easily last the year. We’d have a good chance of turning those floundering kiosks around . . . and, in the meantime, Matt already found a horticultural consultant for Ric’s family, to help them keep the hybrid crops producing—Norbert Usher.
Ellie’s young assistant at the Botanic Garden was quite eager and knowledgeable, as it turned out, and he’d learned plenty from working with Ellie and Ric over the last eight months. The Gostwick family was only too happy to have him come down to Brazil and work in their nursery and on their farm.
The Dutch International contract for those fake Gostwick Estate decaffeinated beans was voided, and Matt was going to see what he could do to help Ric’s family expand legitimately, albeit slowly.
Ric admitted that his fraud scheme with the late Monika Van Doorn’s company was a way for him to purchase more land and quickly expand his crops. He’d been a little too eager to restore his family’s fortune to what it once had been . . . but all of that was behind us now.
As for my baristas, things were working out well for them, too, although not for me. Gardner had gotten so many solo piano gigs from his single appearance at the Beekman that I was now super short-staffed, and working 24/7 while still looking for good trainee baristas.
Meanwhile, Dante was very close to getting a second gallery show, Esther was after me to hold a Poetry Slam night at the Blend, and Tucker was auditioning for an Off-Off-Broadway revival of The Importance of Being Earnest in the Twenty-First Century . . . or, at least, that was the production’s working title.
Joy and I were back on civil terms. We agreed to call a truce in our battle over Tommy Keitel. I told Joy (again) that I loved her, and I didn’t want to see her hurt. She reiterated her intention to continue her relationship with fiftysomething Tommy, although she did at least acknowledge my worries, and (in what I saw as an encouraging sign of growing maturity) said she was glad to know I’d be there to catch her if she ever fell. And we’d left it at that.
All in all, it had been a rather trying week, and I figured I’d earned a coffee break. Reaching toward the burr grinder, my hand shifted to the one with the green tape. A decaffeinated espresso actually sounded like a nice, calming alternative for the night.
I took a seat beside Mike at the bar. “So are you about ready to accept some help furnishing that apartment of yours?”
“Yeah . . . that would be nice. The mattress on the floor currently has all the charm of Sing-Sing solitary.”
“I’ll tell you what else would be nice.”
“What?”
I turned on my stool, reached my hands around his waist, grabbed the cuffs again. “Jumping forward on a few of your ‘stages’ . . .”
“Oh, no, Cosi. You’re on my watch now . . .” He pulled my wrists away from his belt, repositioning them around his neck. “And I’m a procedures kind of guy. I don’t skip stages. That’s what I tell my rookies, you know?”
I arched an eyebrow at that. “First things first?”
“Or second,” he whispered. Then his smiling lips covered mine; and although they kept moving, they finally stopped talking.
RECIPES & TIPS FROM THE VILLAGE BLEND
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BUZZKILL
While coffee is my business, everyone has their threshold for caffeine consumption. If you’re worried about ingesting too much, try replacing one or more of your regular daily cups of coffee with decaf. Or try ordering a cup that’s half decaf and half regular. Remember a demitasse of espresso has less caffeine than a regular cup of your typical Colombian morning brew, and be aware of what foods and beverages have caffeine besides your favorite cuppa Joe. Here’s a short list . . .
1
Coffee Milk
Coffee Milk is a seventy-year-old tradition in Rhode Island, and the official state drink. Our barista Dante Silva explained to me that it’s very much like a glass of chocolate milk, except the syrup used is coffee flavored instead of chocolate flavored. The origins of the drink is believed to be with the Italian immigrants who settled in the region. At the Village Blend, many of our customers order it made with steamed milk, much like a hot cocoa.
2 tablespoons of sweetened coffee syrup (regular or decaf)
8 ounce glass of milk
Mix together and enjoy cold or warmed.
Homemade Coffee