When the two women finally moved off, probably to compare notes, Perrin threw herself into his arms.
For a long moment, he didn’t care who was watching or what they thought, he just pulled her in and buried his face in Perrin’s hair and reveled in the scent of the woman in his arms. He loved feeling her warmth. Holding her joy tight against him.
The dinner itself was a long, wonderful, maddening, incredible experience. At the table, Bill had ended up between Maria and Perrin, apparently a place of quite some privilege. Which raised eyebrows in some parts of the room, but not many.
Thankfully, there were a lot of stories in addition to his own. Maria and Hogan’s sail up the Italian coast. Angelo, the handsome Italian chef who had married Jo Thompson, was still working on opening his second restaurant by the Seattle Center. When Bill told him when opening night of Ascension was, Angelo immediately decided that was a perfect night for a Grand Opening of his restaurant as well. Maybe he’d even get some before and after opera patrons for dinner.
Russell, rather than continuing to threaten Bill, started talking about some kind of a mutual marketing campaign. While a restaurant was small potatoes compared to a new opera costing upwards of five million dollars to produce, he suggested some interesting possibilities. They made an appointment for the next morning to talk about it further. He’d make sure to vet the guy personally before bothering Wilson or Chloe over in Marketing.
The Mexican man, Manuel, apparently a fine Italian sous chef, had taken the glowing Graziella to his family home in Oaxaca for a combined wedding and honeymoon which explained the newlywed smiles.
Angelo declared a reception dinner at his restaurant next Tuesday, rather than dinner at Maria and Hogan’s. “And, Manuel, you will not be allowed in the kitchen.” Based on Manuel’s reserved look, Bill would wager on his finding a way in no matter what his boss said.
Maria and Hogan had married at Christmas, but not wanted to travel until the pastry chef for the new restaurant had been trained and approved by Maria. Apparently the second week of Maria’s honeymoon had been even harder on Maria from worry than on poor Ignazio trying to meet her standards all on his own. A round of toasts and many cheers were raised on his behalf, while he did his best to glow at the far end of the table, it mainly looked like a blush from where Bill was sitting.
All that news traveled back and forth over some of the most amazing food Bill had ever eaten. Lasagna, so not microwaved. A mac and cheese made with fresh-made pasta, very aged cheese, and prosciutto. A side of salmon broiled with baby asparagus, venison flank braised with a mushroom-Barolo sauce, so rich it almost killed him. Steamed vegetables tossed in a white wine, lemon, garlic sauce… The plates seemed infinite yet were all consumed. It was capped off with a pear poached in stout beer for dessert. The evening was finished by tiny cups of decaf espresso laced with Frangelico hazelnut liqueur and many heavy sighs of contentment.
“You folks do this every week?”
Maria nodded at him, “Is there anything better than family around a table?”
Bill tried to come up with something, but… “Not a one I can think of, ma’am.”
“Tell me more about your children.”
“Better than that, if I’m invited next week, I’ll bring the kids if they’d be welcome.”
“Always!” Maria replied emphatically. “Children are always welcome.” She waved a hand at all the new couples seated about the table, “I expect many children to sit at this table for many years to come.”
Bill lifted his right hand, where it still held Perrin’s left. He liked that they were opposite handed, so that they’d been able to hold hands for much of the meal, even while they ate. He kissed the back of her knuckles. It delighted him that it was so normal it didn’t distract her from her conversation further down the table, other than to squeeze his own hand back without turning.
When had he tipped over the edge? What moment had he decided that not only did he want to come back next week, with Perrin, but to offer to bring his children? That was… He could feel the blood draining from his face. Too fast. It was all happening much too fast.
Tammy, who had already been too grown up, was blossoming straight into womanhood from Perrin’s influence. And Jaspar was what? He’d practically thrown a five-year-old’s tantrum about staying at Lucy’s, though he’d been looking forward to it just days before. Bill had looked to Tammy for guidance, but she’d shrugged her shoulders helplessly. He’d tried talking it through, and finally just told him to get over it. He apologized to Lucy when he dropped them off for the horrid mood Jaspar was in. He had no idea—
Maria tapped her tiny espresso cup against his, drawing his attention back to her. “It’s hard to know what to do, isn’t it, Mr. Cullen? Especially when children are involved.”
All he could do was nod.
“I was very careful with men around my son and Russell. But perhaps I was too careful. They turned into such fine boys, that I must have done something right, but Angelo grew with no father. John Morgan, Russell’s father and my employer, was a good man but he was no father to Angelo. He had a wife and a son of his own. A thousand times I wonder if I made the right choice.”
“He’ll make a good father. They’re a beautiful couple.”
Jo and Angelo had begun to clear the table. When he rose to help, Maria rested her hand lightly on his arm. “Not on your first visit.” Others were already rising, apparently based simply on who wasn’t deep in conversation at that moment.
He settled back in his chair, not sure if he was comfortable with the continued conversation. How was he supposed to change his mind and say that he couldn’t bring his children when she was being so gracious?
“Yes, it’s hard to know, Mr. Cullen.”
Bill turned to face Maria once more.
“So, it will be our secret. You will bring your children when you are sure and not before.”
The relief was stronger than might be seemly, but he couldn’t help that.
“Perrin was right, you’re scary smart, Maria Stanford. She didn’t mention that you are also amazingly kind.”
Maria sipped her coffee, leaving him some space to gather his thoughts. Scary smart indeed.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me anything about the woman beside me?”
“You mean other than I wish with all my heart that she, of all women I’ve ever met, had been my daughter?”
That knocked Bill back in his seat. Everyone, except her new husband, called her ‘Mama Maria’ as if she were mother to them all. Yet from this amazing crowd of people, she had singled out Perrin.
“Really? Why?”
“Yes, really. And because Mama Maria is scary smart, you said so yourself, therefore it must be true. And there is one other thing I would tell you, Bill.”
It was the first time she’d used his Christian name, as if he’d finally asked the right question, it had just taken him all evening to find it. She reached out and placed her hand over his heart.
“All the love you have in your heart for your children and your poor departed wife?”
“Yes?”
“Perrin will need that much. She will need so much before she will trust herself. So you will have to trust for her.”
“Why can’t she trust herself?”
“That’s up to her to tell you, if she decides to.”
“And if I can’t trust her that much?”
“Phfft!” Maria flicked her fingers dismissively. “Your heart already knows or you would never have mentioned bringing your children here. Your mind just don’t know it yet, but it’s already true. Don’t worry, dear boy. You’ll get there.”
They sat quietly in his car. Bill had pulled up in front of the store, parked the car, and turned out the lights. He made no move to get out, and Perrin waited with him in the dark silence. A lone streetlight was shadowed by the trees leafing out along the sidewalk. A few other cars were parked along the block, but there was little traffic.
/> “I don’t know if I can do this.” He kept his hands on the wheel.
Perrin didn’t move, suddenly still as a frightened child.
“No, that didn’t come out right,” he reached out and picked up the hand he’d held most of the night. “There’s just so much inside me. It’s all so jumbled up that I don’t know what to do with it. It’s good, Perrin. I swear it is, but it’s big. So big.”
She slowly slipped her other hand over his, trapping his fingers between her hands. Her tension eased, but her silence didn’t.
“I… ” He looked up at the trees, down the street, over at the out-of-business tattoo parlor. Right back where he’d started. “I don’t know what to do with all that’s going on inside me.”
“Welcome to my world,” her voice was soft. “I’m smart enough to know what’s going on inside me. But I can never seem to straighten it all out. Like trying to build a costume that keeps falling apart because a key seam was never sewn, but by the time I fix it, another three have unraveled.”
He turned to face her. Her face but a pale oval in the dim light.
“Can you be smart for me tonight, Perrin? I honestly don’t know what to do with it all.”
“Me?” He’d shocked her. Himself a little too.
“Don’t see anyone else in the car volunteering.”
That roused her laugh.
“I love your laugh so much.” The words just came out of him. He did. It was like a thousand stage lights come alive. Her laugh shone into the darkest places and shone pure, bright light.
“You want me, of all the loony people on the planet, to be smart for both of us?”
He could only nod.
“Okay,” she huffed out a breath. “Okay, I can try, but understand that you only have yourself to blame if this comes out all stupid.”
“Understood. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
She looked away and studied her darkened shop for a long time.
He waited, one hand clamped to the wheel, the other still wrapped so warm between her two hands.
“Okay. Looks as if it’s going to come out as a series of questions.”
“Like I haven’t had enough of those tonight. Talk about the Italian inquisition, it was a tough room.”
“Hey, you asked me to take over here.”
Bill nodded, “I did. Go for it. I trust you.” That snapped her attention back to him. He hadn’t expected those words either. Maria’s words. But who else would he trust in this situation?
“Me?” her voice was a whisper.
“Yes, I do. You. The scary smart lady sitting here beside me like a blessing. So ask. Please?” He actually begged a little. Everything was so mixed up inside him.
“Okay…” her voice was shaky. She took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s start with a key one. After meeting with everyone, do you still want to be with me?”
“So much it’s killing me.”
“That’s a good answer, Bill. That’s a really good answer. I like that answer too. So if that’s not the problem, then let me think what’s next.”
Bill sat in the dark and waited. He had kissed this woman a half dozen times, total. They hadn’t had a proper, just-the-two-of-them date yet. His kids were half mad for her. And his own feelings?
“Are you afraid that if we make love, your life will never be the same?”
“Yes.” The answer dragged out of him.
“Okay, we’re tracking so far.”
“Tracking?”
“We’re both being scared silly by exactly the same thing.”
That reached him. That finally punched through whatever knot had been slowly winding tighter and tighter in his gut all night. It wasn’t the answer yet, but it was the first strand, broken rather than merely loosened.
“Keep going. You’re doing great, Perrin.”
She let go of his hand, “I can’t think while we’re touching.” Then she grabbed it back between hers, “No, not touching you is even worse.”
“That’s not a question, but yes, I feel the same way.”
Perrin smiled over at him.
“Okay, I think this is the final question of the first round.”
“Fire away.”
“Could we go inside to finish this before I freeze to death?”
“Aw!” Bill scrambled out of the car and hurried around to open her door.
She didn’t lead him to her shop as he’d expected, but rather around the corner. She stopped at a door on the side street. A half dozen mailboxes hung along the wall for the various apartments above her shop and the one beyond. Perrin unlocked a door that led to a flight of stairs.
The stairway was hung with a beautiful series of quilts. It was as if he was following a stream through the seasons. Working his way upstream, the first quilt led him from ice winter to red-and-gold fall. The second stream, appearing to flow out of one quilt and into the next, followed the summer colors and included a pool with a bear pawprint and a golden flower. The third quilt started the stream flowing between banks the color of spring, eventually rising to where it flowed out from under blue-white ice, just as it had ended down below.
“Are these yours? The four seasons. They’re beautiful.”
“I quilt sometimes, not often.” They left them behind at the head of the stairs and Perrin led him down a hall that made his eyes water. It had a green ceiling, a zebra stripe wall to one side, a yellow wall to the other with a purple-lettered poem painted on it in tall letters.
He read a few lines, it was a really bad poem.
“These however, are so not me.”
Bill considered remarking that was a good thing, but wasn’t sure of how good the sound insulation might be. Besides, he remembered the last time Perrin had used those words while standing in a pile of confetti. At least the floors were a rich, if hard worn, hardwood. None of the residents had applied “their art” to improve them.
She led him to the door at the end of the hallway.
Perrin’s apartment was neither neat nor messy, it was lived in, but perhaps not very much. Clearly, her life was downstairs in her shop. There were nice coverings on the couch, a television, but no computer. Several fashion magazines. A wall of reference books on types of art: architecture, fiber, painting, sculpture of a dozen varieties, early Japanese, Italian Renaissance. It was all about art forms and they looked well used. This is where she obviously found many of her out-of-the-box ideas. He couldn’t decide if it was an incredibly focused collection or astonishingly unfocused. Assuming the former, it was immensely eclectic within its range. She moved into the kitchen while he inspected the books.
“I don’t see any on opera.”
“They have books on opera art?”
“About a thousand: lighting, costume, sets, you name it. I’ll get you a couple.”
“Thanks.”
A totally mad quilt, clearly done in one of her gonzo frames of mind, filled the wall above the couch with a dozen blocks, each in a different style with different fabrics. Yet the colors tied it together into a cohesive quilt. A wild one, but cohesive.
He found her making tea in a small kitchenette with a table that could seat only two. She still looked cold and he moved to hug her.
“No,” she fended him off. “You touch me and we’re going to go straight to making love, do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred dollars. And as good as that sounds, it’s not what you asked for.”
“I was being an idiot. Come here.”
She didn’t. So he tossed his jacket aside, dropped into one of the chairs, and just enjoyed watching her move about the kitchen fetching mugs and digging out a box of blueberry tea.
“Sorry, I think this is all I have at the moment.”
“Kids’ favorite. I’ve learned to like it.”
She poured the hot water and sat across from him. “Ready for round two?”
“No. But let’s see where we go anyway.”
Perrin looked at Bill over their tea cups and tried to decide
just how brave she was feeling. Maria had liked him. She’d liked him a lot. Jo and Cassidy too, which helped, but Maria was the wise one. And she and Bill had talked quietly together through so much of the meal.
She’d done her best to listen to everything, while pretending not to. She’d missed a lot, but had heard Maria admonish Bill that “he already knew about his heart,” he just didn’t know that he did. There was no way to be sure what they were talking about, but there were things Perrin already knew about herself. Really knew. Even if they were scaring her to death.
Bill waited so patiently. He’d said he trusted her. Trusted her more than himself. No man had ever said such a thing. Well, if he was going to trust her, how could she return less?
All it took was being brave, right? She wasn’t very good at brave. She could do it if she hid behind crazy Perrin, because then it was someone else. And it came out as a joke that no one believed. But she couldn’t go there with this man. Not when they sat quietly together in the night. Not when she felt the way she did. She’d have to be her more rational self tonight.
“Okay, do you want the scary question first or the hard one?”
“That’s a choice?” He brushed a hand through his hair and she wished she had the nerve to do the same, but she didn’t dare touch him at the moment. Not for his sake but for her own.
“It is.”
“No third choice? Drag you down to that designer’s table maybe?”
She shook her head. “As wonderful as that sounds, not yet.”
“Man! Why doesn’t this look good? What the heck. Hard one first.”
Perrin really didn’t know which one was worse, but she wished he hadn’t chosen the hard one.
“First, I want you to know that if you want to walk out the door afterward, I won’t ever blame you.”
She could see that he almost made a joke, then a denial, but finally thought better of it and set aside his tea mug to listen.
Perrin didn’t know how to do this one. Maybe like she’d told Tamara about tearing up the drawings, “You gotta just do it.” Well, she was about to risk tearing up her life, but she saw no other path.
The Complete Where Dreams Page 75
