Page 79 of The Paris Roommates: Dean
He needed to get back to his earlier awe and shake off the emotion he was picking up on between Kyle and Madison. He might even run around his studio with helicopter arms like he’d done when he was a kid—again when his parents weren’t looking—to help him fall back into this moment. Because there was nothing he could do to help them. Every person walked their own path. He was here if they needed him. They knew that. Earlier Kyle had made it clear he didn’t want to talk about it, and from the way Madison had bounced back from her own emotions, he didn’t expect she wanted to open a bottle of Chablis and pour out her heart.
Perhaps that was for the best.
Because if they’d wanted to do so, he would have had to pour his heart out as well. To tell them how badly he wished he could send his parents a fuck-you photo of his new atelier and tell them he had people who believed in him. Of course, they wouldn’t like his new studio, he realized, and somewhere inside his belly, something hot and urgent popped.
He was going to prove them wrong.
Hewasa great artist, dammit. Then he added another name to the list of people he’d prove wrong:himself.
Because nothing was going to happen until he did.
CHAPTERTWENTY
Dean studied the ceiling of his new bedroom and thought his life couldn’t get much better.
He’d just been wondering how he was going to manage to spend the night with Jacqueline in something other than a hotel in the future, and voila, here they were. Surely having Jacqueline over would be a possibility now that they’d be living out from under Nanine’s house and rules. The others would want to have sex sometime too, whether it was casual or with someone they were dating. He imagined they would talk about that kind of thing, but right now, he was just going to pinch himself and enjoy the moment.
Brooke stuck her head in. “Whatare you doing on the floor? Isn’t that hard?”
He could joke about something else being hard last night—all night, thank you, ma’am—but that was crude and he was a gentleman. Mostly.
Awakening with Jacqueline this morning in one of the Ritz’s magnificent king beds after a playful and heated night of sex—lovemaking even, at times—had made him dream of a bigger bed again. Only for his fantasy to immediately come true when Kyle had shown them the rooms they could choose from. He’d thought they were getting a high-end apartment. Not an entire house!
“I’m staring at my new view when I wake up in the morning.” He sat up, because, yes, the floor was gorgeous, but it was indeed hard. “To think Kyle landed this place. Nothing—and I do mean nothing—else could have torn me away from spending the morning with Jacqueline.”
She came in and sat down cross-legged next to him. “I can’t begin to imagine what he paid. We’ll need to talk about that. Unless he wants to own it outright.”
“Happy to. You’re going to help with the decorating, right? Because I want a bed in here fast, bigger than a California king if they make them. I whimpered over the built-in closet.”
“Clearly a renovation addition,” she said, making a happy sound. “Like the bathrooms. The floors are heated.”
“No way!” He pushed himself off the floor. “I didn’t see that.”
“It’s heaven in here,” she said, arranging herself on her side as he crossed to the bathroom. “I’m going to have to work nonstop to decorate. Do you have a color scheme in mind?”
He recoiled. Paint samples drove him crazy. How was he supposed to discern the real difference between spring or sunflower yellow, like an ex-girlfriend had once asked of him while redecorating? “Nothing ugly or too dark, and I hate pumpkin as a color in general. Hey! I found the switch. Low, medium, and high. I wonder how hot high is. Likewalk across hot coalshot?”
“Doubtful, seeing as most homeowners don’t renovate to receive third-degree burns. Also, I never would have thought of you having such a fraught relationship with pumpkin. Are you good with giving me carte blanche?”
Cranking up the dial to high, he high-fived the tiled wall in pure pleasure. The shower was enormous and encased in glass, and he was so going to shampoo every gorgeous part of Jacqueline’s body under its powerful spray. He started to think about last night…and fantasize about next time. Because surely he’d be with her again tonight, right? Or would two successive nights be too much for her?
He’d extended their suite for another three days, hopeful, after he’d left her with a soft kiss this morning, telling her he had to run to a surprise business meeting. She’d texted him already, asking how he was, and he’d responded with a solid ten thumbs-up, which she’d responded to with ten smiling faces. So un-French of her.
“Did you hear me or are you thinking about having sex with Jacqueline in your shower?”
“What?”He almost tripped on his way back to his bedroom, only to see Brooke lying there all smug with her eyebrows raised. “Fine. Yes, I was. Thanks for asking.”
“No problem. Heck, I even thought about having sex in my shower, and I don’t have anyone in mind other than Ivar.”
He’d never had a big-brother-type reaction with Brooke until now. “Who in the hell is Ivar?” he asked in shock, sitting next to her with his ankles crossed. “You holding out on me?”
She lay back and started laughing. “Ivar is the Viking fantasy I have to…you know…make my mornings complete.”
“Oh, yuck! I’m all for your taking care of yourself, but I didn’t need to know about Ivar.” There wasn’t enough bleach in the world to wash that image from his mind. “Wait! Why a Viking? You don’t look like a Viking type. So much facial hair, so little cleanliness.”
Another snarky laugh. “I don’t know. I read this historical romance novel when I was in high school, and the hero was this hot manly Viking on the cover. He had this great heart and an even greater—”
“I get the picture,” he interrupted. “So are you going to ask me?”
