Melanie, the supermodel, was going to meet her at the airport so that they could go over the proofs together. Something about Russell refusing to release them without her final approval. It made sense if they’d been friends. It sort of made sense.
Actually, it made no sense at all. Apparently Melanie was flying out of JFK shortly after Jo was flying in, so that part worked. But none of the rest of it did. Renée had clearly slipped another fast one by her and the hidden strategy eluded Jo the rest of the way across the country.
# # #
“Russell, he does such beautiful work.” Which sounded even better in Melanie’s exquisite voice.
The Palm Bar and Grille at JFK was pleasant with dark wood decor and prompt service. They’d opted to split a Crab Louie Salad, and even though Jo had only had the one glass of wine last night, she opted for a diet Coke as did Melanie.
They had a spread of six different ads that could be based on The Glass Shoppe photo shoot in the Market on the table between them.
“I like this one the best.”
Jo had to agree. “You do look incredibly sexy in that one. Good for a Playboy or a GQ placement. But what do you think of this one for Condé Nast?” It was more playful. Rather than the flirty punch that Melanie delivered so consistently, it had captured her with a smile just being surprised from her lips as she turned to a vase of the deepest red that arced like a tulip petal.
“You are good at this.” Melanie tipped her head one way and another. “I have to think about this one some more. I usually go for the sexy, but this is interesting. You are right of course, use this for them. I need to think about other demographics of my market. I won’t be the most beautiful one forever.”
Not on display, Melanie actually had very little accent or affectation. Her hair was hanked back in a long ponytail. Her skin with minimal makeup was more human. And her accent, rather than suggesting France, hinted ever so slightly at New York. Upper East Side perhaps.
They went through the rest of the ads relatively quickly in between slow bites of crab salad. Then they reached the ads built on the images that had been shot at Angelo’s. The difference was immediately obvious.
“Those are all Claude’s, aren’t they?” Melanie indicated the reject pile.
Jo checked the photo index list and compared the photo numbers. “Every one.”
“Russell is so good. I’m glad he picked up the camera again. It is a part of who he is. He had such a talent. I never look so good as when Russell takes the picture.”
There was some note in her voice that Jo couldn’t help noticing. “You love him very much, don’t you?”
Melanie glanced at her then looked away. But she didn’t need to say any more.
Jo rested a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me. I didn’t know.”
Melanie stared for another long moment at the far end of the bar before turning back to Jo. Then she shrugged those perfect shoulders helplessly.
“At first, I fell for Russell because he is sooo handsome and we look so good together. Then I find that he is worth many, many millions. I liked the sound of that also very much.”
Even without the French accent, Melanie had clearly hidden inside its mask so long that it shifted her speech patterns.
“I grew up poor. I really liked the sound of that money. And then I liked Russell. And then…” Again the elegant shrug. “I was not strong enough or challenging enough or something I no understand. He is good with Cassidy, better than he would be with me. We would have had one of those two-year marriages on the front page of the Enquirer with all of the ugly at the end. It is better that we did not.”
Jo squeezed Melanie’s arm.
They sorted the ads based on Angelo’s in an easy accord that required few words.
There was one more folder at the bottom of the box. Melanie opened it while Jo made notes for Renée.
“Oh,” Melanie’s soft exclamation drew Jo’s attention.
It took her several moments to make sense of the images Melanie was spreading out across the table.
She vaguely remembered Russell snapping photos during the meal, just some quick candids. No flash umbrellas, no makeup artists, no clothier.
There were two shots of Melanie and Perrin both looking stunning in Perrin’s designer clothes. Russell had done one mockup of each, the first one for Pike Place Market, and the other for Perrin’s Glorious Garb. The second one was the killer. They were huddled together as if conspiring to break every heart they came upon. Bare shoulders, a deep, deep V-neck on Perrin, an amazing length of leg from Melanie.
“Oh. Perrin, she must use this one.”
“She’d can’t afford your rates, Melanie. And she never takes charity, not even from her friends.”
“Nonsense. You tell her I have already taken payment for this, I never gave her back the green dress. I like it too much.”
Jo’s attempts to thank her were lightly brushed aside.
“It is done.” To prove her point, she tossed the ad using the two of them for the Market into the reject pile.
“Now, what are these?”
Jo looked down at them and blushed. It was her and Angelo. Jo in her power suit and Angelo in his immaculate charcoal dress shirt sat shoulder to shoulder, sharing Panna Cotta. They had lifted their spoons at the same moment as if they were about to feed each other, though Jo knew they hadn’t.
“This one, it sizzles. It makes me feel hot all over.” Melanie fanned herself with her hand.
Russell had faded the table under the text. The walls were a soft haze. All that remained in focus were the identical desserts, the identical espresso cups, and the identical expressions.
“No,” her mouth was dry and a sip of Coke did nothing to ease the sensation. “We can’t use this one.”
“Why the hell not?” For just a moment, Melanie’s voice took on a Lower West Side grind.
“It’s… I don’t know. It’s just…”
“It is lovely,” Melanie insisted, her soft French firmly back in place and a slight blush on her features that Jo tactfully ignored.
She tried to look at it and see the two people on a date, not herself and Angelo, but couldn’t manage it.
Melanie picked up a cherry tomato and bit down on it.
“There is a photograph that Russell took of me. He is such an imbécile that he does not understand what he took a picture of, until much later. Then he sent me a copy with a very nice apology that cut like a knife in my heart.” She reached over to her purse and slipped it out of an inside pocket, then slid it across the table.
Jo had seen Melanie look many ways in many ads. Tantalizing, distant, teasing, voracious, but this was different.
It was a close-up of Melanie’s face, her features lit from below by the bright blue of a bubbling hot tub. No bathing suit straps where her perfect shoulders rose just above the water. A vase of red roses the color of Melanie’s lips floated nearby. Her eyes were wide and her smile soft.
“It looks like…you’re in love.” Jo regretted it the moment she said it, but that’s how it looked.
“Oui.” Melanie agreed sadly. “And so I was, with the imbécile behind the camera. He is such a good man.”
Then she put one finger on her much-handled photo and slid it across the table next to the ad Russell had made of Jo and Angelo eating dessert together.
Jo’s gaze drifted from Melanie’s photo to the ad.
She looked at both of her and Angelo’s expressions. Now it was easy to see what showed there.
Chapter 35
Angelo kept his attention divided between his sauce and the woman auditioning to be the new aboyeur. As the expeditor, she would direct all communications between the tables and the cook line. A single mistake could snarl the entire line and cause a cascading wreckage of service that could take hours to recover fro
m. However, a good expeditor could improve the line’s efficiency dramatically.
He’d given Graziella a free hand to at least test an assistant. She’d been working as hostess, head waitress, and expeditor. Far too much for one person in a busy restaurant. She was very social and enjoyed the front of house, so she’d brought in Luisa to try out for aboyeur. Luisa could almost be Graziella’s twin. They were both tall, sleek, and dark haired with classic, straight Italian noses gracing their pretty faces. The main difference rapidly became apparent. Graziella always asked and cajoled, even pleaded in a pleasant tone. Luisa got flirtatious, funny, caustic, whatever it took to get what she needed to make everything run smoothly.
Angelo liked her already. If Manuel approved her after today’s test, he’d hire her on a two-week trial. She’d just moved back to the States from two years studying in Italy. Rather than spending time in cooking school, she’d worked restaurants in different regions for three months at a time. She knew food well enough, but it appeared that she understood restaurants intimately.
Her Italian, she admitted, had remained fairly miserable. But when Angelo had pretended to totally botch an order to gauge her response, she’d proven her command of at least the invective portion of the language. She could swear better than Russell, and she made it sound much more pleasant. For one thing, Russell’s accent sucked.
His mother came over for a taste of the new sauce he was fooling with on the side. She let it roll on her tongue for several long moments.
“That is for the seafood linguini at the new restaurant?”
He nodded.
“So, you decided to go Piedmonte without asking your mother?”
Her tone no longer struck fear into his heart. “Piedmonte and Lombardia. They’re close. I still need to work on the name. Angelo’s Nord Italiano Hearth or maybe Angelo’s North Italian Hearth.”
“The second one, your patroni are in America. The sauce, it’s good.”
She turned back to her pastry station where she was making chocolate biscotti for dipping in a thickened vanilla-coffee cream she’d created.
Angelo waited for the other shoe. For the “a little soy sauce would make that nice” or “maybe if you added a bit of elk meat.” But she didn’t.
“Love you, Mama,” he called to her.
“You only love me because I no insult your beautiful sauce,” she shot back and they shared a smile.
A smile that froze on his lips when he looked up and saw who stood at the kitchen door. The kitchen volume dropped by half as his staff spotted his reaction and then its cause. They might not know the whole story, but Angelo supposed his own rocketing and crashing emotions had been hard to miss.
“Jo.” It wasn’t even a whisper, but it was all he could manage. He hadn’t seen her since they’d parted in stiff silence at the airport to find their separate cars. It hadn’t even been a whole week and yet it felt like a year.
She wore the power suit, but the jacket was open, the floopy bow tie missing, and the blouse open just one button. She looked exhausted from travel and nervous to be in his kitchen. He’d never brought her back here and felt suddenly very self-conscious. She looked so damned incredible, standing there shifting from one foot to the other. A small, practical, wheeled suitcase rested beside her, her briefcase in her hand.
“I thought you were in New York.”
“I was.”
“I thought you were supposed to be in meetings all day.”
“I cancelled them.”
He opened his mouth but closed it with a snap that nipped the end of his tongue painfully when his mother poked his ribs with the handle of a wooden spoon. Before he managed to turn on her, she gave him a shove that almost sent him stumbling into Marlys. His grillardin stepped out of the way and let him pass down the line and around the end of the cook stations until he stood close in front of Jo.
“Here. You’ll get run over if you remain there.” He took the suitcase and rolled it under the side prep table, its little plastic wheels making loud thumps on the seams between the tiles, so loud they seemed to echo about the kitchen. The table was presently covered with piles of vegetables and iced filets of sole to prep for the dinner service. She slipped her briefcase under the table as well.
“This is out of the way for the moment.” A waiter came through the swinging door they’d just cleared, bearing an armload of dirty dishes. Graziella didn’t believe in trays and tubs on the floor and Angelo agreed. The waiter delivered them to Marko with an ear-ringing clatter.
Angelo glanced over and saw that Manuel had shifted to cover his position on the line and had turned down the heat under his sauce as well. Good man. Now he had to face Jo.
“I’m sorry to interrupt. You’re busy and—”
“Look, I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that. I wasn’t thinking. It just came out.”
“Did your mother or Cassidy chew you out about that?”
“No.” He glanced toward his mother. “Were they supposed to?” He waved the question away. It meant she’d told his mother and…he turned back to Jo with a shrug.
“They didn’t have to. I sort of figured it out slowly on my own.” It had taken him most of the last four days, but he wouldn’t mention that. He tried to read her expression, but he couldn’t make sense of it. Counselor Thompson, he could read her pretty well. And when she was Jo, everything was so damned obvious on her face that they could have whole conversations without a word. This woman standing before him, he was less sure of.
He wanted to shout out how much he’d missed her, but he couldn’t. It would simply kill him.
He’d drifted through the week, shopping, cooking, sleeping, and then doing the same thing again. It was as if someone had dropped him in a vat of gelatin that was slowly setting to solid around him. He kept struggling against it because he didn’t know how to stop. Now that she stood in his kitchen, it was as if the gel had never been and he’d come back to life.
“I shouldn’t have said it and I wanted to formally apologize.” He folded his arms over his chest to keep his hands still. He knew it sounded stiff, but it was the best he could manage.
She waited, shifted again.
What more was he supposed to say? Cast his damn heart at her feet and watch it be stomped again like a tiny grape?
Jo looked around her, but not as if she was seeing anything. Her hands, those beautiful, elegant, calm hands that could drive his body to such distraction…weren’t calm. They were practically fluttering about her lap.
She was nervous. He’d never seen her nervous. Frustrated at work, out of place and confused in Alaska, but never nervous.
“I’ve been in the air for almost sixteen hours with only three hours on the ground in New York before turning back around. I had really lousy connections coming back, but it was the fastest I could get here.”
“Fastest?” He didn’t dare to hope, squashed the glimmer of it as well as he could, wrapped his arms tighter across this chest.
She pulled out one of the stools from under the prep table and sat down on it.
Angelo kicked one loose and sat facing her. A glance showed that most of the line was watching them surreptitiously, except for his mother who was making no bones about what she was paying attention to. He was glad the patissier station was at the far end of the cookline. The kitchen had never in two years been so quiet while a meal was in progress.
“I’ve had sixteen hours to think about something you said. And you were right, Alaska would kill me. Another multi-year lawsuit would do me in, too, even if it made my career. By the end I would be bitter and angry. I don’t want to be that.”
“That, uh, that sounds good. Does that mean that you’ll—” He couldn’t finish the sentence, but Jo nodded anyway.
“I called Renée Linden last night just before I got on the return flight. You are n
ow talking to your new managing landlord, the Executive Director of the Pike Place Market. Still sounds crazy when I say it. Well, I’ll have some time to get used to it as that will take most of a month to switch over. She’s informing the board of her retirement right now. Muriel and I have to go meet them in fifteen minutes but Renée assures me that’s just a technicality.”
“Oh my God, Jo. That’s incredible!” Angelo wanted to shout. He couldn’t think straight. He’d now have time to court her. She wouldn’t be running out of his life to a place filled with bad memories for her. He wanted to reach for her, but it was too much. He rested his hands firmly on his thighs and clamped them there.
“And you’re closed Mondays and Tuesdays still, right?”
“Uh, right.” That was a real problem he hadn’t been able to solve. Maybe he could shift some of his hours somehow so that he could see more of her. But he hadn’t come up with a solution yet.
“New restaurant, too? Same hours?” She was switching over to that Counselor Thompson role that had so captivated him.
“Hadn’t thought that far ahead, but, uh, sure. Probably. Why?”
“Good. I only have,” she checked her watch, “twelve more minutes and I have a bit of ground to cover.”
“Okay. You’re in Seattle. You’re quitting your job as an attorney. Are you okay with that?”
She reached out and touched his hand for a moment. A contact that rippled up his arm so powerfully it made his breath catch in his chest.
“Bless you, Angelo, for thinking of me and my feelings. It’s not something I’m very good at. Actually, the Market’s business is so complex now, that being an attorney is a distinct advantage. Apparently it is one of the reasons Renée first considered me. I’ll still be practicing law, I will simply be doing it on a more reasonable schedule. Speaking of schedule…”
“I can—”
“Shush! Ten minutes to go.”
God, but she simply slayed him when she was in this mode. There’d never been another woman like her.
“The Market has a number of vendors who only work on the weekends. I’ll be telling the board that my hours are Wednesday through Sunday. I’ll have Monday and Tuesday off as well. I’m not sure what I will do with a career that fits into only five days a week, but that’s a different issue.”
Where Dreams Books 1-3 Page 53
