Where Dreams Books 1-3

by M. L. Buchman

  “You gonna ask her?”

  “Yes.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay, because if you come back from the most romantic country in the world, and you haven’t, I’m a-gonna whip your behind.”

  “You and what army?” Russell went for the sneer, but couldn’t find it anywhere handy.

  “Me and Cassidy, that’s who. You ain’t gonna mess with her, are you?”

  Russell shook him off, climbed out of the car, and signaled for Angelo to pop the trunk lid. He grabbed the duffle and his camera bag, then slammed the lid back into place.

  Angelo pushed up in his seat and looked at him over the windshield.

  “And you remember what I told you.”

  “Cinque Terre. Get idea photos for your next restaurant, ‘Angelo’s Home Hearth.’ It ain’t your home, buddy. I keep telling you, ‘Umbrian Hearth,’ but hey, why listen to me.”

  “It was home for a thousand years before Mama and Papa came to America.”

  “They were sixteen and ran away from poverty to the land of opportunity. Even though he didn’t live to see you born, your home is Brooklyn, New York, America, the United States of.”

  “Fine. That’ll be my third restaurant. Just get me some good photos. Hokay?”

  Russell slung the bags over his shoulder.

  Crap! Some romantic getaway. Now he was supposed to work, too.

  Angelo dropped the Porsche into gear and would have removed Russell’s kneecap if he hadn’t dodged quickly. His car and his best friend roared off into the distance.

  Crap again!

  # # #

  Now this was class. Russell punched the accelerator and the car leapt ahead on the Autostrade.

  What woman would have thought to rent a Ferrari Spider rather than a lousy sedan? Cassidy would. He could kiss her, had kissed her. And it had been even more incredible than the first time. She was more confident and more sure of herself than ever before and that was about the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. She’d even rented them a hotel room at the airport so they didn’t have to wait more than the time it took to cross the terminal and go up two stories in the elevator. They’d almost done it in the elevator like a couple of teens—might have if there’d been a third floor instead of the second.

  She now lay back in her seat, a kerchief over her hair and large Italian sunglasses hiding those luscious hazel eyes. Her hand rested on his thigh as he ripped along, heading north out of Sienna. He was on top of the world, it just couldn’t get any better than this.

  At Lucca she aimed him south toward Pisa. It was the wrong direction for Cinque Terre but—screw Angelo—Russell just didn’t give a damn.

  That’s when it hit him: he really didn’t give a damn. For a month he’d been worrying himself sick about the Seattle City Trade Association contract and then the new offer from the Pioneer Square Association. He just didn’t care. That was the old him.

  It was Russell Morgan the studio photographer who worried about contracts and sweated over jobs until they were perfect and then some. The new Russell didn’t give a damn about Pioneer Square or Seattle City. And he sure as hell didn’t need the money, so from now on he’d only do what was fun.

  If he took a big contract, it would be the next step on the road to personal oblivion. He knew the old networking routine, had turned it into a highly-profitable, multi-million-dollar business with dozens of employees once already. Hell, he’d had three people whose sole job was to hunt weird props that no one had ever used before: from trained tree frogs to the Smithsonian’s collection of every Medal of Honor left at the Wall of the Vietnam Memorial. Then he’d had: office manager, accountant, lighting grip, camera assistant, makeup artist…the list went on and on.

  Done and done—never again would he go there. If it wasn’t something he could do himself, in his leisure time, then from now on his automatic answer would be “no.”

  Cassidy pointed for him to exit at Livorno.

  He’d had fun doing the ads for Angelo, but that was for his best friend. The ones for Perrin were a blast, but that had far more to do with the three women than the work itself. Perrin had a sharp intelligence hidden behind her frivolous façade. And Jo had a wicked sense of wry humor masked with reserve and sophistication. Cassidy was just plain lovable.

  There it was. She was just plain lovable.

  He raised her hand from his thigh to his lips and kissed the back of her hand. When he released it to shift, she stroked his cheek just as he had hers. The tingle made him settle deeper into the seat, more aware than ever of the precious cargo he carried.

  More directions now, Cassidy led him down smaller streets. Italian drivers really were crazy, but they made some extra space for the slick, black Ferrari. Italians respected sports cars the way the French respected bicycles. He used the extra space to slip through the knotted midday traffic.

  She led him past the scenic old city and past rows of businesses. They ran out to the beach, turned left…and there it was.

  “Oh. My.” He pulled the car to the side of the road and shut off the engine.

  “Hey, you’re only supposed to say that about me.”

  He leaned over and kissed her until his lips felt bruised and the catcalls of passing drivers made his ears ring. But he had to look back.

  “This is incredible! It must be ten stories high.”

  “Eleven. The Germans blasted the old lighthouse to smithereens when they were retreating, but the Italians rebuilt it to the original plan using all the original stone they could salvage.”

  The Livorno lighthouse rose from the edge of the busy shipyard. Cargo ships, loading cranes, and railcars scuttled about its base, but the stepped cylinder soared above them all.

  “Boy, these Italians really know how to build a lighthouse.”

  “Isn’t it great? And the best part…”

  He turned to her. She’d pushed her sunglasses up on her forehead, just as his mother had worn them. In that moment he could see the woman who would make Julia Morgan a grandmother. Cassidy Knowles-Morgan sitting on their own child’s sailboat. She was the woman he wanted in his life more than was possible.

  The woman he loved.

  He’d never said that before. Not to her and not to himself. Not to anyone, ever. Yes, he’d talk to Angelo about how to propose to Cassidy, but the L-word was completely unexplored territory—that had remained impossibly foreign until he’d arrived in it. Now that he was here, it made perfect sense.

  He loved Cassidy Knowles.

  “The best part,” she bubbled on, “is that it was built in 1304, almost two hundred years before Columbus. The oldest we’ve visited was 1857, Cape Flattery and New Dungeness.”

  “I’m sorry, Cassidy. I know you’re incredible and I love you, but that rates an ‘Oh. My.’ There’s just no way around it.”

  He watched her closely, it took a moment for it to register. Then he saw it hit, like someone had thumped her in the solar plexus. Her jaw dropped and he heard a gasp. The next moment she swarmed into his lap despite the cramped cockpit and steering wheel. If he thought he’d been soundly kissed ever before, he was happily mistaken.

  Being kissed by Cassidy was better than sex with most women.

  Finally she whispered in his ear, “I love you, too.”

  He held her even tighter.

  # # #

  They drove up to Monterosso along narrow twisty roads that tunneled through mountains, often only a lane wide. In any lesser car than the Ferrari, it would have been a scary ride rather than scenic and fun. They laughed most of the way.

  She told him about California and Montalcino. She’d already written a column about the food and wine at each, as well as several more about winemaking to intersperse over the next year.

  “I don’t give away any company secrets, but it
is amazing how similar and how different the processes are. It’s like the lighthouses. California is so new and slick. They have their gravity feeds between stainless-steel tanks, and everything is temperature controlled to the degree and staged to the hour—so long in steel then so long in oak. All scientific and you could eat off the floor in any of the mechanical rooms.”

  “Exactly what I’d want to do.”

  She thumped his arm playfully and he laughed for the sheer joy of teasing her. He downshifted for another hairpin turn as they climbed then descended then climbed again through the coastal range. The jagged hills broke the vistas into sharp chunks of sky, hill, and tree. Far lower than the mountains of the Cascade Range, but more dramatic in their own way.

  “In California they’re actually boring caves—carving vast cavities into the mountainsides that don’t belong there geologically—just for show. The “caves” come complete with: carpeting, furniture, a wine bar, huge casks that aren’t really used. All for show because caves are the ‘in’ thing now.”

  To Russell’s way of thinking it meant too many New York advertising agencies had opened branches in Napa.

  “The Montalcino wineries are done with casks that are older than the vintner’s great-grandparents. Wine is processed, tanked, purified through the same steps, but nature has a bigger part in it. The same care, less technologic frenzy. And instead of fabricated caves they have real ones that have been there forever. Some of them date back to the Etruscans—they’re the ones who helped the Romans get started.”

  Her excitement was so high—she was so thrilled by what she’d seen—that he couldn’t ask her now. At first he hadn’t because he didn’t want to spoil her wonderful welcome, then because the drive was so fun. And he was still trying to process that she loved him.

  And that he loved her. Had he said it to anyone other than his mother? Ever? And even that had become dutiful, until their last visit. Until he’d realized that she had put up with, for the last fifteen years, his jumping to wrong conclusions about her. And Cassidy had dispelled them all with a few casual questions. Their last visit had been the best ever and it was all Cassidy’s doing. How could he spoil this for her?

  He’d wait just a little longer.

  # # #

  It was all too perfect to be true. Cassidy had been transported by the magic of her father’s letters and the man beside her into a new world, and it was a world of possibilities. She’d aspired to be the next Robert Parker—the first female megastar of the wine-tasting firmament. To become the top of a very small world.

  But the vineyards were breathtaking; that’s where it all happened. On their third day in Cinque Terre they found the winery in the small village of Corniglia where the Sciacchetrà was made—the wine that had fooled her at their disastrous first date. It was made underneath Carla Parrano’s home, a distant cousin of Angelo’s. They entered the winery itself through a narrow oak door at street level that had long since grown dark with age and been polished smooth by human hands.

  They descended into the mountainside: to an Italian cave turned into a wine cellar over six hundred years before. The air was cool, the floor and walls stone. The casks were packed so tightly together that there was barely room to get around them. And the wine tasted so sweet and light with a gentleness from the vat that didn’t, couldn’t survive the ten-thousand-mile journey by boat and rail in bottles. This wine wasn’t intended for export. To make this wine work, you had to bring the wine tasters to the wine and she could think of a dozen different ways to do that—just a part of her newly expanded view of the big picture.

  She led Russell up into the rock-wall terraced vineyards of Cinque Terre. The terraces were barely ten feet wide, each supporting a couple dozen vines in a few feet of soil. For a thousand years, grapes had been cultivated here. Cultivated just this way, in tiny little patches by hard labor. Ingenious, hip-wide monorail cars climbed from one terrace to another transporting the grapes and the more daring tourists.

  Russell’s camera snapped away, taking pictures of cliff-edge vineyards, restaurants, and fishing boats dragged up onto the miniature beaches.

  In Manarola, the fourth of the five little towns of Cinque Terre, they found a hidden ristorante—a true locals’ place. They were the only tourists there despite the warm October. Russell’s Italian was rusty, but he’d learned it at his cook’s knee and it came back quickly. Hers was much worse, just enough of it left from college to make it fun rather than a struggle.

  The owner bustled to their table in the middle of the meal and rattled off a flurry of Italian she had no chance of following.

  “What did he say?”

  “I dropped Angelo’s name; they know about him.”

  “Really? That’s great. Local boy made good, huh?”

  More Italian rattled back and forth, and then the owner jerked to stare at her, slapped his hands to his heart and ran back into the restaurant.

  “What? What did you do to him?”

  Russell just shook his head and shrugged. No grin. He didn’t appear to know. She looked away and checked again, still no grin. Okay, he was as mystified as she was.

  The owner came running back, the waiter and waitress, and a woman who had to be his wife in tow. He was also waving a worn newspaper over his head.

  He thumped it down on table, pointed his finger at an article then brought his fingertips to his lips and tossed the kiss into the air.

  They both leaned in. It was titled “Angelo’s Tuscan Hearth” and her picture sat at the head of the column. The rest was in Italian, definitely her writing though. Her agent had told her about Italy, she’d just never imagined the translation. It was the second of her three reviews. Down at the bottom, there it was.

  She wasn’t going to point it out.

  She didn’t need to.

  Russell’s groan filled the air much to the consternation of the owner who she quickly reassured. She couldn’t quite read the translation, but she didn’t need to. She’d written the words herself.

  Bring the person you love to this restaurant and you’ll never be forgotten for it. Ever.

  “In every language,” Russell moaned.

  # # #

  “Why that’s terribly flattering.”

  Cassidy had been saying that a lot lately. California and Italy were in a bidding war for her expertise. Even hiding away on vacation, news of increased offers trickled her direction. Germany and France had both left lengthy voice messages, or rather a lengthy series of messages in two-minute chunks that Russell was very familiar with.

  He leaned against the stone parapet of the microscopic balcony. Barely big enough to stand in, but enough for him to stare down at the tiny harbor. It would be just big enough to tuck the Lady in among the fishing boats. Nutcase would love this place.

  He could hear Cassidy in the bedroom checking up on the latest flurry of offers. Cassidy Knowles was in play and the games had begun. Salaries, personal villas, cars, and personal assistants were being bandied about in a high stakes poker game that showed no sign of reaching its limit.

  Even the Cinque Terre Consortium had anted up, though they’d been outbid before they even made the offer and they knew it. But they’d done it with style, closing the little Manarola restaurant and inviting a couple dozen of the local chefs, vintners, and officials to feast Italian-style around a long table. There’d been far more food and wine than business. Russell had enjoyed the impromptu singing and copious laughter. By the time they were done, he’d been hugged at least twice by every person there.

  The Ligurian wine industry here had suffered due to the attraction of the almighty tourist dollar. Vines on cliffs were hard work; turning your five-hundred year old cellar into a quaint restaurant or gift shop was far easier. The five-town Consortium had come up with a solution: they were giving the terraces away before they fell into disrepair and slid into the ocean. To retain
ownership, the new owners were required to farm them for at least four years. An ingenious and low price-of-entry way to get new blood into the industry.

  Russell could already think of several different campaign ideas. And the Consortium knew that it needed a Cassidy Knowles to make it all happen. Their offer: a small house perched over the beach, with an even smaller budget to fix it up, a survival stipend, and a marketing budget that would barely pay for the rental on the car they’d left parked at Monterosso.

  The chances of her throwing it all away to go sailing with him were getting slimmer by the minute. Angelo was right. He should have asked her before she left, before they had a chance to get to her. But then he’d have trapped her and that couldn’t be right either.

  He could still feel the scars on his back from his own narrow escape from success’ taloned claws. There were several major accounts who still called him and the ones who’d spotted his work for Angelo or Perrin were hounding his cell phone with requests for “just one more spread.” It was the road to nowhere. It was the road back to a studio, living there because next door would be too far away. Part of the package deal would be a series of lovers who looked like Melanie, or aspired to, but didn’t touch his heart.

  He’d had enough of too many lovers. He now had a girlfriend, a woman he was in love with. And he wanted more of that. Wouldn’t his mother laugh her ass off knowing what he was feeling right about now. Angelo sure would.

  Cassidy hung up the phone.

  He didn’t turn when she ran her hand up his back.

  “I’m sorry. It’s overwhelming.”

  He nodded. He knew the temptation was huge. It was “The Life” all over again. Except now it was Cassidy who had set her sights on it, and he wasn’t a part of the equation. He didn’t want to be a part of that Life. He’d been there once and barely survived.

  “Hey, lover.”

  He jolted beneath her touch. That’s exactly what he’d called Melanie, the moment before he destroyed her life by asking her to go sailing with him.

  He pushed past Cassidy, away from the balcony and into the pensione. It was so damn small. He’d been caged. He was Cassidy Knowles’ captive lover while she made choices that he could never survive. He groped about the room, found the door, and was out on the streets in moments. He headed up the hill, climbing the cobbled streets, and when they gave out, the terraced fields of vines. It was only when he reached the highest terraces—those which had been abandoned first by the shrinking Cinque Terre wine industry—that he ground to a halt.