Where Dreams Books 1-3

by M. L. Buchman

  I thought about never telling you this part of our past. About letting the truth die with me. But finally decided that taking it to the grave wasn’t fair to you. Maybe the drugs have clouded my judgment and your father is wrong, in which case, I’m sorry.

  Her father was dead. Russell flipped the page over, one side only. Cassidy had gone quiet. Her head resting on his shoulder, her hand on his chest, like a little girl going to sleep.

  Your birth was harder on your mother than she ever let on. I was preoccupied with the loss of one vineyard, which nearly broke my heart, and the start of the next. The work was just as brutal, and your mother wasn’t able to help. Her parents were failing fast, your grandfather had a massive stroke and your grandmother just gave up. She caught pneumonia the day before he died and was gone within the week.

  And he’d asked Cassidy to help protect him from his parents. His wealthy, healthy, loving parents. Shit!

  You were born by C-section. There was an infection. Then other things went wrong. We thought they were treated, but some damage was done, something not removed entirely or… We never knew. When the ovarian cancer struck, it took her so fast I barely had a chance to say goodbye.

  I always told you she was called to the hospital and killed on the way. It was almost that fast, but that wasn’t what happened.

  She wasn’t a nurse, though she nursed my heart after Vietnam, and you and her parents. She was a nurse of the heart, the gentlest soul I’ve ever known. I didn’t know she’d never come home when I took her away that last time. Truth of truths, maybe I didn’t ever really say goodbye. I still miss her so much that every day it is a hole in my heart.

  I feel as if I really did get a chance to say goodbye to you. I’m so glad you moved back to Seattle to spend my last six months with me. It is the greatest gift you could have ever given me.

  Love you, Ice Sweet

  Vic

  He turned the page over again. Still blank. He folded it carefully and tucked it back into her hand. She clenched it slowly into a fist, the paper’s crinkling the only sound other than the gentle slap of waves against the hull.

  “When did he die?”

  “Christmas Day.” Her voice was hoarse, barely a whisper. She found a Kleenex and blew her nose with a very unwomanly honk. She was really a mess.

  “I hate crying. I haven’t wept like that since, I don’t know, ever. Maybe since Mama didn’t come home.”

  “But it’s August. How…the letter?” She’d been reading a letter on the bow of the boat when his parents were there. And he’d noticed her reading one out at Cape Flattery while he poked around the rocks looking for his Lady of the Lights.

  For Cassidy.

  “He gave you the calendar of lighthouses.”

  She nodded against his chest.

  “And…a series of letters.”

  Again the smooth slickness of her hair rubbing back and forth under his chin.

  “He’s taking a whole year to say goodbye.”

  This time she was quiet, though he could feel the gentle warmth of her tears soak once more into his t-shirt.

  “He sounds like a wonderful man.”

  “The best.”

  It took her a while, but she told him about the letters. About his sunny California vineyard followed by the one in rainy Bainbridge Island. Cassidy told him of her trip there and what it had felt like to stand on the soil that had once been his—knowing the vines were gone, but still able to feel his spirit there in that soil.

  “You were right.” She was leaning back against the mast now. Her feet propped against his thigh as he lay on the curve of the inside of the hull.

  “I was?” Wouldn’t that just shock the shit out of Angelo. “About what?”

  “About my not really knowing a wine.”

  “It was a stupid-ass remark made to a woman I didn’t even know. I thought you were—”

  “What?”

  He shook his head. It would make him sound even dumber than he was.

  She poked one of her toes into his ribs. He tried to scoot away but there was nowhere to scoot. She started to wiggle them and he had to shove her leg away. She slid the other foot up the leg of his shorts and wiggled them there. He sat bolt upright and cracked his head on the underside of the deck.

  Her laugh spilled out between her fingers even as she mumbled an apology and tried to reach for his head to check for bumps.

  An attempt to push her away achieved nothing. Once she ascertained there was no bump, she kissed the spot.

  “All better,” she declared.

  He turned his head and kissed her. Time slowed, nearly ground to a halt as his blood hammered in his head. Without even thinking about it, he had one hand on her breast, no bra beneath the light dress shirt. She crawled into his lap and in moments they were sprawled back on the stateroom bed.

  She pulled his t-shirt out of his shorts and slid a cool hand across his chest.

  “Oh. My.”

  “You said that before.”

  He had and it was just as true now. How could anything feel so wonderful?

  Then she teased his nipples.

  “Give.”

  “Anything.”

  “What were you going to say?”

  He clamped his mouth shut. She ground her hips against his painfully hard erection.

  “Give.”

  Give? He could barely remember how to breathe.

  “Give.”

  “Okay,” he gasped for breath, but there wasn’t any air on the boat. “Okay, just stop that for a second so I can uncross my eyes.”

  She stopped. Mostly. As if the slow motion of her hips in perfect rhythm with the ocean was one bit less distracting.

  “Give. You thought I was…”

  “A stuck-up, Upper East Side, rich bitch, spoiled brat.”

  Her smile was beatific. “Not a self-made, Northwest island girl, who busted her ass for every inch she ever gained?”

  “Uh. No.” He couldn’t believe this was the same woman who had frozen him out on that first date.

  “Not one of the country’s leading wine tasters who studied how to be Upper East Side because she didn’t have the lazy-ass, Upper West Side fortune?”

  With a quick grab at the back pocket of her shorts, he managed to get the leverage to flip her onto her back.

  “I busted my ass too, I’ve earned every damn cent I’ve ever spent since junior year of high school.” Where did the sudden anger come from? It had soared like a flame inside of him. And now here he was pinning her to his bed, taking advantage of his strength. He shoved away—off the bed and into the main part of the cabin.

  She caught up with him after he’d climbed into the cockpit.

  The boat was just too damned small.

  “Sorry. I was just teasing. I know you earned it. Your dad told me about it when we had dinner in New York. About how proud he was of you for finding your own way.”

  He stared aft. Looking at the sea, the sky, the island, trying to focus on anything.

  “You wouldn’t joke about that?” Had he misjudged every single event in his life?

  She slid her hands around his waist from behind and rested her head on his shoulder. Together they looked out at the lighthouse.

  The day was fading. They’d made love all night, and slept most of the day. The sun was already westerning, though the long Northwest evening was far from over.

  “We make a pretty sad pair of porcupines.” Her voice was kind, her hands strong and gentle.

  She pulled one of his hands free from where he’d jammed them into his pockets.

  He opened his mouth. To explain. To apologize. To thank her for perhaps being the first woman in his life to not care about his money, or his past, or what he might do in the future. The first to like him as he was: a god-awful mortal mess
.

  She rested a finger gently across his lips to silence him.

  Not releasing his hand, she led him back into the cabin.

  # # #

  In some ways it was the trickiest shoot Russell had ever done.

  Perrin had loaded most of the contents of her store into his boat and he’d anchored off the Seattle waterfront. By the second or third clothing change, the three women had gotten over the self-consciousness that usually caused amateur shoots to look so stiff and miserable.

  They laughed more than any group he’d ever been with. They teased him mercilessly, starting with “hubba-hubba” noises and rapidly degenerating to incredibly raunchy—with Perrin definitely taking the lead there. When, in an unthinking moment, Russell had stripped off his shirt because of the sun’s heat, Perrin had started a series of catcalls and whistles that could be heard over most of Elliot Bay.

  The technical challenges of lighting, background, and a shooting platform that was in constant motion occupied most of his mind. The sun would be right, but the background wrong. The background and light right, but the proper shooting position was a five yards off the beam. Some of Perrin’s more classic designs wanted the older part of Seattle in the background. The more outrageous outfits were accented, more vivid, alive with the mid-town skyscrapers as a setting.

  Several times he clambered out onto the boom and swung himself over the side, snapping half-a-dozen images before he swung back inboard. He’d tried standing in the dinghy, but the water was a little too lively for him to keep his balance.

  Then Cassidy got him. He was sitting in the dinghy, shooting up at the women on the boat. She was dressed in a skimpy summer beach outfit. His white dress shirt, the one she’d never returned, open and blowing in the gentle breeze. She grabbed one of the shrouds that soared up to hold up the mast. She leaned out over the water and, with a siren-like beauty used to tease sailors onto the rocks of despair, flashed one of her killer smiles.

  His heart stumbled. His hands wielded the camera more out of habit than intent. He didn’t need the camera, smiling Cassidy was forever burned into his mind. Moments later Perrin and Jo were with her.

  The Three Sirens.

  The Three Fates.

  Three Sisters.

  Jo, Perrin, and Cassidy.

  Truth, Joy, and Beauty.

  At some point they fed him a sandwich which he’d eaten without tasting. He had to change out the memory card in his camera three times.

  As the sun set, he began to wish he’d rented the flash umbrellas. The changing light—with just a few elegant accents—would set the stage for Perrin’s collection of eveningwear.

  “Cassidy. Grab the stormsail,” he called down. He’d been banished from below, the women’s changing room.

  Moments later, she tossed it out of the hatchway.

  “You sure you never sailed before?”

  All that answered was her bright laugh and it definitely did something racy to his heart. Just in one short month, she’d inhaled the knowledge as if she’d been born to it. They’d anchored in quiet coves up in the Canadian Queen Charlottes, ridden out a forty-knot storm in the Straits when they’d decided to visit Destruction Island lighthouse by sail. And love. Holy Christ they’d made incredible love.

  He hung the white stormsail from the main boom and the lifelines, then tied the excess off to the boom.

  Jo came up first. A black sheath that followed every curve perfectly. It rode low enough to reveal the bounty of her breasts, but high enough to be pure class. Her long black hair was swept forward over one shoulder. As she turned, she revealed the bit of magic that was Perrin’s trademark—every piece had some surprise: often subtle, occasionally blatant.

  Jo’s dress didn’t reveal her whole back as might be expected. Rather, only a small, open area revealed her beautiful olive skin. Exactly the spot a man’s hand would rest during an intimate waltz or… He had to smile.

  He had Jo swing back as if in the throes of a tango, the reserved woman released by the dress and his request. Her hair swept back along the deck and her body arched in pleasure, passion, and joy. The flash reflected off the sail covered her in a ballroom’s soft lighting, etching her against the oranges and golds of the sunset beyond the water and the sharply outlined peaks of the Olympic Mountains.

  Perrin slid into the picture, taking the man’s position in the dance. A pantsuit, but like none he’d ever seen in a dozen years of New York fashion. The slacks had seams that climbed in an iridescent spectrum from ankle to hip. The triple-layered jacket lapels shifted from traditional black to the shades of the rainbow depending on how she moved. But they weren’t heavy, rather they accented the plunging cleavage of the single-buttoned front. The cleavage of a woman wearing nothing but the jacket and pants. A perky hat that might have fit a sixties secret agent if not for the single peacock feather above the right ear. She was at once in control, powerful, and incredibly erotic.

  She and Jo danced about the narrow deck, posed at the edge of the dance so that he could capture each alone, and then whirled together in a flurry of laughter and sensuality. And there was never a moment, despite all their fooling around, that there could be a doubt about the orientation of these two women. They were friends dancing together, to make the men wild.

  In their various meetings preparing for this shoot, she’d revealed tiny glimpses of how they had saved her from her parents’ past. The abuser and the whore who had no compunction about using their own daughter, selling her. How she’d surely have gotten herself killed, or killed herself, many times over if it hadn’t been for Cassidy and Jo. Her wild experiments with drugs, alcohol, and men had all been tempered by them. She loved her life and she attributed it entirely to her two best friends.

  He’d fallen further in love with Cassidy as he heard of the interventions, sometimes in the middle of Vassar campus. Cassidy had brought Perrin home for every vacation so she’d never be alone where her parents could get at her, or even alone with her own originally self-destructive tendencies.

  Then Cassidy came up from below and he forgot about everything. She moved slowly, her dress shimmering in the golden light. No sequins, nor glitter. The threads of the material caught, reflected, and refracted light but appeared as plain and simple as a red evening gown. Not the red of a wild woman, but the dusky red of her chestnut hair. The dress wasn’t blatant, it wasn’t a slap in the face like Perrin’s pantsuit, or a sensual masterpiece like Jo’s. It spoke as much of the observer as of the wearer. High-necked, long-sleeved, her cascading hair the only adornment other than a small sailboat on a thin gold neck chain.

  It was a look that invited him into the warm circle of the woman within. Almost of its own will, his camera raised to his eye. They moved in slow motion. Step, click, flash. Shift, click, flash. This time Russell and Cassidy were the two dancing.

  The images of Cassidy shifted about him. The color rising to her cheeks made her that much more alive. The sparkle in her eyes as she relaxed made her that much more desirable.

  He moved about the deck to capture different angles, heights, backgrounds, and still her smile dazzled him.

  She bent out of one frame giving him a shot of the top of her head. When she stood straight once more, Nutcase, in all her fuzzy disarray, cuddled against Cassidy’s chin. He came in closer. The camera never ceased its whirr-click, flash.

  Nutcase looking at Cassidy, Cassidy looking directly at him. Whirr-click, flash. Beauty.

  Cassidy looked down at the cat. Whirr-click, flash. The nurturer.

  Cassidy and the cat both looking at him. Totally self-contained. Whirr-click, flash.

  He stopped. Dropped the camera to his side. How could he not want to be with this woman when she looked at him that way? He wanted her in his life.

  A loud pop startled him from his reverie.

  Perrin laughed aloud and began pouring champagne int
o small glass tumblers.

  He looked back at Cassidy, but she was facing away. Dropping Nutcase onto the cockpit cushions.

  “I thought that last outfit would get you.” Perrin pushed a glass into his free hand and extracted the camera from his limp fingers, unwinding the strap from behind his elbow. She slid his camera into its case then dropped onto the bench seat next to Jo. She planted a big, sloppy kiss on her friend’s cheek.

  His knees finally buckled and he landed on the bench across from them. He’d never worked as hard or enjoyed himself so much. He knocked back the glass of bubbly and it scorched his throat as sharply as scalding coffee.

  Cassidy still stood by the tiller. Her floor-length dress made her look like some fantasy being, inviting him to be with her forever.

  “God, you are so beautiful.”

  That smile of hers lit the night more brightly than any flash. She slid down beside him, pulled his arm over her shoulders, cuddled in close against his side. The blood hammered so loudly in his ears he couldn’t hear a single word being said though he could see Perrin and Jo laughing at something Cassidy said.

  They teased Nutcase and drank champagne. He sat outside. They didn’t shut him out and it wasn’t that he didn’t belong.

  No. He sat outside himself, observing and amazed. The shock was that he truly did belong.

  Admiralty Head Lighthouse

  Whidbey Island

  First lit: 1861

  Extinguished: 1922

  48.15702 -122.67943

  High on the towering cliffs of Whidbey Island, this lighthouse didn’t survive the transition from sailing ships to those driven by steam. The lighthouse marked the farthest side of a wide channel, and ships powered by steam did not need to cross Puget Sound before turning South for Seattle or north for Vancouver. They simply exited the Straits and turned at the Point Wilson light.

  The dormant light served as a medical clinic and barracks for the Fort Casey gun emplacements during WWII. At that time it was painted olive-drab and the light room was removed. The Island County Historical Society eventually repainted it white and red and rebuilt a light room.