Where Dreams Are Born (Angelo's Hearth) (31 page)

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, 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 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. The three women had gotten over the self-consciousness that usually caused amateur shoots to look so stiff and miserable by the second or third clothing change.

The three women 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, though Perrin definitely took the lead there. When, in an unthinking moment, he’d 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 wield
ed 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, 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. In the short last 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. Tied the excess off to the boom.

Jo came up first. A black sheath that followed every curve perfectly. That 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, some subtle, some 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 tango, the reserved woman released by the dress and his request. Her hair swep
t back along the deck, her body arched in pleasure, passion, 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 whirling 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.

Perrin had been very strict about that. She didn’t care what others thought about her, but she didn’t want to embarrass her two friends. Her love for them went as deep as his for Angelo, deeper.

In their various meetings preparing for this shoot, she’d slowly revealed 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 all 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 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 silver neck chain.

Not that she didn’t look absolutely incredible. But it 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 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 calico 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 into 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 placed a big, sloppy, wet 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 still invited him to be with her.

“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. Not that they shut him out. Not that he didn’t belong.

No. He sat outside himself, observing, amazed. He truly did belong.

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. They simply exited the Straits and turned south at the Point Wilson light to head for Seattle.

The dormant light served as a medical clinic and barracks for the Fort Casey gun emplacements during WWII. 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.

Dearest Ice Sweet,

It’s funny. By the time you’re reading this, I’ll have been dead for most of a year. Time is a strange thing. Life speeds up and slows down. Maddeningly slowly when there is pain and sorrow. A blur through the good times. It should be the other way around.

With your mother gone, I thought my life was over. Knowles Valley Vines was lost, both parents-in-law and my wife gone. Yet those years were so busy. They’d be hard to remember if they hadn’t been so full. The daughter I’d left in my wife’s care needed a father.

I’d thought about moving, you were young enough, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. But where? There had been so much heartbreak in the California soil, I couldn’t drag you back there. Besides, I didn’t want to work for someone else on “my” land. I had no family on either side, so I stayed where I was as much by default as anything else.

The vineyards needed my attention. The vines were finally producing. I mixed in Northwest flavors, strawberry, blackberry. I did some of the marketing your mother had suggested: Eagle White, Dugout Rose, Olympics Red were all hers.

They were full, wonderful years. Watching you grow was an education in itself. Your mother had left behind a huge collection of books. You started devouring them thinking they were mine, but that was your dead mother passing on her greatest joy to you. To us. I read like mad to keep up with you. I’m glad that we were able to share that part of our path.

If I could wish anything, it was that you had stayed in the vineyards with me. I think we could have had such a rich life there. I wanted to leave the vineyards to you, but you had your own plans. I sold them for a lot of money, from struggling to very comfortable in a single moment, a shock to an old man late in life. Enough to set you up for many years to come, but you know that by now, assuming my medical bills don’t wipe it out.

We’ve walked together a long way, let’s not stop just yet.

Love you, Ice Sweet

Vic

Cassidy folded the letter and slipped it back into her pocket.

“A long way, Daddy.” This year had been both slow and fast. It had been such a mix that she barely knew what to make of it. The loss of her father, enough money to live off for a decade without any other income, her increasing fame as a columnist, and Russell.

Dear Russ
ell. He sat a dozen yards away facing Puget Sound, carefully not looking her direction. The water stretched from Admiralty Head here to the Port Townsend light ten miles away on the Olympic Peninsula. His unease showed in the way he plucked strands of grass from the high bluff edge, worried them into thin strips with his fingernail before pitching them off the edge. Did he even notice that the sea breeze up the cliff face was lifting his offerings and dumping them behind him?

“Hey there.”

He jerked around at her call. Hustling over he almost sat, then stood again. She patted the grass and he thudded down beside her.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, no gut wrencher this time. Just about my growing up and how much he enjoyed those years.”

He pulled her over and kissed the top of her head. “I’m glad. You didn’t need another like the last one. I’m still angry about that. Hell of a bomb to leave in a letter, coward’s way out.”

That was her Russell. He was all straight-ahead and forthright, as strong and straight as the lighthouse that rose three-stories high behind them. It had made perfect sense to her, but she’d never been able to explain it to Russell’s satisfaction.

Her father was gentle and considerate. He wouldn’t risk their last weeks together with a fight. If he’d been accusatory or angry, he’d have put it in the first letter, not waited until August. She was glad she’d opened the letters one a month. If she’d read some of this right after his death, she’d have been hurt much more. And
really pissed.

“I hear that you’ve got more business.” Some things it was simply better not to talk about.

He pulled another grass blade and started his inattentive dissection.

“The head of a small consortium of stores were eating at Angelo’s, attracted by my ads. He told them about Perrin’s. Turns out she shops there, because of the ads.” He shrugged, those big shoulders rising unevenly then settling only part way back.

“Then why did you say yes?”

Again the shrug. “Well, I’m still a month or so from getting the boat ready. And I want to take another navigation class or two. Gives me something to do.”

She nodded, not wanting to push. She had enough worries of her own. But she was worried about the hunch as he sat. And she was worried about him sailing off into the sunset and what that might mean to them, though they’d agreed to not discuss such things.

“I got an interesting phone call this morning.”

He half turned his head to show he was listening, but he didn’t stop his botanical experiments. The scent of new-mown grass escaped from his little cuttings.

“From Italy.”

Another blade went flying only to be grabbed by the breeze up the face of the eighty-foot cliff and tossed behind him. Another tiny offering at the base of the lighthouse.

“Sienna.”

“What’s there?”

“Montalcino wines.”

“And this means?” He still wasn’t looking at her.

“The Italians heard I was talking to Mondavi and they want a shot at me.” It was kind of nice to be wanted. Even though her mind was made up, at least if she were going to make the change. She’d thought Mondavi’s treatment of her in June was wooing a wine reviewer.

Last week they called with a much more serious offer. They offered to create a new position specifically for her, wine director. She’d bring her palate to the vintner’s aid, her writing to marketing’s aid, and her insights to the winery’s aid. A hand in shaping one of the finest wineries in America. They’d invited her down for the harvest as a “get to know each other.”

The wine-column world was great, but it was limited. She saw that now. Russell had been onto it way back at the beginning
and her dad agreed with him. Wine reviewers lived on the outside looking in and, now that she was aware of it, she hated that feeling. She wanted to be in the game, effecting decisions, shaping flavors, accentuating the superb, casting out the ordinary.

“Sienna?” His attention shifted at last to her face.

“I’m not really interested, but they were very persuasive. I’m going to California during the harvest in a couple of weeks, so I’ll just fly to Italy from there, maybe catch their harvest time as well.”

“Sounds good.”

# # #

But it wasn’t. Russell couldn’t think of a thing to say all the way home. Neither of them was grumpy. Cassidy had tried to start the conversation a couple of times, but it always fizzled out. As much her doing as his. It wasn’t a comfortable silence, but it was a companionable one, each lost in their own thoughts.

He’d dropped her at the condo to write her next column, she might come by the boat later. They spent most nights together, as often as not on the boat. They both claimed it was to keep Nutcase company, but he didn’t sleep well in high-rise condos and they both knew it.

California. Italy. Even if she stayed in Se
attle or went back to New York, her life was on land, attached to root and vine.

His future was on the ocean.

The more he thought about that though, the less comfortable it was. He enjoyed the photography. He’d really liked working with Angelo and Perrin. They’d been fun and made him feel good about himself and about what he could do. The boat would be done soon, as done as wooden sailboats ever were. And he liked knowing the local waters. They were familiar and comfortable.

The consortium of little stores might be fun. But he hadn’t told her about the
Seattle City Trade Association that had approached him about a national campaign. He’d turned them down cold despite the vast sums in their advertising budget. He didn’t do the ads for Angelo or Perrin for the money. The SCTA was maybe a little more personal than a BMW and a Rolex, but maybe not. Maybe it was the same thing, just wrapped up in the softer, kinder style of the Pacific Northwest.

Was the sailing just another escape? Another way to not have to truly make a decision about his life? But that didn’t feel right either. He was far happier on the boat than he’d ever been on dry land.

He fed Nutcase out in the cockpit, grabbed at a beer, and cracked open a fresh tube of Ritz crackers.

Perry moseyed by and Russell called him over. “Got something I’ve been meaning to give you.”

He ducked below and grabbed the small album and another beer.

Perry came aboard and was trying to feed a cracker to Nutcase.

“Don’t get her started on my private stash.”

“Not interested anyway.” He ate the cracker himself and opened the beer with a nod of thanks.

“Finally figured out what you were talking about. Made this for you to say thanks.” He handed the album to him. It was a small one, one picture on each facing page, forty photos in all.

Perry opened to the first page. A photo of Nutcase, curled up in her cardboard box, not much bigger than the lens cap he’d tucked beside her for scale.

The next pages were her discovering the boat. And him discovering his companion. He knew the rest by heart as Perry paged through the book.

Nutcase s
leeping on the boom, another looking out at the lighthouses. A look of fascination, then of terror at a breaching orca. Arguing with a seagull twice her size at close enough range Russell hadn’t been sure whether or not to run to her aid. But she’d won handily, protecting their boat like a hissing hellcat, the seagull flapping off his bowsprit perch in disgust.

The final picture hadn’t been his, but it was arguably the best of the lot. Cassidy had been behind the camera. He’d been asleep on the deck. Nutcase asleep on his chest. The high cliffs and towering Destruction Island lighthouse visible as a soft background. A blow-up of that one hung in his cabin, right next to the final one of Cassidy and Nutcase from Perrin’s photo shoot.

Perry stood and went below without asking permission. It was just the way the old man was. He was harmless, so it was easy to ignore his eccentricities. Maybe he needed to use the head.

He came back on deck and held the closed book with both hands for a moment. Then he returned it to Russell.

“No, it’s yours. I made it for you.”

The old man shook his head. Took a couple of the Ritz crackers, raised his beer in a salute, and stepped off the boat. When he was even with Russell, standing on the finger pier, he took a long swallow of his beer. The old blue eyes wrinkled in what Russell had learned was a smile.

“The Sailing Cat. First in a series. Big hit.” Then he was gone.

# # #

Russell played with Nutcase a little, finished his beer, and idly flipped through the album in the failing light of the day. Perry was right. New York would eat it up. He’d send it to Arnie and she’d have it sitting next to every bookstore cash register in the country by Christmas.

At the second to last page, there was the photo of Nutcase sleeping on his chest. He could have sworn he’d put that one at the end. He turned to the final page.

There she was. Cassidy, in that incredible evening gown, the boat and the city a soft backdrop, Nutcase curled up in her arms. The look on her face still blew him away. He thought he’d photographed love before, but this was as if he’d only photographed the word itself and here was the true emotion. There was love, humor, passion, and, something indescribable. Whatever it was, it made him feel incredible that for even that instant of time it had been aimed at him.

Perry had nailed it. Her entry into his life made the book complete, made it personal, told the story. It would go ballistic.

Stowing the crackers, he locked the cabin and headed for Cassidy’s. He couldn’t lose her to some status-seeking California winery. Couldn’t lose her to a bunch of high-rolling Italians. Screw their tacit agreement to not discuss the future. There had to be a way to keep her and he was going to do something about it now.

He punched in her keycode at the lobby entry and made it all the way to her door, had even raised his hand to knock, before the absurdity of the situation sunk in.

Since when had he ever said the right thing? He should go consult with Angelo. Or should he? His friend had talked about Jo enough, but hadn’t done anything. Granted, his restaurant was taking off. Really taking off. Cassidy had done another write-up and this one had caught the attention of the magazines. Suddenly
Sunset,
Conde Nast,
and
Cigar
were coming out to write up “Angelo’s Tuscan Hearth” above and beyond Cassidy’s column. Maybe now wasn’t the best time to get advice on how to handle his girlfriend.

Girlfriend. He’d had lovers, but not a girlfriend. At least not since high school. Natasha
Beckworth, senior prom. Though she’d been a lover, too. Maybe more lover and less girlfriend. Great sex, but he couldn’t remember a thing about what she did or didn’t like.

He knocked.

No answer.