Before I Do Amazon

by Freethy, Barbara

  But it was immediately clear that he was a regular at the café. A fifty-something-year-old woman with a round figure, sparkling blue eyes, and a cheerful smile greeted Nick with a big hug, an embrace he actually returned with some enthusiasm.

  "It's been too long, Nicholas," she said. "Your table has missed you."

  "I'm sure you've been able to fill it." He looked around the crowded café. "Business is good?"

  "Very good, especially on the weekends." She gave Isabella an interested look, and said, "Aren't you going to introduce me, Nick?"

  "Sorry. Isabella Martinez, this is Joanie Hooper. Joanie and her husband own this wonderful restaurant."

  "It's nice to meet you," she said, seeing Joanie give her an assessing look.

  "You, too," Joanie replied. "Your table is being bussed right now, Nick, so your timing is perfect."

  "Any table will do," Nick said, but Joanie insisted on leading them to the outside deck and a table by the railing overlooking the boats.

  "Whatever you want is on the house," Joanie added, handing them both menus. "The chef's special waffle of the day is blueberry, and it's amazing."

  "You say that about everything Tom makes," Nick said.

  "I found a good man, what can I say? My chef, Tom, is also my husband," she explained for Isabella's benefit. "We opened this café three years ago—with Nick's help. We couldn't have done it without him."

  "You could have done it without me; it just would have taken you longer," Nick said.

  "Like a lifetime." Her eyes welled up. "We owe you everything, Nick. I never would have imagined the serious, skinny kid who asked me a million questions would one day be my savior." She turned to Isabella. "He's a good man, in case you were wondering."

  Isabella smiled. "Good to know."

  "You don't have to impress her, Joanie," Nick said. "She's not a date. She's a…business associate."

  "Really? Is that what I am?" she teased. She glanced up at Joanie. "Actually, I'm a dance teacher, and I'm teaching Nick the tango."

  Joanie raised an eyebrow. "The tango? You're learning to dance, Nick? Now that sounds like a story I want to hear."

  "I'll tell you another time," Nick said firmly. "We're kind of hungry here, Joanie."

  "Okay, I'll let you off the hook for now. Why don't I bring you a couple of our favorite dishes, some omelets, waffles, bacon and hash browns. What do you say?"

  "Sounds good to me," Isabella said, handing back her menu. "But what are you bringing for Nick to eat?"

  Joanie laughed. "I like you, Isabella." She gave Nick a pointed look. "She's a lot more fun than those skinny models you usually show up with. They don't eat a thing. It's a waste of good food."

  As Joanie moved away from the table, Isabella said, "Skinny models, huh?"

  He shrugged. "I don't remember."

  "Now that is a lie. You are not a man who forgets anything."

  "You think you know me well enough to make that statement?"

  "I don't know you well at all, but I still think I'm right."

  He laughed. "Maybe this time."

  His grin transformed his face from rigid and unyielding to friendly and warm.

  "You should do that more often," she said. "Smile. It makes you look like a human."

  "Otherwise, I look…"

  "Angry, on your guard, as if you're ready for the worst."

  He sat back in his seat, a contemplative gleam in his eyes. "I am usually ready for the worst. You read people well, Isabella."

  "Sometimes. Not always. I'm trying to get better so I can save myself from painful mistakes."

  "Who was he?" Nick asked.

  The sharp gleam in his eyes told her he wasn't going to let her get away without an answer. "Carter Hayes."

  "What happened?"

  "A lot."

  "Tell me."

  She could have said no. Nick didn't like to talk about himself. He probably would have respected her privacy, but for some reason she found herself wanting to tell him. Maybe then he'd understand why the studio was so important to her.

  "I met Carter in New York. He was getting a reputation for being a brilliant director, and I was awestruck when I met him. I was that foolish, naïve girl who couldn't believe the most popular man in the theater world wanted to date me. I thought I was special, but it turned out I wasn't. But I didn't find out right away. I was living in a dream world for several months."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We'd been going out a few months when a part came up in a new musical Carter was directing for a successful husband and wife production team—Hal and Donna Tyler. Carter got me an audition, and I won the role. It turned out to be a bigger part than either of us expected. Over the next few weeks, as the script got rewritten, my part got bigger. The Tylers and I were on the same page. I loved their musical and they loved the way I danced."

  She took a sip of her water, then continued. "Carter, however, was not so happy. He didn't want me to have the bigger part. He was afraid to risk his reputation on an unknown, even an unknown he was sleeping with."

  "Sounds like a hell of a guy."

  "It took me far to long to see that he was not a good person and he was never in love with me. I was just one of many women he liked. I actually found him in bed with another dancer—a friend. It was heart-breaking." She could still remember the pain and sense of betrayal she'd felt at that moment. "I thought that was the worst of it, but it wasn't."

  "What else happened?"

  "While my personal life was spinning out of control, my professional life also ran into problems. The production lost one of the stars three weeks before the opening to a serious illness. The investors got worried. One of them pulled his money out. The producers were scrambling to replace those funds. They wanted to put on a special showcase to generate excitement in the musical and sell more tickets for opening night. Carter had a lot of pressure on him, and he put that pressure onto me."

  She swallowed a knot in her throat, then forced herself to continue. She'd gone this far, she might as finish the story. "There was a scene that involved a staircase and some scaffolding. In the rehearsal, I told Carter that I didn't think the structure was stable. He basically told me to suck it up and do the dance or he'd find someone to replace me. I saw the ruthless determination in his eyes. So I sucked it up, and I did the dance. Thirty seconds before the end of the number, the scaffolding collapsed, and I fell ten feet to the stage. I broke my leg in two places."

  Nick drew in a quick breath. "Isabella, I'm sorry."

  "I had to have surgery and months of rehab. Dancing was out of the question. So I went back to the studio and I started to teach."

  "How long ago was that?"

  "A year and a half."

  "So you're fully recovered now?"

  She nodded. "Yes, but I missed my window of opportunity. I'm old for a dancer now. I don't know that I could compete anymore, even if I wanted to, and I don't want to. I'm done with that part of my life. I'm going to run my own studio now, help other dancer reach their dreams." She let out a breath. "That's the whole story."

  "What happened to Carter and the production after your injury?"

  "It was shut down. Theater people can be very superstitious. No one wanted to touch the show. Carter went on to direct something else. The producers went on to produce something else. Time moved on."

  "Why wasn't there a lawsuit?"

  "The producers paid my medical bills. I had a lawyer for a while, but there was no indisputable evidence that the scaffolding had collapsed. There was an argument that I'd tripped and fallen, and with that fall, the structure had come down."

  "It doesn't sound like you had a good lawyer."

  "Probably not, but to be honest I just wanted to move on, too. The Tylers had been good to me. I didn't want to hurt them. I didn't want to put them out of business."

  "And Carter? Did you forgive him?"

  "I've really tried to forgive him for my fall. I don't believe that he honestly tho
ught anything was wrong with the scaffolding when he sent me up there to dance. He should have listened to me, and he didn't, but he also didn't put the scaffolding together."

  "But you told him it was unstable, and he shut you down."

  "That's true. That's why forgiveness has been difficult. But I don't want to waste my life hating Carter for anything that he did, because that would just keep the pain fresh, and I need it to go away, not linger. I can't change what happened. I can only go forward. I'm fine now. I have a good life. The past is the past."

  She was relieved to see a waiter with their food. She needed to put some pancakes into her churning stomach and turn the conversation in another direction.

  "This looks amazing," she said. "I don't know where to start, waffles, pancakes, eggs?"

  Nick smiled. "Start wherever you like. I'm sure we can get more if we run out of food."

  "I don't think we'll run out. This is a feast." She popped a piece of bacon into her mouth. It was perfectly crisp. "I think this café was an excellent investment for you."

  "Contrary to popular opinion," he said.

  "What does that mean?"

  "Nothing. Let's just eat."

  She was happy to go along with that suggestion—at least for the moment. But when they'd finished off most of the plates, she decided it was only fair that Nick share a little personal information. "What did you mean before when you said investing in this café went against popular opinion?"

  "My father thought it was a bad idea. Joanie had originally approached his firm. But when he said no, she came to me."

  "Because you two knew each other?" she ventured, sensing that Joanie hadn't just been a stranger on the street.

  "We did know each other. Joanie was my nanny when I was nine years old. She was with my family until I was fourteen. Then she took another job with some younger kids and eventually fell in love, got married, and decided to open a restaurant."

  She was more than a little surprised to learn that Joanie had been Nick's nanny. It was hard to think of Nick as a child.

  "She still tries to mother me," Nick said. "But I let her get away with it, because in reality she spent more time with me than either of my parents. My mom was a sweetheart, but when my dad said jump, she jumped. That usually meant she was with him and not with me. But Joanie was there." He sat back as the waiter cleared their table. "Do you want anything else?"

  "No, I'm stuffed. It was all really good. I like that you helped out your former nanny, Nick. It's sweet."

  He grimaced. "No one has ever described me as sweet."

  She laughed at his disgruntled expression. "Well, in this instance, you were. Before you told me about Joanie, I didn't think you had any soft edges."

  "I really don't, Isabella. Joanie was the exception."

  She wondered if that were true. Before five minutes ago, she would have said yes, but now she wasn't so sure that Nick didn't have a side that very few people got to see.

  Chapter Seven

  After breakfast, they decided to take a walk instead of going straight back to the car. The path in front of the restaurant took them along the harbor, and as Nick looked out at the sailboats, he felt an odd, yearning desire to get on one of those boats and sail into the horizon with Isabella at his side.

  It wasn't the kind of dream he had often or ever. In fact, he rarely dreamed at all anymore. Every day was about meeting whatever goal he had set the day before. He'd been running at a dead sprint for the past decade. He'd been happy in his ambition and mostly satisfied with his success, but today he felt restless.

  He worked most nights and weekends. Self-made men didn't take days off. But today he didn't feel like going back to his office, and part of that reluctance had to do with Isabella. She was interesting and different, not at all like the women he usually spent time with, and he was intrigued. He also couldn't get their impulsive but passionate kiss the night before out of his head. And having her story about her bad love affair and her horrific injury, he felt an even stronger connection to her.

  Isabella was a survivor, soft on the outside but very strong on the inside. He had a feeling she didn't even realize her strength, which made her even more appealing.

  Isabella paused and rested her arms on a waist-high cement wall that edged the water. "I know I keep saying what a great view, but every time I turn around, my jaw drops," she said with a smile. "I spend most of days in a windowless studio with a mirror reflecting my movements. Sometimes I don't even know if it's sunny outside."

  He could relate to that comment. Even though he sat in front of a huge window most of the day, he rarely looked out. He was too busy concentrating on whatever was on his computer or on a paper in front of him. And when he wasn't doing that, he was usually on the phone dealing with some crisis or closing a deal.

  But today he was reminded that the city was more than his office building and had so much to offer from the magnificent skyscrapers of downtown to the trendy condos at the waterfront, the narrow, steep hills of Nob Hill and Russian Hill, to the broader streets of the Haight and the Sunset. In San Francisco, neighborhoods and cultures changed every block from Chinatown to Japantown to the predominantly Italian North Beach. The once mostly Irish Mission district now belonged to the twenty-somethings, and the hipster generation was settling in high-rise buildings south of Market. There was literally something for everyone in this town.

  "I love this city," he murmured.

  "Me, too," Isabella said, turning to look at him. "What else do you love?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "What excites you? What gets you up in the morning?"

  "Making deals, increasing my net worth, growing my hotel chain." He knew she wouldn't like his answer. She wanted to hear something more soulful, but that's all he had.

  "When will it be enough? What does success look like, Nick?"

  He stared back at her, a little shaken by the question. "I don't know."

  "You've never thought about it?"

  "Not really. I still feel like I have a long way to go."

  "To do what? Prove you're the best? Own the most hotels? Have the most money?"

  "Those would all be good."

  "But life isn't a game of Monopoly. What else do you want? What about marriage and children?"

  "Possibly someday. I didn't grow up in the happiest of families, so I've never been in a rush to settle into some sort of long-term commitment. And not having had the greatest role model, I'm not sure I'd be a good husband or a father."

  "You're not your dad."

  "True."

  "You said he was disappointed when you didn't go into his business, but it sounds like there's more behind your estrangement."

  "I don't want to talk about him."

  "Well, I didn't want to talk about Carter, but I did. I'm trying to get to know you and let you get to know me. I think it will help us when we dance together."

  "That's a stretch."

  "If you won't tell me about your father, then tell me about this land in Argentina that you want so badly. There are a lot of beautiful places in the world. What is it about that piece of property that makes you willing to undergo something so traumatic and painful as learning the tango?"

  He smiled at her words. "You think I'm being overdramatic."

  "Yes. So answer my question."

  He debated for one long minute, then impulsively reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. From there he removed a folded piece of glossy paper. He opened it and handed it to her.

  She gave him a look of surprise, then glanced down at the magazine picture of a beautiful sandy beach, a hammock slung between two palm trees, miles of clear blue sea, and one lone sailboat on the horizon."

  "Is this the beach?" she asked.

  "It is. It was named one of the best beaches in South America."

  "The date on this page is from sixteen years ago." She looked up at him, a question in her eyes.

  "Yes, it is," he said evenly, mentally preparing
himself for what would come next.

  She gazed into his eyes. "You've had this in your wallet for sixteen years?"

  "Not quite that long." He hadn't really given conscious thought to how many years he'd been working towards his goal. "It hasn't always been in my wallet. I put it there when I went to Argentina a few weeks ago."

  "What's the story behind this, Nick?"

  He drew in a breath and slowly let it out. He'd never been tempted to show anyone that picture. Not even Martin knew what had driven him to that land in Argentina, but there was something about Isabella that made him want to open up.

  "My mom cut that picture out of the magazine. She wanted to go there on vacation. She tried for a solid year to get my dad to take her there, but he was always too busy for a vacation. She told me once that she had the terrible feeling that if they didn't take that trip, their marriage would fall apart." His heart hardened at the memory. "But it wasn't their marriage that went bad; it was my mother's health. She got cancer. While that photograph had once started out as a way to save her marriage, it became the focal point of her battle to better health. She dreamed about going to that beach, resting on that hammock, sailing on that sea. She thought if she could just get there, everything would work out."

  Isabella's eyes filled with moisture, and she put a hand on his arm in concern. "She didn't make it, did she?"

  He shook his head, painful waves of emotion rolling through him.

  "I'm so sorry, Nick. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

  Her words should have freed him from saying more, but while he hadn't wanted to talk about it at first, now he couldn't seem to stop the words flowing from his mouth. "After she died, we were packing up her things, and I took the picture off her bulletin board. I don't know why I kept it, but I couldn't bring myself to throw it away. We had so many talks about that beach. I felt like I had to get there for her—if for no other reason."

  "It took you a long time to go."

  "No, it didn't. I went the first time when I was twenty-two, right after I graduated from college. I fell in love with the beach. I vowed then and there that I'd find a way to own a piece of that land, but first I had to make some money. I wasn't interested in my father's offer to join his firm. I knew that he would try to make me over in his image, and I didn't think much of his image. I also didn't want to move money around for a living. That sounded very boring. I got a job in a hotel and started working my way up. I found that I loved the hotel business. Along the way, I made some valuable contacts with people who had money to invest in me and my dreams."