Where Dreams Are Well Done

by M. L. Buchman

  “Where?”

  “L.A. at first; maybe Vegas and overseas after that. Wolfgang Puck wants an experienced aboyeur to vet and enhance the operation of two of his high-end restaurants at the Bel-Air and the Ritz-Carlton. If that works out well, I’d expand into Spago and Cut.”

  It was the entire fine dining line with one of the leading restaurateurs in the country.

  “It’s just talk at this point,” she finished prepping a plate and turned to hand it off.

  But her timing was off; neither Graziella nor the other waiters were anywhere to be seen. It was his only clue that she was not nearly as calm or cool about this as she was pretending. Luisa never missed her cues, not once in the last three months since they’d become lovers had she eased up on pushing him for perfection in the kitchen. She’d also trained someone for Manuel and was helping Angelo do interviews for his Southern Italian Hearth over in Bellevue at the top of one of the towers.

  “Just talk? You said you had an offer.”

  She shrugged negligently and he knew she was gone.

  He wished to heaven he knew why.

  He did his best to focus back on the service, managed to get the mahi-mahi with the right sauce and vegetables, even if it was on the wrong type of plate. He didn’t change it and she didn’t say a word before dressing it with a truffle oil finish.

  All Sam knew was that there was small box in his pocket that had been burning a hole there for two days since he’d picked up the ring. And his plans to give it to her tonight, when they’d have the next two days off to celebrate, had just been burned past recognition.

  Chapter 10

  Luisa hadn’t been prepared for her own pain when Sam had shut her out. Not that she could blame him; it had been one of her least smooth exits in history. But this wasn’t working for her. He was too close, too real, too important. She’d sworn no man would ever get in the way of her dreams. The Old Boys Club of restaurant chefs would never limit her options. She’d prove—

  But the scar that she’d just sliced across Sam’s heart was so visible; she’d never imagined anything that bad.

  He didn’t say another word to her. Instead he returned to creating perfect food like an emotionless machine. She hadn’t had the heart to offer a single prod or nudge—he didn’t give her cause to, except that one plate. His part of the service was perfect. Machine perfect.

  As the last plated dish crossed the line, he turned to Marlys, whispered something to her, and was gone out the back door before she could think what to say. Marlys began cleaning up his station without looking at her once.

  No one else on the line was talking to her either.

  Luisa cleaned up her station amidst the echoing silence and retreated as quickly as she could.

  She entered her apartment too weary to turn on the light. She also couldn’t bear seeing one of Sam’s forgotten jackets over the back of a chair or the silly mobile he’d bought at the Pike Place Market and hung in her window, made entirely of twisted vintage forks and spoons.

  Two days and nights later she was still sitting in the dark when an envelope was slid under her door. She’d hurried barefoot to the peephole, but there was nothing to see and she couldn’t bear to open the door. She slid down until she sat beside the envelope with her back to the door.

  Inside there was a check. It was two-week’s severance pay, plus an extra month’s pay for bonus. Signed by Angelo.

  A post-it had been stuck to the front of the check.

  Two words, no signature, but she’d recognize the handwriting anywhere.

  “Good luck.”

  She caught the next flight to Los Angeles and wore sunglasses the whole way to hide her bloodshot eyes.

  Chapter 11

  Sam finished the last serving of the night and began cleaning up his station. He bantered a bit with Marlys; let the line see he was fine—after two months, he’d better be.

  Graziella came up to him as he was finishing the cleanup on his station.

  “I know,” he told her. “I know. I’ll put out an ad tomorrow for a new aboyeur. I just couldn’t face doing it before. But I really want to thank you for covering, Graziella. You’re amazing.”

  “I am amazing. Thank you for noticing.”

  He managed a smile. Her quick hug was surprising and kind.

  She then nodded toward the front of house. “Someone waiting to see you.” And she was gone.

  Sam double-checked the kitchen. He was the last one, so he flipped off all except the safety night light and pushed out into restaurant.

  The lights were out. The fire was still going and a single candle burned on the table for two close beside it. A lone woman sat at the table facing away from the kitchen.

  For a moment he wondered how Graziella had circled around so fast, but then he knew. His stomach clenched so hard that he couldn’t breathe and had to hold onto the door frame to remain upright. He considered moving back through the door, but Luisa sat so still. Even the sound of the swinging door behind him didn’t cause her to turn, as if she’d shatter at the least movement.

  He circled the long way around the fire so that he didn’t approach her from behind. Her face was as frozen as the rest of her. She was normally so animated that she looked unnatural in her stillness.

  Sam wanted to yell at her; spit out all of the hard hateful words that had rattled around inside him but never found any target. But the candle picked up the tracks of the silent tears that she made no effort to brush aside, if she was even aware of them. At a loss for what else to do, he sat down across from her.

  He saw her swallow hard, several times, but blast it all if he’d be first to speak. If he was, he couldn’t trust what would come out.

  She nodded once, twice, as if trying to confirm something to herself, then began in a soft voice. Not quite looking at him, as if she didn’t dare.

  “My parents threw me out when I was fourteen. Boys and drugs and never going to school and junk like that was what they said. Maybe. But I know they also couldn’t afford to feed me. I learned fast what cold and hungry were like. Got pretty desperate. Finally tried to hustle this chef coming out of a sleazy restaurant. Offered to trade what I had to give for some food.”

  Sam wanted to close his eyes. Didn’t want to see the hard memories that were crossing Luisa’s lovely face, but he couldn’t look away.

  “Instead he fed me, helped me get a fake ID because I already looked like this, and gave me my first restaurant job. He paid me in food and a place to sleep on his floor. No money for the first six months because he didn’t trust me to not buy drugs until I’d been clean a while.”

  Sam had heard stories like that. Except the offered payment was usually accepted. She’d gotten lucky.

  “I don’t have the palate to be a chef. But I’m smart. I earned my GED in two years even though I was missing four years of school. And I saw how restaurants worked; as clearly as a child’s game. I cooked, cleaned, waitressed, did it all. But I was always fascinated by how it all worked. How things flowed.”

  Sam nodded. He couldn’t quite bring himself to tell her just how good she’d been at her job.

  “I always dreamed of running a chain. A big group of restaurants, making them function the way…” her voice stumbled and she took a deep gulping breath not far from a sob but continued. “…the way that we functioned. It was almost as good as sex. Better than, until I met you. Those months with you were the best of my life.”

  “Mine too,” Sam managed his first words and she nodded rapidly in response.

  “But I didn’t understand about boys, men; about a man. About you. I didn’t get that what we had wasn’t like anything I’d ever had before. I did the job. I worked for Wolfgang in amazing restaurants. And people listened. I was good.”

  “Best I’ve ever seen,” Sam finally admitted. He didn’t tend to think ahead, but he found himself trying to second guess this conversation. He wasn’t having much luck. There was a thin thread of hope, but it was blended with m
emory of a pain so intense that it was utterly blinding.

  “I got that dream. The dream that a poor, desperate, cokehead girl had held up as a light to find her way out of the tunnel. But I missed the most important part.”

  “What’s that?” Sam held himself very tightly. Even daring to hope hurt like a knife.

  “You.”

  “Me? Just that simply. Me?”

  She nodded again, her arms wrapped tightly around her as if she was freezing to death sitting right next to the fire.

  “I’m just a dumb chef. You’d better explain it to me. Because last time I checked you’re the one who—” He bit off the words. Clamped down on the recriminations that he wanted to spew all over her…because he didn’t want to spew them any more.

  For better or worse, he knew one truth absolutely.

  He loved Luisa Valenti.

  Heaven help him.

  He took a deep breath and spoke slowly so that he could choose his words carefully.

  “We get back together and you’re just going to wish you were back with Wolfgang’s restaurants. And I don’t want to leave Angelo’s. He’s perhaps the best Italian chef working today and he’s given me his Number One restaurant to run. No way to solve that.”

  “There is. At least I hope there is.”

  “I’m listening,” Sam hoped there was too. He’d never wanted anything in his life as much as he wanted Luisa, but giving up the restaurant dream would only make him bitter. Just as if she gave up hers.

  “Oh, Sam. You’re the best man there ever was. I can’t believe you’re even listening to me. I didn’t deserve you.”

  Sam waited for her to continue, unable to do more.

  Impossibly she clenched her arms even tighter until her frame was shaking.

  “I had the wrong dream.”

  “Say what?” That wasn’t what he’d been expecting. He’d expected some plea for him to go with her. Or that she’d give up her own dreams, which he’d never allow. That’s why he’d written the message he had even if he hadn’t been able to bring himself to sign it.

  “Angelo’s was an amazing experience,” he could hear the truth of it in her voice. “I never had so much fun. Angelo, Manuel, Marlys, Graziella, all of them. And that was before I noticed you. Then it just kept getting better. I asked to be busy, I asked to be challenged.”

  “And Wolfgang’s organization does that for you.”

  “It did, past tense. He offered me consulting at Spago and Cut; flew in himself to do so. I thanked him and then I quit. I gave my two weeks’ notice three weeks ago. I’ve been back for a week trying to find the bravery to come and see you.”

  “You quit?” Sam knew something was wrong here. “Because of me? No! That doesn’t work. I won’t let you—”

  “It wasn’t because of you, doofus. It was because of me,” she shouted him down just as she so often did on the cook line.

  “Because of you?” He still wasn’t getting it.

  “Because of me,” she said more calmly and unwound her arms, finally resting her hands in her lap as if too weary to do more. “I was too young and stupid to understand the most important dream of all, even if you knew it from the very first day.”

  “I did?”

  She smiled at him; that smile she gave right before she was going to unleash mayhem on his cook line just to tease him. That smile that also spilled forth when she’d woken in his arms to find him watching her.

  “Yes,” she continued. “I forgot to dream about being happy. I was happy with you, so happy that I scared the daylights out of myself and ran away. I’m hoping you’ll give me a chance to try out that dream again.”

  “And I’m supposed to trust that?”

  She nodded, but the fear was back and she hung her head to study her hands once more. Luisa wasn’t afraid of anything.

  “How? Please tell me how I can.” Because Sam had no idea—no matter how much he wanted to.

  And when she looked up at him, the tears had returned. “Because I learned something new by leaving you that I never would have learned while we were together.”

  “What was that?”

  “How much I love you, Sam Walsh.”

  And there it was. How could he possibly deny such a statement, especially when it was so clear in his own heart? Had some part of him hoped that she’d be back? Was that why he’d never filled the aboyeur spot no matter how badly they needed it? Apparently so.

  But he couldn’t let her off the hook that easily no matter how much he was planning to.

  Sam crossed his arms over his chest and struggled for a disdainful voice when he really wanted to scoop her into his arms and cry for joy.

  “So, you think you can just come back, pick up where you left off at Angelo’s. As if we’d take you.”

  Her face fell, so he went for a slightly lighter tone.

  “Then you figure you can just slide back into my bed.”

  “Well,” she was too sharp, and caught on from just that tiniest hint, “I did let go of my apartment, so I do kinda need a bed to slide into.”

  He kept his arms crossed, but backed it up with the smile he was feeling building deep inside him. “You’re probably going to want the ring I had in my pocket that night.”

  She looked at him aghast, “You bought me a ring?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She covered her mouth in horror, “That same night? Oh no, I’m so sorry. I never thought anyone would ever do something like that for me.”

  “I did. Doofus that I am. And even worse?”

  “What’s worse than that?”

  Sam rose and circled around the table, then knelt and took Luisa’s hands.

  She looked into his eyes and he knew he was lost. Happily lost.

  “Even worse,” he confirmed. “I love you so much that I can’t imagine life without you.”

  The smile that broke out on her face was accompanied by a different type of tears. Then she giggled. A bright merry laugh that he’d missed more than anything about her.

  “What?” he asked softly.

  She leaned down and gave him a kiss seasoned with pure joy.

  “I was just thinking, what with you being the best man I’ve ever met and all…”

  “What?”

  “I bet you kept the ring.”

  He had. He’d felt pathetic doing so, but now he knew why he hadn’t returned it. Because some part of him had known that something so right could never be denied for long.

  Sam lifted her hands to his lips and kissed her—right where he’d be slipping the ring on later tonight.

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  Return to Eagle Cove (excerpt)

  a small town Oregon romance

  “Almost home, sweetie.”

  “Oh joy,” Jessica Baxter tried to clamp down on her sarcasm. It was a bad habit that worked fine in her social set back in Chicago, but sounded more petty with each mile they drove toward the Oregon Coast. She slumped down in the passenger seat of her mom’s baby-blue Toyota hybrid. It still had that new car smell. As much as she’d dreamed of owning a hot sports car some day, she knew that she was enough her mother’s daughter that this was probably the exact sort of eminently sensible car she would buy when her VW Beetle finally gave up the ghost.

  Just like her mom.

  Maybe she’d get it in red to be at least a little different.

  Jessica sighed again, keeping it to herself so that she wasn’t being overly offensive. Her mother was one of the many reasons that she’d gone as far away as possible for college and did her best to rarely return—she didn’t want to turn into her mother and it was too easy to imagine doing so if she’d stayed in the small town of Eagle Cove, Oregon.

  They were like twins separated by twenty-two years. The two of them had been able to trade clothes since Jessica hit puberty and had shot up to match her mother’s slender five-foot-ten. Other than a very brief mistake of dying her hair black as part of a tenth-grade dare, which had tur
ned her fair complexion past goth and into bloodless vampire, they were both light blond.

  The one part of twin-dom that she couldn’t seem to pull off even though she wanted to was Mom’s casual-chic. Monica Baxter was always dressed one step above the world around her; not fancy, just really well put together. The closest Jessica ever managed was Bohemian-chic which wasn’t really the same thing, but she’d learned to make it her own. Of course, Bohemian was easier on the budget and often available in consignment stores which had only reinforced her chosen style.

  Jessica did her best to not regress as they drove up into the Coast Range that separated the beach towns from the rest of Oregon…and failed miserably at that as well. She felt as if she was rapidly descending back toward being a pouty, pre-pubescent twelve from her present urban and worldly thirty-two.

  Why did crossing the Oregon state line always take twenty years off her intelligence?

  Maybe it was only Coast County. Because of the landscape the Oregon Coast felt incredibly far from anywhere. The Coast Range topped out at a mere four thousand feet high, but only a half dozen passes made it through the three hundred mile range of rugged hills that separated the beaches from the broad farming and industrial realm of the Willamette Valley. The interior of the state might as well be in a whole other country for how little it had in common with where she’d grown up.

  “It’s so strange being back here,” Jessica rolled down the window and sniffed at the air. The scents were so rich and varied that they tickled. Bright with pine. Musty with undergrowth. Damp. A first hint of the sea.

  “Well, it has been four years, honey. That’s bound to make it seem a bit odd. But I’m so glad that you came.”

  “Me too, Mom.” Better. She managed to say it as if she meant it, however unlikely that might be. Chicago fit her like a…but it didn’t. The city was…something she was not going to give a single thought to for the next eight days. If she didn’t fit there and she didn’t want to fit in Eagle Cove, Oregon, then where did she belong?