Where Dreams Are Born (Angelo's Hearth)

by Buchman, M. L.

  Her body shifted as the boat thumped off a wave, leaned a little closer to him. Her hand on his knee steadying him as well. They were so close that her head was spinning. Oak. He smelled of oak and mahogany and teak and ocean waves. Of heady reds at their prime. Of soft, cool whites sipped late at night in front of a warm fire. She leaned forward. If he wasn’t going to kiss her, she’d kiss him.

  “ ‘I didn’t realize Tuesday was the first.’ “

  His words didn’t make sense. This was a moment for—

  “You’ve been to every lighthouse.”

  “Yes,” she had, but what did that have to do with a kiss under the midday sun.

  “You have the same calendar.”

  She nodded her head and leaned forward again.

  “You lied.”

  No she hadn’t. “About what?” She didn’t ever— “Oh.”

  “Oh, she says. ‘Haven’t been to a lighthouse before,’ she said.” He pushed a strong finger against her shoulder. Hard enough to tip her away.

  “You lied.”

  “No, I evaded.” Evaded the most exasperating man on the planet.

  “You lied.”

  If he said it one more time, she was going to smack him.

  “Didn’t.”

  “You said, and I quote, ‘Yes, I am a lighthouse virgin.’ ” He looked immensely pleased with himself. She shoved his knee hard enough that he tipped back from his squat and landed on his behind against the lifelines.

  “Do you catalog everything everyone says so that you can throw it back in their face? I didn’t want you of all people to know about…” There was no way she was going to explain her own father to this irritating man.

  He stared off across the water for a moment. Looked up at the sails as if he might find a clue up there. His smile twisted slightly to one side and his eyes twinkled as his gaze returned to her. Deep, ocean-deep eyes.

  “Nope. Just you. Just everything you’ve ever said. I’d bet I could repeat every word.”

  “There you go, doing it again.” Her heart rate had definitely jumped, it was all she could hear.

  “The jerk being charming?”

  He was so full of himself, and he was absolutely right. It was one of the nicest, back-handed compliments she’d ever had.

  “Hey, up there.” John shouted to make his voice carry above the wind. “We’re almost there.”

  Russell stood with the grace of a wild beast and stepped out onto the narrow bowsprit to look beyond the sail. He paused for a long moment and then turned to her with a positively wicked grin.

  He offered his hand. His grip was warm and firm as he helped her to her feet. The slightest little tug and she’d slip into those arms whether she wanted to or not. Instead, he turned and placed her hand on the lifeline so that they could head back to the cockpit.

  His grin didn’t abate in the slightest.

  # # #

  All the way back to the cockpit, she could feel Julia’s scrutiny. Russell’s mother didn’t miss a thing and it made Cassidy’s cheeks burn. She’d seen how close Cassidy had come to kissing her son. John gave no indication of noticing what he’d interrupted. If indeed he had.

  Cassidy slid shakily into the seat. The woman glanced at her son. Russell was at the tiller with his Dad, both of them looking up at the sails. Absorbed in some silent guy conversation about wind and canvas.

  Julia took her hand and patted it.

  “Don’t worry, dear. The Morgan men aren’t the sharpest tacks in the bunch, but they get there eventually.”

  If her cheeks were heated before, they were on fire now. She turned to look away from her reflection in Julia’s sunglasses, vague and pale in the dark glass.

  There was the Mukilteo lighthouse. It was close, very close. John had sailed them within a few hundred feet. She could easily see the stepped Fresnel lens through the glass windows. The banister, an octagonal decoration around the third story walkway.

  The sun lit the lighthouse and the keeper’s cottages to a near blinding white. A brilliant green and white state ferry pulled out from behind it. Even the lawn before the beacon was white, the white of crushed seashell in the sun.

  Then she noticed the canopy. It was white and light as a feather, set across the front lawn for a party. People were sitting in rows of chairs facing the water. Some at the back and sides stood for a better view. A view of a wedding.

  The minister in black and white. A groom in black, right down to the tails on his tuxedo. The boat slid forward and she saw the bride in profile. She could have been Jo’s twin, straight dark hair, rounded face. And she was absolutely breathtaking in her gown, a clingy satin and a flowing sheer of chiffon to soften the edges. No veil, rather a ring of white flowers worked into black hair.

  Many of the eyes in the audience were looking at her on the sailboat, following her. Before Cassidy could look away, she came to her senses. They were looking at the beautiful sailboat slipping along behind the bride and groom. Cameras clicked and whirred and flashed in a brilliant display that must have surprised the bride and groom, for they turned and so did, finally, the minister.

  Cassidy pulled out her camera and shot a photo of sail, water, lighthouse, and wedding.

  The minister and couple waved at them. Several of the audience joined in. She waved back and felt silly and touched at the same time.

  As they slipped past she caught the wedding and lighthouse in the background and Russell Morgan, holding the tiller and looking aloft at the set of his sails. This shot would get a place of honor on her wall.

  A wedding day memory. What would hers be like? Would some beautiful sailboat pass by while she looked at the man she loved?

  And where the hell was he anyway? She stole a glance at Russell.

  No. Not possible.

  He was pointing out something to his father.

  “Helm’s a-lee!” He called.

  He swung over the tiller and John started doing something with the ropes.

  That’s when she spotted Nutcase on the swinging boom.

  “The cat!” Her cry simply made Russell grin all the more. He was going to flip the cat over the side out of sheer cussedness. She tried to scramble up. Russell’s hand landed on her head and drove her back into her seat. The heavy boom swung by just inches above.

  There was a soft thump as Nutcase jumped onto the cabin roof. The boom swung across, Russell ducking underneath with all the grace of long experience, even slapping the massive thing with his hand as it swung by, a smack of flesh on wood, a man greeting an old friend.

  The cat sat on the cabin roof watching the boom complete its swing, then it daintily raised one paw to its mouth and tugged on an errant nail. Leaning against the new slant of the deck to keep its place.

  “You jerk!” She spun to face Russell. The adrenalin was still pounding through her, making her temples hurt.

  “You could have…” She didn’t know what. But he could have.

  “Warned me!”

  Russell’s smile diminished at that point. Wavering for a moment before fading entirely.

  John fussed with the lines and didn’t look up. Julia sipped her ice tea. The silence in the cockpit stretched out for an overlong moment before Russell cleared his throat.

  “Nutcase knows the drill.”

  Well she sure as hell didn’t. He’d scared the daylights out of her. She faced forward feeling angry and foolish simultaneously. And the damned cat, as if nothing had happened, turned to face the sun.

  Seafaring cats. They knew their place in life. They knew when to stand fast and when to jump. Why couldn’t her life be that easy?

  Everything had made sense. Right up until she’d received the phone call that her father was dying. Even after all the caretaking and the funeral was over, order had never fully returned to her life. Her career on the upswing, living near her friends again for the first time since college. It should have all made sense. But it didn’t. It had never settled comfortably.

  Then her father�
��s letters made it worse.

  And now to cap it all off, stupid, stupid Russell Morgan.

  “You don’t really know anything about anything, do you?” She knew she was being angry and putting words in his mouth that he hadn’t meant that way. But they stung. Like stumbling on a hive of bees on her last trip to her father’s vineyard when she was twelve.

  Fourteen stings.

  She never went back to his fields. Her father had protested that they weren’t even honey bees, just some nasty ground bees that thought attacking a little girl was fun. She’d dug in her pre-teenage heels and she’d never again enjoyed the outdoors he so loved. She’d forgotten that memory. The moment that had turned her from the vines. Such a small thing in retrospect. It had changed the very course of her life.

  She shook herself. How did she get her head into such an awful place? Nutcase curled up for a nap on a coil of rope that looked terribly uncomfortable until she settled herself inside the center. She belonged.

  Cassidy had been having fun. Right until…

  She’d just been afraid for the cat. That was all.

  But Russell had laughed. No, but he’d certainly smiled. Smiled at a joke that had pumped her so full of anger she could still scream.

  She glanced back at him. He was eyeing her with a look of extreme caution. As soon as she turned, he glanced away at the sails.

  Damn him! If he were still laughing, it would be easier to remain angry.

  She checked the action of the boom, but it appeared to be staying safely to the other side of the boat. She stood and did her best to pretend she was stretching. It placed her closer to Russell than either of his parents. She kept her voice low, hoping the wind would make it so that only Russell would hear her.

  “Next time, warn me.”

  He nodded carefully, even had the decency to mouth, “sorry.”

  For good measure she moved forward to scratch the cat, who woke up enough to purr appreciatively before going back to sleep.

  # # #

  The rattle and cough of the engine as it started was a rude interruption to a lazy afternoon spent lolling about before a dying breeze. After the warm sun and the water, Cassidy was ready for a long nap though she never napped and her watch insisted it was barely three o’clock.

  Russell and his dad moved around in an easy fashion lowering and bundling sails. They hung rubber bumpers along one side. Lots and lots of coiling and uncoiling of ropes to no purpose that she could quite understand. Sailboats made fixing her old VW rabbit look easy.

  Nutcase complained when shooed from her rope coil and showed her displeasure by going below with a flick of her tail and not a backward glance.

  Julia sat beside her while the men fussed about. Despite the kerchief over her hair and her sunglasses and dark skin, the bright sheen of a day in the sun flushed her cheeks.

  “I believe that you are the first woman that has ever made Russell behave. I certainly was never able to.”

  If this was Russell behaving, what was he usually like? She had no interest in being someone else’s conscience. Half the time she couldn’t stand to be around him.

  “He and Angelo would get together and that was it.”

  The other half of the time she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

  “They’d get into trouble before they’d even left Nana’s kitchen.”

  “Nana? Who’s Nana?”

  “Our cook. Angelo’s mother has been John’s cook since before I came along. Practically a family member. She and I birthed our boys within weeks of each other. Angelo and Russell learned to cook at her knee. Angelo’s a better cook, but not by much. You never saw two boys with such a passion for fine food. Or who could destroy a kitchen so fast.”

  Russell was once again at the tiller, guiding the long boat through the busy traffic streaming in and out of the marina. A massive rock wall, made of boulders bigger than her car, formed a long breakwater. Only the very tops of sailboat masts peeked over the rocks from the far side.

  He ducked from one side of the boom to the other to keep an eye on the traffic. The clutter of boats might move slower than the commuters on I-5, but they also didn’t turn as fast or stop as readily.

  Russell was completely, smoothly in control. Easy movements. The Lady sliding through a graceful curve at his slightest command. She’d always thought of him as a bumbler, some people naturally were, but not now. Nor when he’d walked through the restaurant with the blond on his arm. Great! She really did bring out the worst in him. He was only an irritating, irrational idiot in her presence. The worst part was, she was little better around him.

  The passengers of every boat that went by, some so close she could smell what they were having for lunch over the diesel exhaust, turned to watch them. Watch the majestic blue hull slide through the water.

  Then she noticed that the women’s stares weren’t directed at the boat in general. Most watched the skipper who stood tall at the helm.

  Now why did that bother her?

  Julia whispered in her ear, “Damn handsome, isn’t he? Even more so than his father, which is not an easy thing to do.”

  He was damn handsome. He belonged out here. Belonged with the wind tousling his hair, his cat winding about his feet, his lady at his side.

  “Ha!”

  “What?” Julia turned to her.

  “Nothing.” No way she was going to say what was going on in her mind. It was beyond ridiculous.

  Julia smiled and patted her arm, as if Cassidy’s thoughts had just been published across her forehead like a Times Square reader board.

  “He’ll get around to it eventually. He already can’t live without you, it will just take him a bit longer to realize that.”

  “But we aren’t… don’t… haven’t…” She sounded like a teenager trying to backpedal.

  “Yet. I know how it looks when I see it.”

  “How what looks?” She’d better not be saying what she was saying.

  Julia placed a hand on one cheek and kissed her on the other.

  “We’re going to be great friends, Cassidy Knowles and Julia Morgan. You’ll see.”

  Russell aimed the boat into a narrow waterway in the forest of masts and radar thingies that was so dense it obscured the hillside behind them.

  # # #

  “You want me to what?” The cordless phone was slippery in her hands, Cassidy grabbed a Kleenex from beside the couch to wipe off the sudden sheen of sweat. It was just as slippery after she did so.

  “C’mon, Cassidy. You already told Mom that you didn’t have plans for the 4th of July.” Russell’s voice was deep and soft on the phone. Not the softness of weakness, but the softness of warm fires on quiet evenings. “You were really great with them, by the way. Thanks. You were definitely the highlight of their trip out. I’d have been dead without you.”

  “A 4th of July boat party?” This made her far more nervous than meeting his parents. This would be a real date.

  “Right! We’ll cruise down to the Seattle waterfront before sunset and toss out a hook.”

  “We’ll go fishing?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Toss out an anchor.”

  “Oh.” They really had a language all their own.

  “Angelo says there’s great music and amazing fireworks along the beach there.”

  “There is. Who else will be there?” Far more nervous. Her stomach flip-flopped, unable to believe that she was even considering the idea.

  “Just a couple of the other boaters. You’re welcome to bring some friends. We’ll go with Dave and Betsy, they have a boat that puts mine to shame. I also just ripped out my electrical.”

  “You need electricity on a sailboat?” She really didn’t care. She just needed to buy a minute to think. Did she really want to go out on a date with him? “Yes,” was the surprising answer. Well, not too surprising if she was going to be truthful about it.

  He was saying something about running lights and anchor lights and radios
.

  Did she want to have that date along with other people she didn’t know? It would certainly be safer. Chaperoned. Not that she needed any chaperones, at least not normally. But around Russell maybe she did. Not in case he did something. More to keep herself from jumping him and really regretting it in the morning.

  He was on to metering and instrumentation.

  She’d beg off on the decision, call him back tomorrow when she’d had a chance to sleep on it.

  “It’s interesting the different types of cable and equipment that are required to survive salt air corrosion. Even if it’s inside. Did you know that stainless steel rots in sea air? It rots fast if it gets salt spray.”

  Delay was definitely a good idea. Better yet, she’d tell him to expect her if she showed up, and not if she didn’t.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, you knew about stainless? Weird, huh?”

  “No, I mean, yes, I’ll be there.” That wasn’t what she’d meant to say. All her standoffish thoughts were careening together to make her voice silky in a way that sounded nothing like her and a bit like those 1-900-Dial-a-Babe ads.

  “I’d love to. See you then.”

  She pressed the hangup button before her mouth could invite him up to the condo which had a great view of the fireworks.

  Still clenching the cordless phone, like the lifeline to a woman lost overboard, she staggered up to the glass door to her balcony. The late evening was dappled with a thousand lights. The Olympic mountains etched against the pink sky.

  Cassidy leaned her forehead against the sunwarmed glass.

  Ferries plied the water. Commercial ships unloaded at the piers. Traffic hustled along the waterfront.

  She reared her head back a few inches and thumped it forward against the glass.

  # # #

  Perrin had already made a date with a banker she’d been seeing for a while and was really pissed about not going on the sailboat. “I can’t believe this dream guy of yours is that same grouch who sat at dinner for thirty seconds. How can you be dating him? Though he’s a hunk, I have to admit that. And makes great ads. You should see what we have picked out for you to model. It’s wicked. ”