Where Dreams Books 1-3

by M. L. Buchman

  They pummeled down the hill on Fourth Avenue. Only the one street clung to the steep north face of Queen Anne Hill, and it dropped straight down. At the bottom of the descent they crossed the Fremont Bridge and hit the Burke-Gilman Trail where they’d started their bike ride, this time on foot.

  “This is like the Oregon terrain.”

  “I knew it.” Jo ground to halt and Angelo doubled back to her. He kept jogging in place though she’d stopped.

  “Knew what?”

  “You signed up for the Hagg Lake Tri today, didn’t you?”

  Shit! Well, time to be a man about it. He shrugged a, “Yes.”

  “Are you stalking me, Angelo? What’s really going on here?” She was shaking out her legs. He knew they’d be vibrating with the interrupted run. He stopped running and gestured helplessly as his own legs began to vibrate with the sudden break.

  Should he try the truth? What the hell did he have to lose? He’d met her barely a half dozen times and she was all he could think about. Fat lot of good it did him.

  # # #

  “Since the first moment I saw you, I don’t see anyone else.” Angelo traced his hands through the air as if tracing her face.

  Jo loved watching his hands as he spoke, it was so, she searched for the right word. It was so Italian.

  “A pretty girl goes by,” he waved to indicate a long, lean, blonde running by them on the Burke-Gilman path with a graceful, gazelle-like stride. “I don’t even see her.”

  “But you just did.” She had to bite the inside of her cheek to not laugh at him.

  “I…” He turned to look, but the runner had already passed out of sight under the bridge. “She…” He smacked a palm against his forehead. He looked so perplexed.

  “Let me guess,” Jo put on her Counselor Thompson tone as Angelo seemed to find it so daunting. “If you were alone, you would have perhaps jogged up to that woman, greeted her in Italian, pretended you were new in town and only knew a little English. And then…let’s see...you’d have asked if she knew a ‘great gelato place’ somewhere nearby.”

  “Sure,” then he blushed a brilliant red, then shrugged in that eloquent way of his. “Probably.”

  He hedged, but she wasn’t buying it. He was too damned handsome to not know his power over women.

  “Last year, before I met you, no problem. Of course I would. She wore no ring, either.” He slapped a hand over his mouth. Then shrugged again and uncovered a boyish smile.

  “Okay, so I still notice. But since the first time I see you,” he flicked a finger against his own temple. “Nothing. I watch them run by and I don’t even think, ‘Angelo, you should chase that one.’ They just go by and I wonder when is the next time I will see Jo Thompson.”

  His voice was rising and Jo was having trouble swallowing. No one ever talked about her like that. And the faster he spoke, the more an Italian rhythm slipped in, making his voice even more engaging.

  “I just can’t win with you, can I? No matter what I do, I just screw it all up. I can’t sweep you away with the best food at the most romantic wedding I’ve ever been to. I can’t go running with you with not making myself an idiota.”

  “You can’t cook dinner for me, you proved that,” she couldn’t resist the tease. He was past hearing the tone. It struck home and his dark eyes flashed.

  “You come by without some damned, out-sized, ‘I’m so gorgeous’ Russian and I’ll show you what I can cook.” His anger rolled louder still. “Hell! Bring him along and I’ll show you both what I can do. I’ll cook that bastard under the damn table!” He made as if to hurl down a gauntlet.

  He took her breath away. No one had ever seen her as he did. Outside of her legal expertise, all men ever saw was her body, but Angelo hadn’t glanced down once in his entire tirade.

  And he was so damn cute about it. So wound up that she could only think of one thing to stop him as he launched into a description of exactly what he would cook to show that Russian what was what.

  She clamped his face in her hands and kissed him, hard.

  If he hesitated even a second, she didn’t notice it go by. He didn’t drag her against him. He didn’t clutch or grab. He barely moved.

  In an instant he went from raging Italian to leaning ever so gently into the kiss. It floated through her like… She was so good with words, she should be able to attach some words to how she felt as he tipped his head in her hands and deepened the kiss. It floated through her like…a kiss. It sounded stupid inside her head, but it was all she had at the moment.

  He slid his hands over hers. Caressing them, then holding them in his, and finally sliding them from his face, then rocking back just enough for their lips to part.

  “Breathe, bella signora. Before you pass out.” His dark eyes sparkled so close.

  “I’d better take my own advice.” He stepped back, dropping her hands after a final gentle squeeze, and made a show of taking a deep breath that ended on a soft chuckle.

  Jo managed to drag in some much needed air and shared his laugh for a moment.

  “Okay,” his voice was a caress. “I expected that kiss to be strong, like a spicy Sicilian sauce, but…” He whooshed out another breath and scrubbed his hands over his face.

  She still couldn’t respond. Couldn’t quite tell if he was happy or upset. Couldn’t quite tell how she felt about it either.

  “Next time we try that,” Angelo grinned at her, “I want to be somewhere we won’t injure ourselves when our knees give out.”

  Jo looked down at the hard pavement of the trail then back up at Angelo.

  “Please tell me there will be a next time, Jo. Please tell me there will be.”

  Jo’s wits finally came back to her. She’d just received the best kiss of her life from one of the most handsome men she’d ever met.

  “Damn straight there’s going to be another chance,” she assured both of them.

  Chapter 9

  Angelo and his mother arrived at the airport just before midnight. Cassidy’s somewhat frantic e-mail had popped up while Angelo had been out running with Jo. They were on a direct flight home and could Angelo or someone pick them up?

  She’d been less than clear about why they were aborting their honeymoon after only a week and Angelo feared the worst. Their first trip to Italy had been a four-alarm relationship disaster, but Russell had assured him that everything that had caused that was resolved. After all, he’d married her rather than setting off to sail alone around the world in anger and misery, which was a good thing. Angelo wondered if he should have hidden Russell’s boat.

  Mama had insisted on coming with him to the airport even though the plane was arriving near midnight. She’d known Russell as long as Angelo had and was just as worried. They’d driven the car down as the van had no back seats.

  Now they waited at the head of the escalator for international arrivals. It was a leftover from the days when you could meet arriving flights at the gate, and no one had ever updated it. International flights landed at the secure southern terminal. After people wended their way through customs, they boarded the underground train to the main terminal and rode up the escalator at the end of the secure zone.

  That was all well and good. But the escalator popped out in the middle of baggage claim where a total of three uncomfortable seats had been bolted to a gray wall well off to the side. Other than that, you just had to stand in the busiest and narrowest corridor of the whole airport, among a vast array of baggage claim carousels, and wait.

  Angelo sucked at waiting.

  He’d settled into pacing down past the first couple baggage claim conveyors and back while his mother settled in one of the three awkward seats. Some installation artist had mounted dozens of pieces of abandoned luggage with a massive iron pipe rammed through their centers. Suspended above the baggage conveyor were skewered leather suitcases, punctured n
ylon carry-ons, a guitar hardshell case pithed like a giant black beetle, a garment bag bullet-shot through the heart, and many more. Like this was supposed to instill confidence in the airlines? He was halfway down the art piece wondering if any of these was the suitcase that had never followed him back from his last trip to California to teach, when he heard the twin cries of “Mrs. Parrano!”

  He spun to see his mother embracing Jo and Perrin. Cassidy’s plea for help must have gone to them as well.

  Damn! He kept forgetting to tell Jo about his mother’s moving in with him, never mind that she was making him insane at the restaurant. Already the three of them were talking so fast he couldn’t begin to follow. How in the world did women all talk at once and still hear everything? He’d never understood that.

  Jo barely broke the flow as she shot him her hotshot attorney look with one raised eyebrow. Well, the news of his mother’s move had just come out, probably the retirement would be only seconds behind it.

  He tried a shrug to say, “Okay, you caught me. I screwed up. I’ll never do it again. Trust me.”

  Her laugh informed him that she’d read right through his bullshit of best intentions.

  Damn, the woman made him crazy. All he’d been able to think about was when he’d get a chance to kiss her again. And more. But she’d gone shy at the end of their run, leaving him quickly when they reached his restaurant. He didn’t even know where she lived, though by the direction and that she’d walked rather than jogged away without looking back, he figured it was somewhere downtown.

  He’d managed not to follow her, but had broken down and Googled her. All he got back was her law offices two blocks from his restaurant and a daunting list of lawsuits. He didn’t even understand what most of them were about, corporate craziness of some breed or other, but he poked through them enough to learn that she never lost a case, at least not that he could tell.

  He was lusting after one of the top corporate lawyers in the city, one who could slice and dice a corporation or a government lawsuit before breakfast without breaking a sweat. He usually went for the simplicity of a vapid, no-strings-sex kind of women. Workout girls were a nice bonus, though he’d learned the hard way to never pick up a woman at the gym he used. It made things awkward after the breakups. He’d tried dating other chefs, but between their mutually workaholic schedules and his generally superior cooking skills, those never lasted. Now he was chasing a woman who was probably smarter than most of the people on the planet. He should be running full tilt the other direction.

  Then why had her kiss rooted him to the ground? One moment he’d been raging against something he still couldn’t quite recall and the next his world had gone quiet. All he’d known were the cool touch of her hands and the burning heat of her lips. He’d always been the one in calm control and he wasn’t liking the change.

  Jo continued to chat with his mother as if they were long lost friends.

  Oh God! His mother hadn’t only become friends with his butcher and his seafood supplier. She was also charming the woman he wanted to date. If she did become his girlfriend… Maybe he should just leave quietly, go back to his restaurant, and throw himself on a chef’s knife. Then he’d be comfortably dead and the craziness in his head would stop. Bene!

  Another train must have unloaded downstairs as a fresh flood of passengers flowed up the escalator. That’s when he spotted the friendly face. A friendly male face.

  “Sanctuary!” He hustled past the three women, through the crowd streaming off the escalator, and over to the elevator where he’d spotted Russell Morgan.

  He stopped, put his hands on his hips, and looked down at him.

  “And what the hell happened to you?”

  Chapter 10

  The three women enveloped Cassidy and it was left to Angelo to keep a level head and roll his friend’s wheelchair to the side, freeing a blockage in the flow of traffic when the next elevator load spilled out. He considered trying to also move the four women, now catching up on news, out of the way, but decided that his long-term survival would be improved if he left them to their own devices.

  He rapped his knuckles sharply on Russell’s leg cast, noted the slight wince and rapped it once more with a little more force.

  “How in the hell did you break that?”

  “It was Cassidy’s idea.”

  “Was not.” Somehow she’d heard despite the half-dozen paces and stream of tired tourists that separated them. She came over to stand beside her husband’s wheelchair. The hand she stroked over his head and down his neck was gentle and told Angelo that at least the relationship hadn’t blown up unlike their last trip to Italy.

  “Mr. Athlete here decided he just had to try parasailing behind a power boat.”

  “You said it looked like fun.”

  “No,” Cassidy rested a hand on his shoulder. “I said it looked like stupid fun.”

  Russell just harrumphed.

  Angelo rapped his knuckles on the cast again and would have received a sharp jab in the ribs if he hadn’t dodged quickly.

  “How long?”

  “Damn thing itches. It’s already too long.”

  “Six weeks,” Cassidy kissed him on top of the head. “And he’s already got three weeks of complaining in during the first forty-eight hours. I can’t begin to tell you how much fun this is going to be.”

  “That does it. I’m never going back to that stupid country.”

  This time Angelo’s mother rapped her knuckles sharply on Russell’s cast and he caught his breath sharply.

  “You no say that about my country or I no make you my special biscotti.”

  Russell looked up at her, “Yes, Nana. What are you doing in Seattle?”

  “Good boy,” she leaned down and kissed him on top of the head just as Cassidy had. “And no making Cassidy crazy. I know you.”

  She turned to Cassidy, “I warn you. He is even a worse patient than my boy Angelo.”

  “Baggage.” Angelo grabbed the handles to the wheelchair and pushed he and Russell clear of the group. “We definitely need to find baggage.”

  “And a bar,” Russell put in.

  “Definitely a bar,” Angelo agreed.

  # # #

  Angelo had overruled the women’s vote to head straight home in a very simple way. He’d settled Russell into his car and gotten behind the driver’s wheel. Then he drove them out of SeaTac airport, across Highway 99, and right into the 13 Coins Restaurant parking lot. It was their traditional stop after crazy trips. The place offered twenty-four hour fine dining and alcohol from six in the morning until two the next morning.

  He’d dragged Russell here after his ill-fated first trip to Italy with Cassidy and let him drink himself straight through oblivion and into passed out. Russell had made sure Angelo got good and loose, though stopped him short of plastered, after he’d returned from his first time as a guest instructor at the Culinary Institute of America last fall. Cassidy had kept telling him what fun it was to teach there, and he’d fallen for it like a babe in the woods. He still shivered at the memory of it. The CIA wanted him back this fall, but he had never been one to get up in front of a room full of people. Just let him hide in the kitchen and cook. Besides, he’d need to buy a new suitcase.

  The 13 Coins had deep booths with high, dark leather backs and soft lighting. You could crawl into a booth and not be seen for hours. The waitresses were discrete, understood the necessity for speed on drink orders, and always offered to keep track of your flight time if you were outbound to make sure you didn’t miss your plane. Even the stools in front of the bar were tall, cozy, and wrapped around you shutting out the rest of the world.

  In the middle of the room were low tables and comfortable chairs scattered about like someone’s living room. They found a table with room for six plus Russell’s extended leg.

  “I came down wrong is all.”


  “Yes. Right on top of a jet skier’s head, then got tangled in the controls as it rolled over.”

  “You thought those looked like fun too.”

  “Suicidal stupid fun? Yes. Something any rational, thinking human would actually do? Not so much. Don’t you hear adjectives?” She turned to face everyone else. “I took a nap on the beach and next thing I know a polite Italian ambulance driver is waking me up. The guy he landed on was the cameraman and his camera is now deep in the Mediterranean Sea, so we, thank God, don’t have video of it. Though if we did, I could lord it over him whenever he got out of line.” Cassidy was clearly enjoying herself. Quite happy with being right, she did nothing to halt the sharp rap Maria Amelia Avico Parrano landed on Russell’s cast each time he whined.

  “Are you trying to extend my lifespan or something?” Russell groused at his wife.

  Angelo shook his head and whispered to his friend, “Still a crazy thought, you being married.”

  Russell nodded in agreement and he studied his beer while Cassidy kept going. She was having way too much fun at Russell’s expense, which Angelo was trying not to laugh about in his friend’s face.

  “Hey, you’re the one who showed me that I loved you. So if you die before I do, I’m going to have to kill you.” Cassidy dipped up a cracker full of the Crab and Artichoke Dip clearly feeling she’d won the point.

  Angelo would have to agree that she would have to kill him, so, out of loyalty he kept his mouth shut. All he really wanted to do was run everything by Russell, but he couldn’t with his mother and Jo sitting right there. And he wasn’t so sure he wanted to talk about Jo with him anyway. He could hear Russell’s answer right now without asking.

  “She’s hot. You should go for her.”

  Not really helpful. The first part he couldn’t argue with. The second part he already knew, it just scared the crap out of him.

  Jo sat between his mother on one side and Cassidy and Perrin on the other. They were just far enough away that he couldn’t make out their soft conversation.