Twelve Desserts of Summer

By Tinnean

Connor Murphy, the CFO of the family business, has given up his dream of becoming a chef in order to help the company. After all, family means the world to him, something his boyfriend learned at Christmas, much to his displeasure. This is why six months after that disastrous Christmas, Connor is sans boyfriend and buries himself in work to take his mind off his single status. Still, he enjoys baking desserts and bringing them to his beloved nanny. He also enjoys going to the Coffee Shoppe, exchanging glances with the man behind the counter. Until the man is suddenly gone.

While Murphy Doyle waits for a job in his preferred field, he helps out behind the counter at his family’s coffee shop. He might be a physical therapist, but he also loves to bake, especially desserts, which are a big hit at work. He’s been intrigued by the businessman who frequently comes into the shop, wearing a three-piece suit and always ordering the same thing. Murph would have loved to ask him out, but it’s against company policy, so they never speak, just gaze silently at each other, everything but their eyes hidden by the masks they wear due to the pandemic. And then he gets his dream job, and he’s afraid the opportunity is lost.

Are these two men destined to be ships passing in the night, or will family meddling somehow bring them together?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Jul 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685501624

Tinnean

I’ve been writing since the 3rd grade. I was on the staff of my high school magazine, and then... I got married. There was a long interval when raising my kids took preference, although I would scribble sci fi, contemporary, or paranormal stories with very strong heroines. (This was before I discovered m/m. Don’t laugh, I led a very sheltered childhood.)It was with the advent of the family's second computer – the first intimidated everyone – that my writing took off. I discovered 1. Fanfiction; 2. m/m (yes, I know. Finally!); 3. the wonder that is copy and paste. Does anyone remember what typing up a manuscript on a manual typewriter was like? Okay then, nuff said.While I was involved in fandom, I was nominated for both Rerun and Light My Fire Awards. But even then, my original characters would come knocking, to the point I’ve left Jim and Blair, Rodney and John, and even Lyle and Mr. Taggart (Blazing Saddles) behind. I’ve been published by Nazca Plain, JMS Books, Dreamspinner, Wilde City Press, and Less Than Three Press, and now I’m taking the leap into the self-pubbing pool. My novel, Two Lips, Indifferent Red received honorable mention in the 2013 Rainbow Awards, and Home Before Sundown was a 2017 runner-up.Now I reside in SW Florida with my husband and three computers, but I’ll always be a Noo Yawk kinda gal.

Book preview

Twelve Desserts of Summer

By Tinnean

Published by JMS Books LLC

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2022 Tinnean

ISBN 9781685501624

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Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

All rights reserved.

WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review. This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

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This is for Bob, because…Bob. It will always be for him.

Many thanks to JMS for being an amazing publisher. Happy Anniversary! This story has been written for the 12th anniversary of JMS Books, hence the twelve in the title. Morganville, while a real town, is fictional in this story, as is Heathview.

Murphy calls Siobhan (pronounced Shiv-ahn) mo mhuirnin—pronounced mu voor-neen, which means my darling or my sweetheart. Siobhan calls Connor mo chroí—my heart.

Thank you to Trisha Harrington for letting me borrow her town, as well as her help with all things Irish in this story. My son Joe drives a hybrid, and I appreciate him sharing his knowledge with me. Finally, huge, huge thanks to Gail Morse for being the world’s best beta and for twenty-two years of friendship.

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Twelve Desserts of Summer

By Tinnean

Prologue: Chocolate Pots de Crème

Connor Murphy put the finishing touches on the chocolate pots de crème, whipping together the heavy cream and powdered sugar while his boyfriend shaved the chocolate that was to garnish it. This made dessert number twelve.

Number eleven was keeping warm, and number ten was in the freezer.

It was the last day of summer, and over the past months they’d put together one chocolate dessert after another—because who didn’t love chocolate?

He glanced across the butcher block counter, unable to help gazing at the man who stood there, who gazed back at him with such love…

Who’d have thought?

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Chapter 1: Double Chocolate Meringue Cookies

Even though it wasn’t quite nine A.M., Connor Murphy had already been at work for three hours. Why not? As the CFO of Dougherty, Murphy, and Family, the construction company his great-grandfathers had started, he could pretty much set his own hours, especially since he worked from home. After all, what else was there for him to do? Spend those early morning hours in bed with his boyfriend? He couldn’t help a bitter laugh. Not fucking likely. It seemed his relationship was one more casualty of this goddamned pandemic. Just before Valentine’s Day, Jordan had declared Connor too wrapped up in the family business to be any fun and had moved out.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Connor.

Of course, it hadn’t always been like that. Jordan hadn’t known him when he’d planned to be a chef. Back then, Connor and his friends would go clubbing on the weekends, while during the week, Connor would dine out at various restaurants in the Boston area, sampling their cuisine to see how he would do it…better.

That stopped after Aunt Brig, the company’s accountant, announced she was planning to retire, and none of the other cousins wanted to take over the financial aspect of the company. Connor had transferred to Harvard and switched to business administration—he’d taken some of those courses anyway, since he’d planned at one point to have his own restaurant. That was where he’d met Jordan. It hadn’t taken long for them to begin dating, and Connor had had hopes for them.

The thing was he and his family were a package deal—love him, love them, something Jordan seemed incapable of understanding. His boyfriend learned this on