Page 3 of The Paris Roommates: Dean
“Vraiment?” Sawyer asked in French. He wanted to know whether the guy was serious, which was a fair question. The whole thing was unlikely as hell, but it rang of truth.
“Yes, really,” the slim, mustached man answered in French with a cordial nod to acknowledge the switch in language. Dean was grateful for it. His French was coming back, but regaining fluency was an ongoing process for him. Not so for Sawyer, who read medieval French! “The chef he’d worked with passed away some years ago, but before that, the bird worked by his side in his restaurant for nearly twenty years. Since he was a baby. The chef’s wife passed away last month, and sadly, the inheriting family member isn’t based in Paris and works too many hours to give him a good home. They had to let him go. Parrots crave constant companionship. But wait, I have a newspaper clipping about the parrot with his chef.”
The man sailed across the narrow store, plucking it up from the well-worn bureau at the front, before returning and thrusting it out to Dean.
“Mes amis,” the parrot cried out in a grief-stricken voice.
Dean’s throat clogged with emotion as he took the clipping. Man, the little guy sounded like he’d really loved these people.
Sawyer leaned in, exclaiming, “I’ll be damned.”
Dean couldn’t utter a single word. His mouth had gone dry.
The most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on was holding the parrot next to a tall, smiling slender chef wearing one of those silly hats chefs wear. Dean fingered the article,wishing it weren’t in black and white. It didn’t bring her to life all the way, and he desperately wanted to see the fullness of her. He noticed her name under the photo: Jacqueline, along with the mention she was a sommelier student and helped in her father’s restaurant.
Tingles slid up his arms until he was vibrating with them. Clutching the article between his fingers, he spied the date of the photograph. Fourteen years ago. He wondered what she looked like now. Was the long hair that curled at the ends dark blond or red? Dammit, he couldn’t be sure. But her almost angelic smile and classically shaped almond eyes were what Sawyer might call Romanesque or something. Yet behind her smile was a mischievousness that deeply intrigued him. Dean realized he’d been holding his breath only when he felt the sudden need for a huge batch of oxygen.
“You okay, man?” Sawyer asked, regarding him with concern.
He fought off sayingI think I’m in loveout loud since the proprietor was standing right there, settling instead for a nod.
He was more than okay, though. He sensed he’d just found his dream girl.
He’d seen and enjoyed plenty of beautiful women, so it wasn’t just her natural beauty causing his heart to gallop. No, it was the love radiating from her as she gazed at her father, with whom she shared a brow line, and how she seemed to be enjoying the moment. The way the corners of her smile tipped up suggested passion and humor.
It might be irrational, but Dean had never prided himself on being a rational man. He was man who had a good gut and trusted it, and now he wanted that smile—that love—directed athim.
Whoa! Was this what a direct hit from Cupid’s arrow felt like? “That’s in-incredible,” Dean finally stuttered when the man gestured at him for a response.
“Let me tell you more about Pierre here,” the proprietor said with an excited wave of his hands. “The parrot is a male—an African gray from Congo—one of the smartest of all the breeds. They have the distinction of being able to complete full sentences. Experts consider them to be one of the most intelligent nonhuman species in the world along with apes. Some equate their intelligence to that of a young child. I was just reading that these parrots understand the concept of zero, can identify colors and shapes, and solve problems.”
“Zero?” Sawyer’s mouth parted. “But that’s incredible!”
“Oui,” Pierre squawked.“Incroyable!”
“See!” The owner bounced in his Italian shoes. “He can follow a conversation.”
Normally Dean would have been totally captivated, but his mouth had gone dry over his dream girl. He couldn’t stop looking at her. “I’m nearly speechless after seeing this article.”
Sawyer muttered something, prompting Dean to clear his throat. Yeah, Doc knew Dean wasn’t speechless because of a smarty-pants parrot.
“This does all seem to be an incredible coincidence,” Sawyer admitted at last. “What with the parrot having worked with a chef and all.”
Except Dean didn’t believe in coincidence. Coincidence was a word designed for cynics to make sense of an event that was pure magic.
“It is more than that,monsieur!” The man gestured to the ceiling, as if intoning to the heavens themselves, causing the finches to fly around overhead. Sawyer held his head again. “How can you deny it? Please take him! If you have chefs, he will be fulfilled again. His very soul longs to be in the kitchen.”
Dean gazed at the parrot. Hadn’t he just been talking about his own soul in a weirdly philosophical way he would only do with Sawyer?
“Don’t you, Pierre?” The man gave his head a delicate pat. “He was named after François Pierre La Varenne, you see.”
Sawyer pursed his lips in appreciation, making Dean once again wonder at the miracle that was their friendship, as he was obviously not in his friend’s mental league. Maybe not even in this parrot’s, for that matter. “Who?” Dean asked.
“He wrote the first French cookbook,” Sawyer supplied, folding his hands as if a lecture was about to commence while eyeing the finches. “Le Cuisinier François.In 1651. While it’s debatable whether he was the first chef to write down and compile his recipes into one standard edition, many experts believe him to be the first to do so in Europe, kicking off the cookbook industry we have today.”
“Well said,” the proprietor announced, tapping his own thigh in accord. “You clearly know your history.”
“He’s a college professor, so he comes by it naturally,” Dean answered.
