his, but the nights were their own.

  They bought little things for the Pioneer Square condo. Not for themselves but for the condo, because anything more might imply some form of permanence. A poster that would look good there. Bright pillows that cheered up the sofa. A couple of yoga exercise mats that Melanie was using to prove to Joshua just how inflexible he was. “I should teach a class called, ‘Yoga for men who don’t bend’!” She should, he for one would gladly pay to watch how she could move.

  They were living a love story, one day at a time by continuing to pretend that tomorrow didn’t exist.

  His novel needed a love story. Not only wasn’t his book a murder mystery, it wasn’t a foodie thriller either. No. It was a foodie romantic suspense. It was crazy; that same kind of craziness that somehow made sense. Like him being in love with a supermodel who loved him back—ridiculous from the outside, wonderful from the inside.

  The woman would be the chef…no, too stereotypical. She’d be Shelley’s protégé. A shapely, ambitious senior airman with a cheery blond bob. Penny Baker, bright and shiny like the copper coin, with a cooking last name to intrigue the chef hero.

  The man, the older chef’s protégé… No, too much the same as Penny. He needed another story…

  Josh startled to realize that Melanie was sitting quietly on the other side of the table. They had brainstormed so much, that he didn’t think about it, he just leapt in.

  “I need another character. Interesting guy. Cooks a lot. Professional chef or the potential to be one. Not sure yet. He needs to be someone for my heroine to fall in love with.”

  “You.”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it.

  Melanie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then her smile shone to life. “Wow! That was a surprise.”

  “I’m noticing that.”

  “Well,” Melanie reached over to take a forkful of his pasta. “Oh that’s so délectable. Angelo is definitely a food criminal, because this is sinfully wonderful.”

  Then she looked at him more seriously.

  “Any woman with the least common sense would fall in love with you, Joshua Harper.”

  He tried to catch his breath, but it was sticking somewhere in his chest. “You always struck me as a woman with immense common sense.” How lame was that? He was begging.

  “Thank you,” she reached over to take another forkful. She made him wait while she ate another bite, her eyes remaining locked on his.

  She took her time chewing, swallowing, reaching to take a sip of his ice tea.

  He remained mute.

  “Yes, I’m not sure that it is sensible, but I have fallen quite in love with you, Joshua. I find that it complicates things quite badly.”

  “I’ve been noticing that myself for over a week.” There. He’d as good as said it. But it wasn’t enough and he knew it. “I don’t know if it was at our first meeting a couple months ago or the moment you threatened me with the Taser, but I have discovered I am so very much in love with you. I’m sure this isn’t just rebound. It’s too big and too wonderful to
… What?”

  Melanie’s smile had grown huge.

  “What?”

  “You are a man of many words.”

  He looked down at his computer screen, and then back up at her to make his point. He was.

  “So, my man of words, what are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking I can write anywhere I have a laptop.” He said the next part because it was true. “And you. I need you like I need to breathe. You inspire me. You make me want to be better—” He clamped his jaw shut. He was doing it again. Too many words.

  Melanie tipped her head, her long hair making a blond waterfall over her shoulder. “You are more romantic than I am, Joshua. But you are right. I have never looked as I did in those photos. I have spent the week since puzzling over that difference. I finally found it. During that entire photo shoot, I was thinking of you. I was thinking of the joy you bring me.”

  “So, what do we do?” Josh was sorry the second he asked, for the smile slid off Melanie’s face. She bowed her head and her hair shuttered part of her face from him.

  “This I don’t know.”

  So, it was up to him. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do.” His voice seemed confident, declaring that he had the answers, even if he didn’t. Yet.

  She looked up at him in uncertain hope.

  “First, we will continue as we have been.”

  “Playing house as if we are a couple?” there was an edge to her voice.

  “Making the most of each day because we choose to be together.”

  She brightened at that interpretation and nodded.

  “Second, we start talking about what tomorrow may be. Not what are we committing to. Let’s make it…ah!” There was the metaphor he wanted.

  He hit Save, then closed his laptop, shoving it and the now empty pasta bowl aside.

  He nudged his ice tea closer to the middle of the table in case she wanted some more. “So, what are we really good at together?”

  “Making love.” She said it matter-of-factly but it sent the air whooshing out of his lungs. He continued when he got his breath back.