Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3) (6 page)

He looked over at the bubbly girl, who at some point had used a trip to the bathroom to resituate herself between his sons and was now happily swiveling back and forth between them, basking in the sun of their attention. She seemed like a typical sweet, vapid, privileged princess. If she graduated from Brown, she couldn’t be dumb, but she didn’t look like someone whose pursuits were naturally serious. He wondered what she’d majored in, but then decided that was a question for Eli to ask Rosa, not for him to ask her sister. He was more interested in Carmen.

“That’s a nice graduation gift.”

Carmen shrugged. “We’re staying at a friend’s flat who’s traveling. And I’m working while we’re here.”

Their food came, and Theo was distracted from continuing his inquiries while they sorted out the plates and starting eating, making the appropriate polite conversation about their selections. Everyone had ordered a full meal except Rosa, who was having only salad. Theo was glad to see that Carmen was eating a cheeseburger and fries. With her hands, as God intended. He liked himself a burger, and he could definitely appreciate a woman who did the same, and who tucked into her food as if she were hungry, rather than pick at it as if she were performing.

While they ate, he peppered her with questions, learning that she was a landscape designer from a seaside town in Rhode Island; that she and Rosa had four brothers and were the only daughters; that, like him, her mother was dead; and that, unlike him, her father was not.

As she answered that last, she set the remains of her burger back on its plate. “This isn’t a conversation, you know. This is an interview.”

She was right, and he laughed, feeling his cheeks warm a little. Blushing was a new thing. He didn’t blush, and he didn’t like it. But he’d embarrassed himself on more than one occasion with this woman. “Well, I’m at a disadvantage. You read my memoir. You know a lot more about me than I do you. Just trying to catch up.”

“Not really. I skimmed through it again this morning. You don’t write much about yourself at all. It’s not the story of you. It’s the story of the loss of you. Your wife’s death and your grief—those are the main characters.”

Was it strange that his cock swelled at her words? Probably it was. But her clear insight, that moment of being perfectly understood, passed over him like a caress. He put his hand on her thigh—he did it without thinking, simply needing, suddenly, to touch her. “Yes. That’s right. It doesn’t have much to do with me at all.”

“And that’s why it’s so poignant. There’s this sense that you weren’t even there, somehow. Like you mattered so little in the cosmos of that time that you weren’t even visible in your own grief.” She turned toward his sons and her sister. “I feel like I know them and your wife better for having read your memoir than I know you.”

If they’d have been alone in that booth, he would have kissed her—would have grabbed her, pulled her close, laid her down on the seat and kissed the breath right out of her. As it was, he looked down at his plate and tried to rein in his careening emotions.

After a minute, he felt her hand on his, which still lay on her thigh. “Did I say something wrong?”

He looked at their hands. Hers was shapely and tan, with graceful, unadorned fingers ending in blunt, unvarnished nails. “No. There haven’t been many people who’ve been able to see that. It’s a powerful feeling to be understood.” He turned his head and met her eyes.

She smiled. “I felt something a little like it, I think, when our mother died. I got lost in the grief and loss and responsibility. It changed everything.”

He turned his hand under hers and linked their fingers. Her head jerked down to see, but she didn’t move away.

He wanted more than a physical connection with this woman. But when he curled his fingers over hers and squeezed, she twisted out of his hold and turned to Rosa.

Once she inserted herself into the conversation the youngsters were having—he kept thinking of his boys and Rosa as ‘the youngsters’; he had no idea how old Carmen was, but he was sure she, too, was considerably younger than he—the talk began to focus on the next day’s plans. Distracted by his still-rioting emotions and the new way of thinking that seemed to be following after them, Theo was a second behind the rest before he understood that Jordan was trying to invite himself along on Carmen and Rosa’s planned shopping trip tomorrow.

“Jordan, we have plans, son.” They didn’t have any fixed plans, in fact, but Theo was looking for a way to get his son under control. He got excited sometimes and came on far too strong. The thought of having a likeminded shopping buddy seemed to have overheated his circuits. Neither his brother nor his father were much good on shopping trips.

“No—but Dad, I can help.” He turned to Rosa. “I did research before I came over. I know the best vintage shops, the best places to get consignment designer goods, all of it. I even have a route planned out for browsing with the super-rich on the Champs-Élysées.”

Rosa, evidently into the idea, sent an inquiring look toward her sister. Carmen shrugged. “Fine with me. You two can go without me.”

“No way, Carm. You have to come, too. You promised—a fancy outfit for a fancy dinner out tomorrow. You can’t go in your laborer-chic clothes.”

At the same time that Carmen flipped her sister the bird and muttered, “Fuck you, precious,” Jordan clapped.

“Fancy dinner? Like
tuxedo
fancy? Like I could wear my new patent leather tuxedo slippers?”

Theo was, frankly, appalled at the way his son’s untrammeled enthusiasm was running roughshod over other people’s standing plans. “Jordan! Enough!”

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d raised his voice to either son. Many years. Certainly not since they were grown. And Jordan looked shocked, abashed, and hurt. Shit. Theo needed to get control of his head.

Into the sudden awkward silence that followed Theo’s…shout—really, it had been a shout; he’d even hit the table when he’d said it—into that silence, Eli spoke. His eyes on Rosa, he said, “You know, it would be nice to do a big night in Paris with a couple of beautiful women.” He smirked at his brother. “If you don’t mind being a fifth wheel, that is.”

Regaining his bravado, Jordan passed a fussy, artful hand over his styled hair. “Honey, I’m never the fifth wheel. I’m
driving
.”

Eli laughed and turned to Theo. “Dad?”

Theo felt contrite for having yelled—and for obviously being wrong about how welcome Jordan’s horning in really was. With a sheepish grin, he turned to Carmen. “Would you care for some company on your fancy night out?”

Carmen’s eyes lingered on his for a beat, and then she turned to Rosa, who was nodding emphatically. She turned back to him. “I guess so.”

~oOo~

Plans were made for Jordan, Rosa, and Carmen to shop tomorrow, and for all five of them to dine together in the evening, and then the conversation reverted to normal dinner chitchat.

After dinner, the bill for which Carmen insisted be split between them by family, ‘the youngsters’ decided that they were not done yet. They three went off clubbing, leaving Theo and Carmen on the sidewalk.

They were alone.

For a moment, they stood on the sidewalk. Carmen seemed to feel as suddenly awkward as he did. He knew what he wanted. But he wasn’t sure whether to go for it tonight.

Then she turned and looked up at him. “I have wine at the apartment. Red and white both. Will you drink wine?”

No, he wouldn’t. But there was a little market at the end of the block they were standing on. “I’d rather run down to the corner and grab a bottle of bourbon, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.” She started off in that direction.

“Carmen, wait. What are we doing?”

She grinned. “Booty call. You in?”

A booty call was a place to start, at least. And with the aftereffects of the emotional deluge she’d caused inside him still swirling, he needed to get his hands on her. “Oh, yeah.” He needed to pick something else up at the market, too.

~oOo~

Compared to Hunter Anders’ opulent digs, the flat Carmen and Rosa were staying in was chic but modest—and much more comfortable, in Theo’s estimation. It was light and airy, the lamps and sconces in the room, and the white walls and trim, making it appear so even when the big, arched windows were dark with night.

She left him in the living room, nosing about the bookshelves, and took the bourbon into the kitchen. When she came back, she had an old-fashioned glass with about three fingers of bourbon for him and a large glass of red in a Bordeaux glass for her. She handed him his drink and gestured at the big, worn, comfy leather sofa. They sat.

“How do you have this place?”

She sipped her wine. “I told you—this is my friend’s flat. She and her husband are in India for a year or so. She offered, and the timing was good to bring Rosa for the summer.”

“Well, it’s nice. It feels like a home. In this neighborhood, the décor can get a little fussy, I’ve noticed. But this is comfortable.”

“Yeah. Izzie is pretty down to earth. What about you—are you in a hotel all this time, or how does the grant or whatever work?”

They were having a conversation. Considering her resistance to the idea earlier, Theo was glad to see that not only was she engaged, but she’d actually initiated it. “Like you, I’m staying as a guest in someone’s home. The man who awarded me the grant. He calls it his
pied-à-terre
, but that’s the false modesty of the wealthy.”

“Somebody is paying for you to spend time writing a memoir. I’m sorry—that boggles my mind. Just the idea that somebody can make a living writing about their own life. People are weird.” She took a long sip of her wine and set the glass down on the wide, rough-hewn table in front of the sofa.

“Who’s weird? Me, or the people—like you—who pay to read about my life?” He hoped his smile would show the joke in the challenge.

“Everybody. Just weird. We’re nosy assholes, the lot of us.”

He laughed. “Maybe not the whole lot, but
a
lot, yes. I’d agree there. I don’t make a living writing about my own life, by the way. I made a little extra money, but not a huge pile. This grant is nice, but it’s an anomaly. What I really do is teach. And I’m not even a memoirist by training.”

“No?”

He finished his bourbon and let the fire ignite and then die down in his belly before he answered. “No. I’m a poet.”

“Oh, good lord. Seriously?”

“Seriously. I would never have written a memoir if Maggie hadn’t died. The Fates conspired to make me a memoirist, and now I guess I’m stuck.”

Her laugh was melancholy, and Theo sensed a story lying beneath it. “Yeah. That happens.” She picked up her glass and drained it, then set it down again. “I thought my philosophy degree was a dead-ender, but it seems like poet would be worse. How does one land on ‘poet’ as a career choice?”

A philosophy degree. Oh, he liked that. It spoke of keen wit and deep curiosity—things he’d already seen in her. He could imagine them having long, involved conversations over dinner. Or in bed.

“One doesn’t really have a choice. Words demand their due.” It was his standard answer to her common question. Most people let it lie where it landed, because they didn’t understand and didn’t want to appear as if they hadn’t understood.

She nodded. “I guess they would. There’s a quote by a writer I like: ‘When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.’ There wasn’t any poetry in
Orchids
—is that because the words weren’t there when your wife was dying? Is that what you mean?”

Jesus Christ. It was like she’d opened his head and chest and pulled out his deepest thoughts and feelings. “That’s Woolf.
The Waves
.” His voice broke on the last word, and he cleared his throat.