The Complete Where Dreams - Volume 1 of 2

FEBRUARY 1-3

“You left New York for this?” Melanie stood on the pitching dock barely wide enough to walk on and clutched tightly onto Russell’s arm for stability.

“Yep! Isn’t she beautiful?” Melanie was used to being called beautiful, and had made a career of it. But if it meant that she was similar to this boat, a shudder rippled up her spine, she’d give it up.

The boat, which was moving with a life of its own that had nothing to do with the dock, lay spread out before her. In the late afternoon light she could see the blue paint on the side was peeling. The white masts were doing the same. There was a great expanse of red material wrapped about the horizontal piece—the boom, Russell called it. It looked like a virulent growth that one should spray immediately with Lysol. A lot of it. Before burning it in the bathtub. The floor was all torn up, great strips of gray and black canvas had been peeled up to reveal rough wood that looked even worse.

“Want to come aboard?”

“No!” But Russell was already stepping up onto the boat and her tight grip on his arm dragged her along. The boat was so small that it rolled back and forth just from their weight. The only boat she’d ever been on was the New York Circle Line, a massive ferry filled with thousands of tourists. And that had been for a fashion shoot, so she hadn’t paid much attention to anything but the photographer. That had been her second spread and first cover for Elle. Even for that she might not have climbed aboard this boat.

“See, over here I’ve been replacing the deck.”

Deck, not floor. She repeated the word a couple of times to remind herself.

He had ducked under the virulent boom thing and was pointing at a place she couldn’t see along the cabin. She took a breath and leaned over to see. If felt as if she was going to be flung headfirst into the inky depths between Russell’s boat and the ragged old powerboat parked next door.

The deck looked better on this side. More like the parquet of her kitchen floor though not nearly as pretty.

“It’s so,” narrow, she wanted to shout. The water was right there. “Nice.” She checked Russell’s face and he beamed like a newborn’s father. The right answer. Perhaps it was okay to relax a little.

“Down below is still a mess.” She hadn’t really thought about the inside of the boat. The cabin was barely as tall as her knees. There was a tiny door that might do for the White Rabbit, but she was no Alice in Wonderland to go crawling on her hands and knees, especially not in her cashmere coat.

He opened the door and then slid a part of the roof back. A little ladder went much farther down than she thought. Down far enough to stand in. Down until, she glanced over the side and then back down the ladder, until she’d be standing underwater to her knees.

“Make sure to hold on as you come down.” Russell clambered down into the cabin like he was born to it, facing forward as he dropped down the ladder holding onto nothing at all. She knew from experience that men lived in a world of their own. Russell had always been a cut above: more civilized, more polite, and usually more thoughtful.

At the moment, she could kill him.

But if she wanted him, she was going to have to do this stupid male test. One of thousands they threw at women, but at least with Russell it didn’t have a backing of cruelty behind it, just his own version of naïveté. And she did want him. Why else had she cancelled two shoots on short notice when he’d called with a Valentine’s Day invitation to come to Seattle? Even at her level, those cancellations would have ripples across her career for months to come.

“Get a grip, girl.” She took hold of either side of the doorway, thankful for her leather gloves. Though they didn’t stop the cold, at least she didn’t have to risk a splinter. There was no way to descend the ladder as Russell had. She turned and went down it backwards. Even one at a time, the steps were steep and difficult. The boat kept shifting, little jerks in unexpected directions. This is how clumsy people must feel. She hated it. Hated it so much she wanted to cry. She clamped down on that hard, careful not to bite her lip.

The floor was a surprise when she ran out of steps. Then she turned. There was just enough room to stand upright, but her instincts wanted to hunch down like a troll.

The ceiling was high in the middle, but sloped down to either side. The floor was a narrow strip running all the way to the front. The walls sloped outward from the floor. Seating was perched part way up the wall, making more use of the wider space. God, it was even smaller than her father’s trailer—may the old bastard rot in hell.

“I’m going to put the galley here,” he pointed to a couple cardboard boxes of groceries, an ice chest and a small camping stove.

“Pilot’s berth there.” A bed no bigger than a coffin, across the narrow walkway from the galley. How could you even climb into the thing? The deck was just two or three feet above the narrow bench.

“A settee that can be a dining table or collapse into a comfortable double bed right here across from this little woodstove.” He continued forward oblivious of the fact that all this meant nothing to her. Whatever he was calling a settee was now a card table and two folding chairs. And how that became a bed for two was beyond her and a place she’d certainly never be found.

A section of the flooring was pulled up and she half expected to see the ocean beneath it. Instead, about six inches down, was concrete and, she swallowed hard, a wash of blackish water running back and forth with each motion of the boat.

A loud buzz below her right foot made her jump. There were splashing noises and slowly the skin of water disappeared. The buzzing stopped with a sigh and a gurgle.

“That’s just the bilge pump.”

The smell of fresh-cut wood and paint added to the queasiness in her stomach. The bilge pump, she did her best to catalog all of the strange words he kept using. Booms and tillers and hulls. Even something called a fang or a vang that he wanted to replace for reasons she’d never understand.

Again she focused on the curve of the hull. It had looked wider from outside. She peeked out one of the round windows and could just see the water. The floor was deeper than she’d thought, she was in the ocean up to her waist.

The “head” was next on the tour.

She blinked twice but it didn’t go away. A porcelain toilet. With handles and levers that would make a dentist chair look safe. Sitting right there in the open on the floor. It was a good thing that he’d promised her a hotel room or she’d be on the red-eye back to New York.

He waved at a blank section of hull, “Books, maybe a bench seat that could double as a bunk. Don’t really know yet.”

The last of the tour was the forward stateroom. A fancy name for a double bed jammed into the pointy end of the boat. He was dreaming if he thought they were going to make love there. The place wasn’t as cold as a meat locker, by maybe five degrees but not by ten. She hadn’t roughed it since she and her mother had escaped the trailer park and she wasn’t about to start again now.

Tools were piled everywhere. Cans of paint and who knew what. They smelled—it all smelled—nasty.

He was waiting for her to join him at the far end.

Deep breath. Deep breath.

He was so damn handsome. And he’d never looked better. Standing with his legs spread like a sea pirate standing on his treasure. The work on the boat had flattened his stomach even more and his arms had a power that was stronger, safer than she’d imagined possible when they’d hugged at the airport.

Keeping her attention on his eyes, and where the hole in the floor was, she headed in his direction. When the boat shifted, she reached up and a small rail was in just the right place to grab. She could do this.

She was halfway there when something shot between her legs. She gasped and hung on to the too thin rail with both hands.

Russell casually reached down with one hand and scooped up…a kitten. A black kitten with shaggy hair and outrageously long whiskers.

“This is Nutcase. She has absolutely no fear. She sticks her little nose in the strangest of places. One day she fiberglassed her tail and it took me an hour to trim it off because she wouldn’t hold still.” It climbed up his chest to perch on his shoulder.

“You can see where it hasn’t grown back yet.” He pulled the long tail from around his throat and one side was indeed shaved.

A cat.

When she was just starting out, her career was almost aborted by a cat. Right before a shoot when she was ten, she’d tried to pet the photographer’s cat. It had swiped her with its claws and left a long red scratch down the side of her finger. They had to get another hand model.

Her mother had been furious.

Melanie didn’t sleep for four days as she watched it to make sure it healed. Skipped school and rubbed in salves and moisturizers to make sure there was no unsightly puckering. Finally wept herself to sleep with relief when she could no longer find exactly where it had been. She turned down every shoot with a cat since then.

There was no way she was going to pet Russell’s cat.

“She’s really quite sweet. She likes being scritched under the chin like this.” He demonstrated and Nutcase purred loudly.

How badly did she want this? How badly did she want him? She’d never told him the cat story. Never told anyone that she could still feel the outline of her mother’s slap on her face that had shone as livid a red as the cat’s mark for days—the mark that still burned though her mother was long dead.

“She won’t hurt you.”

How many tests did she have to pass? Clearly there would always be another. But she hadn’t reached her limit yet. She’d manage this one.

Melanie extended her finger until the cat had to lean forward to sniff the black leather. After a careful inspection, its pink and black nose wiggling like a tiny bumblebee, another of her fears, the cat leaned even farther out and rubbed its chin along her finger. Russell was right. She was gentle.

But there was no way she was taking off her gloves.