by Estelle Ryan
I was looking. But the unexpected tears in my eyes were obscuring my view. I blinked them away to study Pink’s face. There were no nonverbal cues of pain visible on his face, only concentration. Twice his left leg wobbled, but he quickly righted himself. He stopped next to the dining room chair Daniel was sitting on and punched him hard on his arm. “You owe me a thousand euros, sucker!”
Daniel got up and grabbed Pink in a strong embrace, slapping him on his back. Then he stood back and looked Pink up and down. “Arsehole. You made me think your progress was much slower than this.”
“I need that money.” Pink laughed. “Want to buy the new game controller coming out this week.”
“Really?” Roxy walked around Pink, poking at his legs. “You’re really walking like this?”
“With shitloads of work, yeah.”
“And swearing,” Nikki added. “A lot of swearing.”
“Congratulations, Pink.” Phillip got up and shook Pink’s hand. “You are an inspiration.”
“Talk about inspiration.” Vinnie put a large cake on the coffee table. “I made Dobos cake to go with the coffee.”
“Ooh!” Roxy and Francine burst out laughing when they spoke at the same time.
“What’s Dobos cake?” Phillip asked.
Vinnie cut into the cake and put a slice on a small plate. “Six layers of special sponge cake with chocolate-flavoured buttercream between the layers.”
“And caramel on top?” Roxy rubbed her hands when Vinnie nodded. “A large piece, please.”
“Can you take him for a moment?” Nikki put Eric on my lap without waiting for an answer. “I want to enjoy this cake without that little monster trying to take it out of my mouth the whole time.”
“And Jenny should just wait?” Colin asked with a laugh.
“Uh.” Nikki looked from the cake on the coffee table to me. “Please, Doc G?”
Eric wiggled on my lap and turned around to look at me. I nodded at Nikki, but quickly turned my attention to Eric. I looked at his eyes, which were focusing on my lips. “No kisses. No kisses.”
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Look at the paintings from this book, find out about the true provenance of The Woman Feeding a Parrot, learn more about Nazi-looted art, the gaming industry, Hungarian cuisine and the Roma culture at:
http://estelleryan.com/the-netscher-connection.html
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Other books in the Genevieve Lenard Series:
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Book 1: The Gauguin Connection
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Book 2: The Dante Connection
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Book 3: The Braque Connection
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Book 4: The Flinck Connection
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Book 5: The Courbet Connection
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Book 6: The Pucelle Connection
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Book 7: The Léger Connection
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Book 8: The Morisot Connection
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Book 9: The Vecellio Connection
and more...
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For more books in this series, go to http://estelleryan.com/books.html
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