The Complete Where Dreams - Volume 2 of 2

Chapter 13-4

“You have to be kidding me, Angelo.” Bill sipped his espresso and enjoyed the perfect brewing of it. “No one can learn to cook that well in just thirty years. You sure you aren’t at least, oh, three hundred and something.”

Angelo grinned at Bill’s words and sipped his own espresso. He must get a hundred such compliments a day, but still he appeared genuinely pleased.

Angelo had joined them for a few moments after the meal. The kids were polishing off their apple sorbet with caramel glaze sprinkled with pistachios as voraciously as their manners allowed.

Perrin rested one of her gloved hands on Angelo’s arm, but turned to Bill. “He is always this magnificent, except if Jo comes to dinner. Then he is too distracted. We almost had to ban her from the restaurant for ruining our food during their courtship.”

“Uh, but how did you straighten that out?”

“Easy,” Perrin answered for him. “He married her.” Her saucy wink told him that while her words had been for the kids, it had actually straightened out before that, probably when Angelo and Jo had become lovers.

Angelo captured Perrin’s hand and kissed it. “It’s all Perrin’s doing. If not for her, my Jo might well have slipped away and my life would have been ruined.”

As if Bill needed yet another reason to respect this woman.

Bill thought back over the dinner at Angelo’s Hearth. It was the first time they’d all been together, since the pizza night. They’d all been present at rehearsals together several times, but that wasn’t the same thing. Tonight they’d had a meal as a family.

Perrin had sat across from Jaspar and beside Tammy. It was a perfect, thoughtful choice. Had she sat across from him, he’d have been too distracted and paid no attention to the kids. Instead, the children had been included throughout the dinner.

She’d made them laugh with stories of the crazy clothing that people had asked her to make. Some of them so fanciful as to be wholly impossible, yet she told each story as if it was absolutely true. By the end he believed every tale, well, except for the one about the representative from the Vulcan Science Academy’s Wardrobe Mistress coming to Earth to order fancy party robes for their high council. But the rest of it she made sound at least possible if not wholly believable.

Tammy had talked about sewing her dress, she’d done a lot of it herself, albeit from Perrin’s design. Still, it was so beautifully made that it totally floored Bill. “She made me take out the seams an awful lot of times before I made it right.” He still couldn’t get over the fact that not only was his daughter a teenager, but she looked like one.

Jaspar had worked on his Italian with them, especially when he discovered that Graziella, the beautiful young maître d’ who Bill had met only briefly at Maria’s dinner, spoke fluent Italian. She kept coming by the table, leaving behind another few words with each passing. And, unless Bill was vastly mistaken, she’d also started Jaspar on his first major crush. Being informed that she was newly married didn’t abate his ardor in the slightest. Apparently he saw that as no obstacle in whatever his plans were.

“Hey kids,” Angelo looked toward them, “want to see what our kitchen looks like?”

“I bet it has a stove and everything,” Tammy offered him with a laugh.

Angelo did his best to look hurt, but didn’t succeed very well.

Perrin elbowed her and the two of them, thick as thieves, rose to follow before Angelo could even pretend a decent whimper.

“Where the women lead, we must follow,” he told his son, and they followed along behind Angelo.

It was quite the scene. A woman, who might have been Graziella’s evil, though equally attractive twin, was hopping up and down on one foot in her impatience. “C’mon, Manuel, if you cooked any slower you’d be as bad as Angelo.”

“Ah, Luisa,” the Mexican chef at the center of the cook line teased back as he slid across a beautiful plate that must be the braised venison with wild morel sauce that Bill had almost ordered. “Beware, señora. You encourage me to follow in the footsteps of the maestro.”

Luisa growled, dressed the plate with tiny dots of some dark sauce, and turned around with perfect timing to place it in Graziella’s hand just as she breezed through the kitchen.

Perrin was leading the kids down the line to meet everyone. Without breaking their amazing flow, they greeted his kids as if this was a normal thing to do, and even described a bit of what they were doing.

Angelo remained beside Bill, off to the side watching the line’s progress. He nodded once to himself, clearly satisfied with what he was seeing.

“Maria will be sorry that she missed a chance to meet your children. She starts early and usually leaves before dinner service.”

“She works here?”

Angelo eyed him carefully. “With how long you spent talking to my Mama at dinner on Tuesday, I thought you would know everything. She is the best pastry chef you can imagine.”

“Uh, I kind of remember that,” Bill searched his memory. It was there, but way down the list. “We talked about a lot of things that night.”

Angelo nodded down the cook line to where Perrin and the kids were sampling a red sauce, though where they’d fit another bite after that meal, he had no idea.

“I’ve known Perrin for two years. She’s a very positive person, always glad to see you, always great fun to be around.”

“But?” Bill could hear it clear as day. However good they were together, their relationship was still fragile. If Perrin’s friends decided Bill and his family weren’t good for her in some way, it could shatter what little they’d built so far. He knew Perrin sometimes relied on them more than herself in such matters. But that didn’t seem right somehow. Maybe she only let them think they did… She still confused him much of the time.

“But,” Angelo acknowledged his question. “I always assumed she was happy. But now that I see her overflowing with it around you and your children, I have to wonder about how she truly felt all this time I’ve known her.”

Bill didn’t know what to say to that one. From the moment that she’d shattered his pigeon-holing of her, by staggering into the Opera drunk with exhaustion and glowing like the Empress, he’d only ever seen her as joyous.

But happy? And that he and his family made her feel that way was something else again. A part of him worried that some addictive part of her past had become dependent on him for her happiness.

Then he had to remind himself that the Perrin Williams he knew was strong and incredibly smart. Maybe Angelo had known a different Perrin. But the one Bill knew didn’t strike him as the sort of person to entrust her emotional well-being to another. Share with them, absolutely. Care about their opinion? She couldn’t help it, she wanted everyone around her to be happy too. Depend on them for how she felt? Not a chance.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, Angelo, she’s making me damned happy as well.”

Perrin and the kids began heading back from the far end of the cook line, each bearing another serving of the dessert. Even the somewhat fierce Luisa stopped her service to meet the kids.

“Back when Russell and I were first bringing girls home to the kitchen where Mama cooked for Russell’s parents, she said something to us that I’ve always tried to do. ‘Follow the quiet voice of joy. Follow it like nothing else matters.’ Best damn advice Mama ever gave me. It’s why I cook. It’s why I’m married to Jo. Might have made the road a little easier if we’d listened to her a bit more often.”

“You ended up in an amazing spot, Angelo.”

“I did, my friend.” His friendly thump on Bill’s back was almost as solid as one he’d deliver to Russell. It was an acceptance. A welcoming.

As he returned to the cook line, Angelo kissed Perrin on each cheek, scruffed Jaspar’s hair, and bowed so deeply to Tammy that she blushed fiercely.

“Hey, where’s my second dessert?” Bill complained as they reached him.

Perrin held out a spoonful of caramel-covered sorbet. “If I have to finish this on my own, I’ll die of a pleasure overdose. You have to help me.”

He took the bite, and did his best to relish the quiet voice of joy, as the four of them stood to the side watching the busy kitchen and eating their three desserts.