GirlMostLikelyTo (17 page)

“And don’t tell Olive.”

Wren popped the keys in her pocket and zipped her lips.

Once Alfred had left, she hurried to the café and carried
the groceries down to the cookery room on the second floor. She wiped the
countertops and laid everything out. Twenty minutes before the class started, so
enough time to run to the office and start copying. But as she made for the
door, Monique walked in.

“I didn’t see your name on the list,” Wren blurted.

“Jolene said it would be fine. Here’s my money.” She put
twenty-five pounds in front of Wren.

“I’ve only bought enough ingredients for eight. I’m sorry.”

Monique shrugged. “I wait and see if someone doesn’t turn
up.”

“Okay.” Maybe the French beauty would distract Tomas.

Wren was well aware both he and Adam wanted to speak to her,
but the thought of it made her throat close up. She moved again toward the
door, only to have her way blocked by another early arrival. Benoit. His face
lit up and Wren didn’t have the heart to walk past him.

“I do really well with signatures,” he said. “Everyone wants
to sign.”

“That’s great.”

“I’ll do more tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Benoit.”

He smiled again and headed for Monique. “You have a dog. You
must like animals. Wren’s mother is trying to save their home. Sign this to
help.”

He offered a pen but Monique removed one from her purse.
“Why do you need to know courses I study?”

“To prove you’re students here,” Wren said.

Monique frowned but fortunately didn’t dwell on the point.

“Do you really want to cook tonight?” Monique said to
Benoit.

“Monique!” Wren put as much of a warning tone in her voice
as she could.

“Fine. I’ll help Benoit. We can work together.” Monique
smiled at him.

Benoit’s jaw dropped. Wren’s followed.

* * * * *

After Adam had emptied his glass, they stood to leave the
pub. As Tomas moved out of the booth after Adam, he spotted Sanjay sitting
behind them.
Christ.
Concern and anger flared in his chest. When Sanjay
followed Adam with his gaze, Tomas came straight to the boil.

“Wait outside,” he said, relieved when Adam pushed open the
door and left without a word.

Had Sanjay heard them talking? Tomas had spoken quietly but
he’d spoken without an accent. This was why having a relationship with anyone
was a bad idea. Carelessness could get them killed.

Tomas slid into Sanjay’s booth and sat opposite.

Sanjay glanced pointedly at the exit Adam had used and then
turned his gaze back on Tomas. “Marco says you have a girlfriend.”

I’m going to fucking kill Marco.
Tomas didn’t want
this scumbag knowing anything about him.

“Wren.” Sanjay smiled. “He looks a much bigger bird.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Do not rise to the bait. Don’t explain
Adam’s just a friend.
Not that Sanjay would believe him.

Sanjay leaned across the table. “I’ll fly you and the little
bird to Paris this weekend. Provide a room at the Victoria Palace Hotel. A meal
at Lasserre. Then onto Château de Lys for some…fun.”

“While you wank off in London?”

Sanjay laughed. “I was thinking more of wanking on your
fucking face.”

“Not interested.”

Tomas stood and Sanjay grabbed his wrist. Tomas looked down
at the guy’s hand. “Not good idea.”

“No one around to save you this time.” Sanjay uncurled his
fingers. “Be careful, Tomas.”

Tomas shook his sleeve down. He had a snappy remark sitting
on his tongue but he swallowed it and left the pub.

Adam waited outside. “What was that about?” he asked as they
headed toward Ezispeke.

“Friend of my boss. Asshole.” He glanced over his shoulder
and saw Sanjay outside the pub staring at them.

Christ.

He wondered whether to tell Adam that Sanjay was the one
who’d attacked him but decided not to. The less Adam knew about his world, the
better.

When they eventually found the room where they’d be cooking,
they took up the only vacant positions, next to each other at the back. He
spotted Benoit and Monique on the front row. He didn’t know the other five—three
middle-aged women and two elderly men. Tomas frowned when he saw the packets in
front of him. Sugar, ground almonds, eggs. No meat. His rumbling stomach hoped
for a pasta dish.

“
Buona sera
,” Wren said. “Tonight you’re going to
make macaroons the classic Italian way. In front of you, you have all the
ingredients and equipment you need, and a recipe card.”

A thermometer?

“I need to warn you, they aren’t easy to make. You have to
do exactly what the recipe says to have any chance of success. Did you hear that,
Reg?”

The gray-haired guy sighed. “Yes, I hear you.”

“If it doesn’t say a teaspoon of salt, don’t put in a
teaspoon of salt. And especially not a tablespoon.”

There was a ripple of laughter.

“Any questions?” Wren asked.

Tomas had plenty but he wanted only the three of them there
when he asked them. He grinned. Actually, he wanted Adam to ask them.

“Read through the recipe and be sure you know what you need
to do,” Wren said.

Tomas glanced at the photograph of a neat pile of pink
macaroons at the top of the recipe.

“What am I supposed to do?” Adam looked panic-stricken.

Tomas picked up the ground almonds and the icing sugar and
kept his voice low. “Weigh out what you need of these. Sift them together.
Separate three eggs. Put half the egg whites with the sifted mixture.” He
dropped the packets and picked up the recipe. “Er… Put the water and sugar in a
saucepan and once it starts to boil, whisk the remaining egg whites while you
bring the sugar-water mix up to 118 degrees centigrade. Take it off the heat,
pour into the egg whites. Blah, blah and then mix that into the ground almonds
and icing sugar. Pipe it onto baking sheets and leave an inch between the
circles. Tap the trays to flatten the piles and leave for thirty minutes.
Cook—”

“Stop. I can bloody read. You lost me after separate the
eggs. How the fucking hell do I do that?”

Chapter Seventeen

Wren sighed with relief when she finally found the key that
would open the office. She switched on the light and closed the door. After
she’d powered up the copier, she glanced round. Were the older registers kept
in here or in Olive’s office? Wren really didn’t want to go in there. There was
a vague chance of making up an excuse to be in Jolene’s section if someone
came, but not the room beyond. She checked the filing cabinet and found nothing
of interest apart from the student files at the bottom. The cabinet next to the
window beckoned.

Locked.
Bugger.

Key on top.
Bingo.

The second shelf down held the familiar green folders and
she lifted them out. There was one for each course. Wren laid them in lines on
the floor, whisked out the top three sheets from each, loaded the copier,
checked there was plenty of paper and went back upstairs. Good thing Jolene was
so organized.

One step back inside the cookery room and Wren had to press
her lips together so she didn’t laugh. Adam appeared to have been sandblasted
with sugar and ground almonds. Grains of pale yellow dust covered his face and
shirt. He held a broken egg, passing it from one palm to the other, dribbles of
the glutinous white oozing through his fingers into a bowl. It looked like—
oh
God
. She felt as though she’d inhaled fire, her mouth suddenly devoid of
moisture. He must have sensed her watching, because he looked up and the yolk
slipped into the bowl.

“Damn,” he muttered and picked up a spoon.

“You’ll need to get out every bit or no matter how hard you
whip, it won’t go stiff,” Wren called.

His eyes widened and her cheeks heated.

“Mine really stiff,” Tomas said. “Want to check it stiff
enough?”

Oh God.

Monique burst in behind her and Wren jumped. She hadn’t
realized the woman had left the room.

“Should it stand in hard peak?” Tomas asked.

“Not too hard,” Wren said.

If he said one more word, she’d throttle him.

“Ah, okay. Never mind. It fall over.”

Adam sniggered. Wren headed for Benoit.

“Everything all right,” she asked.

“Yes. I already mix.”

Monique dipped her finger into Benoit’s bowl. He rapped her
on the knuckles, spat out a mouthful of French, and Wren smiled. Maybe he was
getting braver.

She helped Reg make a piping bag and tried not to wince at
the fluorescent pink of the mixture. His bottle of food coloring was almost
empty.

“My hand wobbled,” he said.

Wren chickened out over checking on Adam and Tomas and
instead went down to the office again. The photocopier had finished. She put
the sheets in an empty brown folder and returned the originals to the files on
the floor, making sure to pile them up in the same order before she slipped
them back in the cupboard.

The next thing she copied were the pages from the personal
files of the four whose names had appeared on her class lists. She already knew
Ardita’s phone number didn’t work, but perhaps the others’ did. Unsure if she’d
get a chance to come back for more information, she took everything with her, switched
off the copier and the light and locked the door. When she turned, Monique
stood in front of her.

“What you doing?” Monique asked.

“Photocopying for tomorrow.” Which was not a lie. “Were you
looking for me?”

“Benoit has spilled color on my dress.” She pointed to a
small spot on her sleeve.

“It should wash off.” Wren headed for the stairs.

“This must be dry-cleaned.”

“Then dry-clean it.”

The tiny pink spot wasn’t enough of a reason for Monique to
come after her. What did she really want? There was something about her that
made Wren uneasy, and not just that she was so elegant.

When Wren opened the door upstairs, she inhaled the sweet
scent of baking macaroons and sighed. Very few would bear any resemblance to
the photo but they still smelled divine. She shoved the folder under the chair
where she’d left her purse. When she glanced up, Monique was watching her.
What
the hell?
Tomas gave a bark of laughter and Wren turned to see Adam
spattered with blobs of white cream, the electric whisk whirring in his hand.
The counter in front of him looked as if it had sat under its very own
snowstorm. She sighed.

“When you’ve finished, bring them to the front,” she called.

Tomas brought his first and she bit her lip so she didn’t
giggle. Just one macaroon the size of the plate and flat as a pancake.

“They kissed on tray,” he said. “All mix together.”

Reg walked up with a plate of bright pink misshaped, lumpy
blobs. “I followed the recipe but they’re not pretty.”

Eventually everyone but Adam had brought their macaroons to
the counter and as they looked from one plate to the other, they started to
laugh. They might have all cooked something different.

“The recipe must be incorrect,” Monique said.

“No, it isn’t,” Wren said. “There’s so much that can go
wrong when you’re making macaroons. The sifting, pouring, temperature. One
error and you’re doomed.”

Monique pouted. “What was the point then?”

“Apart from showing the importance of sticking to the
recipe? Well, they might not look good but they still taste lovely,” Wren said.
“Shouldn’t judge by appearances.”

“Not sure about that.” Adam carried his plate over together
with the bowl of whipped cream. “The cream looks wrong and it tastes odd.”

Wren winced. “You whipped it too much.”

“Hard whipping not good. I have lighter touch,” Tomas said
and her cheeks heated.

“It’s turned to butter,” Benoit said.

Wren stared at Adam’s plate of little burnt circles. “Well,
at least the macaroons are crisp and not soggy.”

“Soggy is bad,” Tomas said. “I no like soggy.”

She choked trying to keep back her laughter. “Did you leave
them in longer because they were soft?”

Adam nodded, chewing his lip.

“Longer you leave it in, harder it gets?” Tomas asked.

Wren wanted to kick him. In a moment, she’d be crying with
laughter. She took a deep breath before she began to speak. “If you’d done
exactly what the recipe said, they’ve have come out fine.” She paused.
“Probably.”

“They should be hard on the outside and slightly gooey in
the middle,” Reg said.

“Mine like that.” Tomas broke his into chunks and offered a
piece to Adam and another to Wren. “Hard and soft.”

She couldn’t meet his gaze. The macaroon was delicious.

By the time everything was cleaned and the room put back to
normal, Wren was as skittish as a colt. Maybe she’d made a mistake not talking to
them earlier, because she knew they wouldn’t leave without confronting her.

“Don’t forget to collect your receipts,” Wren said to
everyone.

Gradually, the room emptied until it was just the three of
them. She checked the ovens were switched off and sidled toward the door.

“Don’t escape,” Tomas said. “We want talk to you.”

“I’m very busy.” She shrugged on her coat and picked up the
folder and her purse.

Tomas leaned with his back against the door. “If you run, we
chase.”

And damn if that didn’t make her panties wet. But she
straightened her shoulders and glanced from him to Adam. “Okay. What do you
want?” Her heart hammered so loudly, it was all she could hear.

“We both want you,” Tomas said.

Nope, she heard that just fine. Her knees trembled and she
clamped her legs together.

“W-what for?” But she knew. She fumbled with the buttons of
her coat to hide her trembling fingers.

Adam stepped forward. “I’m sorry I left without saying
anything.”

She nodded. “You needed to think.”

His eyes widened. “You heard me say that?”

“I was thinking too.”

His face flushed. “That I was an asshole? I was. Am. Sorry.”

“You said you didn’t think you were the man I deserved.” She
twisted a button. “What changed?”

He sighed. “Nothing. I’m still not the man you deserve, but
I want to try to be.”

“We bisexual, Wren,” Tomas whispered. “We need both worlds.
Not enough to settle for man or woman.”

She raised her head to look at Adam. “I’m not enough for
you?”

“I wish you were.” He glanced from her to Tomas and back. “I
don’t mean any disrespect to Tomas. Maybe one of you
is
the one who
could be enough for me, but my heart tells me not, that me with a single
partner won’t happen, that there’s more risk of hurting that person if I try. I
want you both.”

“We need third. We need you,” Tomas said.

There were a million reasons to say no. Well, not a million,
but Wren knew
no
was the right answer. Maybe not
right
but
sensible. So why was her heart shouting
yes
? Every cell and molecule
screaming
yes? Plus she wanted to be number one, not number three.

She opened her mouth just as there was a bang on the door.
Wren let out a little squeak.

Alfred came in. “Finished, Wren?”

“Yes, thanks.” She handed him the bunch of keys and,
grabbing her purse and the folder, slipped out, Adam and Tomas on her heels.

Maybe she deserved two gorgeous men. Maybe this was her
reward for the shitty way she’d been treated by her exes.

It won’t last
, said her head.

I don’t care
, said her heart.

At that moment she didn’t want to remember Tomas likely
worked for a crook, that Adam had walked out on her. They were here now and
they wanted her. She wasn’t going to hide from the way she felt any longer. As
they emerged into the night, she turned to face them.

Adam stood fidgeting, his cheeks still dusted with icing
sugar, his lips pressed together, but his eyes full of eager anticipation. In
less than three weeks he’d be gone. But so might she. Tomas stood motionless at
his side, a slight curve to his lips, his hands in his pockets, pure devilment
in his gaze.

Wren felt the ache in her lower belly, need flaring like
hunger. She could say no, walk away and that would be it. Or she could say yes
and have an adventure. And okay, it might not last but she’d still have had it.

“Going to be brave?” Tomas asked.

“You’re not a coward if you say no,” Adam said.

Tomas’ face fell. “Didn’t mean—”

“I know.” Wren attempted a smile.

There was a long pause.

“Let’s go bowling,” Adam blurted.

Tomas gaped at him.

“I’d love that,” Wren said. Because she wasn’t quite ready
to take the next step. Well, any step. Her feet were stuck to the pavement.

“And after?” Tomas asked.

“Depends who wins.” Wren managed to kick-start herself into
walking toward the Merrion Center.

Adam insisted on paying. They exchanged their footwear for
nonslip bowling shoes and Tomas went to buy drinks. The guys had the same size
feet. Big.

“You okay?” Adam asked as they settled in their allotted
bay.

“Yep.” She brushed a smudge of icing sugar from his cheek
and licked her fingers.

He groaned. “Oh Christ. I’m going to have to keep my coat on
now.”

She dropped hers on a chair with a laugh, putting her purse
and the folder beneath. Adam sat at the desk in front of the automatic scoring
system and tapped in their names. Wren glanced at the lanes on either side. Two
older, intense-looking men played on their left and a noisy mixed group bowled
on the right. One of the women got a strike and jumped up and down to cheers
and hoots of excitement.

Wren turned to check for Tomas and Adam came up behind her.
His hand settled on her hip, his thumb caressing, and heat shot all the way
through her clothes. He moved closer until she could feel his erect cock
pressing against her through the gap in his coat, and her sex responded with a
spasm of recognition. She swiveled in his arms and he kissed her gently,
holding her waist as he licked his way into her mouth. The kiss was gentle but
persuasive and he teased with his tongue, let it flirt with hers. A surge of
cream wet her panties. The kiss grew stronger, Adam’s grip tighter and her
control began to slip. She wanted him naked, her naked, Tomas—

“Starting without me?”

They sprang apart. Tomas came forward, a smile on his face,
carrying a tray with several bottles of beer and bowls of fries. He held out a
Corona to Wren.

“Thanks.” She wrapped her fingers around the bottle but
Tomas didn’t let go.

He tugged her closer. “Do I get kiss too?”

Wren didn’t get chance to answer. As she opened her mouth,
he moved in, his tongue invading as his free hand moved around her back to pull
her tightly to him. She felt Adam tug the bottle from between them, heard him
laugh, and then Tomas was groaning into her mouth, his tongue sliding back and
forth repeatedly as if it was fucking her. His cock was as hard and insistent
as Adam’s. Tomas slid his hands up her back, threaded his fingers in her hair
and held her head, kept her exactly where he wanted her. She clung to his coat,
her heart struggling to maintain an even beat, struggling to stay in the same
place in her chest. She wondered if it was trying to run away in terror or leap
out to kiss his.

Just when she thought she’d either suffocate or dissolve
into a puddle, Tomas let her go. She stood wobbling, looking from one to the
other, registered the slight air of smug satisfaction and grinned.

“Are either of you going to take your coats off?”

“Not at the moment,” Adam said. “Damn that was hot.”

Wren took a long slug of beer, aware the guys hadn’t taken
their gazes off her, and then put the bottle down and bent over the rack of
balls, her butt facing them. She ran both hands over the smooth surfaces of an
orange and a blue ball.

“Mmm, can’t decide which I like best,” she said and wriggled
her backside.