Free Holiday Grind by Cleo Coyle Page A

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. “ Mmmm , the house smells good,” he murmured, “like my mom used to make it smell at Christmastime when I was a kid. You weren’t actually cooking this early, were you?”
    “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