Macarons at Midnight

by M. J. O'Shea

  (You can also skip this step by buying a ready-made pastry shell!)

  Stir the egg, ground almonds, sugar, and almond extract into the melted butter until it forms a thick paste. Add a dollop of jam to the bottom of each pastry shell, or if you’re using a premade shell, cover the bottom with a generous layer. Add the almond mix on top. An ideal ratio is 1 part jam to 3 parts almonds.

  Bake in a 400°F oven for 20 to 35 minutes, depending on the size of your tart (bigger tarts will take longer to bake). They’re cooked when the top springs back when pressed. Allow to cool, then decorate.

  Chapter 8

  TRISTAN’S SUNNY mood evaporated the moment he stepped into the office. It wasn’t that any one thing in particular happened—just the feel of the place, the people and the atmosphere and the stark white walls seemed to zap him of the high Henry’s kisses had given him.

  Oh, well. He had to work; there was no two ways about it.

  With a sigh, Tristan wandered through the rows of desks to his own and powered up his computer, idly wiggling the mouse back and forth until the screen glowed to life. He almost jumped out of his skin when Shatara sat down on the edge of his desk with a thunk.

  “Good, you’re here,” she said quickly.

  Tristan glanced at the clock. It was only eight thirty. “I’m not late, am I?”

  “No, no. I just wanted to talk to you. New project.”

  She always spoke in short sentences, leaving out any words that she thought of as unimportant. Tristan recognized that side of her after he’d gotten to know her a little better. She was always busy or had something much bigger than him on her mind. He didn’t really mind, he wasn’t exactly there all the time mentally. Especially since he’d met Henry.

  “Great,” Tristan said, trying to summon some enthusiasm.

  “Jordan will be over to tell you about it.”

  Even his fake enthusiasm deflated the moment she said that name. “Jordan?”

  “Yes. He’s been angling to get onto something new with me for a while, and to be honest, if you’re there to pull him up, I trust him a lot more. Don’t let me down, Tristan.”

  “I won’t,” he said faithfully. He really wanted to tell her to fuck off for sticking him with Jordan and expecting him to pull double weight, but of course he wouldn’t do it. “I just….”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Tristan sighed. It really wasn’t on to tell Shatara all about his problems with Jordan. He just didn’t want her to expect too much. “Jordan and I haven’t always had the best relationship. I’m sure you saw that at the Charity Parker meeting.”

  Shatara nodded. “I did.”

  “But you’re still going to have me work with him?” Tristan was puzzled.

  “Here’s the thing, Tristan. The people at offices like this work exactly the same way. It’s just like… like high school, really. You have to be the one holding the cards they want.”

  “I already am. This job. That didn’t exactly make me popular.”

  She thought for a moment. “Let me try again. You have to be holding the sharable cards they want. If you can be in a position to help only some of them, they’ll all be clamoring to be your best friend.”

  How the bloody hell was he supposed to do that? “Okay,” he murmured.

  “I’m sure you’ll come up with a way,” Shatara said. She smoothed down her crisp navy pencil skirt and straightened her equally crisp white blouse, and nodded to him before clicking away on her very high shoes.

  With nothing better to do, Tristan pulled up his e-mails and started to weed through them, flagging those that looked somewhat important and deleting anything he didn’t want to deal with. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before he was entertained with Jordan’s presence, and although he could think up a hundred different ways of hiding or just going somewhere else, he didn’t want to delay the inevitable.

  It was almost an hour later when the smooth “Hey, Jolly,” distracted him from his e-mail deleting and Tristan leaned back in his chair.

  “You should know I’m starting to lose any will to stay in this fucking job,” he said easily. It was a lie; the thought of leaving Henry made him feel sick, but Jordan didn’t know that. “So if you want to keep taking the piss out of me, go ahead. But I’ll throw you to the fucking lions on this project.”

  It was the first time Tristan had really stood up to Jordan—really stood up to him—and it felt amazing. Something was making him brave these days, and he had a feeling that something was a tall, dark-haired New Yorker who had a very sweet tooth.

  Jordan blinked a few times, then launched into what sounded like a ready-prepared pitch for the account they would be working on. How he knew enough to put a pitch together was anyone’s guess; Tristan had only known about it for an hour or so, but he let Jordan talk himself hoarse before adding his own two cents.

  He got a raised eyebrow.

  Tristan stood his ground.

  “Okay,” Jordan said, apparently not caring which agency they used to create their pitch boards. Since Tristan had developed a good relationship with Royal Blue, he wanted to keep using them.

  “Did you ask to be put on a project with me?” Tristan asked, apropos of nothing, narrowing his eyes at Jordan.

  “What? No.” For a moment, Tristan said nothing. “Seriously,” Jordan added.

  “Okay. Well, we’ve got a week to pull this together. I’ll book a meeting room and we can start to brainstorm,” Tristan said. “And I mean we, not me.”

  For the first time ever, Jordan agreed with him.

  AS WITH most of the bigger accounts Tristan had worked on, the project he’d started for the high-end lamp-making company Shatara had hooked them up with seemed to grow in scope and scale as the week progressed. The already long hours Tristan worked got progressively longer, and he fell into bed most nights gritty-eyed and desperate for a warm body to curl around.

  He sent messages to Henry as often as he could, which wasn’t as often as he was used to, but they’d managed one decent phone conversation where Tristan had explained the project and what it could mean for his career, so Henry understood. Or at least, Tristan hoped he did.

  Despite the odds, he and Jordan were actually working well together. When he wasn’t being a total dickhead, Jordan actually came up with some good ideas, and Tristan was convinced they were going to put in the best possible pitch. He hoped they got it. They had to get it.

  The next morning, Tristan took time to stop by the bakery, time he didn’t really have, and spent fifteen minutes kissing Henry into oblivion before they finally pulled free of each other. Tristan left with a knot in his belly, full of promises that they’d spend more time together when the project was out of the way. Being so close for a while, only to have to leave so soon, was almost worse than not seeing Henry at all.

  Almost.

  “Where were you?” Jordan demanded as Tristan walked into the meeting room that had been their base of operations all week. It was only a few minutes before eight o’clock.

  “Sorry,” Tristan said. “I had to do something this morning.”

  Jordan’s demeanor immediately changed. “Something, or someone?” he asked with a knowing grin.

  Although he didn’t answer, Tristan was sure his blush spoke for him.

  “Shit,” Jordan drawled. “I didn’t know you were dating.”

  “I’m….”

  Tristan was going to say “I’m not,” but he didn’t want to reduce Henry to a side note, even with his colleague.

  “Yeah,” he said eventually.

  “Spill,” Jordan demanded, leaning against the edge of the table, fingers gripping the edge. “What’s her name?”

  “His name,” Tristan corrected, “is Henry. He owns his own bakery.”

  “Nice,” Jordan said with a grin, not commenting at all on Tristan’s correction. “Have you been seeing him for long?”

  “A little while. He’s nice. We usually try to hang out during the week, but I’
ve been so busy with this I’ve barely seen him.”

  It was a smooth way of transitioning back into talking about work, rather than Tristan’s personal life, and he appreciated Jordan not pressing for more details. He’d talk about Henry willingly, but it was all still a bit shiny and new, for now. And even if he was being surprisingly human, Jordan was still Jordan.

  The pitch was on Thursday afternoon, and after spending most of the morning doing final prep, they made their way across town during the lunch rush to get to the client on time. It went as well as Tristan could hope for, and by three, they were back at the office.

  In the lunchroom, there was a small crowd gathered around a sports game on the TV. It had to be a rerun; his knowledge of American sports was small, but he didn’t think anyone played baseball on a midweek afternoon.

  “Hey, Jordan,” called one of the other jockish guys who had never bothered to speak to Tristan. “Guess who’s got a shot at Project Indigo?”

  “Psh. You’ll never get it.”

  Tristan set down the two mugs of coffee he’d made and slid into the seat next to Jordan. “What’s Project Indigo?” He’d heard some of the pitches being color coded in the past before the details could be released into wider knowledge. A lot of the time they worked under nondisclosure agreements.

  “It’s a department store uptown. Very old, very exclusive, very expensive.”

  “What, a clothing department store?” Tristan asked.

  “Designer clothes, gifts, homewares. Typical department-store stuff. Ridiculously expensive.”

  Around him, Tristan’s colleagues were nodding as if they knew just what “Project Indigo” actually was. Not being a native New Yorker put him at a disadvantage more than he’d expected.

  “They’re expanding into new markets across the US,” Connor added, apparently deciding if Jordan was now talking like a civil human being to Tristan, he could too. “We’ve been trying to get shortlisted to pitch for the ad campaign. Blanchard and Starr has wanted to land these guys forever.”

  “And we’re not likely to now,” Darrell, who was one of Connor’s regular partners, added. “Rich, entitled white man asshole owner. We could spend thousands wining and dining this guy, and he’d still go with Watson Buck. They’ve run his ads for years.”

  Privately, Tristan agreed with Darrell. When he’d been working in London, he’d been involved in some of those “shoot for the stars” pitches, and they were mostly a waste of time. The old, established brands liked to stick to what they knew. A company like Blanchard and Starr could spend plenty in resources on a pitch like this; not just money, but the time and effort of their staff, which could probably be put to better use elsewhere. Still, if it was what the big bosses wanted, some poor sod like Connor got to put it all together. At least the responsibility didn’t fall on Tristan’s shoulders.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on everything that had been pushed to one side when the new project came in. It wasn’t that there was a lot to do, just that what there was was deathly boring, and Tristan’s mind wasn’t on his job.

  Come to think of it, Tristan’s mind hadn’t been on his job for a while now. It wasn’t that Henry had come into his life like a whirlwind, stealing attention from a career that Tristan loved. He’d been falling out of love with advertising for some time now. It was a fast-paced, cutthroat industry, and he wasn’t really cut out for what that meant—in New York, at least. Even his coworkers were out to get him.

  What Tristan really wanted was to downscale again, go back to working for the sort of intimate, family-run company he’d started out in when he’d worked part-time at university. That had felt like a good job, at the time, to get his foot in the door. These days, he missed the camaraderie and fun that job had been, even though the little place in Manchester would never have gotten clients anywhere near as big as Tristan had now.

  Going back to that sort of environment would feel like failing, though. He’d worked hard to climb the ladder, moving from home, to London, to New York. At one time, he’d thought about going to Hong Kong next, a real challenge, but his heart wasn’t in it anymore. That realization was depressing. For his whole adult life, Tristan had worked to get exactly where he was now. A desk in a huge, international advertising agency.

  It sucked to discover it wasn’t where he wanted to be at all.

  THEY’D BEEN promised a decision from the lamp-making company by midday on Friday, so when one o’clock ticked over, then two, Tristan started to worry. He’d spent all morning worrying, knowing there was nothing more he could do but going over and over the pitch in his head, wondering if he should have done something different.

  Shatara didn’t know anything either; she was pacing the office on her clicky high shoes, giving terse instructions to anyone who dared to make eye contact with her. Tristan seemed to be on the receiving end of most of her glares—clearly it was all on him. If they’d fucked it up, it was going to be his responsibility, despite the fact that Jordan was the more experienced exec here.

  At two thirty, Shatara answered a call on her BlackBerry and disappeared into her glass office to discuss, which usually meant it was confidential. A few minutes later, she reappeared and waved at Tristan. He grabbed Jordan on his way in.

  “Congratulations, guys,” she said as soon as Jordan shut the door behind them. “It sounds like you did a fabulous job.”

  Jordan whooped; Tristan managed a small grin.

  “Great,” he said.

  “They were particularly impressed with the phased stages you presented….”

  As Shatara went into the details and the next steps for the campaign, Tristan let himself relax. With this pitch under his belt, hopefully things would be smoother sailing from now on.

  A FEW hours later, his concentration was starting to wane, so he was easily distracted when a familiar someone stopped in front of his desk, hands on hips, groin thrust forward as he demanded, “Come out with us tonight.”

  It was gone six in the evening, and Tristan was tied up in putting the plan they’d pitched into action. The company wanted to get things moving immediately, and although the timeline they’d put together looked fine on paper, now they had to implement it, Tristan was starting to feel the stress.

  He looked up into Jordan’s smug, grinning face. The other guy had already lost his tie, the top buttons of his shirt undone and the cuffs rolled up.

  “We’re gonna go celebrate at a sports bar down the street,” he added.

  “I don’t think so,” Tristan said carefully. “I’ve got a lot to do here.”

  “Aw, come on, Jolly. Gotta get involved, man!”

  It was part of the job Tristan had always hated. He worked long hours with these people, and the last thing he wanted to do was spend his social time with them as well. Not that he was surprised or anything, but it looked like his going-better relationship with Jordan had gone down the pan now the pitch was over. He’d been pulled back onto his regular work, and it was Tristan who’d been asked to take the project forward into the implementation stages. Apparently, that had grated on Jordan’s pride.

  “Give me five minutes?” Tristan said, hating himself. He’d prefer to be here, working, than out socializing with a bunch of people he didn’t like. He’d prefer to be somewhere with Henry than here. But sometimes, sacrifices had to be made.

  Like the others, Tristan took off his tie and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He tucked his tie into his messenger bag and splashed some water on his face in the bathroom before deciding he looked like one of them, and didn’t that just make him feel like shit. The small crowd of people was obviously waiting for him outside the lunchroom, and he mumbled and apologized and felt himself turn red as they turned and headed out the door.

  Tristan found himself at the back of the group, tagging along rather than leading the bunch. He doubted he would ever be a leading-the-bunch type of guy—probably not, when Jordan and his alpha-male friends were around.

  The
sports bar was predictable. Large TVs showing a number of different games all at the same time, all with the sound on, so it was almost impossible to follow a single game. Beer served in jugs, food you had to eat with your fingers. Tristan ordered a bottle of Heineken and leaned back against the bar to drink it, wondering when it would be safe to sneak off.

  Easier said than done. Every time Tristan tried to go anywhere, whether it was to the bathroom or to get another drink, someone was at his elbow, wondering what he was doing or where he was going. It was like there was some conspiracy to keep him out tonight. By the time he finally did slip away, it was nine thirty, he’d drank four beers, and wanted nothing more than to go and see Henry.

  It was probably the fourth beer that convinced Tristan that going to see Henry was, in fact, an excellent idea. Even though his rational brain told him Henry had other friends and was probably out seeing them on a Friday night, the fourth beer told him to head down to that corner of the Village anyway. It would be a romantic surprise.

  The subway ride and walk to Waverly went most of the way to sobering Tristan up, so by the time he leaned against the railings outside Henry’s apartment, he had convinced himself his boyfriend would be out.

  Henry answered on the second ring.

  “Tris?”

  “Yeah. Whatcha doing?”

  Tristan liked to think he could hear the smile down the phone as Henry stretched. It sounded quiet, wherever he was.

  “I am sprawled on my sofa, the cold remains of the best pepperoni pizza in the city on the table, my second beer almost finished, missing my boyfriend and watching Criminal Minds. How about you? How did the pitch go?”

  “We won the account,” Tristan said with a smile, rocking from one foot to the other. “The guys I work with dragged me out to celebrate.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. I’m now standing on the street, looking up at your flat, wondering if it’s too late to come and knock on the door.”