Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(15)
Yeah, no kidding. They could hear the macho shit talk all the way down the hall. Jake Adams had been lounging in the doorway, watching Lina as she came out of the elevator, probably prepared to take out any threat at a distance.
But when his face had relaxed at the sight of her and he’d straightened, Lina had…flushed and hurried into Vi’s room. If you want to indulge in hot meaningless sex in order to get through the nights, do you seriously think a U.S. black ops friend of Vi’s new boyfriend is the least complicated person to do that with? Go hit a bar or something.
Although bars held people. Who could get sprayed by the same bullets, torn into pieces by the same bomb that was meant to punish her. For fighting. For living.
She focused hard on those confident male warrior voices down the hall.
Chase nearly always had company in the afternoon. Those macho buddies of his were loyal, that was for sure. Vi had constant visitors, too, from the kitchen staff, her friends, her big family. But her wounds had been more serious than Chase’s and she was incapable of admitting she was tired and needed to rest, so Lina and Adrien, Vi’s sous-chef, had taken it upon themselves to organize the staff to make sure they paced the visits enough to liven up her days but not so much that she overdid it. Everyone wanted to see her. Vi’s team had thought the world of her before she fought terrorists on their behalf and won.
“How’s the ice sculpting going?” Vi said.
Lina took a dart and threw it at the dart board so hard it bounced off. Oops. “Why did I enter this damn contest again?”
“You like to freeze your ass off?” Vi suggested. “Don’t you dare back out now. You’re practically representing all of Paris at this point. Nothing makes us quit.”
Oh, great, layer on more pressure. “This morning, just when I was starting to sharpen the teeth, the whole damn dragon nose-dived off the stand. Clearly I gave that thing too much mass in the brain area.”
Vi laughed.
Lina smiled, pleased with herself at having helped produce that laugh. Maybe she could put up with a few more ice dragons acting like brats to have stories that made Vi laugh. “And when I stop trying to make it fly and make it curling up around treasure instead, it looks more like a damn cat with cream.”
Vi chuckled, looking more and more relaxed.
“Made it,” said a cheerful voice from the doorway, and Célie bounced into the room. Célie’s burgundy-red hair (her natural brown being not nearly expressive enough for her) was currently at a very unfortunate stage in her attempts to let it grow out to shoulder length, and being crushed by a motorcycle helmet hadn’t really helped it. But she brought all her warmth and energy into the room with her, and Lina could feel herself relaxing to it. Unlike Lina and Vi, Célie hadn’t been at Au-dessus for the attacks because she worked for Dominique Richard. She had rushed to them as soon as the news started to flash across all the media outlets, devastated and furious, but she still retained a normalcy that Vi and Lina might never have again.
Vi smiled at Célie, too. “Busy day?”
“If you ask me, in times of crisis, people eat more chocolate. Can’t really blame them.” Célie’s boss had been letting her go early every day to come see Vi, but given that Célie was the chef chocolatier for Richard’s, sometimes no matter how willing Dom was to cover for her, she couldn’t pull herself free sooner. “Speaking of which…” Célie pulled a flat metal box out of her backpack and set it on Vi’s table beside Lina’s verrine.
“You’re the best,” Vi said.
“Also for you.” Célie handed a box to Lina.
Lina smiled at her, blinking once against the sting in her eyes that had been plaguing her at every kind gesture ever since the attack. I’m so glad I’m still alive and have such good people in my life.
“And of course for you know who…” Célie pulled out Richard’s biggest box, the one that held one hundred forty-four chocolates. “And for all his ‘buddies’.”
“That should last them…oh, an hour,” Lina said. She had never in her life seen men quite so hungry. Even if a certain Jake Adams did tend to look at her desserts as if he expected them to bite him and not the other way around.
“Hey, thanks for taking care of Chase, too,” Vi said. “I know you weren’t sure about him when you met him.”
“Neither were you,” Célie pointed out. “That’s why we weren’t.”
“He still seems like a lot of trouble to me,” Lina said. “I like shy, geeky guys.” Except for hot, short-term, I’m-still-alive sex. In that case, a shy, geeky guy might get his shy feelings hurt so maybe I’d be better off with someone supremely confident—She forced her thoughts back into their box.
“You keep saying that, but I don’t see you trailing a shy, geeky guy around with you,” Célie pointed out.
Lina narrowed her eyes at her. “They’re hard to find with you and Vi scaring them off all the time.”
“Maybe you should try to find a guy who can’t be scared off by your friends,” Vi said pointedly.
“Yeah.” Célie flexed her biceps. “Because I’m not planning on getting less scary.”
Lina laughed. Vi actually looked scary—tall, blonde, gorgeous, striding through life in her black boots and leather, wielding knives. But Lina and Célie looked like cute little things. So far, in Lina’s case at least, no man had proven able to handle the shock of how stubborn, confident, and determined to get her own way she actually was.