The patrons weren’t lined up at the door, they were lined up at the kitchen window. He’d sometimes left it cracked open to let the cooking scents spill out into the alley as an advertisement. Now, someone had installed a small counter that stuck out from the window sill and the window sash itself was slid all of the way up.
He stumbled to a halt at the edge of the crowd and stared.
Inside the window sat his mother. She wore a deep purple dress that clung to her curves and exposed a cleavage worthy of Sophia Loren. Her laugh sparkled out.
A smiling customer left the line and passed Angelo. She bore a tiny cup of espresso and a flaky cornetto, an Italian croissant filled with, he didn’t need to lean in close to see, he could smell the sweet Italian sausage and pepper.
There was no posted menu, just a sign that said, “$3” next to a jar. He noticed that most people slipped in a five anyway and left happy. His mother’s charm was apparently sufficient for the two-dollar tip. Even at five dollars, it was a bargain. The cornetti were large, flaky, and still steaming. The espresso was dark, rich, and served in an amount a little bigger than an Italian portion but not so big as an American one.
He slipped into the restaurant. There she sat, perched on her stool by the window. Her bare legs casually crossed and exposed by a knee-length skirt that rode just up on her thighs. She wasn’t racy, but she was a fair amount too attractive, for even an Italian mother, and especially for his mother. He slipped up across from her and leaned against the window’s wall, pretty much out of view of the customers.
“You’re not going to make much money that way, Mama,” he whispered just loud enough for her to hear in between customers.
“Sweetheart, I am losing you money.” She smiled as if that were the goal.
But Angelo knew better. He left Maria Amelia to charm the next early morning patron after taking a cornetto and espresso for himself and leaving an, “I love you, Mama,” behind. He strolled over to Manuel as he enjoyed the rich sausage in the almost painfully warm pastry.
“Better gear up, Manuel. We’ve got another lunch rush coming.”
Manuel just smiled at him, took a bite of his own, almost-finished cornetto, and went back to work. Angelo pulled on an apron. He’d spent the night with a woman who presented more mystery and fascination after being with her, rather than less as usually seemed to be the case. His mouth was watering for the next bite of his second breakfast. His mother was actually fitting in at his restaurant. And they were about to get hammered by a massive lunch rush.
It was a very good day.
Chapter 18
Cutters Crabhouse was their go-to bar when they needed to talk. Jo and Perrin had met here on and off for years. Then when Cassidy had returned to Seattle to be with her ailing father and purchased a condo practically next door, it had become a fixture in their lives. Whenever someone had a crisis or a triumph, commiseration and celebration were handed out in equal shares at Cutter’s.
The outer bar was lively, as it was one of those places that urban professionals went to see and be seen, which could be very fun. But it also allowed them to slip into the anonymity of the crowd, each clustered in small but very watchful groups, and gain a pleasant level of privacy. Good cocktails, great appetizers, and what Cassidy acknowledged as an acceptable wine cellar certainly helped.
It also sat a block from both Jo’s office and Cassidy’s condo and only three from Perrin’s Glorious Garb in Belltown with her apartment above her store.
Jo scanned the room as she came in the front door, waiting for a couple who didn’t quite understand that they had to keep going down a barely labeled side hall to reach the entry to the restaurant. Despite it having good food and some of the best views in Seattle, Jo and her friends rarely went for a meal, opting instead for the more relaxed community of the bar.
Cutter’s trademark focaccia scented the air with rosemary and olive oil. Garlic of steamed clams and the bright bite of lemon for oysters wrapped around her and welcomed her in. The bright afternoon light shining in from the long wall of windows facing the Seattle waterfront actually left the bar feeling warm and friendly by contrast.
Jo could feel her shoulders easing even as she spotted Cassidy. Perrin sat close beside her, looking much better than the last time Jo had seen her. Though her hair was now bleach-white rather than the Jo-Thompson-black that it had been.
Cassidy spotted Jo and offered a near invisible shrug. It said, “I know what you said, but tough.”
And Cassidy, as usual, was right.
Jo did need to talk to her college roommate, but whatever else might be going on, Perrin was a true friend and would do anything for her.
Cassidy had snagged them three tall stools at a small table by the window. Only about a third of the tables were occupied, leaving a bit of a hush in the bar. But it was barely five o’clock, give it half an hour and the place would be humming.
Cassidy had worn a simple silk blouse and designer jeans with flats, a serious dress down for her. She really was still on her honeymoon, which made Jo feel all the more guilty for dragging her away from it. Perrin wore one of her own designs, again in the pale green of the bridesmaid gowns, but this time as a peasant blouse fallen off one shoulder. The floral skirt showed a long flash of her fine legs and looked great with her simple sandals. Jo had to stare at it for several moments before she recognized it as her own skirt, stolen from her closet, and redesigned to be more updated. She’d liked that skirt, but there was little point complaining about it to Perrin.
Jo searched wildly for some safe topic to start with as she joined them, and landed nowhere near one.
“Did Perrin tell you about the dress she made for me?” Jo needed to cut her tongue out now. She knew it was going to be going straight downhill from this point on.
Jo rarely drank, and almost never finished the first drink when she did, but when the second Honey Citrus Martini disappeared and a third one replaced it without her quite figuring out how it happened, she knew she was in trouble. The Dungeness Crab Cakes, Buffalo Wings, and Steamed Manila Clams in a sauce so luscious they were still dipping it up with another round of focaccia, had slid by just as easily over the last hour.
Thankfully, the dress turned out to be the right topic after all. It ended up that Perrin hadn’t mentioned it to Cassidy. She wanted to drag them all off to Jo’s apartment to see it right away, but she and Cassidy had vetoed that. Then Perrin rescued Jo’s poor lead-in by starting on her idea for a line of custom wedding dresses, not designed as dresses, but designed for individuals.
“You’ll be the Howard Roarke of fashion.” Jo wondered blearily what neuron had remembered that tidbit of information.
“No. First, in case you haven’t noticed because they’re so small, I actually do have breasts. So I can’t be anyone named Howard.”
“You do,” Jo acknowledged. “They look good on you too. Better than they would on Gary Cooper.”
Perrin tipped her head sideways. “You’re drunk. You aren’t making sense any longer.”
“Gary Cooper played Howard Roarke in the movie The Fountainhead.” Cassidy took up the gauntlet and tried to carry it down the field or across the polo ground or whatever one did with a gauntlet. “It’s about an architect who believes that every design must be unique to the place and the materials.”
Perrin stared down at her Cosmo for several long seconds before replying. “But I’m not building buildings. I’m designing wedding dresses. And I’m saying that they need to be unique for each woman. Jo’s dress would look stupid on you.”
“Because I don’t have Jo’s amazing breasts.”
“Exactly!” Perrin flagged down a waitress with a loud, “Hey cutie!” Which turned a dozen or so heads at their end of the lounge.
She was cute in a brunette, clingy-top clad way though Jo would never have thought of her that way. Let alone shouted it out for the whole bar to hear.
“Is it me,” Perrin studied the table, “or did we run out o
f food?”
“I can fix that,” the waitress was unflappable.
“Cool, thanks!” Perrin turned back to Jo. “What was I talking about?”
The waitress didn’t even blink before wandering away. Jo wondered what would be coming next.
“Wedding dresses,” Jo supplied.
“No. No, that wasn’t it.” Perrin searched the table again, this time apparently looking for her last topic rather than the next appetizer.
“Jo’s breasts?” Cassidy offered as she sipped her wine.
“Bingo!” Perrin nudged Cassidy’s arm almost tipping them both off their stools.
“So. What happened from, ‘I have no one to wear a wedding dress for’ to an hemergency meeting?” Perrin blinked hard then repeated more slowly and clearly. “E-mer-gen-cy meeting. Nope, not that drunk yet. He-emergency meeting. Hey! That must be it.”
She nudged Cassidy again but harder. Cassidy was better braced this time.
“Jo got laid. That’s the problem.” Then she turned to Jo. “Why is that a problem?”
Jo did her best not to groan. Somehow Perrin always found her way back to the topic, even when Jo no longer wanted her to. Over the first two drinks, she’d come to terms with just having to figure it out herself. It would be safer, easier that way. What part of her had thought that Cassidy, being Angelo’s best friend’s wife, was the proper confessor for Jo’s sins?
“Because it was with Angelo.”
Jo slapped her hand over her mouth, but she’d said it and now it was out in the world. She should have opened with the job offer that Renée was using to make her crazy. That had to be safer than this. Anything would have been safer.
She gauged her friends’ reactions.
Cassidy had gone very quiet. She looked like she did when tasting a new wine. Rolling the idea around on her tongue, letting it build and flow to see how it tasted.
Perrin practically shouted, “Shrimp and crab cocktail!” Her attempt to drunkenly hug the waitress while she still bore the next appetizer almost caused the woman to bobble the plate, but she was good enough to save the moment.
“Cute and smart! Too bad I’m straight. Are you?”
The waitress shook her head no.
“Bummer. Any takers?” Perrin asked Jo and Cassidy. Cassidy rolled her eyes and Jo just shook her head.
“Oh well,” Perrin addressed the waitress. “No luck here, sorry about that. Girls, we have to remember to tip her extra nice.” The waitress smiled easily and drifted off at a call to the next table. Another reason Jo liked Cutter’s, the waitresses could deal with Perrin. Other places she tended to blow them out of the water and they never recovered.
Jo thought that maybe at least on one front, she might have dodged the bullet. Cassidy was still testing the idea and edging up on her opinion.
“Well, I knew he was attracted to you. But that was last year before I started dating Russell.”
“You didn’t date Russell,” Perrin corrected her. She held up a finger and began counting. “First you despised his very existence. Then second, you fell head over heels in love with him. After that, third, you couldn’t figure out what to do about it.”
“I married him.”
“Okay, that’s fourth. But it took you long enough.”
Jo considered that this might be an opportunity for her to quietly slip away but rather than rising to Perrin’s tease, Cassidy turned back to face Jo, trapping her on her stool.
“And now, with no buildup, you, ah…”
“Jumped his bones,” Perrin filled in when Cassidy hesitated.
“Well,” Jo thought of trying to explain the wedding and the way Angelo looked at her and how uncomfortable that had made her feel. But it had also made her feel feminine. When she thought of herself as a woman, it was the power suit one who came to mind. The lawyer feared far and wide, feared even more because she was a female and had triumphed every time she’d entered a courtroom since her first mock trial in college. But Angelo kept seeing a different Jo, one she didn’t know, and, much to her dismay it was a version of Jo that she was finding she wasn’t very comfortable with.
She thought of trying to explain the disastrous meal, his banged head, and how he’d been so cute about it. And their working out together. And… She couldn’t wrap her head, never mind her tongue, around how it had happened. Though she’d never behaved in such a fashion with any lover before Angelo, “jumped his bones” was also alarmingly accurate.
“Sort of did that,” was the best response she could muster for Perrin. She reached for her martini to slake her dry throat, but it was already half gone and she really needed to slow down. Instead she dipped some crab in the cocktail sauce to buy herself a moment.
“When?”
“Last night!” Perrin answered for her. “That’s why we’re having the he-mergency meeting today.” She pulled one sleeve onto her shoulder causing the other one to fall off.
Perrin leaned in. “Was it good? Yep, that blush nails that part of it.”
Jo did her best to use sheer willpower to fight the heat rising in her face, which only made her cheeks burn hotter.
“Did he stay the night?”
This time Jo gulped some of her martini. When she recovered her breath from the scorch of alcohol sliding down her throat and the citrus twang had cleared her head a bit, she nodded.
“He stayed until it was time to go shopping.”
“Yes!” Perrin did a fist pump and almost elbowed a passing guy in the crotch. “That’s a good sign. And he’s so awfully pretty. Is he prettier naked?”
“How do you do that?” Jo’s voice had drifted out of her control and it came out half in anger but got snarled up in a laugh on the way out.
“Do what?” Perrin did her best to look all innocent, sitting up extra straight. This caused her blouse to slide off both shoulders making her look even more elfin than she usually did.
“Make me tell you things I never intended to say?”
“You’re avoiding the question, counselor. All I want to know is, is Angelo Parrano as pretty naked as you’d expect?” She said it in a voice declarative enough that the women at two nearby tables paused and listened for the answer.
Jo ground her teeth and fought back the urge to scream.
“Yes. He is completely gorgeous.” That made two of the women at other tables look away. Two others sighed in what sounded like envy before they turned back to their own tables.
“Jo swore,” Perrin dropped her jaw in mock horror. “He must look really amazing.”
“Look, feel, made me feel… Beyond amazing.” Now that she’d started, she couldn’t shut up. But he had. There’d been a heat, a need, a yearning, that would have been unnerving if it hadn’t been so completely mutual. He’d opened up whole new worlds of sensation that she hadn’t known existed. She wasn’t a prude, or inexperienced. But Angelo’s body had simply been made for her. She’d had good lovers before, but she’d never had one who made it so much fun.
“It was,” her voice sounded soft and dreamy even to herself, “the best I’ve ever had.”
“Then why are we having a he-mergency meeting?” Perrin placed an elbow on the table and propped her chin in her hand as if that were the only thing keeping her head off the table.
“Because,” Cassidy still spoke in that slow analytic voice of hers. “Because she’s afraid I’ll be upset.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m married to Russell.”
Jo nodded, but Perrin simply looked more confused.
“She isn’t sleeping with Russell. You are. She is sleeping with Angelo.”
“Actually we didn’t sleep much.” The gin was talking. That was definitely the gin and not Jo Thompson. She really hoped that was true.
“Now she’s bragging,” Perrin poked at the cocktail sauce with another shrimp.
“She is,” Cassidy agreed. Cassidy straightened and only wobbled a little in her chair.
“We’ll just all be adult a
bout this. We’re all grown and, uh, you know, worldly sorts of people. We’ll just make sure that we all end up being friends.”
“Or lovers,” Perrin never missed.
“Or lovers.” Cassidy acknowledged.
“Or married.” This time Perrin positively smirked at Jo. “Told you not to underestimate the power of a good dress.”
“I’m not marrying Angelo, I’m only sleeping with him.”
“Except you said you weren’t sleeping with him. Just having lots of fun.”
Cassidy held out her hands to stop the conversation. Taking a deep breath, she tried to steer the conversation back to the point.
“We’ll just be adult about this.”
Jo nodded. That sounded more like her. Far more than the woman who’d lost every single inhibition in Angelo’s arms.
“We weren’t very adult about it.”
Perrin cocked her head to one side, still held up only by her chin on her palm. “You were juvenile about sex?”
“No, more…fun than I thought adults ever had.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere! Cassidy, we need to get Jo drunk far more often. This is way too much fun. Waitress, where did that cute butch gal go? We need another round.”
Jo looked down, but her martini was empty. Yup, she really was in trouble now.
Chapter 19
“My girlfriend is moving to Hawaii.”
The phrase sent chills up Angelo’s back.
First, it struck him as far too reminiscent of Jo’s statement about heading to Alaska for much of the next three-to-five years. Second, it was coming from his patissier, Eugene, at the end of another brutal shift. Angelo didn’t need him to be distracted when they were so busy they could barely breathe.
They sat around the stainless prep table. Graziella lay with her head on her arms as if someone had shot her. Marlys the grillardin had kicked out on the grill tonight and now she looked like the kicking had been the other way around. Vic and Valerie who’d done such yeoman service on the fryer and the soups were still upright and Angelo couldn’t imagine how. Marko was still finishing the last of the dishes. Angelo would go over there and drag him to the table in a headlock as soon as their late dinner was ready.
The Complete Where Dreams Page 42
