Latte Trouble (12 page)

“C
LARE!”

The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t see the person calling my name. Darkness surrounded me, my legs and arms were buoyed, and the rhythmic sound of waves lapped against my ears. The lights of Manhattan towered above me, and I realized I was floating in the Hudson River.

“Clare! Help!”

Nearby, the rank water began splashing back and forth like the agitation cycle in a washing machine. Not more than twenty feet away, Tucker was flailing around in the river He was drowning!

“Clare, help me!”

I swam toward him, but a thick fog suddenly descended, obscuring the monumental towers of light. I peered into the dark mist. “Tucker, where are you? I can’t find you!”

“Clare, hurry! Please!”

I swam forward again, tried to cut through the fog. Finally, I saw his face ahead in the water. His eyes were fearful, his expression panicked. He was going under! I lurched forward to take hold of him, but suddenly I couldn’t move. My arms felt weighted, my legs paralyzed. Now I was sinking too.

“Tucker, hold on!” I tried to shout, but my mouth slipped below the surface and the foul smelling river water swallowed my words.

“Hi, cupcake!”

My father, the short, wiry Italian with the manic energy of an excited terrier, rowed by on a dinghy, chewing the stub of a cigar. Forward and back, forward and back, he leaned with carefree ease, pulling the oars that glided him along right past me.

“Just remember what I told you, cupcake. Before they try to scam you—and they always will—stick it to ’em and twice as hard!”

“Dad!” I cried.

“Gotta, go, cupcake. Another day, another half dollar.” Then he was gone, rowing right along, disappearing into the fog.

“Clare!”

The voice was male but not my father’s or Tucker’s. I looked up from beneath the water. Above the undulating surface of the river, the foggy night had magically turned into blazing day. A large yacht drifted nearly on top of me. Standing on its deck, Matteo wore a white suit and bow tie. His hair was neatly trimmed, his face closely shaved, and his smile nearly blinding. But after he spotted me in the water, his brilliant smile faded.

“Clare, sweetheart, hold on! I’m coming!” he cried.

He was about to climb over the rail and jump in with me when Breanne Summour, head-to-toe in a hot pink nightgown, the color of Ricky Flatt’s corpse, strode up and whispered in his ear.

He nodded, then laughed and swung his leg back, behind the rail. Suddenly, Joy was there on the yacht’s deck, moving up to the rail, squeezing in between them. “Bye, Mom! See ya!” she called, waving happily in her white sundress.

As I sunk deeper and deeper into the river, I watched all three of them wave, then turn from the rail and disappear, laughing and raising glass latte mugs. I closed my eyes, devastated beyond words…

I opened my eyes—

Matteo’s face was next to mine. His jawline was no longer clean-shaven but shadowed with dark stubble. His brown eyes appeared tired.

“What the…” I murmured.

“You were having a bad dream,” Matt informed me. “You were moaning.”

I was also still floating, I realized, but not in water.

“Where am I?”

“On your way to bed.”

I blinked again and saw that Matt was carrying me with ease in his muscular arms. He was cresting the short flight of carpeted stairs and heading into the duplex’s master bedroom—my own. Matt had his own, smaller room at the other end of the short hall, for his infrequent layovers in New York.

On and off since I’d moved into the Blend duplex, I’d tried to get Matt to see reason and stay in hotels for the ten or so days a month he came back to New York. But he balked, claiming the cost was an outrageous expense that would bust his budget, especially when he had legal permission from the duplex’s owner (his mother) to reside here for free. He suggested that if I didn’t like it, I could always move out. But I couldn’t afford to live anywhere near the Blend without taking on roommates—and at my age, I wasn’t about to go back to collegiate living. Neither did I want to give up my residential right to the duplex or end up driving any great distance to do the sunup to sundown job of properly managing the business. So Matt and I agreed to be French about the whole thing and try to make the arrangement work by giving each other our distance and our privacy.

At the moment, neither was in play. I was wearing nothing more than a white cotton nightgown, beneath which were slight lace panties and no bra. I was small but my breasts weren’t, and the intimate grip of my ex’s hands was quickly having an unwanted effect on them.

“Matt, it’s okay,” I told him gently. “You can put me down.”

He did, on the four-poster bed of carved mahogany—part of Madame’s exquisite antique bedroom set. Then he sat down beside me, sinking into the white cloud of a comforter. I shifted into a sitting position, pressing my back against the gaggle of goose feather decorative pillows piled up against the headboard, and yawned, aware my ex-husband was no longer wearing the Good Humor Man white suit and bow tie from my bizarre dream. His faded blue
NO FEAR
—
CLIFF DIVE HAWAII
T-shirt stretched across his hard chest, gray sweats covered his legs.

“You’re okay then?” he asked.

“Sure…” I rubbed my eyes and sighed, trying to remove the lingering images of Tucker drowning, my father rowing, and Matt and Joy laughing as they carelessly waved
ciao
to me. I even glanced around the room to get my bearings.

Like the rest of the duplex, Madame had decorated the master bedroom with her romantic setting on high. The carved ivory-colored Italian marble fireplace was not original to the room, neither was the gilt-edged French mirror above it, or the fleur-de-lys medallion in the center of the ceiling, from which hung a charming chandelier of hand-blown, pale rose Venetian glass. The walls had been painted the same pale rose as the imported chandelier while the door and window frames echoed the same shade of ivory as the silk draperies pulled back from the floor-to-ceiling casement windows.

My favorite aspect of this room, however, wasn’t the furnishings, the fireplace, or the draperies. Hanging on practically every inch of free wall space were priceless original oils and sketches from artists my former mother-in-law had known over the years—including Jackson Pollack, whom she’d attempted to sober up more than once with hot, fresh pots of French roast, and Edward Hopper, one of my all-time favorites, who’d sketched this very coffeehouse for Madame on one of the marble-topped tables three floors below.

“I found you passed out in a living room chair,” Matt informed me. “Java was curled up in another. You both looked too cute to disturb, but I figured you’d be pretty sore in the morning if I left you in that position. Java can fend for herself.”

“I didn’t mean to pass out.” I yawned again. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“You didn’t get any, Clare.” He smiled. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay…I was actually trying to wait up to talk to you—”

“What did I do now?”

He’d cut me off before I could mention the kiosks. But it didn’t matter anyway. Something more important had come up before I’d dozed off.

I shook my head. “Not you Joy.”

Matt’s body stiffened: aloof to anxious in less than sixty seconds. It didn’t surprise me. Even when we were married, Matt’s focus on Joy had been hyper-protective—when he’d been around, that is. When he’d been off on his coffee buying and brokering expeditions, an entire week could go by without even a call. For that, it had been hard to forgive him.

“She’s fine, Matt. At least…I think so.”

“What do you mean, you
‘think so.
’” His tone was censuring, but I overlooked it. When it came to extreme sports, my ex-husband had no fear. When it came to our daughter’s well being, however, dread was his middle name.

“Take it easy,” I said gently. “When I first came upstairs, it wasn’t that late—just after eleven. I called her home phone and she didn’t answer. Then I tried her cell…”

“And?”

“And an obviously drunk boy answered.”

Matt stiffened again.

“After a number of tries, I got out of the boy what was going on. He was a friend of Joy’s. Apparently, she’d left her bag at the bar at some dance club and went to the restroom with a few people in their group. I asked how long she’d been gone—and he said a half hour or so but that was no big deal because, as he put it, ‘Joy obviously didn’t go to the restroom to rest.’ Then he hung up.”

“
Which
club, Clare?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. I tried calling her cell again, but the boy must have turned off the phone because I just got her voice mail for an hour after that. And before you ask, I left messages on her cell and her apartment phone, demanding that she call me no matter the hour.”

Matt stood up, rubbed his neck, began to pace the polished hardwood floor in his bare feet.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I’m thinking she’s doing drugs. What else?”

“I thought about that, too, but it just isn’t Joy. For one thing, where would she get the money?”

“Clare, you’re so naïve. The clubscene revolves around young professionals with money to burn. They drink and do drugs because things are good, and they drink and do drugs because things are tough. Joy’s an attractive, outgoing young woman and she has a lot of friends. It would be easy for her to fall in with a crowd that would share their recreational drugs with her. She wouldn’t need money for that.”

“I know my daughter. She’s too smart for that. We had long talks about this stuff when she was in high school. She has her head on straight. Besides, she saw what…”

Matt stopped his pacing. “What? Saw what?”

“Nothing.”

He folded his arms and his biceps swelled, obscuring the
NO
part of the
NO FEAR
scrawled across his faded tee. “Saw
what
?”

“You. What the cocaine did to you. To us.”

Matt’s expression faltered. “I thought she was too young to…”

“Children, even young ones, pick up more than you know.” I was ready to point out that if he’d been around more, maybe he would have noticed how very perceptive his young daughter had been, but I’d made that point so much and so often over the years, Matt had to be sick of hearing it—and I was certainly weary of repeating it.

He uncrossed his arms, sat back down on the bed, met my eyes. “After rehab, I never did drugs again, Clare. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know it was hard for you. I know you’re straight now. I just pray you stay that way.”

“Junkies don’t need a reason to start. But they definitely need one to stop…I had more than one reason. I had two.” Matt’s hand came to rest on my leg. I felt the warmth seeping beneath the nightgown’s thin layer, warming my thigh.

I swallowed uneasily, trying not to react to his touch. “Matt…I…”

The phone startled us both as it rang at my bedside. I reached for it. Matt was faster.

“Hello.”

“Daddy?”

I leaned a little closer to hear Joy’s end of the conversation. Matt didn’t appear to mind. In fact, he angled his own body, making the proximity even more intimate.

“Joy, where the hell are you?” he asked, taking the words right out of my mouth. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I’m home. You and Mom should get a life. I’m over eighteen and I was out with friends, that’s all. Relax, okay?”

Matt sighed. “Muffin, we’re just worried. Your mother told me a drunk boy answered your cell phone and—”

Joy began to laugh. “That was Tommy. He’s so crazy. He also should have told me you called. I didn’t get Mom’s message till I got home.”

“Ask her about the restroom!” I hissed.

“Is that Mom?” snapped Joy. “Is she listening in?”

“Your mother is understandably worried, Joy. That boy gave her a heart attack. She thinks you’re doing drugs.”

“I’m not.”

“And why should I believe you?” Matt demanded.

“Because I’m your daughter and I totally don’t lie.” She sighed. “Look, I have a few friends who like to do it for fun in clubs sometimes. I hang with them, but I never do the drugs, okay? So, listen, it’s late and I’m really, really tired. I’m going to bed. Okay?”

“We’ll talk about this again,” Matt promised her.

“Fine, but not at one in the
A.M
. Please, Daddy? Good night.”

“Good night, muffin.”

Matt hung up. Then he and I stared at each other in silence for at least thirty seconds. This whole over-eighteen thing was definitely uncharted waters.

“What do you think?” he finally asked. His expression, usually confident and cocky, was so lost and helpless that I nearly burst out laughing.

“I think I’m relieved Joy called us back tonight,” I told him. “And because she called, I do believe she’s telling us the truth.”

“But she’s hanging with friends who do drugs,” Matt pointed out, “which is why I’m going to have a long, straight talk with her.”

“That’s a very good idea. She’ll listen to you.”

Matt grunted and rubbed his eyes as if he were trying to ward off a monumental headache.

“She worships you, Matt, you know that, don’t you?”

Matt stopped rubbing his eyes and looked up. “I’ve never heard you say that before.”

“Sure you have.”

“No, Clare. What I usually hear is how I wasn’t around enough for her, which was completely true. And I honestly can’t see why Joy would want to listen to her old man when he’s just an ex-drug addict…a fuck-up.”

“Matt, stop. Of course she worships you. You’re her father—her exciting, larger-than-life, super-cool, globetrotting,
no-fear
father. I reached out and underlined those very words on his shirt. He caught my hand.

“Matt…”

“Are you just saying that because I’m so pathetic?” He brought my hand to his cheek, kissed my palm. “I mean, did you hear me on the phone?” He lowered his voice to a ridiculous octave. “‘Your mother is
understandably
upset.’”