Where Dreams Are Written

by M. L. Buchman

  “Right. Sorry.” He came around the counter and bent down to give her a hug and a European-style peck upon each cheek. He kissed her on the forehead for good measure. It was only after he did so that he felt the heat rising to his cheeks. He’d never hugged Maria before, felt he barely knew her.

  “Good, boy.” Maria waved him toward the coffee pot. “You’re family now, you can get your own coffee.” She returned to rolling out the dough, then looked up at him as he stood rooted to the ground. Maria smiled and patted his cheek with a floured hand.

  He shuffled off to get his coffee. By the time he returned to the stool he’d occupied yesterday, a pair of cornetti were waiting on a plate. Even the walk and the strong coffee weren’t enough to clear his head.

  “What are you doing to me, Maria?” She’d cast some sort of strange spell over him and he couldn’t shake it off.

  “Me. I do nothing. You do it to yourself.”

  “If that’s true, then I’m in real trouble.”

  Her laughter was bright and musical.

  “I can’t believe some cad married you before I came along.”

  “Ah,” her smile turned radiant. “Hogan Stanford is the perfect man for me. Fear not, you will find the perfect woman for you.”

  “I did,” his own bitterness mixed with the next sip of coffee and he set it down with an overloud clatter in the quiet kitchen, only barely managing to not spill it again.

  “No. You may think you did, but she proved you wrong. It is clear just from looking at you that she is the one who left, more the foolish woman. The right woman does not do such a thing. Men are often foolish, but a smart woman would know what she had and keep it close.”

  He was tired of telling the story, of defending Constance. Even as he had the thought, he recalled Melanie’s fingertips on his lips. And then her kiss. It was totally inappropriate. He didn’t want a rebound relationship, especially not with Melanie because she deserved so much more than assuaging his need to be with someone again—no matter how briefly.

  But—and he tried his best to ignore the feeling of disloyalty to Constance—Melanie’s kiss was far more powerful than her beauty. One of them had moaned with how glorious it felt, and he still wasn’t sure whether or not it was him. The sheer power of his desire to devour the woman on the spot had been so startling that it was enough to break the spell of that brief kiss, at least for that sufficient instant to allow him to step back.

  “Well,” Maria was staring at him with her hands resting on her hips, “that was clearly a very pleasant thought.” Her smile said that she knew much more than she was saying. Well, he didn’t want to hear it.

  “Perhaps I should go write.”

  Maria returned to her preparations for the day, “If you can.”

  Unwilling to face that question either, he retreated to the darkened restaurant and the table that Angelo had said was his. He sat down and began setting up.

  Maria followed moments later with the coffee and untouched cornetti that he’d forgotten to take with him. She gave him a hug from the side and kissed him on top of the head.

  “Such a good boy.”

  He watched her walking back to the kitchen. What did she know that he didn’t?

  “Perrin, I need to see those e-mails,” Melanie had done it. It had only taken ten minutes walking around the Belltown neighborhood before entering Perrin’s Glorious Garb, but she’d found the nerve somewhere.

  Perrin flapped a hand toward a stack of paper at the corner of the cutting table. “I printed them all.” She had finished clearing the far end of the table and fluffed out a couple yards of royal blue. A tall pile of jewel tones stood as a protective barricade between them down the middle of the table.

  Karissa and Clem glanced at her with interest, but then each noticed that the other had stopped working, so they both returned to the woman’s business suit they were copying in two different sizes—a little competition was a useful thing. The suit hanging on the rack between them was a powder blue, with a thin black pinstripe that just reeked of femininity and power. The overall cut and lapels were so retro that they could well be the next “new.”

  Melanie turned from the enticement of closer inspection, or perhaps trying it on. She could see on the rack just how masterful she’d look in it. With a dark-charcoal blouse for daytime and the jacket open, without the blouse and the jacket buttoned in the evening—the closures high enough that even a strongly figured woman could wear it. Most clothes like this could only be worn by the most flat-chested. Perrin designed for women who had shape as well.

  By the time Melanie had finished her inspection, Perrin was whacking at the royal blue with a rotary cutter. Smooth efficient slices with no pattern. Were the designs so clear in her head that she could cut them freehand, or was that only for mockup? Melanie was a little too daunted to ask, just in case Perrin really was that skilled.

  Perrin was so studiously ignoring her, that Melanie knew every move she made was being closely observed.

  Melanie turned to the stack of e-mails and began to read. There were many more e-mails than there had been letters, but the quality was mostly lower. She rapidly sorted aside the stupid “offers” from agents and managers who wanted to control Perrin for however much they could bleed out of her. Two she didn’t simply set aside, she tore them to shreds and threw them in the garbage. She knew those scam artists and didn’t want their name in Perrin’s shop—what they’d done to some models they’d managed to latch onto had been horrible, career-ruining horrible.

  “These two names, and I will give you a list of three more, you must delete their e-mail as soon as it arrives. They are pollutants, not people.”

  “What names?”

  Melanie rattled them off, added another for good measure. “I will write them for you so that you do not forget.”

  “No need, I’ve got it. Thanks, I was worried about that kind of thing.”

  Melanie never needed to write down such things either. Her respect for Perrin’s mind went up another small notch. How much had she made the same mistake about Perrin that others made about her? They saw the flighty artist and missed the sharp businesswoman so easily.

  Well, she would take a lesson from Joshua and no longer underestimate Perrin. It would be difficult, Perrin’s chosen self-protective persona was as polished as her own.

  Back to the e-mails. The wanna-be designers were all so overeager. Some of the more professional ones had included images from their collections. On one set of images, which didn’t have an attached e-mail, Perrin had made some notes down the side. The designs were interesting, but the eye was young. Perrin designed for women, but this designer sketched for teens. And did it well.

  “Perrin, whose are these? If you ever want to do a youth line, you might consider hiring this designer. It would be a very fine place for beginning.”

  Until that moment, Perrin had been assiduously focused on cutting and pinning more of the royal blue. As soon as Melanie held up the sketches, Perrin stopped and her entire manner shifted. Her smile was huge, “Those are Tammy’s.”

  Melanie looked at them again in awe, “I thought she was thirteen.”

  “Fourteen next month.”

  “Merde!”

  “I stuck them in hoping you’d like them. I can’t judge because I love her too much. I never imagined a step-daughter. Actually she’s my daughter since I adopted her the same day Bill married me, but that freaks me out too much to really think about. She’s young enough that I could have had her if I’d had her while still in high school. But a step-daughter, okay, daughter who is so skilled at design already just makes me all…” Perrin did a shimmy that might have been a lot like a firecracker about to explode.

  “They are: well done, creative, age-appropriate,” she ticked off on her fingers, trying not to feel as if she was channeling Joshua’s passion for numbered lists. “You seriously need to consider these designs as the basis for a product line. A separate product line.”

 
“Her own line?” Perrin tasted the idea and stared at the ceiling as she toyed with the idea.

  Melanie realized just how little prepared Perrin was for what was about to happen to her; no matter how smart. That should have been an automatic next-step thought, instead it had to be given to her to think about.

  Melanie went back to her sorting. Several of the e-mails were overlaps with the letters. She checked the dates; frustrated by no response to their electronic messages, they had gone to paper-based pleas. But for the most part, there were at least as many new opportunities here as in the folder. If only twenty percent of these came through, Perrin’s business wasn’t going to grow, it was going to skyrocket upward. Whereas her own was…

  Melanie clambered off the stool and to her feet. She looked for somewhere else to sit, but realized she didn’t want to sit. She didn’t want to sew. She saw Perrin—still glowing from the compliment to her new daughter—leaning in to explain a particularly tricky pattern piece to Karissa and Clem.

  The soft-rap tune on the radio was getting on her nerves; something about a geek in pink. Next one would be about models no one wanted to see any longer.

  Out front would be no better. From here she could see customers in the front of the shop. There was so much purpose here, everyone had something to do and she…was useless.

  Melanie had never been useless. More importantly, she would never again depend upon another person for her state of mind. She closed the folders, picked up her bag, and wished Perrin À bientôt. No one on the outside looking at her must ever know what was wrong.

  Yet Perrin clearly sensed something by her surprised expression, but Melanie made it out the door before it registered fully enough for Perrin to do more than look at her oddly. A clean getaway.

  That’s what she had to do. She had to get away. She didn’t belong here. She belonged in… She didn’t even know where the swimsuit shoot was this year. That was insider-only knowledge, and for eight straight years she’d been in the know.

  Well, the magazines weren’t going to control her mind either. Her mother had done her best to twist and control Melanie’s mind, as well as Melanie’s body to her own ends. That too was done. So, perfectly in control—calm, collected, and throwing a walk that made men stop and stare—she strode past the shops of Belltown and then headed south.

  It was late morning. Hole-in-the-wall restaurants were blocking as much of the sidewalk as they dared with small steel tables and artfully rusting chairs throwing off her purposeful stride. Little boutiques were displaying wares not half the quality of Perrin’s. These were shops she might have normally browsed, but it would be a pointless waste.

  When she reached Pike Place Market it meant she was a third of the way back to the condo. She would pack, find a flight, and go home. Hopefully she would get there before the wave of depression crushed down on her and left her unpresentable to friends and fodder for her worst enemies, the paparazzi. With a single unguarded moment, they could capture and damage a career, even one like hers. And news of the swimsuit issue loss would be out by now. Add that into…

  She stopped. She couldn’t breathe. Bending over to rest her hands on her knees, her hair almost brushing the dirty cobbles, didn’t help. All she could see was the cobblestones. No air. She leaned against a handy wall until her head stopped spinning enough for her to think. To recognize where she was so that she could continue on her way. She was in front of…

  Angelo’s?

  She’d been headed to the condo; straight down First Avenue. How had she ended up in the heart of Pike Place Market? Granted it was only a block aside from her escape route… Oh. Some part of her that was still functioning knew she should say merci to Maria and au revoir to Joshua. He hadn’t been at the condo when she woke, so maybe he was here writing.

  Josh looked up from the pit of despair into the warm sunshine of hope. The transition was a shock to both his brain and his libido. If yesterday his writing had been crap, this morning he had crawled into the outhouse, then ducked down the hole for a long swim.

  He took a moment to appreciate the wonder that was Melanie. Her casual wear could shame, well, any supermodel that wasn’t her and all mere mortals. Rumpled leather cavalier boots to mid-calf, skinny jeans that showed the advantage of perfect legs even when hidden away, a sunshine yellow blouse whose loose form didn’t reveal, but a sharp leather vest that suggested very strongly. And those eyes. Cornflower blue offset against her light golden hair.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Thank god.”

  She looked at him quizzically.

  “I think Mama Maria put a special hex on me. If yesterday was crap, today is completely unmentionable in decent company.” He slapped his laptop in his bag and rose to his feet.

  It was only when he was standing eye to eye with her that he saw the stiffly square set of her shoulders, the grim determination in her look. He knew that look. Head down and striding straight into a headwind come hell or damnation. It was the only way he’d survived the last three months.

  Her words finally registered. She was leaving? Like leaving Seattle? Nope. Not no way. Not no how. He didn’t know why the voice in his head was so vehement on that point, but it was.

  “Uh huh. Leaving? Good. Let’s go.” Purposely misunderstanding her. He offered his arm, and when she hesitated, he took her hand and tucked it into his elbow simply because he wanted to. She left it there as he guided her out of the restaurant. He liked the sense of connection.

  She seemed almost nerveless, even ethereal as he led her down the rough brick of Post Alley. The late morning crowd of tourists swirled about them. The piano guy had his little roll-around upright piano on a street corner and was knocking out a very creditable version of Joplin’s The Entertainer. Josh tossed his spare change in the busker’s bucket; he didn’t want to risk dislodging Melanie’s hand to reach for his wallet.

  In silence he led her deeper into the Market. He’d expected her to unravel at least a little bit as they moseyed past the overflowing flower stands, but their lush scents and brilliant sprays of color didn’t touch her.

  So, keeping them in pace with the slow-moving crowd—but not stopping to admire the sights—they were soon clear of the flower, produce, and artisanal sausage merchants. They bypassed the pasta stall with over thirty flavors of pasta from chocolate to strawberry to—he had to glance over his shoulder to be sure of the last—licorice. He made a note to try that someday, perhaps paired with honeyed peaches for a dessert—the black pasta and golden fruit making an interesting contrast. Down the stairs by the tea merchant, they passed the parrot store and a bagel shop.

  It only took a few minutes before he had led her under the viaduct highway, across Alaskan Way, and out onto the vacant Pier 62. All of the other piers along Seattle’s deep waterfront were filled with tourist or commerce activities: restaurants, giant Ferris wheel, ferry terminal, the Seattle Aquarium. For some reason this pier and the adjoining one created a couple of acres of unoccupied rough wood planking. A few people wandered the open expanse, but it was actually a very private place right at the heart of the Northwest’s largest city.

  He led her out to the far corner of the pier. Behind them the city soared and bustled. Ahead of them the dark blue waters of Elliot Bay were dotted with green-trimmed white ferries, container ships headed for the big orange port cranes to the left, a couple of sailboats skimming along under the light breeze. A massive cruise ship was just pulling away from the next pier to the north. The city proper was bordered to the south and north by house-dappled hills, straight ahead the snow-capped peaks of the Olympic Mountains were so bright in the sun that it was hard to look at them.

  Melanie remained beside him, unmoving, unspeaking.

  Josh bided his time, letting the soothing breeze—pleasantly cool off the water on a calm day—wash over them. When he turned at last to face her, because he couldn’t stand not seeing her a moment longer, she looked a little calmer.

  “Okay, Ms. Secretly-I’
m-a-mess-no-matter-how-incredibly-I-present-myself-to-the-world. What happened?”

  In answer, Melanie simply turned into his arms and lay her head on his shoulder. She clung to him as if he were the Rock of Gibraltar rather than a lost soul himself. Well, if she needed him to be strong, he would be.

  His arms naturally slid around her and he came to appreciate so many things at once. Slender yet strong, hair even softer than it looked, just meant to be stroked gently, and he was right the first time—she absolutely smelled of hope, hope and summertime.

  Melanie could feel the day brightening, one tiny bit at a time. She knew she was being irrational, knew her past wasn’t really a vicious bounty hunter seeking to repossess her soul; it only felt that way. Except it didn’t feel that way with Joshua.

  From the moment she’d taken his arm, it was as if all her willpower was gone. Her panic-level desperation to run, to get somewhere safe, had simply drained away. When she was losing control, he had simply taken it. Then he’d led her here where the people didn’t press about her so.

  She had meant to give him a brief hug of thanks, but her body had other ideas and she’d clung to him like a lover, never wanting to move again. His arms were strong, solid. His shoulder perfect to lean her cheek on. Right at the base of his neck was a place she could go to hide for a long, long time. Not even to hide. She could almost…what? Be content here?

  His skin was warm against her nose and forehead. His soft dark hair, which needed a trim soon, tickled her temple. Her nose couldn’t place him except to say, “male.” Joshua exuded “strong male” as if it were a new designer fragrance. So, instead of a brief hug or a tentative embrace, she simply allowed herself to appreciate the soft stroke of his hands down her back. To enjoy the moment.

  Before she was ready, his chest rumbled with the repeated voicing of his question. How was she supposed to know what happened? She’d simply needed get away before the world collapsed on her head.