Read Online Billionaire Blend (A Coffeehouse Mystery) by Cleo Coyle - Free Book Online

picked up his fork. “Just don’t do some kind of hard sell on Franco. You shouldn’t try to defend him.”
    “Why not? He’s the best thing that’s happened to my daughter in a long time—and she said so herself. Don’t you like him?”
    “It’s because I like him that I’m saying this.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Police work is a worthy profession, but it’s also a demanding one. Franco should have a woman in his life who understands that, one who’s proud to stand by him. No man wants to hook up with a partner who looks down on his work—or his income.”
    “You
are
taking this personally,” I said and he shot me a look that confirmed it.
    Given what Mike had been through in his marriage, I shouldn’t have been surprised. His ex-wife had never liked his profession—not its demands, its sacrifices, or its salary. But then, the two never should have married . . .
    Leila had come to Manhattan as a privileged, out-of-town girl. Her family had pulled strings to help start her career in modeling. When she wasn’t at photo shoots, she was partying in bars and clubs with such frequency that she attracted a stalker, a real creep who’d beaten and nearly raped her. Mike had been the street cop who saved her and put the rapist behind bars.
    Rattled by the attack, Leila clung to him. They dated for a short time before tying the knot. At his wedding, Mike’s precinct buddies made him feel as if he’d won the lottery; he had a gorgeous model for a wife, one who was completely infatuated with him—until the shine wore off.
    In a short space of time, Leila had gone from glittering parties and Manhattan shopping sprees to changing diapers in the “wrong part” of Brooklyn. Gone were the designer clothes and exciting photo shoots, nightclub passes, and fawning men buying her overpriced drinks in trendy bars.
    As the danger of that rapist became a distant memory, so did the reasons she’d married her husband. Mike the Blue Knight became a square-jawed bore. She didn’t understand his dedication to police work and didn’t want to hear his sordid stories of dealing with lowlifes. He couldn’t afford lavish vacations or gourmet restaurants. She couldn’t even depend on him to come home on time.
    The way Leila saw it, Mike was cheating her; so she felt
zero
guilt when she began cheating on him.
    Right from the start, Mike knew—he was a detective, after all. He’d tailed her a few times, saw the pattern: she would travel to Manhattan on some pretense or other, buy something sexy, wear it to a stockbroker bar, and relive those years when she was young and happy.
    He once told me what it felt like, the first time she’d cheated—a nuclear explosion in his gut. The second, third, and fourth times had struck him with lesser impacts—a grenade, a gunshot, a firecracker.
    Then came a fifth time, and a sixth . . .
    When he stopped counting, he stopped feeling.
    Confronting Leila hadn’t helped. She lied to his face, claimed his job made him paranoid. He showed her the credit card bills, recounted her movements. She accused him of trying to control her.
    Mike didn’t want to face the mistake of his marriage so when Leila promised to stop, he looked the other way. If stepping out was something she needed to do, then he’d let her do it as a kind of therapy, a way to help her feel young, pretty, and special again. In Mike’s mind, she deserved better than he could give her, anyway, and he was “fortunate” she chose to come back to him again and again.
    Then he met me.
    A case of homicide brought us together, and we got to know each other solving it. After that, he became a regular at my coffeehouse.
    When he found out I’d navigated through a difficult marriage, he began to confide in me about Leila. For years, he’d kept his troubles private. He’d been ashamed to tell friends, family, or the guys on the job who continually told him how lucky he was.
    I enjoyed pouring his coffee and listening to him talk, not