Too late.
“Well, well,” said Matt in an injured tone. “So you finally made it home.”
“Good morning,” I said, meeting his gaze. He stood there in tight, scuffed jeans and a crinkled gray turtleneck.
I took off the beautiful shearling coat and hung it in the closet. Put down the Saks shopping bag with Joy’s and faced Matteo to find him staring at my outfit, his disapproving eyes moving from the low cleavage of my tight, pearl-buttoned sweater to the short hemline on my red plaid skirt.
“I know you were wearing Joy’s yellow parka when you left here — and I won’t even ask where the hell it is now — but you haven’t actually been borrowing the girl’s clothes, have you?”
“Certainly not,” I replied. “I’d never let my barely adult daughter go out in public wearing an outfit like this one.”
For a change, Matteo was speechless.
“Coffee?” I asked. “You’re up so early you probably need it.”
I headed for the kitchen and my drip coffee maker, Matt on my heels.
“Someone had to get up early,” he said. “In case you didn’t make it home. Someone would have to open the coffeehouse.”
“Please,” I said with a wave. “In all the time I managed this place for your mother — during our marriage and since I’ve returned — I’ve never once missed the opening. You, on the other hand — ”
Matt put up his hand to stop me.
“Let’s not go there. It’s the here and now we’re talking about.”
Matteo sat down at the table while I scooped beans into the grinder.
“Anyway,” he said, “I wonder how much longer you’ll be able to keep that sterling employment record going? Especially with millionaire Bruce Bowman — a.k.a. Mr. Right — in hot pursuit. Or is the pursuit technically over now?” Matteo glanced at his watch and raised an eyebrow. “Gauging the hour — and your choice of attire — I’d say Bruce got pretty much what he was after. How about you, Clare? Happy?”
Matteo had learned the many ways to bait me early in our marriage. For the first few years, I refused to sink to his level, but soon we were fighting fairly regularly. It was possible my hostility gave him some kind of sick justification to seek comfort elsewhere — not that he’d ever really needed an excuse.
In the years since the divorce had become final, however, I’d had little to no patience with Matteo’s games.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am happy,” I tossed over my shoulder. “Bruce made me very happy. And correct me if I’m wrong, wasn’t it you who always said I was too uptight and should lighten up? You’re just mad because I didn’t lighten up while I was married to you.”
“That’s a load of — ”
I pushed the button on the electric grinder, drowning out his reply. Grinding beans too long would create a bitter brew, but frankly I preferred having the bitterness on my tongue than in my ear.
When the beans were pulverized I turned off the grinder and dumped them into the drip machine’s cone filter to the sound of silence. I got the whole thing brewing, then grabbed two large mugs and set one in front of Matteo.
The nutty smell of freshly brewed Breakfast Blend gradually filled the kitchen. I yawned, leaned against the granite sink, and let the earthy aroma revive me.
It slowly dawned on me that through some bizarre circumstance of karmic justice, Matteo and I were both reliving an all too common scene from our past — only in reverse.
Back when we were married, Matt had been the one who invariably partied the night away, usually with some vivacious little bubblehead, as a result of a networking party, while I played the part of the responsible, long-suffering, faithful, injured spouse. I didn’t like my role, but what Matt saw as my “uptight” morals allowed for no other choice of lifestyles. Just because Matteo strayed at the drop of a thong, didn’t mean I would.
If I remembered correctly, it was Matteo who usually made coffee on those bleak mornings, still dressed in the clothes he went out wearing the night before — pumped full of adrenaline, or testosterone, or cocaine, or all three. He’d make coffee while I sat at the table or gazed out the window, sulking, and contemplating the end.
Now if I were a cruel person, I would take pleasure in this remarkable turning of the tide — and maybe I was a cruel person because a part of me knew Matt wanted me back, and I was honestly enjoying this moment. On the other hand, maybe I wasn’t cruel. Maybe I was just human.
When the pot gurgled its last, I carried the hot carafe to the table.
Matt spoke again. “Your friend Detective Quinn stopped by last night, around closing time.”
I froze in mid-pour, dribbling three dark drops. Matteo swept his hand across the table, wiping them away.
“Quinn put a tail on Bruce,” he continued. “From the report he received late last night, it appeared a woman with a bright yellow parka entered Bowman’s house. He thought it was Joy who had gone in. He came here, alarmed, looking for you. He found me instead, and I explained you’d borrowed Joy’s yellow parka. What his plain clothes officer saw was you going in. That’s when Quinn told me — ”
I finished pouring and sat down at the table across from the father of my child. “I know what he told you. He told you Bruce Bowman is a suspect in a murder.”
“The suspect, in three murders.”
“Quinn exaggerates,” I said evenly. I tasted my coffee and found it bitter. I added an extra dash of cream — and, uncharacteristically, a heaping teaspoon of sugar.
“So maybe Bruce only killed one woman instead of two or more,” said Matt. “Yeah, I could see how Detective Quinn was exaggerating just a tad. Nothing to worry about.”
I shook my head, disturbed. “Matt, listen to me. Bruce is not a murderer. Quinn’s wrong. Misguided, over-wrought, and…wrong. And if he’s telling you about it, then he’s obviously trying to convince you to persuade me to stop seeing Bruce. But I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to do something else.”
“Like what?”
“Like prove Quinn wrong.”
“Whoa, Clare — ”
“Don’t ‘whoa Clare’ me,” I said a little too loudly. “You want to know what I think? I think both you and Quinn are jealous. You with your public parade of serial flirtations, and Quinn with his messed-up marriage and all the baggage that comes with it. Frankly I’m sick of the both of you.”
“Aren’t we being a little harsh?”
I gritted my teeth and glared at Matt. “I meet a man. A nice man. More than a nice man. A remarkable, talented, tender, and hard-working one. Someone sane, reasonable, adult, self-aware, and brutally honest about the mistakes of his past, and you and Quinn conspire together to ruin things for me.”
“Clare, you’re starting to sound paranoid. I can’t speak for Quinn, but I’m not out to frame your boyfriend, or hurt you, believe me.”
“Not out to hurt me? That’s rich. Just what did you think you were doing all those times you had a fling with some barmaid, stewardess, or mutual friend’s wife?”
For a long minute, he had no reply.
“I didn’t do it to hurt you, Clare,” he finally said softly. “You know that.”
Sadly, I did. It had taken me years to come to terms with the idea that Matteo and I had very different attitudes toward sex. For him, physical love was just another exhilarating activity — like mountain climbing, surfing, getting falling-down drunk, or bungee jumping. Sex was no big anxiety-producing ordeal — and there certainly didn’t have to be any complicated meaning behind it. What meaning was there in a drunken binge or a bungee jump?
But for me there had to be more than the excitement of the chase, or the thrill of the seduction. Much more. I had to respect the man, and like him a lot, if not love him completely. Sex meant relationship. Sex for me could never be a one-night stand.
I know now that Matt never really understood what his little infidelities were doing to me back then. It was like he was missing some gene, or had an amazing psychological blind spot where the result of his own behavior on others was concerned. The cocaine didn’t help either, frankly. But my cognitive comprehension of my ex-husband’s shortcomings didn’t go very far to ease the pain in my heart. Or stop the anger I still felt toward him at times.