Page 6 of Brooke
Brooke was about to pounce when Thea said, “Maybe Pierre needs a treat.” She carefully slid her bread loaves farther down the counter and came over, holding out an almond.
“Non!”Pierre called, grayish wings fluttering under her hands.“Arrête! Gendarmes! Aide-moi!”
“Great, now he’s calling for the police,” Brooke said with an aggrieved sigh. “Finish up, Dean.”
“I’m trying, Brooke!”
“I want Chef Madison,” Pierre wailed in French.
“She won’t save you from a bath.” Brooke wished she’d had the foresight to wake Madison up for this debacle. But their other roommate usually slept late since she’d continued to work restaurant hours as they prepared for the grand reopening of Nanine’s. They’d planned it for days before the American Thanksgiving holiday, popular with tourists and expatriates.
“What in the world is going on?” Kyle asked, arriving inT-shirt and boxers, his ash brown hair nearly perfect despite just waking up. God, sometimes Golden Boy made her sick. “I could hear the racket all the way upstairs.”
“Pierre doesn’t want a bath.” Dean lathered up more of his shower gel and used his free hand to wash Pierre’s breast.
“You bathed Pierre without me?”came a sharp question fired like a bullet.
Brooke didn’t have to look toward the kitchen doorway to know who’d arrived. “Thank goodness you’re here, Madison. Wash the parrot. Dean thought he could handle it himself.”
Madison’s black curly hair stood out in spikes as she stalked toward them in her usual all-black ensemble of T-shirt and jeans.
Dean handed her the kitchen wand and took a giant step back. “I thought he’d be happy to take a bath.”
“Not in the kitchen sink like he’s nothing but a dirty dinner plate,” Madison huffed, gathering Pierre up to her chest. “He likes to take a bubble bath in a basin of lukewarm water filled with jasmine soap.”
Brooke bit her lip as she and her other roommates exchanged looks. This was their badass friend?
“A bubble bath?” Kyle asked in an exaggerated Texas drawl.“With jasmine?”
“He’s clearly a bird who knows his own mind,” Thea jumped in like the peacemaker she was, popping the ignored almond in her mouth.
“How did I not know that?” Dean asked, wiping his hands on a dish towel before handing it to Brooke. “That’s totally cool.”
She ignored the dish towel. Pierre had soaked her yoga clothes and her bangs. A shower was called for. Now.
Madison grabbed the dish towel from Dean’s hand and started patting Pierre dry. “Come, my friend.”
“Merci,Chef Madison,” he sang, nesting against her black T-shirt as she carried him to the counter and took out a largesilver bucket and began to fill it before reaching into the utility cabinet for the jasmine soap.
“Don’t worry, Pierre,” their usually cynical friend practically crooned. “I’ve got you. Unlike these morons.”
Brooke straightened at that. “Hey! I only stepped in since Dean was flubbing it up. Do we want a wet parrot flying through the house? No. We need to keep the house in tip-top shape for Axel’s surprise visit, remember?”
Everyone groaned like a choreographed symphony.
“Look, I don’t like it either, but it’s his process. Seeing people at home when they don’t expect him.”
“But isn’t the point for us not to be neat and tidy, Brooke?” Dean asked with an aggrieved sigh, shaking his wet hair like a dog. “I mean, I don’t see why it’s such a big deal if it looks like we live here. We do. Okay, not Thea. I do mostly. When I’m not staying with Jacqueline.”
“Dean, you could use the Tidy Police twenty-four seven if you ask me.” Kyle pointed to the water puddles on the floor. “You were planning on cleaning up, right?”
Dean shot him the finger. “I thought Brooke would help.”
Another dragon breath escaped her lungs. “You started it, Dean. I was only a Good Samaritan. God, I need a café.”
Dean and Kyle echoed her sentiment.
“Coming right up.” Thea, who was the best coffee maker in the bunch, spun into action. Not that she really lived with them anymore. Usually, she spent the night with her fiancé Jean Luc before coming over. She was finalizing the bread recipes she would use for her bakery, which would also be served at Nanine’s.
