Shortbread and Shadows
By Amy Lane
Hedge Witches Lonely Hearts Club: Book One
When a coven of hedge witches casts a spell for their hearts’ desires, the world turns upside down.
Bartholomew Baker is afraid to hope for his heart’s true desire—the gregarious woodworker who sells his wares next to Bartholomew at the local craft fairs—so he writes the spell for his baking business to thrive and allow him to quit his office job. He’d rather pour his energy into emotionally gratifying pastry! But the magic won’t allow him to lie, even to himself, and the spellcasting has unexpected consequences.
For two years Lachlan has been flirting with Bartholomew, but the shy baker with the beautiful gray eyes runs away whenever their conversation turns personal. He’s about to give up hope… and then Bartholomew rushes into a convention in the midst of a spellcasting disaster of epic proportions.
Suddenly everybody wants a taste of Bartholomew’s baked goods—and Bartholomew himself. Lachlan gladly jumps on for the ride, enduring rioting crowds and supernatural birds for a chance with Bartholomew. Can Bartholomew overcome the shyness that has kept him from giving his heart to Lachlan?
Lachlan tilted his head. That’s all. Just tilted his head, and Bartholomew felt the pull to confess everything to him—from what he’d said he’d wish for to what he’d actually wished for, to the weird way his friends were acting, to the starlings and the squirrels and oh my God the homicidal cats!
Mary—always. Sue—thank you for the story talk, and the kickass editing, and putting up with my shit. Elizabeth—still holding your hand, honey, we’ll find that rainbow. Damon—faith in you is never misplaced. Mate—because.
Shortbread and Shadows
BARTHOLOMEW and his two best friends moved about his giant refurbished kitchen seamlessly, even though their minds were racing. The thing they’d just done had seemed so harmless—their coven cast spells all the time, right? Small spells, big spells, and yeah, they’d seen one backfire, but that had been a special case, right? The guy had asked them, and then he’d intervened, and it turned out he’d been asking for a super-vindictive reason, and it hadn’t been the coven’s fault the guy’s theater had been mobbed by crapping turkeys that had ruined his roof and driven him out of town.
But most of the time, the magic was good—helped them find jobs, helped them find their glasses, helped them not make stupid decisions about their love lives, and generally helped them.
Until this time, when it had knocked the entire seven-person coven on their asses, and the carefully constructed spells everybody had been planning to recite had burned to ash as they watched, and each member of the coven had blurted the one desire they’d tried to hide the hardest.
Bartholomew had no idea what his friends had blurted—although they all seemed to know and be embarrassed—but he knew what he’d shouted into their magic cone of power and it was….
Oh God, so embarrassing.
Six foot, three inches of auburn-haired, luminous hazel-eyed, broad-chested, joke-cracking, gregarious, kind, clever embarrassment, and Bartholomew was too embarrassed to even finish a conversation.
He swallowed against his want for Lachlan Stephens and tried to concentrate on his business, but Jordan, their default leader and the friend who’d brought them all together, was at his elbow.
“Don’t worry too much about it, Barty,” he said softly. “We all screwed up the spell.”
Bartholomew just shook his head, unable to even voice what he was thinking to Jordan, not now, not in the heat of the moment.
“Barty,” Alex murmured, walking into the kitchen with flour from the storage shelves in the garage, “you’ve got to snap out of it, man. This product list is huge. We’re going to be up until God knows when!”
“On it,” Bartholomew said smartly, but Jordan stopped him.
“Barty, I know it’s not easy for you to talk to people—I mean, besides us. But… but what would it hurt? Just to say hi to him? Ask him to coffee?” Jordan grimaced. “I mean, if nothing else, the magic was trying to tell us something about lying to ourselves.”
“You know me,” Bartholomew said briskly. “The only lie I tell myself is that Lachlan Stephens could be so much as interested. But Alex is right. I know the others are still cleaning up the mess, but we need to get a move on.”
Jordan sighed. “Magic isn’t the only thing that solves things for us, Barty. Sometimes it’s just stepping up a little.”
“I’ll step up after we’re done baking,” Bartholomew said, forcing a smile. “Sometime around 3:00 a.m.”
Jordan gave a groan, and the others from the coven got there, filling Alex and Bartholomew’s house with willing helpers—none of whom wanted to talk about the spell gone wrong.
Which was fine with Bartholomew. He could spend his time mooning over Lachlan Stephens, knowing he was out of reach.
The truth was, Lachlan Stephens was a giant broad-shouldered unrequited ache in Bartholomew’s heart, and in spite of the spectacular moment of failed spellcasting, Bartholomew didn’t have the slightest idea of what to do about it.
He would just have to keep this burning need to talk to Lachlan, see his smile, hear his deep voice, stroke those beautiful wooden creations of his, sanded to a sheen…
Brush Lachlan’s hand with his own.
Get close enough to smell the combination of cedar and sweat and kindness.
Oh God. All of that. He was going to have to keep all of that in his heart, and not bother the rest of the world with it at all.
As Bartholomew broke out his recipes and his supplies and directed everybody to a different section of the kitchen and gave them their own duties, he managed to keep them all in his heart.
But as he was moving from station to station, adding a hint of vanilla here, a dash of cinnamon there, some chocolate, some white chocolate, some brown sugar everywhere, that yearning, that desire for Lachlan to love him wept from his fingers in every recipe.
It must have.
That was the only way to explain what happened next.
Heart of Living Wood
“MORTY?” Lachlan stage-whispered. “Are you sure you put him in the right place?”
Morty Chambers, Lachlan’s second cousin, looked up from his computer at the registration desk of the Sacramento Convention Center and rolled his eyes. “You say that like we haven’t done this dance for over a year and a half,” Morty said dryly. “Yes—see? Here’s the floor plan.”
“But he’s not here yet!” Lachlan was starting to get worried. Everybody else on the vendors’ floor was already set up.
“Look, Lock—same as I always do, at your request. His booth is right next to you, where he will continue to ignore you because he isn’t that excited about you, no matter what you think.”
Lachlan let out a grunt. “No, no, that’s not it.”
“Face it, Lachlan. He’s just not that into you or he would have said more than boo to a mouse over the last two years!”