by Клео Коул
On and off since I’d moved into the Blend duplex, I’d tried to get Matt to see reason and stay in hotels for the ten or so days a month he came back to New York. But he balked, claiming the cost was an outrageous expense that would bust his budget, especially when he had legal permission from the duplex’s owner (his mother) to reside here for free. He suggested that if I didn’t like it, I could always move out. But I couldn’t afford to live anywhere near the Blend without taking on roommates—and at my age, I wasn’t about to go back to collegiate living. Neither did I want to give up my residential right to the duplex or end up driving any great distance to do the sunup to sundown job of properly managing the business. So Matt and I agreed to be French about the whole thing and try to make the arrangement work by giving each other our distance and our privacy.
At the moment, neither was in play. I was wearing nothing more than a white cotton nightgown, beneath which were slight lace panties and no bra. I was small but my breasts weren’t, and the intimate grip of my ex’s hands was quickly having an unwanted effect on them.
“Matt, it’s okay,” I told him gently. “You can put me down.”
He did, on the four-poster bed of carved mahogany—part of Madame’s exquisite antique bedroom set. Then he sat down beside me, sinking into the white cloud of a comforter. I shifted into a sitting position, pressing my back against the gaggle of goose feather decorative pillows piled up against the headboard, and yawned, aware my ex-husband was no longer wearing the Good Humor Man white suit and bow tie from my bizarre dream. His faded blue NO FEAR—CLIFF DIVE HAWAII T-shirt stretched across his hard chest, gray sweats covered his legs.
“You’re okay then?” he asked.
“Sure…” I rubbed my eyes and sighed, trying to remove the lingering images of Tucker drowning, my father rowing, and Matt and Joy laughing as they carelessly waved ciao to me. I even glanced around the room to get my bearings.
Like the rest of the duplex, Madame had decorated the master bedroom with her romantic setting on high. The carved ivory-colored Italian marble fireplace was not original to the room, neither was the gilt-edged French mirror above it, or the fleur-de-lys medallion in the center of the ceiling, from which hung a charming chandelier of hand-blown, pale rose Venetian glass. The walls had been painted the same pale rose as the imported chandelier while the door and window frames echoed the same shade of ivory as the silk draperies pulled back from the floor-to-ceiling casement windows.
My favorite aspect of this room, however, wasn’t the furnishings, the fireplace, or the draperies. Hanging on practically every inch of free wall space were priceless original oils and sketches from artists my former mother-in-law had known over the years—including Jackson Pollack, whom she’d attempted to sober up more than once with hot, fresh pots of French roast, and Edward Hopper, one of my all-time favorites, who’d sketched this very coffeehouse for Madame on one of the marble-topped tables three floors below.
“I found you passed out in a living room chair,” Matt informed me. “Java was curled up in another. You both looked too cute to disturb, but I figured you’d be pretty sore in the morning if I left you in that position. Java can fend for herself.”
“I didn’t mean to pass out.” I yawned again. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“You didn’t get any, Clare.” He smiled. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s okay…I was actually trying to wait up to talk to you—”
“What did I do now?”
He’d cut me off before I could mention the kiosks. But it didn’t matter anyway. Something more important had come up before I’d dozed off.
I shook my head. “Not you Joy.”
Matt’s body stiffened: aloof to anxious in less than sixty seconds. It didn’t surprise me. Even when we were married, Matt’s focus on Joy had been hyper-protective—when he’d been around, that is. When he’d been off on his coffee buying and brokering expeditions, an entire week could go by without even a call. For that, it had been hard to forgive him.
“She’s fine, Matt. At least…I think so.”
“What do you mean, you ‘think so.’” His tone was censuring, but I overlooked it. When it came to extreme sports, my ex-husband had no fear. When it came to our daughter’s well being, however, dread was his middle name.
“Take it easy,” I said gently. “When I first came upstairs, it wasn’t that late—just after eleven. I called her home phone and she didn’t answer. Then I tried her cell…”
“And?”
“And an obviously drunk boy answered.”
Matt stiffened again.
“After a number of tries, I got out of the boy what was going on. He was a friend of Joy’s. Apparently, she’d left her bag at the bar at some dance club and went to the restroom with a few people in their group. I asked how long she’d been gone—and he said a half hour or so but that was no big deal because, as he put it, ‘Joy obviously didn’t go to the restroom to rest.’ Then he hung up.”
“Which club, Clare?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. I tried calling her cell again, but the boy must have turned off the phone because I just got her voice mail for an hour after that. And before you ask, I left messages on her cell and her apartment phone, demanding that she call me no matter the hour.”
Matt stood up, rubbed his neck, began to pace the polished hardwood floor in his bare feet.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I’m thinking she’s doing drugs. What else?”
“I thought about that, too, but it just isn’t Joy. For one thing, where would she get the money?”
“Clare, you’re so naïve. The clubscene revolves around young professionals with money to burn. They drink and do drugs because things are good, and they drink and do drugs because things are tough. Joy’s an attractive, outgoing young woman and she has a lot of friends. It would be easy for her to fall in with a crowd that would share their recreational drugs with her. She wouldn’t need money for that.”
“I know my daughter. She’s too smart for that. We had long talks about this stuff when she was in high school. She has her head on straight. Besides, she saw what…”
Matt stopped his pacing. “What? Saw what?”
“Nothing.”
He folded his arms and his biceps swelled, obscuring the NO part of the NO FEAR scrawled across his faded tee. “Saw what?”
“You. What the cocaine did to you. To us.”
Matt’s expression faltered. “I thought she was too young to…”
“Children, even young ones, pick up more than you know.” I was ready to point out that if he’d been around more, maybe he would have noticed how very perceptive his young daughter had been, but I’d made that point so much and so often over the years, Matt had to be sick of hearing it—and I was certainly weary of repeating it.
He uncrossed his arms, sat back down on the bed, met my eyes. “After rehab, I never did drugs again, Clare. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know it was hard for you. I know you’re straight now. I just pray you stay that way.”
“Junkies don’t need a reason to start. But they definitely need one to stop…I had more than one reason. I had two.” Matt’s hand came to rest on my leg. I felt the warmth seeping beneath the nightgown’s thin layer, warming my thigh.
I swallowed uneasily, trying not to react to his touch. “Matt…I…”
The phone startled us both as it rang at my bedside. I reached for it. Matt was faster.
“Hello.”
“Daddy?”
I leaned a little closer to hear Joy’s end of the conversation. Matt didn’t appear to mind. In fact, he angled his own body, making the proximity even more intimate.
“Joy, where the hell are you?” he asked, taking the words right out of my mouth. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m home. You and Mom should get a life. I’m over eighteen and I was out with friends, that’s all. Rela
x, okay?”
Matt sighed. “Muffin, we’re just worried. Your mother told me a drunk boy answered your cell phone and—”
Joy began to laugh. “That was Tommy. He’s so crazy. He also should have told me you called. I didn’t get Mom’s message till I got home.”
“Ask her about the restroom!” I hissed.
“Is that Mom?” snapped Joy. “Is she listening in?”
“Your mother is understandably worried, Joy. That boy gave her a heart attack. She thinks you’re doing drugs.”
“I’m not.”
“And why should I believe you?” Matt demanded.
“Because I’m your daughter and I totally don’t lie.” She sighed. “Look, I have a few friends who like to do it for fun in clubs sometimes. I hang with them, but I never do the drugs, okay? So, listen, it’s late and I’m really, really tired. I’m going to bed. Okay?”
“We’ll talk about this again,” Matt promised her.
“Fine, but not at one in the A.M. Please, Daddy? Good night.”
“Good night, muffin.”
Matt hung up. Then he and I stared at each other in silence for at least thirty seconds. This whole over-eighteen thing was definitely uncharted waters.
“What do you think?” he finally asked. His expression, usually confident and cocky, was so lost and helpless that I nearly burst out laughing.
“I think I’m relieved Joy called us back tonight,” I told him. “And because she called, I do believe she’s telling us the truth.”
“But she’s hanging with friends who do drugs,” Matt pointed out, “which is why I’m going to have a long, straight talk with her.”
“That’s a very good idea. She’ll listen to you.”
Matt grunted and rubbed his eyes as if he were trying to ward off a monumental headache.
“She worships you, Matt, you know that, don’t you?”
Matt stopped rubbing his eyes and looked up. “I’ve never heard you say that before.”
“Sure you have.”
“No, Clare. What I usually hear is how I wasn’t around enough for her, which was completely true. And I honestly can’t see why Joy would want to listen to her old man when he’s just an ex-drug addict…a fuck-up.”
“Matt, stop. Of course she worships you. You’re her father—her exciting, larger-than-life, super-cool, globetrotting, no-fear father. I reached out and underlined those very words on his shirt. He caught my hand.
“Matt…”
“Are you just saying that because I’m so pathetic?” He brought my hand to his cheek, kissed my palm. “I mean, did you hear me on the phone?” He lowered his voice to a ridiculous octave. “‘Your mother is understandably upset.’”
I smiled. “That’s the thing about parenthood. No matter how cool you think you are, you are doomed to one day channel Ward Cleaver.”
As I spoke, his lips moved, touching the inside of my wrist and elbow. Then he shifted closer on the bed, pulling my arm around his waist, he angled in to nibble my throat, my ear, my jawline…
I sighed. It felt good. Too good. “Matt,” I said softly. “I don’t think—”
“Clare, sweetheart,” he whispered into my ear, “please…don’t think.”
Then his lips were on mine, warm and gentle, like an espresso, relaxing and rousing at the same time. The weight of his body pressed me farther into the sea of pillows. I closed my eyes, and I was floating once more. It felt like a dream, but not a bad one…and I let it carry me away.
Seventeen
The dawning sun streamed in with a blinding vengeance. I yawned and arched my back, wondering why I hadn’t drawn the drapes. Beside me Java trotted across the clean, white sheets and arched her back, too, then she butted her coffee-bean colored head against my arm in her usual demand for attention. As I petted the silky length of her, a Technicolor scene from Gone with the Wind flashed through my sleep-addled brain. I saw Scarlett awakening and stretching like a cream-fed feline the morning after Rhett carried her off to bed.
Now what brought that to mind? I innocently pondered. Then my hand stilled on Java’s fur.
Oh, god.
I sat up, the sheet fell down. I was naked.
“Good morning, sweetheart!”
A bare-chested Matteo strode through the master bedroom door as if we were still married. I snatched up the sheet to cover my naked breasts and realized with an appalling jolt that what had happened between us last night hadn’t been a dream.
Oh, no, I thought. No, no, no!
Matt wore gray sweats and nothing else. In his hands were two mugs of freshly brewed coffee. The aroma told me at once he’d broken into his special reserve Harrar for what he undoubtedly presumed was a “special” occasion.
He set the mugs on the rosewood nightstand, dropped onto the bed beside me, and immediately began to nuzzle my neck. “Mmmm, Clare, sweetheart…it’s been so long…”
“Y-yes.”
“You’ve changed, you know…”
“Changed?”
He pressed closer, the heat of his naked chest penetrating the thin layer of sheet between us. “You were so…different last night…”.
“Different?”
“Less inhibited…more open…passionate…” He continued to nuzzle my neck, my ear, moved to brush my lips. “You even taste different…like vanilla…”
I squirmed. “Must be the new shampoo and body wash. It comes in comfort food flavors. Strawberry ice cream, butter rum, gingerbread…”
“Mmmhmm…good to know…I like variety…”
I closed my eyes at that. Matt may have changed in some ways, but I knew he would never change in others. That’s always been our problem, Matt, I thought. You like variety a little too much. I touched his chest. As gently as I could, I pushed him away. “You made me your special reserve, didn’t you? I can smell it.”
He nodded, reached for one of the mugs and handed it over. As we sipped in silence, enjoying the incredible flavors, I tried not to panic.
Giving in to Matt had been a big mistake. Huge. And I should have known better. Notwithstanding the fact that our getting back together was something his mother had wanted for years—as well as our daughter—I had been through the mill too many times with my ex to want to risk getting my heart ground up again. Besides which, our relationship was changed now. We were business partners in the Blend, and I didn’t want that disturbed. Matteo was the best coffee buyer and broker in the business as far as I was concerned, and the Blend couldn’t lose that.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, I railed at myself. My resistance to Matt’s physical charms had failed only a few times since our divorce over a decade ago. Usually, I could rely on one of my memories of Matt’s extracurricular sexual romps to break “the mood” more effectively than an icy spike through my spine. But last night I couldn’t see Matt as a betrayer, only as a father and, shockingly, as a maturing man. He’d been hurting and open and unbelievably vulnerable. I wasn’t used to seeing him like that, his cockiness stripped away, his need so raw. It got to me…that and the fact that this mattress hadn’t seen any action for quite some time.
“Might as well enjoy the Harrar while you can,” Matt said, interrupting my thoughts. “Since my kiosks are a bust.”
“Oh, god, Matt. I’m so sorry—”
“It’s not your fault, Clare. My mother’s a stubborn old bird, and I obviously screwed up the presentation by going after Lebreaux—”
“No! Listen to me,” I told him. “The reason I’m sorry…I was waiting up to tell you, but then the whole thing with Joy at that nightclub happened, and then we…you and I…”
“Wait, back up,” said Matt. “What slipped your mind?”
“Your mother confided in me last night, while you were waiting on the taxi line. She thinks the future of the Blend is ours to decide, not hers. She understands what you’re doing and why. She’s not going to stand in your way.”
“Jesus, Clare. Why didn’t you tell me that last night!”
&
nbsp; “Because at first I thought she should be the one to tell you, in her own words, but when I saw how hard you were taking it, I knew it was something you shouldn’t have to wait to hear—and then I…I got distracted. I’m sorry. But, Matt, I know she thinks your work in Ethiopia is phenomenal. And I do, too, by the way.”
His outraged tone softened. “She told you about the Harrar wet-processing?”
“Yes, and it’s just astonishing. You know, your mother will help hook you up with investors. She’s kept in touch with all of Pierre’s old contacts. You won’t have to go it alone or trust Tad to…”
My voice trailed off. The mention of Tad brought back all the things I’d witnessed on the Fortune the night before—not to mention my dream of Tucker drowning. And I realized with a sickening stab of guilt that while I was enjoying amazing coffee in the luxury of an elegant bedroom, my good friend was alone and afraid in a Riker’s Island jail cell.
I threw off the covers and got out of bed. I was totally naked, and I felt Matt’s eyes on me as I darted around the room, dressing for the day. But I didn’t care. I didn’t have time to.
“Listen to me, Matt,” I said as I pulled on a pair of panties and hooked on a bra. I told him all about Lottie Harmon’s business arrangement with Tad Benedict and Rena Garcia, and about the intimate moment they’d shared together on the dark deck—a moment I had secretly witnessed from the shadows.
“Sounds like they’re desperate to sell,” said Matt, scratching his chin as he leaned back against the four-poster’s headboard and continued to sip his coffee. “And I doubt Lottie is in a position to buy them out.”
“Yes, but she obviously has no idea they’re selling.”
“It doesn’t matter. Together, Tad and Rena control exactly half the business and they can sell fifty percent of the stock if they want to. It’s their right, Clare.”
“Yes, but I’m sure they were trying to sell even more. Tad didn’t even blink when Madame said she wanted thirty percent. Instead, he pressed me to buy some, too.”
