Holiday Grind

“Who are you?” I demanded—and that’s when I remembered. This was the same Blend customer who’d been giving me nasty looks for the past week. I’d assumed she’d been holding a grudge because of our argument on the night of Alf’s murder. Obviously, I’d been wrong.

“I’m Leila!” she now informed me. “Leila Quinn!”

“Mike’s ex-wife!”

I closed my eyes. Mike never wanted to talk about Leila. He displayed no photos of her, and I’d never pressed him for details. I thought I was letting the man heal, allowing him space from bad memories. Now I could see what that naive trust had wrought.

Opening my eyes, I glared. “Why are you here?”

“Excuse me,” she snapped, “why are you here?”

“Mike invited me!”

“Well, he invited me, too,” Leila said with a pout. “And you know what? Three’s a crowd!” She pointed to one of her wrists and, right in front of me, handcuffed herself to Mike’s bedpost!

My God. Matt was right. He’d warned me that Quinn was seeing some redhead...

“You know what, Leila?” I said. “Three is a crowd.”

Hurt, humiliated, and so angry I couldn’t see straight, I moved to the drawer Quinn had set aside for me, yanked out jeans, a sweater, socks. I didn’t have shoes here, but the black go-go boots would do. I went back into the bathroom, dressed, and began to storm out.

As I reached the front door, the man walked in.

“Get out of my way, you son of a—”

“Clare!” Quinn took hold of my shoulders, stopping me. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” Through a filmy blur of exasperated tears, I glared at the lying, cheating, jerk of a—“I just witnessed your ex-wife handcuffing herself to your bed, wearing a Mrs. Claus nightie, and you ask me what’s wrong?!”

For three mind-numbing seconds, Quinn’s confused expression dropped into horrified shock. Then his face flushed with pure fury.

“Wait right here,” he bit out.

“No! I’m leaving—”

“Please, Clare, wait. You need to see this!”

Swiping away my angry tears, I stiffly stood by the apartment’s open door, vowing to give the man no more than thirty seconds for whatever stunt he was about to pull.

Twenty-Nine

Quinn kicked open the bedroom door.

“Get out.”

“Oh, calm down,” Leila replied with a little-girl voice. “You want me here, Mike. Admit it...”

“You have no right. No right to invade my privacy.”

“You gave me a key!”

“I gave you a key because you can’t seem to drop off our kids anywhere close to a time we’ve agreed on. I gave you a key for Molly and Jeremy, not to handcuff yourself to my damn bedpost!”

Quinn cursed a blue streak. I could hear him manipulating the cuffs, unlocking them. “Get dressed—”

“You’ll change your mind. You will—”

“Listen to me, Leila. I told you a dozen times over the last week. I don’t want you in my bed ever again. Have you got that?”

“You’re just acting like this because she’s in the next room listening.”

“Get out. Now. Or I swear to God I will have you arrested for trespassing.”

Leila laughed. “Go ahead. Why do you think I brought the toy handcuffs? Remember when we first got married? They used to be your favorite—”

Quinn cursed again. “Get out!”

I gritted my teeth as I listened to the scene, remembering too well how ugly things had gotten between me and Matt at the end of our marriage. As I heard Leila stomping toward the bedroom door, my whole body went rigid. A second later, her statuesque figure sashayed across Quinn’s living room. She was fully dressed now—a cashmere sweater and little skirt, a dainty box handbag dangling on her slender arm.

“Here!” Mike grabbed her overcoat off his couch and flung it at her.

I’d never seen him so angry. This was no act. He was absolutely furious.

Leila picked the coat up off the floor and took her time putting it on. Her big blue eyes connected with mine, then collapsed into slits. “He’ll change his mind about you.” Her voice was no longer girlishly saccharine. The tone was bitter, guttural, threatening. “And when he does, I’ll be there.”

I said nothing to the woman. This wasn’t my fight.

“Get moving, Leila. Get out.”

“I’m going,” she told Quinn sweetly, and with one last withering glance my way, she added, “For now,” then shut the door.

The room fell silent. I felt numb. Mike was still furious; his harsh breathing was audible. Finally, I got up the courage to meet his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Clare,” he said. “She just found out about you.”

“What? After all this time, you never mentioned me?!”

“Sit down, sweetheart. Let me explain.”

Frankly, I was tempted not to. This night had put me through the grinder, and all I wanted right now was a warm gingerbread steamer and a soft mattress. I’d wanted Mike’s arms around me, too, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again.

“Please hear me out.” Mike’s face was no longer filled with rage. As he studied me, his expression crumbled into an almost painful helplessness. “Sweetheart, please...”

I finally did as he asked, moving to the sofa and sitting stiffly on its edge. “Talk.”

Mike took a deep breath, ran a hand through his hair. “Remember when Leila changed plans on me two weeks ago, dropped off the kids for Thanksgiving? You changed your own plans so that you could help me take the kids to the Macy’s parade, make us that incredible turkey dinner, play with the kids when I was called away to consult on the Pilgrim’s Daughter OD case...”

“Of course I remember.”

He began to pace. “Well, Molly and Jeremy loved you, Clare. When Leila saw them again the following night, they couldn’t stop talking about the food you made them and the games you played with them. It finally hit Leila that I had a woman in my life—” He stopped pacing and met my eyes. “An unbelievably good, incredibly beautiful woman...”

“Mike—”

“Leila lost it, sweetheart. She had to know everything about you—”

I closed my eyes, remembering all the times I’d seen the woman visiting my coffeehouse since Thanksgiving weekend. Had she simply been spying on me? Or had she been waiting for Mike to walk in so she could make some kind of scene? Probably both, I realized.

“She started showing up at my apartment,” Mike continued, “calling me at all hours, literally throwing herself at me.”

“Why?”

“Because my ex-wife is a spoiled brat, that’s why!”

“That tells me nothing.”

Mike shook his head and went back to pacing. “Clare, when Leila and I first met, it was professionally. She came to the city on her father’s money. She was a party girl, a model, and she had plenty of men drooling after