Клео Коул - Roast Mortem

“What time is it?”

“All the clocks have stopped, sweetheart. There is no time. Right now there’s nothing but you and me...”

Soft tugs coaxed off my nightshirt. The touch of slightly calloused fingers were cool at first, but quickly warmed on my naked skin. Tender kisses came next, to the back of my shoulder, along my neck, around my jawline...

I smiled in the dark.

A few minutes later, Quinn’s long, heavy body was covering mine, and I found my way back to sweet oblivion.

An hour later, we were lying together, still under the covers, my head on his shoulder, his durable arm around me.

“Mike... ?”

My voice sounded shamefully hesitant in the shadowy chill of the pre-dawn room. “There’s something I didn’t tell you earlier...”

“That makes two of us.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. But you go first.”

“No,” I said, far from eager to spill. “You.”

“All right, well... Remember that private word I had with your ex-husband?”

“Yeah, what was that about? Matt wouldn’t tell me...”

“I asked him to stay here with you.”

“You’re kidding...”

Not so long ago, Mike nearly broke up with me because Matt was still making use of this duplex. “I can’t believe it,” I said. “You asked Matt to stay here with me?”

“I didn’t want you to be in the building alone. That’s all. Matt agreed with me.”

“Oh, no, he didn’t. I was up here all night alone — until you came.”

“You were alone in the duplex, Clare, but not in the building. Allegro spent the night downstairs in the Blend, doing business with Europe and Japan on his PDA. I spoke to him before I came upstairs to you, told him to get home, try to get some rest...”

Once again, I was surprised, but only a little. Matteo Allegro’s long list of petty vices continued to be trumped by one major virtue: the man had a ferocious protective streak. Whether it was his daughter, his mother, his new wife, or old, my ex-husband refused to accept someone he loved being in harm’s way.

“Okay, sweetheart, your turn,” Mike said, his voice almost teasing. I felt a soft kiss on my hair. “What didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“I went to your cousin’s firehouse last night.”

Mike’s big, warm body froze against mine.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Your cousin swore to me on the phone that he wouldn’t be there — ”

“But he was anyway.”

“Yes.”

“I asked you to stay away from him, Clare.”

“I thought I was staying away from him. I swear. He lied to me — ”

“You promised me.”

“You’re not listening, Mike. Try to understand...”

I did my best to explain my side of it. “I needed to do it. I needed to find answers. The problem is... I found more questions...”

Mike let my final statement hang for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “You want to explain what that’s supposed to mean?”

“It means your cousin told me about the history between you and his younger brother, Kevin...”

Mike exhaled, loud and long. “Let’s get this out of the way, all right? I want to know every single thing that son-of-a-bitch cousin of mine told you.”

“Fine.” I threw off the covers and got up.

“Clare! Where are you going?!”

“I’m not going to discuss your cousin in this bed,” I said, grabbing my robe, wrapping it tight. “Are you hungry? I need to cook.”

“Oh?” Mike blinked, his tone suddenly more pliable. “What did you have in mind?”

Crab cakes. That’s what I had in mind. Mike loved them, and I’d already picked up two pounds of fresh lump crabmeat from the Lobster Place on Bleecker. (Blue, of course. For Maryland-style cakes, the crabs really should be blue.)

So, okay, seafood wasn’t your typical breakfast fare. But Mike had been up all night and this was going to be dinner for him.

Now, as the coral glow of dawn lightened the darkness beyond my window, I made a pot of coffee and poured two mugs. Quinn sat at my kitchen table in sweat pants and a faded Rangers T-shirt, his feet bare, his dark blond hair mussed. The man had a strong presence, even when he didn’t say a word. With his twilight blue eyes watching my every move over the rim of his coffee mug, I found it difficult to focus on the cooking, but I did my level best.

Back around midnight, I’d already mixed the crabmeat with binders and herbs and formed the small patties. Now I pulled the wax paper covered plates from the fridge, brushed them lightly with an egg wash, and carefully rolled each in a crisp breading of Japanese panko.

The clammy texture of the chilly patties against my fingers and palms reminded me of another dish — my nonna ’s spinach and ricotta malfatti , just one of the daily take-out specialties we made for her grocery.

Malfatti , which translates to “badly formed,” were essentially dumplings of ravioli filling (hold the pasta). But the idea I found useful at this very moment was bigger than that. Italian culinary philosophy dictated that you never apologized for your mistake. You just made up a little name for it and moved along.

My malfatti look lumpy? Hey, don’t blame me! They’re called badly formed, aren’t they? Those little meringue-hazelnut cookies of mine resemble toadstool tops? So what! They’re called brutti ma buoni , right? Ugly but good!

It was exactly the tack I took with Mike, explaining (but never apologizing) for my encounter with his cousin the previous evening.

Laughable, wasn’t it? I mean, it wasn’t my fault your cousin was there. Don’t blame me!

(Of course, I was careful to leave out the part about his flame-haired twin inviting me to play Texas Hold ’Em in Atlantic City.) But then I got to the story of how Mike had put his career ahead of his younger cousin Kevin...

When I finished, Mike appeared to come down with a prolonged case of lockjaw. Finally, he let out a harsh laugh.

“He’s such a piece of work...”

“Kevin?”

“ Michael . He gave you selected highlights, Clare, a carefully redacted tale of Quinn ancient history...”

“You’ll have to explain.”

“Kevin Quinn was supposed to follow in his late father’s footsteps, just like his older brother. But Kevin’s partying got out of hand. Underage drinking became a major problem. And then he began to drive drunk.”

“So it wasn’t just a one time thing?”

“No. When Kevin was pulled over in Manhattan one night, he used my name to get the officers to give him another chance. The pair contacted me themselves — I was on duty so I showed up inside of ten minutes to take my idiot younger cousin off their hands. I drove Kevin straight home, warned the kid to sober the hell up and straighten out. But Kevin blew it.”

“What do you mean? He drove drunk again?”

“A few months later, just before he was supposed to start training at the fire academy, the kid was back behind the wheel, loaded up on boilermakers. This time it wasn’t just a pull over, it was a traffic accident. He went right through a red light, banged up another vehicle. No one was badly hurt, but a few seconds’ difference in that crash and Kevin could have injured or even killed two young women.”

“Oh my God...”

“The story’s not over: this time Michael came to me, hat in hand, asking me to help out his little brother, just like I’d done before. Make it go away. Those were his words. But things were different this time. Kevin was falling down drunk when the arresting officers took him in. By the time I heard about it, he was already in the system. I made sure the kid got a good lawyer. I stood up for him in court, vouched for his character. It was all I could do.”