Where Dreams Are Born (Angelo's Hearth) (18 page)

Adrianne and I spent three years trying to save the vineyard. We sunk every penny we had, every belonging was sold, every ounce of our life’s blood. We often lived on beans and rice to stretch the money.
By the time you were two, the last threads were unraveling.

Adrianne was too busy raising you to ever take to the fields again for those grueling sixteen-hour days. When her parents took ill, she went home to Kingston, Washington to take care of them. I struggled to save that which was past saving. I stayed on. Sheer damn stubbornness, I guess. Or maybe just blinders.

April 7
th
. That was the day. With the lack of water the last harvest had been miserable. I’d spent the winter trying to work the wine, but without your mother’s help and wisdom, it failed miserably. Your mother was gone and I didn’t think she’d be coming back. I had to choose between my vineyard or her and you. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Thank all the gods, I made the right choice. I sold out and I moved to the Kitsap Peninsula and started living over your grandparents’ garage.

Beware getting so locked in, that you don’t see what you most need to look at.

Love you, Icesweet.

Vic

He’d lost a vineyard and she’d never known, a Napa Valley vineyard. That would be worth a fortune and it sounded as if he lost it for pennies. He’d taken a body blow to the heart because of her. Then he not only lost his vineyard, but his parents-in-law and then his wife. No wonder he didn’t speak much of his past; the pain ran deep roots into his life.

Russell was heading back toward her.

She crumpled the letter and shoved it into her pocket. A quick wipe at her eyes and her wet fingers cooled in the offshore breeze. She turned her face into that light breeze, she’d blame her eyes on the wind if he said anything.

He stopped and scanned the area once more, looking at the land. Not looking at her. Nor the water. Apparently not finding whatever he was seeking.

She checked the ocean again, especially back down the Straits toward Seattle, but no blue sailboat braved the waters. No boat at all had appeared in the last hour except for a pair of container ships and a tanker that looked big enough to carry all the oil of an entire country. Okay, a small country.

She photographed the lighthouse out on the island, but without her sailboat, it looked empty. Felt pointless. It wouldn’t really belong in the series on her wall.

Each step he took closer was followed by a quick glance around.

“You look as if you’ve lost something.”

He shrugged.

“Stood up by your blond girlfriend?”

He aimed a scathing glance in her direction.

“Sorry.” She bit the edge of her tongue. “Now I’m the one being bitchy. I’m sorry.”

His gaze didn’t soften, but he did manage a jerky nod of acknowledgement. Tit-for-tat. The lowest form if revenge. She wanted to crawl away and hide until he was gone.

He headed back for the parking lot without offering his arm.

She was a little ashamed that she missed it, not that she needed support along the well-groomed trail. His silence was becoming oppressive. She could just fade back, let him disappear ahead. Pretend she had to go back for something she’d dropped, or check again for her sailboat. But somehow she knew it wasn’t coming.

Besides, it was the chicken’s way out.

Russell strode ahead, not fast, but with hard, jarring steps. He had powerful legs and a well-formed butt that his worn jeans outlined nicely.

What was she avoiding so much? She stuffed her hands into her pockets and her father’s letter crinkled. That was it. The letter had said the same thing Russell had thrown at her.

What did she want to do? She’d walked her career path head down like some kind of bull dog.

Be the best food critic.

Know all the wines.

Be hurt when you don’t know about an obscure wine from an insignificant Italian village.

She’d dropped nearly four hundred dollars the day after their date ordering every wine she could find from the five villages of Cinque Terre. She’d cataloged over half of them, would never forget them, but most were mediocre wines you’d expect from small village wineries. Only a few surprises in the lot and the sciacchetrà was the best of those.

“You were right.”

He stumbled and looked back at her.

“What?”

“I said, you were right.”

“No, I screwed up with Melanie.”

“I meant about having no long-term plan.”

For a moment they blinked at each other, both lost on a straight trail with their two cars in clear sight a hundred yards away.

“Her name is Melanie?”

“I’m sorry I said that about you.”

Once again they were at a stop. Both too vulnerable. Both with their hearts out on the trail. She couldn’t do it. It was a cliff she just couldn’t climb. Not with this man.

“I, uh, are you going to the next lighthouse?”

He looked down and kicked at the dirt. “Next lighthouse?”

“There’s one a couple of hours south, called Destruction Island. It’s—” She almost said, ‘not on the calendar,’ but caught herself.

“It’s offshore a couple miles. They say it should be visible. On a clear day. Like today.”

He looked about the parking lot. Stared for a long moment at Jo’s car. Hers was in the shop and Jo had leant her the BMW roadster.

“Nice wheels.”

“Um, thanks.” What was it with men and fancy cars? It was too racy for her taste
, though Russell’s car looked even lower and meaner than Jo’s. Porsche maybe? Jo had always been the fan of sports cars, the only weakness she’d admit to.

“I think I’ll head home. You?” He didn’t meet her gaze but continued to be fascinated by the dirt.

“Don’t know really. They say a bull lived there who hated the new fog horn. Kept charging the lighthouse whenever it went off. Thought it was a competing bull.” Why was she trying to talk him into coming?

His narrowed eyes indicated that he was certainly asking himself the same question. After a long moment, during which she forgot to breathe, he shrugged.

“Nah. I’m not really feeling up to it.” He turned toward his little black car, but turned back and returned to stand in front of her.

He held out a hand. She took it but rather than shaking it, he covered it with his other hand. Big, powerful, warm hands enfolded hers, warming away a chill she hadn’t noticed.

His sea-dark eyes looked down at her for a long moment. She could feel her knees going weak. Was he going to kiss her? What would she do if he did?

“Thanks. It was nice to spend some time with you. Perhaps we can do this again sometime. I mean that. I’m lousy company, but you’re nice.”

She nodded. He let go and walked back to his car. It started with a dull roar, but he didn’t disappear in a flurry of gravel as she’d expected. Instead he waited. Waited while she fished out first her keys, then Jo’s, got in and started the engine.

As soon as it came to life, he did roar off, fishtailing so wildly on the gravel parking lot that for a moment she thought he’d crash into the trees. Then he regained control and put his foot down, hard. His engine roared loudly over the quiet purr of the BMW’s engine even after he was out of sight.

# # #

Russell let the miles flow through him. He wasn’t even really aware of where he was until he pulled into Port Angeles.

“Good job, Russ. Real safe way to drive.” Eighty miles had rolled by since he’d left Cassidy in the parking lot without really saying goodbye.

He got off Highway 101 and threaded his way through town until he hit the waterfront in a pot-holed gravel parking lot. He stopped with the car’s nose pointed toward the water and Canada. He thumped his forehead against the steering wheel.

“Stood up by Melanie?”

Not even close.

“Right about Cassidy Knowles?”

Not a bit closer. She had more class in her little pinky than he’d had in his whole life. She’d forgiven him slashing at her yet again. Forgiven him being there to meet another woman and being so damn obvious about his disappointment that he totally shut her out.

He flopped back in his seat and looked at his hands. He could still feel the outline of her strong fingers imprinted on both his palms. Could still see all of the colors of autumn in her eyes. Had seen those lips, those lips that he longed to kiss since the first moment he saw them pursed above a glass of wine.

And that was a path right down the wrong road. Right back into a woman enveloped in a New York state of mind. She wanted to be Craig Claiborne reborn as a woman.

She was so wrong for him.

So why hadn’t he been able to stop thinking about her for the last twenty-six days?

# # #

“You really look like shit!” Angelo shouted over the serious cranking of the R&B band in the corner of the bar and everyone else’s shouting to be heard by their companions.

“Thanks, Buddy. Big help.” Russell looked up at the mirror behind the broad, wooden bar. Bottles of liquor were lined up and down the mirror’s length. He could see only one eye reflected between the silver spouts of a bottle of Johnny Red and the next of Jack Daniels black. The dark rings beneath the eye made it look more a ghost’s than his own.

“I’m serious, man. You look even worse than the night I told you what you did to Melanie.”

“Can’t you just drink in silence?”

Angelo licked the salt off the back of his hand, knocked back the Cuervo Reserva shooter, and sucked on a piece of lime.

“Nope, I’m a chatty drunk. You know that.”

Which usually made them so compatible. Tonight Russell wanted to just… He stared at the one eye in the mirror. He wanted… he didn’t know what. He knocked back his Tequila and reached for a chaser, but his beer was gone.

Angelo was leaning back against the bar, checking out the crowd, taking a slug from Russell’s pint. He reached for it just as Angelo looked at him and whispered in a quiet shout.

“Target acquired!”

Russell glanced over his shoulder. Sure enough, a pair of women were sitting alone at a tiny table. Long dark hair, thin but in a Seattle-healthy way rather than a New York-anorexic fashion, halter top that revealed a nice expanse of shoulder and belly and enough curve beneath to be very pleasing. Friend, perky Japanese, denim shorts cut incredibly short. Her hair barely reached her ears, flat and cute as could be in her clingy tube top. They’d noted Angelo’s and his attention and were very carefully not looking in their direction, but it was clear he and Angelo were being assessed in sidelong glances that included nice smiles.

Russell
turned back to the bar for another tequila, catching their disappointment as he did so.

“Oh shit,” Angelo knocked back the rest of Russell’s beer. “It’s going to be one of those nights?”

Russell punched Angelo’s arm but didn’t feel much better for it.

# # #

Several drinks later, Angelo had battered down Russell’s defenses and was now giving him worldly advice. Exactly what he didn’t need.

“You can no go sailing away from me, my friend. You are no ready. You boat, she is no ready either.” The drunker Angelo got, the thicker his accent grew. Half his mother’s Italian, half Brooklyn. It would be about three more drinks until he wouldn’t understand a word Angelo said. And that would be just fine with him.

In fact, he couldn’t wait.

“Look,
amico della gioventù.
Sailing off into the unknown, it is a plan. Maybe good. Maybe bad. But it is only sailing off into the unknown. You gonna take you problems with you. Youself, he is gon’ be dere.”

Russell’s
one eye in the mirror was blearier, but he could still pick it out among the bottles. He definitely wasn’t drunk enough yet.

“Melanie is in the past, man. There isn’t shit you can do about that one. You go back, you open the studio, you go down on one knee, even if she say yes, your heart, she fold up and die. I’m Italian. I know this things.”

Down on two knees and bowing his head into the sand at Tatoosh. He hadn’t been thinking of Melanie. He was thinking of the way Cassidy Knowles looked, standing tall above him, scowling downward as the smile tugged at the corners of her generous mouth. Again, the line of jaw to neck, of cheek to eye made him want to caress, stroke, feel. The wind picking at her tightly controlled hair, but not breaking it free. Not a single strand out of control. She didn’t have the New York model look. But it was certainly what New York should want.

“Hey! You no listening to me.”

He wasn’t. “What?”

“I tell you how to fix your whole life and make a million dollars and you not even listening?”

“I already have a million, it’s just my life that’s fucked up.”

“Does that mean I should or shouldn’t give you my number?” The long dark one was standing beside him paying her tab.

”Shouldn’t.”

“Should!” Angelo insisted at the same moment.

“He’s really an okay guy when he isn’t drunk.”