Jo inspected Renée’s outfit and saw another reason the woman might feel that way. She was ruthlessly fit, as was probably only achieved with a personal trainer, and impeccably dressed in a simple maroon dress that shouted to take this woman seriously, without masking that she was a woman. It was an outfit that Jo herself would have selected if she could afford such tailoring. Her dark blond hair had highlights and not a hint of gray, worn just long enough to reach her collar, and held back in a no-nonsense clasp that was simple enough to have come from Bartell Drug Store but perfect enough that it probably came from Nordstrom.
An image was forming in Jo mind’s eye. It started with Melanie and filled out slowly like a camera pulling back to reveal the surroundings. An image of this beautiful, shining woman in a dusky, warm Italian kitchen.
“Did you shoot a restaurant?”
Renée shook her head. “We considered Maximilien’s, but we frequently feature them in our ads and we wanted these to be different.”
“Have you been in Angelo’s Tuscan Hearth since they remodeled?”
Renée inspected her intensely for half a heartbeat then smiled radiantly.
Jo wondered at the meaning of those two emotions side by side.
“No, I haven’t.” Renée’s smile didn’t diminish, but it felt as if were part of another conversation that was again eluding Jo. “I do keep meaning to go in. Coming back into the city with Nathaniel after we both finally get home from work simply hasn’t happened.”
She looped a hand through Jo’s arm. “That’s a brilliant idea. Come.”
Jo had intended to go back to work. Had to. But was making little progress in that direction.
Chapter 12
Jo felt a bit like a scout leader as she led the troop down the old bricks of Pike Place and turned up Post Alley. Behind her followed Melanie and Renée talking about how charming the Market was on a summer day. Apparently Melanie had been here only once before and that had been a chill and spitting winter’s day. Not a day when the smell of the sea was battled back by fresh flowers, sweet pastries, and rich coffee thick on the Seattle air.
Following them were the photographer, his laden assistants, the makeup guy, clothier, and several others apparently connected to the shoot that she hadn’t noticed in the surrounding crowd.
As it was only a block away, they’d decided it was better to show up and ask forgiveness later rather than calling ahead.
She asked the others to wait outside, taking only Renée, Melanie, and the photographer in with her.
“Table for four?” The slender Italian woman greeted them. Jo remembered her as the hostess from last week’s meal with Yuri. She’d been terribly gracious about Jo’s request to see Angelo. Gracious. Graziella.
“Graziella. I was wondering if Angelo might be available.”
The hostess’ memory was clearly up to the challenge as well. “Ah, Miss Thompson. Table seven.”
They were both careful not to look toward the offending piece of furniture.
“A moment please.” And the woman was gone.
Angelo breezed into the room, his apron immaculate, his smile radiant.
“Why hello, Miss Thomp— Melanie!” He rushed forward and greeted the supermodel with a kiss on each cheek and then a profound hug though she towered several inches over him.
“Angelo!” They slid into rapid Italian leaving Jo stupefied.
They laughed together. The kind of laugh that only happened when you were flirting. Angelo was flirting with a supermodel right in front of her. She’d been planning to thank him for the flower if they found a moment alone, but now he was holding hands with a supermodel and they were talking excitedly over one another, just inches apart.
Jo’s body flashed hot and then very, very cold. The power suit she’d put on in case her visitor was Yuri, which then looked appropriate beside Renée’s perfect, understated attire, now did its job. Jo’s clothes wrapped around her like armor. Sensible heels, navy blue slacks with a perfect crease that matched her wide-lapelled jacket. The dress white blouse with the muted-floral bow tie. She’d taken down federal cases in this exact outfit. She could deal with one lousy Italian restaurateur while wearing it.
Clearly the whole shooting plan had passed back and forth and been approved in Italian, as moments later Graziella was escorting in those who had waited outside while Melanie toured the restaurant on Angelo’s arm.
Had the man been playing her? Simply wanting someone to amuse himself with while his supermodel lover was flitting about the world on her climb to fame and fortune? Melanie made Jo feel downright dowdy.
# # #
Angelo couldn’t stop laughing. Melanie kept going on about how she’d clearly fallen in love with the wrong man, because Angelo was so much more handsome. Then she told a rather racy story of how Zaia, Essence, and Stella Star had been found naked together in a bathroom at the Carlton. He hadn’t heard that one about her fellow models, but Melanie told him he must search on it, as the person who found them had indeed had a smartphone that linked video directly to YouTube. It might not have been so bad if the three women hadn’t been having a screaming match about sleeping with the same film director.
“You have made it so beautiful,” she kept looking around the restaurant and he couldn’t stop himself from grinning.
“This was the second try. The first one was pronounced ‘butt ugly’.”
“Russell?” Her voice sounded a touch sad as she said his name, so he did his best to gloss over it as if he hadn’t noticed the change.
“His words exactly. But he helped me do this.”
“That man,” she sighed lightly. “He does have an amazing eye. No one has ever made me as beautiful as he did with a camera. Not even Claude, though he is better than most.” She flicked a long red fingernail in the direction of the photographer who was moving about the restaurant checking angles through one lens and then another.
“He still…”
“Angelo, buddy,” Russell swung through the kitchen door on crutches. The few mid-afternoon diners startled at Russell’s bull-in-china-shop shout. “You gotta save me. I’m bored to dea—”
He came to a halt when he spotted Melanie, all of his bluster gone. As far as Angelo knew, they’d never spoken since that awful day a year ago February.
Melanie had pulled back her hand from Angelo’s arm and hunched her shoulders a bit. It didn’t look good on her.
Though his heart ached, he didn’t know how to help them. Melanie had fallen in love with Russell, who had neither understood nor returned the emotion, though they’d been lovers at the time. Involved. “The Season’s Hot Item” according to the tabloids. The flashy heir to the Morganson shipping empire, and the molten supermodel. No one but Angelo knew that both their emotions had been caught up as well, that not only the glamour had kept them together as long as they were.
“Hi Russell,” Angelo reached deep for some tiny bit of casual. “Melanie’s in town for an ad shoot for the Market. They decided to drop in and use my restaurant for one of the ads.”
All they did was stare stone-faced at each other and Angelo didn’t know what to say. Couldn’t figure out how to help them out of their mutual pain and embarrassment.
“It was my idea,” Jo came up beside Russell and laid a friendly hand on his arm as if nothing were amiss.
Didn’t the woman have any sensitivity in that severe suit of hers?
“You and Angelo did such a beautiful job of redecorating. And your art on the walls. It was irresistible.”
“Uh, thanks.”
She was doing it. By avoiding the subject of their mutual pain entirely, Jo had gotten Russell to relax a half-inch, though his hands still clamped around the crutch handles as if holding on for dear life. But that little bit of easing on his part had in turn removed some of the hunch from Melanie’s shoulders. Angelo would have trie
d stepping straight into the breach, whereas Jo just circled around it as if it wasn’t even there. It was as artful as the muted paintings and crystalline photographs on his walls.
“I thought over by that table, the one by the central hearth, would look really splendid.” Claude had clearly recognized Russell, but his tone clearly said, this is my shoot, that is my choice.
Russell’s gaze begrudgingly shifted from Melanie’s face to the room about them.
“No.”
Claude blinked and suddenly looked like a fish out of water.
Angelo could see Russell swallow hard, then it became a bit too obvious that he wasn’t going to look back at Melanie now that he’d looked away, but there was nothing Angelo could do about that.
“No,” Russell cleared his throat and tried again. “That’s a four-topper. It’s the right position, Claude, but for the photograph you’ll want a two-person table even though she’s the only one seated there. It’s an ad. She’s waiting. Waiting for the viewer of the ad to come join her.” He swung off on his crutches to direct the change.
Melanie turned to Angelo and mouthed a “Thank you” before bending down to lean her cheek against his. He could feel her hands in his squeeze long and hard, then steadier. She stood, her shoulders back and nodded once.
Angelo turned to Jo to thank her as well, but she was no longer beside Melanie.
“None of these clothes are right,” Russell was riffling through the rack by the front door.
“It’s all I brought,” the clothier was complaining.
Jo had moved over beside Russell. Angelo watched her turn that appraising attorney gaze on Melanie and slowly inspect her from shoes to hair. Her eyes didn’t track over to Angelo even in the slightest flicker.
She pulled out her phone and dialed.
He moved closer to hear the conversation.
“Perrin? This is Jo, I’m at Angelo’s and we have a bit of an emergency. Could you bring over your dress from last Saturday, the one you wore? A pair of heels, not platform, but spike. In,” she glanced at Russell, “red.”
Russell nodded.
“Fingernail red. Thanks.”
“No lipstick. Only a little makeup,” Russell told the man who’d set up his kit on a side table. “You shouldn’t be able to see it at all.”
Then the room kicked into action.
Chapter 13
“I fall for zis…” Melanie pointed an elegant finger negligently at Russell. “Zis fool and you are the one who marries him. How does this happen?”
Cassidy grinned at Jo and squeezed her hand beneath the dinner table. No one knew better than she how many potholes and pitfalls Cassidy had discovered along that particular road.
“Just my punishment, I suppose.”
Melanie threw back her head and laughed. Any easy, joyous sound.
Jo marveled at how the tone of the room had changed over the last few hours.
First, it had all been a great rush of preparation. Part of it clearly to distract from the tension in the room.
Then Perrin had roared in from her design store a couple blocks up the hill. Not only with the green bridesmaid dress, but also with about a third of her shop on a long rolling rack, just in case, which added to the mayhem. They’d shot four different outfits, but Jo was pleased that her instincts had been right. Perrin’s dress with its long lines and surprising reveals had fit Melanie perfectly with only a few minor adjustments, and had been the star of the shoot. Thankfully they were of a size, even if Melanie was taller. The height had revealed a little more arm and a fair amount more leg while hugging her body perfectly. Melanie still wore it and swore she was never giving it back, much to Perrin’s vocal protests and obvious delight.
Russell had coaxed a camera from one of Claude’s assistants and, somehow without offending the notoriously irritable photographer, had taken what everyone, including Claude, had agreed were the best shots.
Renée, on discovering Russell’s previous ownership of one of the top boutique ad studios in New York, had somehow coaxed him into agreeing to build the ads based on his and Claude’s photography. Claude, being a purist, photographer only, had managed to not be offended after only minimal coaxing on Jo’s part.
Cassidy had arrived in search of her errant husband and soon they were all gathered around one of Angelo’s exquisite meals.
Jo was relieved by that. She worried that she’d become a curse for him. But he produced amazing food in unbelievable quantities despite how shabbily she’d treated him earlier this afternoon. It was Cassidy who’d straightened her out over the appetizers.
“Remember the first time we saw them, that Valentine’s Day?”
And now Jo did. She, Cassidy, and Perrin had been out drinking. Celebrating Jo’s partnership in her new firm if she remembered correctly. And Cassidy breaking up with the drip she’d been seeing. Melanie and Russell had breezed through the bar on the way to the restaurant. Her back had been toward the entrance and she’d caught just a brief glimpse, no wonder she hadn’t been able to place the moment.
“I got the story out of Angelo because Russell wouldn’t tell me.” Cassidy confided so that the others at the table wouldn’t hear. “The three of them were close friends in New York. Can you believe that my husband used to date her but ended up with me? It makes no sense.”
Jo thought it made perfect sense, at least as soon as you saw the way Russell looked at Cassidy. She was the center of his world, perhaps even more than he was the center of hers. If that were possible.
Jo had finally registered that it wasn’t Angelo who was thrown by Melanie’s sudden appearance, it was Russell. And something about it had hit him far deeper than “they used to date.” Yet Russell had managed to move past that, even if he wasn’t quite back to his usual blusterous self. He might sound it, but to Jo’s trained ear the testimony of his bravura didn’t quite ring true.
She had also overheard him at one point during a break in the shoot whispering to Melanie. Whispering that he was so sorry.
“I have a suggestion.” Jo hugged Cassidy for a moment so that she could whisper in her friend’s ear.
“What?”
Angelo hadn’t been so much flirting with Melanie as trying to help his friends. And he’d done it so well that it had mostly worked. He was such a good man, it was hard to credit.
“I think,” Jo told Cassidy, “that when you take Russell home tonight, you should be especially nice to him. He’s a very good man.”
Cassidy had smiled and nodded. And she hadn’t looked the least bit upset by the burden.
# # #
“You are in rare form tonight, my son.”
Angelo’s mother patted his back as he fussed over the final plating of the desserts.
“I tried. I really tried.”
“I quote that short thing to you, ‘You no try, you do’.”
“Yoda,” Angelo supplied.
“Yes, whatever. Finish that and you deliver it. Manuel and me, we finish the dinners. You go be with your friends and with the bicycle lady.”
Angelo wiped the edge of a spotless plate and tried to calm his nerves.
Jo was pissed at him about something. He knew that much. When Russell had drifted through the kitchen at one point, he’d asked, but his friend had no idea. He’d tried to offer Angelo a warning scowl of poaching on his honorary sisters, but Angelo was too worried about what he might have done to care.
It was like whenever he was with Jo, she was the most amazing woman he’d ever met. And then the lawyer would appear and he felt like an undereducated slob who couldn’t do anything right.
“Go. You fussing like an old woman. I’m an old woman, you are not. So you are not allowed to fuss like one.”
“Yes, Mama.” He kissed her cheek, then picked up the tray and tried to breeze through the door.
He se
rved the dessert, describing it as he went around the table. Practiced diners like these would absolutely want to know what they were eating.
“This is my mother’s Panna Cotta recipe, with a few twists. Atop her Italian cream, I floated Tarocco-blood-orange-infused eighty-five-percent dark cocoa sauce topped with honey-glazed strawberries. Rather than a grappa, I’ve paired it with espresso. Though I would suggest Marolo Barolo Grappa if you’d prefer that.”
Only as he finished serving did he dare look at the people around the table. Russell, with his broken leg propped on a chair, and Claude were busy discussing ad composition at one end. Renée was listening closely, making occasional suggestions. The four other women sat down the table, Melanie and Perrin on one side, Cassidy and Jo on the other.
He looked at Jo last, trying to be careful about gauging her temperature. He took the last Panna Cotta and espresso for himself and hesitated. Jo slid her chair slightly toward Cassidy and pulled her dessert over as well, opening just enough room for him at the end of the table.
He’d take that as a good sign.
He set his dessert in the cleared space and pulled over a chair from the next table as he fielded all of the compliments about the meal and the dessert that rippled up and down the table.
Jo was silent as she took one bite, then another.
He settled enough to try his own. It was the best he’d ever done. Even his mother had not tried to alter what he’d added to her old recipe. She’d simply tasted it then turned away to walk to the sink. At first he’d thought she was going to spit it out.
She’d run a little water over her fingertips then patted them dry on her apron and brushed them lightly over her eyes. If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect her of blinking back tears before she turned clear-eyed to tell him how wonderful it was.
Where Dreams Books 1-3 Page 40
