I didn’t think you’d show.” I shut the door on the snowy night. “You only got back from Guatemala—what? Six hours ago?”
“Five.”
“And I know how you feel about Fa-la-la-la Lattes.” I smiled at the catchy term. I hadn’t invented it. Alfred Glockner, our local charity Santa, had coined it. In truth, the whole Taste of Christmas idea had been Alf’s.
Matt shrugged. “What can I say? When it comes to coffee, I’m a purist.”
As an international coffee broker as well as our coffee buyer, Matt was also a coffee snob, but justifiably so. The lattes and cappuccinos were a big draw to the Blend and a healthy contributor to our bottom line. But they weren’t his area of the business; they were mine—and my staff of baristas who mixed them to order.
While I roasted and served the beans, Matt was responsible for sourcing them. And because harvest quality could change from season to season, Matt was essentially a java-centric Magellan, regularly exploring the world’s coffee belt—a band of mountainous slopes that circled the globe between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, where sunny, frost-free, moderately wet conditions allowed for the cultivation of the very best arabica beans.
“Good thing your Holiday Blend’s a winner this year,” I said, knowing that our single-origin coffees, seasonal blends, and straight espressos were what lit Matt up. (No artificial oils, no sugar syrups, just his top-quality beans with natural, exotic spice notes, which I regularly roasted in small batches in our shop’s basement.)
“So where’s Breanne?” I asked, glancing through the front door’s glass. Snow fluttered down through the light of the streetlamps, but the curb was empty. No limo. No hired car. No yellow cab with an open door sprouting an endless, designer-draped leg.
“She was supposed to meet me here.” Matt scanned the tasting group gathered around the fire. “She hasn’t shown yet?”
“No. Is she working late again?”
Matt’s reply was a muttered, “When isn’t she?”
“I’ll bet the snow held her up,” I said. “You know it’s murder getting a cab in weather like this.”
Matt didn’t nod or agree, just pulled off his black knit cap, ran a hand over his short, dark Caesar, and looked away.
He and Breanne had gotten married in the spring, went on a whirlwind tour of Spain for a number of weeks, then spent much of the summer in a cottony cloud of sweetness that rivaled Tucker’s Candy Cane Cappuccino. By early fall, however, the sugar had started to melt. Sharp bouts of bickering continually punctured their meringue of constant cooing.
I didn’t see this as any great sign of marital doom. Sooner or later every honeymooning couple had to deal with the struggles and drudgery of workaday life. Whether they touched down or crash-landed, newlyweds have been traveling the same trajectory for centuries.
“Maybe you should call her?” I suggested.
“Forget it,” he said, then changed the subject. “You know, Clare, our Holiday Blend’s a winner this year because of you. You created the blend; you perfected the roast.”
“But you found the beans, Matt. Your beans are incredible.” I didn’t mind giving away the credit for this year’s exotically spiced blend. Usually, Matt was so cocky it wasn’t necessary. But because he’d gone humble on me, I stated the obvious: “That microlot of Sumatra you snagged on the last trip to Indonesia was superb. You made my job easy.”
Matt’s weary expression lightened at that, and I was glad to see him smile—until his gaze drifted over me. In anticipation of the evening’s festivities, I’d fastened a prim choker of green velvet ribbon around my neck. In hopes of seeing Quinn, however, I’d squeezed into a new pair of not-so-prim, form-fitting low-riders. The holly-berry-colored cashmere-blend sweater wasn’t exactly loose, either. It also flaunted a borderline audacious neckline. (What could I say? I liked Quinn’s eyes on me.) Unfortunately, at the moment, it wasn’t Mike Quinn doing the looking.
“Nice sweater,” Matt said with an arched eyebrow, and before I could stop him he reached out to brush the melting snow crystals from my hair. “Have I seen it before?”
“The sweater’s new,” I informed him while carefully stepping beyond his reach.
Married or not, Matteo Allegro liked women. And because I was one, there was no getting around his occasional flirtations. I could get around his touches, however, and I’d found that a subtle dodge worked a whole lot better than a snippy lecture—it proved a lot less embarrassing in public, too.
Obviously, Matt and I had a history: the kind where you live together for ten years as