Free A Case of Christmas by Josh Lanyon Page A

you like.”
    “I’ll come over about three. I don’t really have anything to bring, but—”
    “Don’t worry about that.” Linus stared at him for a moment. “See you tomorrow.”
    He turned away, crossed the street, and disappeared inside his cottage.
    Shane went into his own cottage and headed straight for the kitchen where he made
    himself a cheese sandwich, which he ate in three bites. He followed that with a second
    sandwich, and was tempted to go for three except he had a feeling he would regret it.
    Instead, he lit the fire, and poured a glass of Hupert’s Dark Origins. Alcohol wouldn’t
    normally affect antibiotics, and if the drink did make him sleepy or tired, fine. He had no
    plans.
    Which was exactly the way he had wanted it. So it would be silly to start second-
    guessing his decision to turn Linus down.
    The whiskey had a sweetly smoky taste to it. A hint of sherry? A hint of earth. It
    tasted like something pirates—classy, pirates—would drink.
    He was just settling into one of the leather chairs in front of the fireplace when the
    door jumped under an energetic knock.
    “Up on the rooftop, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he muttered. Perhaps the whiskey had not been
    the best idea.
    He set the glass down, rose, and looked out the peephole. Linus stood on the
    doorstep, scowling into the night. Shane opened the door.
    Linus turned and said roughly, “I want to explain something to you.”
    “Okay,” Shane said warily. He stepped back, and Linus entered the cottage. He
    regarded Shane with a dark, troubled gaze.
    “Go ahead,” Shane said. His heart was racing with a mix of anticipation and dread.
    He really hoped he was not going to hear more bad news.
    Linus seemed to struggle, then said in that same choppy way, “I honestly didn’t think
    what we had together meant anything more than sex to you. You gave no indication that
    it did.”
    “I don’t know that it did,” Shane said. But that was pride talking, and by now they
    both knew it.
    “It wasn’t my intent to—to hurt you.”
    “I believe that.”
    Shane’s admission didn’t seem to ease Linus’s tension. “But even if you had, I didn’t
    have a choice. I was hired to investigate you. How much validity would my report have if
    we were involved?”
    “We were involved.”
    “I mean, if we stayed involved. If we began an actual relationship.” Linus shook his
    head. “Yeah, he’s one hundred percent in the clear, and he also happens to be my
    boyfriend.”
    Shane was silent. He hadn’t previously considered this angle.
    “What was plain to me from the start was you had no intention of leaving the
    Bureau. You wanted your job back. And once I figured out you were one of the good
    guys, I wanted you to have your job back. I wanted to be able to do that for you. To give
    you that. But for that to happen, for me to clear you of any suspicion of wrongdoing…I
    had to be an objective investigator with no personal stake in the outcome.”
    “You’re saying you walked away without a word for my sake?”
    “Shane, I never had a clue you were interested in a relationship. But even if I had
    thought that…my investigation had to be by the book. Yes, for your sake.”
    “Even if that’s true,” Shane began.
    “If?”
    “Let’s say it is true,” Shane said. “I had a right to know what was going on. And if
    what you’re saying is maybe you had feelings for me too, then I doubly had a right to
    know. It wasn’t your place to make that choice for both of us. If that’s what you’re saying
    you did.”
    Linus’s smile was twisted. “You think you would have chosen me over the FBI?”
    Shane’s face warmed. “How would I know? There was never any indication on your
    part that what we had together was anything more than sex for you either. But if there
    was something more there, then…we should have discussed it. Together.”
    Linus shook his head. “There was no way to do that without compromising my
    investigation and my