Secrets and High Spirits: Secrets, Book 4 by Lou Harper Read Free Book Online Page B

into his memory. Could he have been the only one feeling it? He desperately wanted to get to know Teag better, but Teag kept himself at a distance.
    Teag’s sister, Helen, was a friendly sort—a fetching woman with an easy smile and the same dark eyes as her brother. She was closer to Bruce in age, and for a moment, he’d considered approaching her to learn more about her brother, but in the end, he’d decided against it.
    Dylan seemed a safer bet. All it took was a lunch in Purlieux, during which Dylan agreed to see Bruce after work.
    They met at a coffee shop that miraculously wasn’t Starbucks. It was one of those places where every piece of furniture was different and well-worn. Splendidly bad paintings hung from the brick walls. Bruce arrived a good half an hour early and secured two seats in a corner.
    Dylan arrived on time and threw himself into the free chair and gave an impish grin. “Couldn’t get enough of me? I can’t blame you. Unfortunately for you, I’m off the market.”
    Bruce smiled at the young man’s vampish antics. “Can I at least buy you a coffee?” Once they sorted out drinks, he cut to the chase. “I’m hoping you could tell me a little about Teag.”
    Dylan opened his eyes wide and pressed a melodramatic hand to his chest. “You want me to betray my best friend’s deepest and darkest secrets?”
    “Nah, some general information will do. Likes, dislikes, hobbies and such.”
    Dylan dropped the act. Mostly. “Ah. Good, because I don’t know any deep, dark secrets. If Dylan has any, he kept them from me. You like him, don’t you?”
    “Uhm, sure. He’s…nice.” Nice was a woefully insufficient adjective to describe someone so frustratingly alluring yet unapproachable, but it had to do. “Since we’re going to be partners, I thought I should know a little more about him than his name and social security number, but he’s not the most communicative person.”
    “Professional curiosity, sure.” Dylan pursed his lips. “What do you want to know?”
    “Hobbies?”
    “Booze. Not drinking it, but mixing them together, like an alchemist. You shoulda seen his room, back when we lived together. He had a bookcase full of bottles, and not the ordinary stuff either.”
    “I know he’s into craft cocktails,” Bruce prompted.
    “Totally. He made me watch a long-ass documentary about Prohibition once. Teag loves documentaries. He’s on the opinion that Prohibition ruined cocktails because the alcohol was crappy and the bartenders mixed in too much stuff to hide the harsh flavor. Kinda like Starbucks does with coffee.”
    Bruce nodded. This followed what little Teag had told him. “He wants to return to the classic principles.”
    “Yes, but apparently it’s not so simple. He once gave me a lecture on gin, but I kinda zoned out. At any rate, he made four different versions of martini and asked me to sample them. I told him they all tasted like paint thinner to me, but he wanted to know which one I thought was the worst. I did, and he made a note and seemed very smug about it.”
    “Huh.” Considering Dylan’s love for the sweet and fruity mai tais, Bruce wouldn’t have used him as a test subject.
    Dylan pattered on, heedless of Bruce’s ruminative silence. “He has a bunch of old books too, not originals but cheap copies of super-old bartending books. He mentioned one old guy a few times, I forget the name, something like Cherry Garcia.”
    “Jerry Thomas?” asked Bruce, who wasn’t completely ignorant of the classics.
    “Yeah, that’s him!”
    “What did Teag say about Jerry Thomas?”
    “He’s redoing the guy’s recipes, you know, so you can make them easily, because some stuff is not the same now as it was back then when dinosaurs roamed the earth, or something. He has this big-ass binder full of notes and recipes.”
    Bruce was getting more and more impressed with Teag’s commitment. “He’s been at it a long time.”
    Dylan nodded. “Years. Long before we