ball the color of a roasted arabica bean settled onto my chest and began loudly purring. I considered nudging away the little brown tabby, turning over to show her my back, but I didn’t have the heart.
“Okay, Java, you win,” I whispered on a yawn. “Let’s get you some breakfast.”
Rolling out of bed, I stifled a groan. The bruises along my side had been easy enough to forget about while Mike was making love to me. In the light of day, the pain wasn’t so easy to ignore. The hot shower helped; so did the Advil with espresso chaser. Within a half hour of waking, I was feeling much better—and much worse.
My contentedly full kitty was watching pigeons on a wire out the back window, my man was happily catching zzz’s in the bedroom upstairs, but I was far from serene. In the quiet stillness of the duplex’s kitchen, sipping my second espresso of the day, I couldn’t stop my mind from returning to that dingy alley down the street.
I felt myself beginning to shake again—but not from fear or cold or Mike’s touches. This time what shook me was fury. I wanted to do something
I suddenly stood up at the kitchen table.
Tucker was already downstairs in the shop. One of our new trainees was helping him open, and I was supposed to have the morning off. I considered getting dressed and going down to the coffeehouse anyway, but I didn’t want to abandon my still-sleeping Mike.
Java’s ears barely twitched at my announcement, which she deemed far less significant than her pigeon watching. Given my line of thinking a moment before, I figured the cat was right—
Baking was a pathetic alternative to pursuing an active criminal investigation that could nail Alf’s killer, but it
I cringed at the sudden memory of my dream—Alf’s Santa’s bells transforming into ringing cash registers. Then I remembered yesterday’s holiday decorating blitz when we’d replaced the Blend’s front door dinger with jingle bells.
I closed my eyes.
I started pulling out the flour, sugar, butter, and the old wooden bread board that Nonna had brought with her from Italy. An hour later I was carrying a breakfast tray upstairs. On it was a French-pressed pot of Matt’s annual shipment of Jamaica Blue Mountain and my modern twist to my grandmother’s biscotti.
I replaced her traditional anise with vanilla and used roasted pistachios to give the cookie a delicate nutty flavor as well as a hint of green for the season. Dried cranberries added a cheerful shade of Christmas red while a decadent drizzle of white chocolate evoked icy-fresh winter snow. My secret ingredient, however, was ground cinnamon. The bright, bittersweet spice—once used in love potions by wealthy Romans—may have been an unconventional addition for biscotti, but it struck a surprisingly harmonious chord with the cookie’s other flavorings while lacing the air with an evocative aroma for the holidays.
As I reentered the still-chilly bedroom, my spirits rose like a yeast panettone. Mike’s being here for me felt like an early Christmas gift. At the very least, it was a wish fulfilled. Not so very long ago I’d daydreamed a scenario exactly like this: me serving the sandy-haired detective his morning coffee in this beautiful mahogany four- poster.
There’d been times I never thought it would happen, not that Mike hadn’t been thoroughly miserable in his marriage. Between his wife’s lying, cheating, and mood swings, the man had been living in the equivalent of an emotional war zone. For the sake of his two kids, however, he’d made every attempt to keep his marriage together. His wife was the one who’d ended things.
I’d never met Leila Quinn, and I often wondered what she’d been like when he first married her. I’d heard about the end of their marriage, of course, but I was curious how they’d originally met, what made him fall in love with the woman and decide to marry her.
Mike never told me. He didn’t like talking about his ex or his past with her. And whenever the subject came up, he changed it. For now, I let him. When I’d first met the man, he’d been reduced to a shell-shocked zombie where relationships were concerned. The last thing I wanted to do at this stage of our fledgling bonding process was open barely scabbed-over wounds.
“Rise and shine, big guy,” I sang in his ear.
Without opening his eyes, Mike smiled.
I set the tray on the nightstand. “Your coffee is here, and you can try my newest recipe with it: Red and Green Holiday Biscotti.”
Mike’s eyes were still closed, but his nostrils moved. “
“You don’t know the third tenet of the homemaker’s credo?”
“Never heard of it.”
“I bake, therefore I am.”
Mike laughed. “What are the first two?”
“I clean, therefore I am; I grocery shop, therefore I am; and there are at least seven more.” (During my Jersey days, when I was freelance writing to make ends meet, I’d listed them all in one of my old In the Kitchen with Clare columns.) “But my favorite is still baking.”
“Lucky for me,” he said, closing his fingers around my wrist, “because, as it happens, I’m still starving.” Then Mike pulled me back under the bedcovers; and that’s when I knew two things—it was absolutely brilliant planning on my part to pour the Blue Mountain into a thermal carafe (because we wouldn’t be getting to it for a good half hour), and those wealthy Romans were right about the cinnamon.
A short time later, Quinn was back on the job and so was I. After tying on my Village Blend apron, I helped Tucker recharge our lunchtime crush of caffeine-deficient regulars, then relieved him and our trainee.
Dante and Gardner were scheduled for the evening shifts, and we were short-staffed at the moment, which meant the Blend was all mine for the next three hours.
Only a few café tables were occupied, and after I whipped out another dozen sporadic take-out orders, there were no customers left in line. This was usually my favorite time of day—the quiet afternoon between lunch and dinner, the calm before the after-work crowd stormed our doors. But I didn’t like the calm. Not today. Not one bit. My deserted coffeehouse suddenly felt like a widow’s empty kitchen, once boisterous with family laughter, now as silent as the viewing room of a funeral home.
Around two o’clock, a number of chatty tourists and chilled holiday shoppers passed right by the shop without even glancing in. I frowned, considering writing up that sidewalk chalkboard featuring our new Fa-la-la-la Lattes, but I thought of Alf again—how the whole Taste of Christmas thing had been his idea—and my heart just wasn’t in it. So I swept the floor and wiped down our unoccupied tables.
Just before three, I felt myself tensing. Alf almost always stopped in at this time to “warm his mittens,” as he put it, and I’d take a break with him, grab a latte, and sit by the fire. At one minute after the hour, the jingle bells rang. I glanced up, half expecting to see my Santa, and instead found Matt standing there.
I smiled.
He returned my smile, clomped his snowy hiking boots across the wood plank floor, and took a load off at my espresso bar. I was a little surprised to see him dressed like the old days (before fashionista Breanne’s influence) in paint-stained jeans and a battered old parka. As he pulled off his coat and settled onto the bar stool, I took a moment to thank him for his help the previous night—and not just for coming to the crime scene.
