Girl Most Likely To

by Barbara Elsborg

“Molto bene,” Wren said.

  After Adam had stuttered and stumbled his way through, “Acqua minerale naturale con latte, per favore,” she realized why he’d not laughed. He hadn’t understood what Tomas said.

  Adam shrugged, gave a rueful grin and she couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Acqua minerale naturale e latte, unless you actually want milk in your water,” she said.

  He winced.

  She couldn’t afford to spend time explaining everything to him when the rest of the group was miles ahead. Clearly a beginner, he was in the wrong class. Maybe she could offer to give him private lessons. Heat flooded her cheeks. Of course, she’d have to plead with him not to tell Olive or she’d get the sack.

  While Adam had understood very little of what she said, it became clear Tomas’ Italian was as good as hers. So why was he in this class? Whenever he spoke to her, he stared at her so intently, she kept losing her train of thought. There always seemed to be something suggestive in his words. Flirting with me? It was a minor miracle she managed to conduct a coherent lesson when her brain raced around like an overexcited puppy. She didn’t even tell Tomas off when he obviously checked a phone text in the middle of the lesson.

  What were the two of them up to? Maybe Tomas was only interested in her because she hadn’t fallen at his feet like Monique. Maybe Adam thought he could get more than language lessons on his break from work. They were both trouble and Wren didn’t need trouble.

  But she was tempted. Oh damn, am I tempted.

  The moment the lesson ended, instead of lingering in case there were questions, she bolted, clattering down the stairs to the office.

  Jolene glared when she burst in. “Forgotten how to knock? Lost the use of your hands?”

  “Sorry. I need to sign the registers.”

  “Finally. They’re on the desk in the corner.”

  Wren took a pen from her bag.

  “While you’re in here, I’ll go for a cup of coffee,” Jolene said. “Answer the phone and take a message if anyone calls.”

  “Okay.”

  Wren suspected Jolene’s dislike of her was because the woman had a very obvious crush on Moaning Martin. Well, obvious to everyone but Martin. Even if he eventually asked Jolene out, Wren suspected she’d still despise her because he’d asked Wren first and Jolene had been there. Neither Wren nor Martin had seen Jolene in the staffroom until their awkward exchange was over. Wren didn’t much like Jolene but everything seemed to run smoother since she’d come to work there a year ago. The staff was paid on time for a start.

  Jolene’s desk was tidy, everything set in neat piles, the computer monitor and keyboard spotless, pens and pencils and bulldog clips in lines. When Olive had done the administration, the desk overflowed with paper and the room always looked as though it had been hit by a whirlwind. Jolene had whipped everything and everyone into shape within the first week.

  Wren opened the top register and frowned. At first she thought she’d picked up someone else’s file, because she expected to see four names and there were eight. But it was her class. The name and time were correct. She checked the rest of her registers and found the same names added for her other conversation classes, students she’d never seen. Weird.

  Her gaze shifted to the closed door that led to Olive’s office. She picked up the folder and knocked—no one answered. Student files were kept in the tall, gray cabinet behind Jolene’s desk. Wren stared at it. She could check the names, but teachers weren’t supposed to open the cabinet without permission. Jolene probably didn’t trust them to put the files back in the right place. Merely thinking about opening the cabinet and getting caught made her heart thump.

  What would Jolene do if she caught her? Eat her? Her feet but not her brain took her to the corner and she pulled open the bottom drawer.

  The student files were in alphabetical order. She checked the four names and found slender files for each, application forms with basic personal details, addresses in their home country and in the UK, next of kin, date of birth. There were details of attendance for Wren’s classes and marks she’d given them, yet she’d definitely not taught any of them.

  It had to be some sort of mistake.

  Wren hesitated and then pulled out Tomas’ file. Thirty-four. Unmarried. No next of kin listed. He lived on Dock Street, so he hadn’t lied about that. Then she checked Adam’s. Thirty years old. He’d given his home address as 3 Wellington Place, Greenwich, but he was temporarily living next to Tomas. How strange. How…convenient.

  She closed the file cabinet and went over to the photocopier to duplicate one of her class sheets with the extra names. She wasn’t going to sign off on anything until she’d checked with Olive.

  Tomas had spent most of Wren’s Italian for Travelers class plotting ways to get even with Adam for walking out of the men’s room without finishing what he’d started. When the bastard left him standing with his pants around his ankles and a cock hard enough to pound a hole in the wall, he’d been torn for a moment between fury and laughter. Laughter won. Just.

  He liked that Adam wasn’t the type to roll over, but everything that made Tomas like him also made it harder for him to do his own walking away. Two dominant guys in a relationship made things tricky. They also made things damn near perfect, assuming Tomas could get his ass in gear. Literally. He bit back a sigh. He wouldn’t fight this anymore. He didn’t want to. In three weeks Adam would be back in London. Plenty of time to get him out of his system. What was one more secret from Marco? Oh, and from his official boss.

  Leaning back in his chair, in between exchanging glares and smirks with Adam, he listened to Wren chatter in Italian. God, she’s good and she’s cute. Adam was crap at Italian. He shouldn’t be in the class. Not hard to figure out he was there because of Wren. The two of them had some sort of history and Tomas was keen to learn what that was. He felt a pang of something uncomfortably like jealousy.

  One way to deal with that and maybe kill two birds with one stone. After the lesson was over, he planned to corner her and ask her to dinner. Though he wasn’t sure if that was to piss off Adam or because he liked her. A little of both. A vibration in his pocket told him he had a text and he tried to check it without Wren noticing. Apparently Veton was parked on double yellow lines outside and wanted him there now. Fuck.

  When the lesson ended and Wren bolted, he decided to wait and ask her out tomorrow.

  When Adam saw Tomas and Wren dash out of the room at the end of the Italian lesson, he’d thought for a moment they were going somewhere together, but as he hurried after them, he spotted Wren making for the office while Tomas headed outside. He followed Wren and lingered by the notice board, waiting for her to emerge. When he spotted Wren ran an Italian cookery class on Wednesday evening, he signed up for it. The door of the office opened and he spun round smiling, but it was Jolene who emerged and he quickly turned back to the board. Shit. He didn’t want her to think he was—

  “Everything okay?” she asked, the flirty tone unmistakable.

  “Just checking the details for the Italian cookery class.”

  “What do you need to know? Maybe I can help?”

  “Seeing what I need to bring.”

  “You pay Wren on the night. She provides the ingredients. Saves the students having to bother. You get to keep or eat what you’ve made. If it’s edible.” She chuckled. “You’d be better at the Italian restaurant around the corner. It’s really good. Perhaps—”

  “Right, thanks.” Adam stared at the board until he heard Jolene stomping for the stairs. Once she’d gone, he exhaled. Was Wren now in there on her own? He shuffled from foot to foot. Just get in there and speak to her.

  When he opened the door, Wren jerked upright from the photocopier and looked—guilty? “Hi.”

  Her smile reassured him. Christ, just seeing at her made his heart hop and his throat tighten. He might not have had sex for a long time with anyone other than himself, but this wasn’t normal, to have this strong a n
eed to—

  “Is something the matter?” she asked.

  Yes. “No. Yes. No.” Has lust addled my brain?

  Wren chuckled.

  “No,” he said firmly.

  “That’s better.”

  “What is it about you?” he whispered and as her smile slid south, he swallowed hard. “Wouldyouliketocomeoutwithmetonight?” Way to look smooth. “Manage to decipher that or shall I say it again?” Though he wasn’t sure it would come out any more coherent the second time around. He’d reverted to the shy, stumbling lad of his teens.

  “A date?”

  The uncertainty in her voice added to his nervousness. “Movie, meal, bowling, skating, dancing, parachuting. I don’t know. Whatever you want. Er, except not the parachuting. I threw that in at random.”

  “Now I’m disappointed.”

  No way was he letting her make a parachute jump. On Adam’s first solo free fall, his chute had failed to open. The emergency chute saved him, but that was the last time he intended to throw himself out of a plane unless it was onto one of those inflated escape ramps.

  “I’m not supposed to date students.”

  He couldn’t tell if that was a yes or a no, but she sounded disappointed. “Then I’ll stop being a student.”

  She stared into his eyes and it was all he could do not to drag her into his arms and kiss her right there and then.

  “I mean it,” he said. “This place isn’t important. You are.”

  “Oh God.”

  “God or good?”

  Wren chuckled. “A meal then, but you do know how to keep a secret? Otherwise I’ll get the sack.”

  He nodded, but he couldn’t see why there was a problem. They were adults, though his cock was behaving like a teenager.

  “We’re friends. No issue in us eating together,” he said.

  That came out wrong. Her smile wavered. Adam wanted more than a meal with her. Tell her.

  “No issue at all,” Wren said.

  “Where shall we go? Shall I pick you up? What time? What do you like to eat?” He clamped his lips together, wishing he could slap his hand over his mouth and start again, preferably from before the moment he’d knocked her on her butt.

  “I finish at five. We can decide then. Meet me in the pub we went to at lunchtime?”

  “I’m going to go and sit in there now so I don’t miss you.”

  Wren laughed. They left the office and she headed for the stairs. He watched until she was out of sight. She thought he was joking but he wasn’t. Now he’d found her, there was no way he was letting her go.

  Wren almost danced up to the staffroom. He asked me on a date. I said yes. She wanted to yell it out loud. Or at least whisper it to Sylvie, who sat talking to Mike, another Russian teacher. Four other staff members were in there, plus Jolene and Belinda. Wren dumped her bags on a chair near Sylvie and headed for the coffee machine.

  “Has Olive come back?” Jolene called across the room.

  “No.”

  “You left the phone unattended?” Jolene screeched. “You idiot.”

  “You didn’t say you wanted me to stay until you came back,” Wren shouted as Jolene hurried through the door. Though thinking about it, she should have guessed. Damn. Adam had distracted her.

  She took her mug from the cupboard, made herself a drink and went to sit next to Mike and Sylvie. “Think I’m off her Christmas card list?”

  Mike raised his eyebrows. “Were you ever on it?”

  “Yep. I got one last year. A robin wearing a kilt, on paper-thin card. Cheap and hideous.”

  Wren took the sheet she’d copied from her bag. “Did either of you have any of the last four students in your class last term?”

  Mike scanned the paper. “Nope.”

  Sylvie looked at the sheet and shook her head. “No. Why?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. Let me just ask the others before they shoot off.”

  Two had taught the first four like Wren, but no one recognized the other names. That wasn’t altogether surprising. It was a large language school with a big turnover. Because Wren did mainly conversation work, her groups were much smaller than the average. It was possible some of her colleagues never learned all the names of their students if they only attended for a few weeks.

  Wren took a deep breath and showed the list to Belinda. She wasn’t a teacher, but a guidance counselor. If students had problems, Belinda sorted them out. Theoretically. Her cousin was supposed to have her fingers on the pulse of the academy but Wren thought she was the least empathetic person she knew. Since she and Leo had become an item, she hadn’t cared about Wren’s feelings at all.

  “The names don’t ring a bell.” Belinda handed back the paper.

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “So you and Brendan aren’t going out together anymore?” she said to Wren’s back, louder than necessary.

  Wren turned. “No. He’s gone abroad.”

  “You don’t seem to have much luck with guys. I thought you and Peter would get on like a house on fire.”

  Bitch. Wren kept smiling and gripped her mug tighter. Don’t throw the coffee in her face. Don’t.

  “If you ever need to talk?”

  You’d be the last person on the planet I’d come to. Wren didn’t say anything, just stood and waited, and Belinda backed away.

  Wren exhaled silently, sipped her drink and dismissed her weaselly cousin from her mind. She wondered if the names were missing from someone else’s list and been put on hers by mistake. Did it matter? Probably not, but it’d continue to annoy her if she didn’t get to the bottom of it. She’d been infected with her father’s desire for everything to be upfront and clear and didn’t like unsolved mysteries.

  “What’s the problem?” Mike asked when Wren sat down again.

  “I had four in that class, not eight. I don’t know where these other names have come from.”

  “Jolene’s probably made a mistake, but don’t tell her I said that, and don’t you say that to her either,” Mike said. “She’ll give you the worst class last thing on Friday afternoon.”

  “I already have it. English spelling.”

  Sylvie groaned.

  “Play Scrabble with them,” Mike suggested. “Or do a crossword.”

  Wren had been given a list of words the group needed to learn, but Mike’s ideas were good ones.

  “I don’t think it’s fair that you get both of them,” Sylvie said with sigh.

  Wren didn’t even pretend not to understand, but signaled with her eyes for Sylvie to keep her voice down. Big-eared Belinda sat on the other side of the room.

  Sylvie whispered, “I’ve been teaching adult groups every term with not a hint of hunkiness and now you get two of the best-looking guys I’ve seen for ages?”

  “Present company excepted?” Mike asked.

  Wren glanced at the small, balding guy beside her. “You don’t count. You’re already taken. By an angel. She has to be to put up with you.”

  Mike smiled. “What are they like?”

  “Tall,” Sylvie said, speaking before Wren had the chance. “Really tall. They could be twins and they have bodies to die for. They both have dark hair and dark eyes, though Tomas’ hair is longer and shaggier than Adam’s. Adam’s face lights up when he smiles. When Tomas smiles it looks like he’s up to no good. They’re both intense and brooding. Definite book-cover models. And definite drool material. If they weren’t out in daylight, I’d think they were…vampires.” She whispered the last word.

  Wren and Mike gaped at her.

  “What?” Sylvie asked. “Too much? Maybe they’re werewolves?”

  Mike snorted and Wren rolled her eyes.

  “Which one do you fancy?” Sylvie asked. “God, it’s hard to choose but I think I’d play safe and go for Adam. What about you?”

  Wren swallowed. “Aren’t I allowed to fancy both?”

  Sylvie glowered. “Yes, but you can’t have both.”

  And suddenly Wren didn�
�t want to tell Sylvie about her date.

  Why can’t I have both? Her cheeks heated and she hoped she wasn’t blushing. Sylvie blathered on but Mike caught Wren’s eye, raised one brow and she quickly looked away.

  “They hardly took their eyes off you in the pub.” Sylvie’s tone was grumpy. “I thought Adam was going to thump Tomas when he sat between you, then when Monique dragged her stool over…” She smirked. “It was like a strange sort of musical chairs. Monique said Tomas flirted with you in your lesson. I don’t think she could get over that he didn’t succumb to her charms.”

  Nor to yours, Wren thought. “He’s a bit full of himself.” But I like that. Just as I like Adam’s awkwardness.

  “Thought I’d do you a favor at lunchtime and give them chance to talk to you without Miss Chic butting in. Did you get asked on a date? Spill. Which one is mine? And he and Adam are neighbors? How weird is that?” Sylvie sat back in her seat and gave a heavy sigh. “Of course, that’s it.”

  Wren furrowed her brows, relieved she’d avoided answering. “What?”

  “They’re competing with each other over who’s first to tempt you into a date. They probably bet on it. You know what guys are like.”

  Wren’s heart bounced against her ribs and punctured itself. “You think?” Now she was even more grateful she hadn’t mentioned the date.

  “Put your claws away, Sylvie,” Mike said. “Guys are allowed to fancy Wren. I would if I didn’t think the angel I live with would kill me.”

  “Thank you.” Wren smiled at him.

  “Wren’s so helpful and kind. I’ve always thought she makes such lovely coffee,” he said. “And often there’s no need to even ask. She just knows when I want one.”

  She chuckled, grabbed his mug and got to her feet.

  She’d just placed the drink next to him when Jolene reappeared. “Olive wants to see you. Now.”

  Wren resisted the temptation to leap up and salute. She gathered her bags and followed Jolene.

  Olive was in the main office, brandishing the register file bearing Wren’s name. Oh God, now what have I done?

  “How hard can this be?” Olive snapped. “Are you incompetent as well as stupid? Why didn’t you sign them when you were in here?”