Shortbread and Shadows - Amy Lane Page 0,18

kept spilling out.

“They’re pretty girls,” Bartholomew said softly as Lachlan jiggled the handle. “It’s a shame that sight’s wasted.”

“Oh, I think the guard’s enjoying himself. Shit! Is this thing locked?”

“Here,” Bartholomew said. “Let me.”

This particular spell was one they’d worked up for Josh, who had a bad habit of misplacing his keys and had desperately not wanted to get fired from his new job.

“Lock of steel adamant, yield to us, dammit! We’ll gift you with oil if our work you don’t foil, we swear our intentions are perfect!”

Underneath his hand the handle turned, and Bartholomew and Lachlan slipped through.

“Wait,” Bartholomew muttered, pausing after the door clicked behind them. “Do you have some lip balm or something?”

“Oddly enough, yes.” Lachlan handed him a small tube of lip treatment.

“Smells like strawberry,” Bartholomew noted, and he smacked his mouth, tasting Lachlan’s kisses again. “Oh!”

“What are you doing?” Lachlan wanted to know.

“If I don’t put a little oil on the lock,” Bartholomew told him, rubbing his finger on the lip balm and then rubbing the lock itself, “the spell rebels and the door freezes. It’s a karma thing. Anyway, they might need it in case of emergencies, so I don’t want to seal it shut.”

“That’s a good idea,” Lachlan told him, “but come on. We need to hurry.”

“I need to text Jordan,” Bartholomew said, trying hard to keep up with Lachlan’s purposeful stride to the freight elevator across the hallway. “He needs to know to give those girls free stock.”

Lachlan yanked him into the elevator and hit Door Close. “When we get to my truck,” he said, sounding a little grumpy. “It’s been five minutes since I kissed you, and I need one more.”

His mouth closed down on Bartholomew’s, and Bartholomew melted into him. Oh wow. An encore! This next kiss was none the worse for being the second, and this time Bartholomew had more room to slide his palms up Lachlan’s hard-planed stomach, making happy little noises as he found ab muscles.

“Oh dear lord, you have abs,” Bartholomew mumbled against his mouth. “Do you work out?”

“Some,” Lachlan confessed. “Mostly I’m just active all day, and I tend to eat well.”

“I run,” Bartholomew told him, and Lachlan’s palms explored his tummy lazily.

“All soft,” Lachlan said in delight. “Stringy muscle underneath.” He took Bartholomew’s mouth again, and then the door opened into the lower level garage.

Lachlan broke away from the kiss on a sigh and tugged on Bartholomew’s hand. “Eventually, you know, we’re going to have to talk about this.”

“I don’t even know what this is,” Bartholomew said honestly.

“You don’t? Over there—see the battered blue thing?” He pointed to a battered Ford F-150, with specially outfitted shelves and boxes. “I’m going to have to bring it tomorrow morning so I can clear out my stock tomorrow evening.”

“We’ll help,” Bartholomew said. He grimaced. “It’s the least we can do. God, I hope the others are okay. Do you think that crowd dispersed after Jordan cast the counterspell?”

“I’m sure,” Lachlan said. “What was he countering? I mean, out of curiosity. I don’t see how the spell you all cast last night about your wishes could have made people mob your booth like that.”

Oh God. Bartholomew knew he was going to have to tell Lachlan this eventually, but now?

“It was… it was something I was thinking while we were all baking. It’s like we all had this sort of heightened magic source swirling around me, and I just sort of… accidentally blessed the food.”

“Blessed?” Lachlan asked, opening the passenger door for him.

Bartholomew paused and looked at Lachlan’s hand on the handle. Like a date. “How very chivalrous,” he muttered, the memory of their kisses flooding his senses again.

Lachlan paused too, his body trapping Bartholomew’s into the cab of the truck. “You should go on a real date with me, Tolly. I’m good like that.”

Bartholomew narrowed his eyes. “You must be,” he said. “You’ve had a lot of people kiss you goodbye on the vendor floor.”

Lachlan sobered, and his eyes grew really intense. “Not for a while now,” he said. “Not for a year and a half, almost.”

Bartholomew swallowed. “Why so long?”

“You don’t remember?”

Oh. It had been a moment, really. A look. A touch. Lachlan was holding court at his booth, telling a story about a rabbit in his backyard.

“So this little goober pops up to my workshop window, right? And I turn off the belt sander and turn around, and he’s looking at me through the window. Man, he might have left rabbit droppings, but I almost left