Page 10 of The Paris Roommates: Dean
“Why would he when we’re all partners?” Kyle drawled.
Their roommate and friend from Austin didn’t drawl often, but when he did, it was its own statement. Dean knew it and nodded briskly. “Don’t piss me off, Kyle, when it’s been such a momentous day. The only women I’m alone with at the moment are my business partners.”
“Keep it that way,” Madison added anyway, true to form.
He pressed a hand protectively over his crotch. “Did I mention you look really nice in a color other than black?”
Madison cracked her knuckles. “And one more thing. You’re cleaning up after that parrot whenever he craps in our kitchen. Right, Nanine?”
She and Nanine shared a smile.
He shot them another winning grin. “That’s fair.”
The chandelier gave a delighted jangle as the back door to the restaurant shut. “Thea is here,” Nanine announced with a warm smile. “With Jean Luc.”
“How does she do that?” Sawyer asked in astonishment.
“She speaks chandelier,” Dean told him. “Nanineunderstands magic.”
“Dean, you’re trying to sell your decision again,” Madison growled. “You already got your way.”
The parrot took flight and landed on Madison’s shoulder. “You are the chef,” he croaked in French.“Enchanté.”
“Oh, my gosh!” Thea exclaimed as she emerged into view, holding her fiancé’s hand, resplendent in her usual sunshine disposition.
“Bro—” Dean called out to Jean Luc, giving a slight chin nod, in a bad imitation of a demented sports guy.
“We have a parrot?” Thea shouted with a grin, jumping in the red handmade Italian ballet slippers Jean Luc had had commissioned in Florence for their engagement.
“Who’s going to fill the happy couple in on our incredible kismet today?” Madison asked with another knuckle crack.
Everyone pointed at Dean.
CHAPTERTHREE
Kyle jumped on the couch as strong feminine hands landed on his shoulders.
“Dammit, Madison!” He sucked in a breath as he turned to look at her, only to lurch back as her oval face zoomed in closer, mere inches from his own. Friends should never be that close—especially when it was a friend he’d been tempted to kiss lately. Sawyer’s earlier joke about them kissing wasn’t a joke to him anymore, dammit. “Hey! Personal space.”
She dropped her hands from him, leaving a trail of fire on his shoulders, and stepped back from the couch, arms crossing over her black T-shirt, which matched her black jeans and black high-tops. The fact that she’d changed out of her formal chef’s outfit wasn’t a surprise. Neither was her return to her preferred color. She didn’t wear black because she was a vampire or had a thing for looking like a New Yorker, the way Dean used to tease. He’d wished he hadn’t heard the real reason on one of their Drink and Divulge nights, the roommates’ version of Truth or Dare: that it was to hide the size of her breasts, which she thought too noticeable in anything but black.
And boy, that was not something he could rebut. But if you asked him, she didn’t need to wear black. At. All. And her breasts were flat-out perfect. God, he had to stop thinking like this, but when she’d kissed him as a last resort to make his ex-fiancée back off—something everyone in the house loved to bring up—they’d opened some terrifying Pandora’s box for him. He was starting to see her as more than a friend, which was not only against Nanine’s house rules, but could screw with both their friendship and business. He had to find a way back to their old pattern of friendship or he was going to go crazy. Hiding the way he’d been feeling was getting harder, and seeing her in white today hadn’t helped. His first thought had been that she looked like a goddess because the color illuminated her skin and did nothing to hide her curves.
Her golden eyes, shot with browns and greens—another thing he’d noticed, dammit—were studying him with an intense, assessing look. “Sorry, I hate it when people creep up on me, but I had to see what you were doing up here on the Boys’ Floor after disappearing so fast. I thought you might be doing what I was about to do: looking up the girl in Dean’s newspaper clipping. And you are, you crazy kid!”
For a moment he wondered if the “kid” reference was because she was also trying to put him back into the friend zone, but so far, her poker face hadn’t slipped. If she had the hots for him at all, she hadn’t shown it.
Her knowing smile finally got to him. “Great minds think alike,” he said, falling back into the comfortable comradery they’d always shared. He patted the seat beside him, and she flopped down next to him on the blue velvet couch.
She stretched out her long, rangy form next to him, crossing her ankles. “What do you have so far?”
Plenty. He felt a little guilty about his sneaking, but with Madison here, the guilt was draining away like rainwater on a dry Texan cornfield. “Did anyone downstairs believe my excuse about needing to make a call?”
“My guess is they thought we were escaping the parrot madness.”
Right. The parrot. He’d never imagined being greeted by a bird saying “enchanté,”which is precisely what Pierre had done after Dean had officially introduced him to all of the roommates. “I can only do so much weird in a week, and I’ve already reached my quota. How did you escape?”
“I said I wanted to change.” She tugged on her black shirt. “Not that I didn’t want to hear about Thea and Jean Luc’s picnic at Luxembourg Gardens.”
