FIFTY-FIVE

MIKE Quinn slept in.

After his endless, stress-filled Friday, it felt good to saw away half of Saturday morning. When he finally stirred (10:47 AM, according to his mobile), he showered, threw on an NYPD T-shirt and sweatpants, and headed downstairs. That was where he found her, yawning in the mansion’s large kitchen, head bent over some appliance on the counter.

“Good morning, Clare.”

“Oh, hi! Hello . . . I mean, good morning . . . Mike.”

She was blushing.

He tried not to smile too wide at her reddening cheeks. Or bend down for a kiss. Or tell her how good she looked in her favorite blue jeans and how that sweater always brought out the deep green of her eyes. All those things, which came naturally to him, were now sadly wrong. Instead, he approached the woman he loved like he was an aloof professor with hands behind his back.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Trying to figure out this odd coffeemaker of Matt’s.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It’s a model I’ve never seen before—”

Curling a lock of chestnut hair around an ear, she described the machine as appearing to be an autodrip, but with features that made no sense to her, including a lidless filter on an open Chemex-type carafe.

“I think it’s an electric pour-over machine. But the whole point of pour-over coffee is the manual control of the pour. I don’t get it.”

Mike scratched the rough stubble on his chin. (He’d been so eager to see her again that he’d skipped his morning shave.) “It’s hard to believe any coffee contraption could stump you. I’ve seen you work the most complicated espresso machines.”

“You have?”

“Something called a Slayer?”

“I don’t remember that one, but espresso machines in general I understand. And I’ve deduced how to operate this thing. What I don’t understand is the brewing philosophy behind it.”

“Every problem has a solution.”

“And the most obvious one is to wake up our host.”

“Naw, let Allegro get his beauty sleep. I have a better idea. How about you and I investigate alternatives?”

“Such as?”

Mike began opening cupboards. It took a minute, but he found what he was looking for on a high shelf. “Here we go. A French press.”

Clare tilted her head. “You know what a French press is?”

“That surprises you?”

“I would have pegged you for a convenience-store-coffee kind of guy.”

“Bodegas, actually. Remember those blue-and-white paper cups with the Greek design?”

“The Anthora?” she said, putting water on to boil.

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what the design is called. Back in the 1960s, a paper cup manufacturer wanted to create something that would appeal to the Greek-owned coffee shops—they were all over New York at the time. ‘We are happy to serve you,’ right? That was the motto on the cup—”

“And on my patrol car, come to think of it, another version of it, anyway.”

“I don’t recall the NYPD serving coffee.”

“No, but we drank enough of it to keep the shops in business. I practically lived on it when I was in uniform, the younger model of me.”

“This model’s not half bad.” She looked him up and down, and threw him a cheeky wink.

Now he felt like blushing.

Clare smiled. “Was the younger model of you that different from this one?”

“This one’s a lot wiser. Otherwise, not much different in the things that matter.”

“Oh, I already guessed that.”

“How?”

“Let’s see—” Her fingers ticked off a list. “Number one, the way you talk about your work. It’s obviously part of your identity. Two, you carry an EMT jump bag in your car, you know, just in case you casually come across a civilian having a heart attack. Three, your haircut is vintage police academy. Shall I go on?”

“Be my guest. But I’ll need coffee first. Lots of it.”

“You read my mind.” She rolled her eyes. “Or what’s left of it.”

Yep, still Clare, he thought. How could he not love this woman?

She was about to grind the beans when he stepped in and took the bag from her hand.

“Sit down, let me.”

“You know how?”

“Guess who taught me.”

“Oh . . . okay.”

“Don’t sweat it. I taught you a few things, too. But not in the kitchen . . .”

When his captivated gaze found hers, her blush came back. Mike couldn’t stop himself. The back of his hand lifted to brush her cheek. She immediately backed away.

“Sorry,” she said.

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I need to take things slow. I keep reminding myself, but . . .”

“Don’t be discouraged,” she said again.

He smiled. “We detectives wouldn’t get very far if we gave up easily.”

“I don’t give up easily, either.”

“No, you never have—and I’m counting on that.”