Macarons at Midnight by M.J. O'Shea & Anna Martin Read Free Book Online Page A

Millie in the shop. Or me on my own.”
    Tristan’s heart sank in his chest. “Is Millie your wife?”
    Henry chuckled. “Lord, no. She’d laugh for hours if she heard that. Millie’s my employee, but she’s more like a grumpy, overprotective older sister. She’s bossy, but I love her.”
    Tristan didn’t want to ask, but he had to know. He tried to tell himself it was just curiosity. But it wasn’t. Henry was gorgeous. Tristan was attracted. Simple as that. “Do you… have a wife?”
    Henry smiled as if he could read Tristan’s mind. Probably not the hardest thing to do when huge, incandescent beams of giddy puppy lust were practically shining out of Tristan’s arse. “Nope.”
    “Do you have a girlfriend?” He figured he might as well go for the gold medal of humiliation while he was at it.
    Henry’s smile quirked up even higher on the side. “None of those either.”
    “So… you’re single?”
    “Yup.”
    Something about the way Henry popped the “p” a little smugly made Tristan’s heart clunk in his chest. “Me too. Obviously. Or else I probably wouldn’t be wandering around at night by myself and talking to strange blokes.” He kicked the heels of his feet against the cabinets underneath him. It wouldn’t have been flirting without the little grin he knew he’d just turned on Henry. Or the way he bit at his lip. Tristan found himself doing it, but couldn’t stop.
    Henry looked up with another of his small smiles. “You calling me strange?”
    “Maybe. A little.” Yeah. Flirting. Definitely flirting. Tristan knew this version of himself. The one he turned on when he went out on the pull—charming country boy Tristan: dial down the education, turn up the shy, blushy smiles. Stop it before they come to arrest you for being a complete idiot in front of the prettiest man you’ve ever met. He glanced up at Henry from underneath his eyelashes again. He couldn’t help it.
    Henry let out a big laugh at that. “Okay, then. If I’m strange, and you’re happy here, do you want to help me so you don’t sit there and fall asleep?”
    “I’m really not good with baking. Or cooking. Or anything that doesn’t include ordering takeout.”
    “What do you do?”
    “Advertising. Mostly layouts and page design. And I write ad copy.” he shrugged. “It’s a job.”
    “Is that what you always wanted to do?” Henry looked like he already knew the answer to that.
    “It’s what I went to school for. This is my first job out of university.”
    “Wow. So you’re a baby,” Henry said. Tristan hoped it wasn’t a bad thing. He was a mature twenty-three. He thought. Not many other guys from his year at home had made it much further than Ripon. Bradford or Sheffield if they were moving to the “big city.” Tristan had made it all the way to America. He felt grown up.
    “You don’t look very old, yourself,” he said. He hoped it didn’t sound defensive.
    “Twenty-seven. I have a young face.”
    “I’m twenty-three. Nearly twenty-four. Not that much younger.” Not that it mattered. Henry could be forty-seven and Tristan seventeen, and he would still be middrool at any given moment over Henry’s big-lashed brown eyes, waving hair, and glamorous smile.
     
     
    T RISTAN WATCHED Henry, twenty-seven, with beautiful eyes and dark, dark hair, lean over to pipe another row of rounds onto a sheet. More hot pink. A whole sea of hot pink.
    He smiled, satisfied, when he stood upright again. “That’s the last of them. Two hundred, with ten extra of each color as a safety net. The others should be ready to get out of the oven now.” He waltzed over to the oven and started pulling out sheets of baked shells, bright lime green, electric turquoise, black, and of course, pink. “These things are really temperamental. Easy to mess up if you haven’t tried them before. Macarons are like art. Beautiful, colorful, sweet, and about a half step away from disaster at any turn.”
    “I liked the black