The Complete Where Dreams

by M. L. Buchman

  “Good. Alaska is very good,” Yuri sounded very pleased and leaned in a little closer.

  No, Alaska really sucked, but she wasn’t going to say that aloud.

  “You are a woman who it would be a pleasure to see more of, Jo.” The momentary dip of his eyes without lingering and his smile might have been charming under different conditions. Had they been sharing sushi at the Old Power House in Kodiak, it probably would have worked.

  Sitting in Angelo’s, he struck her as not quite coarse. That was the wrong word. Perhaps as a touch crass.

  “The case will take me more North Slope than southern coastal,” she did her best to backpedal. As if anywhere in Alaska was better than any other. She’d escaped at sixteen—her career constantly forcing her to return was not one of life’s little ironies—it was one of life’s monster-sized ironies.

  “It’s about the Arctic’s continental shelf rights. Who gets to drill how deep and just where do international waters begin when we’re talking about the mineral rights beneath the sea bed where everything converges toward the pole. The state, after losing to me so badly last year, wants me to protect their interests. They’ve learned that if the corporations don’t get what they want, the state won’t get their tax revenue.”

  “That is still good. You will fly through Juneau and I will meet you there. It will be good to see you more often and away from the laws, Jo.” And he sounded sincere.

  Jo knew what she was looking for in a man. The criteria would change in another three to five years. But for now, she was focused on her career and could afford to dally a bit here and there. When she was ready to settle down more permanently, then she’d pick a quiet, intelligent man. He’d be well-educated and have already passed through whatever crises men passed through. Then she’d think about family.

  Each thing in its order. It was a safe maxim, one she’d always liked. There was still plenty of time. She wouldn’t “settle” when she was making that final choice, not one little bit.

  That’s when she knew that Yuri would be sleeping alone tonight. Despite the romance that Cassidy’s wedding had briefly awakened in Jo’s heart, she wouldn’t settle even during the dating phase of her plan, and that’s what sleeping with Yuri would be. Not only wasn’t he Mister Right for the future, he wasn’t even Mister Right for the present.

  Thankfully, before she had to respond, the soup arrived. The aroma was rich, the fish broth revealing a depth that even her childhood-in-Alaska trained senses couldn’t fault. It was a cheerful mixture of clams, mussels, and salmon.

  Yuri took a spoonful first and nodded his head as if saying, “Good enough.”

  Jo felt a heat rise. Angelo’s cooking deserved more than a “good enough.” His ingredients were always the finest. The proteins were always finished impeccably and his seasoning balance was exquisite. He had been written up by so many critics that he was causing some embarrassment to the city’s other restaurateurs. For six months his write-ups had commanded as much print and blog presence as all of the others competing for the high-end market combined.

  She allowed herself a moment more to appreciate the scents and presentation of the soup. Even the dark blue stoneware bowl, that just happened to match the room’s paint accent, against the soft yellow tablecloths promised a depth that a white bowl would not have.

  The broth delivered its richness to her tongue as her nose had promised. Living through college with Cassidy, even before she became such a renowned food-and-wine critic, had trained Jo’s palate well. She could appreciate the interplay of the basil and oregano and the way they complemented the clam-based broth.

  Then it hit her. Square in the center of the tongue, the impossible-to-miss bright sweetness of sugar. It broke the broth. The dusky clam and the subtle salmon were washed beneath it like an ocean wave. Another spoonful from elsewhere in the bowl had the same issue.

  It was good. Would have been fine in some spaghetti-house type of restaurant, but it didn’t belong in Angelo’s.

  She barely paid attention once Yuri began creating a fantasy weekend of small fishing cabins along the Sitka shore during a Pacific winter storm. She’d always paid meticulous attention to not revealing her past. As far as anyone other than Cassidy and Perrin knew, Jo Thompson had been born the day she arrived at college.

  Yuri would have no way of knowing that she’d dedicated her younger existence to escape exactly such a place that he thought so charming. Since she escaped to college at sixteen after practically killing herself to skip two grades, she had never been back. She occasionally met her father in a restaurant in Ketchikan when she was flying through, but she never went back to the hovel filled with too much fish and too much alcohol. At least he’d been a quiet drunk, albeit a morose one.

  If Yuri thought he was painting a romantic scenario, he couldn’t be more completely wrong. He might have risen to a fishing consultant sought out by corporations and the media as an expert in the field. But at his core, he was still a fisherman who would be happiest out on his boat with the wheel in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other.

  After the soup, a tiny entremets arrived. Angelo had taken to adding little dishes between courses as accent marks, a common enough action in modern French cuisine, but he was perhaps the first to apply it to traditional Italian dining. Definitely the first to do it so successfully. The between-course dishes typically completed the last flavor of the prior course or hinted at the next. Occasionally, they stepped wholly out of the bounds of the meal and were brightly amusing which somehow heightened her awareness of the dishes to either side.

  This appeared to fall into the last category. Two delicate shrimp tempura on a single plate, set curve-to-curve so that they nestled together like a yin and yang symbol. They rested upon the sheerest smear of what might be a blackberry sauce set off by the perfectly white plate. The dish might be Japanese in form, but Jo would wager it had some Italian twist to the flavoring.

  She took hers, refusing to be embarrassed that Angelo had sent a lover’s dish to her table. The first taste pleased her, she’d been right about the blackberry sauce. The second almost made her gag. A sharp bite of plastic rolled along the edge of her tongue and even a swallow of the red wine did nothing to cut the acrid bitterness.

  Jo was going to kill him. This wasn’t only rude, it was downright nasty.

  An exclamation from the next table over drew her attention. A fork clattered down in disgust and a plate was shoved aside, though the others at the table continued to eat. The protesting patron had a different dish from the her own. Something wasn’t right.

  She looked about the room. Most people were continuing to eat, but here and there, plates were returning to the kitchen, their purported delicacies abandoned.

  That just didn’t happen here. At Angelo’s Tuscan Hearth, people mopped their plates clean with their bread so as not to lose the least drop of sauce. Working here as a dishwasher had to be one of the easiest jobs in the kitchen.

  Not tonight.

  But if it wasn’t personal… Jo began to worry.

  Something had definitely gone wrong in the kitchen.

  Chapter 3

  Muriel, Jo’s legal assistant for over five years, carried the towering woven-wicker basket into Jo’s office and set it on the corner of her broad oak-wood desk with a thud.

  Jo slapped a hand over her mouth too late to block a foul curse.

  Muriel stopped and stared at her, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear.”

  “Sorry. You can just take that right back out.” The thing was huge, brimming with flowers and sausages, bags of coffee and wedges of cheese. It was monstrous enough that there could be an entire ham hiding beneath the cheery multicolored cloth. It was late morning, only a little before lunch, and the waft of fresh-baked bread made her stomach growl. That woke up her whole system which then insisted on its desire for a deeply fatty and high-caloric lunch that it certainly was not going to receive, even if it filed a motion for summary judgment in st
ate court.

  Jo tried to look back down at the benthic map of the Arctic continental shelf that showed all of the undersea topographic ridges and valleys she’d been studying. The wicker basket’s base covered from Ivvavik Park in the Yukon clear over to Prudhoe Bay and well out to sea.

  “Don’t you even want to know who it’s from?”

  “An arrogant Russian who does not know the meaning of ‘just get on the stupid plane and go home’.” Suddenly Jo had far more of her assistant’s attention than she wanted. Suddenly her personal life was spinning out of her control and she was in over her head as if she were being pulled down a whirlpool. This was a not-familiar and highly-uncomfortable feeling. Normally it remained in the same perfect control as her career and her workout schedule.

  “Sorry,” Jo rubbed at her eyes. “Bad date last night. What part of ‘No!’ don’t men understand?”

  “Oh, they understand it just fine, except for its meaning and how to spell it.”

  Muriel Mendenbaum, despite her name, was sassy and youthful. Only a year younger, she somehow embodied a vitality that Jo kept committed to her career. The woman was also a gift in Jo’s life, they’d been through hell and back over their years together.

  Jo wished she was more like Muriel, so confident in all aspects of her life. Muriel talked easily about men and boundaries and good dates and bad. Jo merely felt awkward and so made a point of moving slowly. That had labeled her as overly choosy or, at times, arrogant. Neither was right at all, except perhaps for the choosy part.

  She’d hit college at sixteen and been lost in all of the flirting and boy-baiting confidence of the eighteen-year-old’s world. She’d found a decent guy and latched onto him for safety. Latched on so hard that she hadn’t figured out how to let go of him except by graduating four years later and moving across the country. Richard had been decent, but not exciting, definitely not a keeper. A decade gone and he still e-mailed her occasionally, especially after a bad breakup, which she studiously ignored.

  Muriel stood now with her short, dark hair tucked behind her ears, a pink cotton sleeveless blouse with lace shoulders, and a smart black skirt with a flirty hem. She also had her hands fisted on her hips. Jo knew her assistant well enough to know that Muriel would plant herself by Jo’s desk until she had the whole story, or at least enough to satisfy.

  “Whereas I see you have a date tonight.” Jo tried to turn the subject with the compliment to her nice clothes.

  Muriel just shook her head no. Not no to the date, but no to Jo’s lame evasion.

  One of the newbie associates rushed in. She’d hoped for a reprieve, but all he needed was a signature on one of the smaller research matters she’d subbed out to him. He was gone almost before he arrived.

  Jo would like to claim she had to get back to work, but Muriel knew Jo’s workload better than anyone, frequently even Jo. They both understood that the large map spread across her desk only meant that the first files hadn’t started arriving yet. She needed to get the lay of the land, but there was no rush.

  Even looking out the corner office windows over Elliot Bay and the Seattle waterfront didn’t offer any nice distracting topics. Where was a blizzard when you needed one, who cared if this was June?

  “Let me simply say that the meal was not good. Then I almost had to deliver a slap to force him to back off at the front door of my condo.”

  “Maybe you should have taken him to that place you like so much. The Italian one.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” She wasn’t going to mention that she had. The entrée at least had been marvelous, almost as good as the meals she’d had with Cassidy attending. And dessert had finally swept Yuri’s attention from her to his food, he couldn’t stop saying how deep and rich the chocolate torte was and how the brandy was the perfect match.

  Her espresso had been scorched to sludge and the Sweet Ricotta and Meyer Lemon over Amaretti had been so sour she could still feel the dry pucker at the back of her throat. She’d have liked to taste Yuri’s dish just to be sure it was okay, but by that time she hadn’t wanted the implied intimacy and begged off as being full.

  When she didn’t eat even a second spoonful of her own dessert, he teased her about it. She’d considered digging out a bit of the amaretti cookie, but they were too soggy to make it worth eating one to shut him up. He’d put the final nail in his own coffin with some remark about her girlish figure. She knew she was a full-figured gal, he didn’t need to hammer on the point.

  “It was Yuri, from Ketchikan.”

  “Ooo, good-looking Russian.” Muriel almost chortled then caught herself. “But you didn’t drag him into your lair.”

  Jo actually laughed at the image. She’d never “dragged a man into her lair.” But the way Muriel said it, perhaps she should try it someday. She made it sound fun.

  “No, I didn’t. I sent him to his hotel and wished him good travels. He was deeply shocked. Why do men assume that a pleasant meal is always a coquettish invitation to crawl into a woman’s bed?”

  “Sure, guys are like that. They go from having a sure-thing-with-an-incredibly-hot-and-voluptuous-high-powered-attorney fantasy one moment, to boring-night-all-alone-and-not-understanding-or-willing-to-admit-why reality the next. For some reason, it’s always a shock to their system.”

  “Anyway,” Jo glared at the basket towering above her. “The last thing I want from him is a gift basket.”

  “Well, how convenient that it isn’t from him.”

  Jo held out her hand and Muriel dropped the card into her palm.

  “PPM.” Calligraphied on heavy ivory stock. The paper looked like one of those artisanal, handmade cards. “Nothing else?”

  Muriel shook her head, though clearly she knew something more, she wasn’t going to give it over that easily.

  Jo puzzled at the card for a long moment. “I’m assuming that the Presidential Pet Museum is not soliciting my services.”

  “Nor the Progressive Party of the Maldives,” was Muriel’s comeback.

  Jo wondered if she’d Googled that just to have it ready, or if the woman had already known about it, or made it up. Jo decided it was better not to know. Muriel’s smile said she was clearly enjoying her boss’ confusion.

  But even as Muriel opened her mouth, Jo made the connection. She stood up and looked down into the basket. Whoever had assembled the basket had raided every shop in Pike Place Market. Okay, there were something on the order of two hundred of them, so they’d raided a quarter of the shops, still the bounty was amazing. The cloth covering the gifts wasn’t just a remnant of fabric, it was a splendid piece of local weaving. A pound of Market Tea. A salami from the meat merchant, traditional cookies from the Italian grocery. The treats kept going as they probed the contents.

  She hoped there wasn’t a dead fish somewhere in the depths. She pulled back the corner of the cloth. Actually, there was a dead fish, but it was a teriyaki-and-ginger smoked salmon which sounded delicious. Fresh bread from the French baker’s stall had been the cause of her stomach’s growling.

  It was a bounty on a glorious scale. Even splitting it fifty-fifty with Muriel, this was going to last a while. Maybe they should bonus some of it to the junior lawyers she’d be chewing up on the Alaska case to ease their upcoming pain.

  “No other note?”

  Muriel shook her head. She reached down and pulled out a local artisanal chocolate bar, seventy-percent dark with Bing cherry and marzipan filling.

  “It’s never too early for chocolate,” Jo nodded for her to open it. They broke off squares and tapped them together like champagne flutes. They shared a moment of respectful silence as the flavors bloomed in their mouths.

  “Ah!”

  Muriel’s soft exclamation echoed Jo’s feelings exactly.

  “Now, what do they want?” Jo noted her own curse and ignored Muriel’s pretend shock.

  “Maybe the Market’s administrators are just being freakishly nice?” Muriel dug around some more and held up a coupon from the Parrot
Store for a free parakeet. “After all, you redid their lease agreements for them.”

  “That was months ago.”

  They uncovered several more stunning delicacies and a really nice pair of earrings that they joked about arm wrestling for, which Jo resolved by putting them on. But no further information.

  When Jo’s phone rang, Muriel answered it. After listening for a moment, she handed it across the desk.

  Jo met Renée Linden at the Maximilien French Restaurant for lunch. The Executive Director of the Pike Place Market had deftly avoided Jo’s queries on the phone as to the lunch’s purpose with a skill that was easy for a trial attorney to appreciate.

  They were seated at an immaculate table set on the restaurant’s second story, nestled up against the glass that fronted much of this side of the Market. Beyond lay the spread of the Seattle waterfront. From the giant Ferris wheel to the south, past the ferry docks in the foreground, and West Seattle rising like an island in the midst of Puget Sound. Beyond the docks lay the sweeping expanse of Elliot Bay and the majestic Olympic mountains still sporting their glittering white glacial caps despite the June heat. It was one of the finest views in Seattle and Jo let herself be swept up by it.

  “I’m so glad you could join me on such short notice.”

  Maybe Jo shouldn’t get swept up too easily. This was Renée Linden across the table.

  Jo’s Friday lunch plans had transformed and her stomach was going to get what it asked for after all. She’d planned on a cup of soup and a workout at the gym, a rare midday luxury that only happened briefly between cases when her schedule had a little flexibility. Now, she would be power-lunching over a three-course French meal. It was almost as well that her dessert had been awful last night, at least she’d saved those calories. Tonight she’d have that cup of soup and gym workout to balance this splurge.