Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3) (7 page)

She smiled warmly. “Yes. I love her unreasonably much. Is that what you mean?” she asked again.

“It is, yes.” He was done conversing. His body was on fire, and it wasn’t the bourbon. He was feeling a kind of overpowering desire—a
need
—he hadn’t felt since Maggie had been strong and well. “Carmen…”

He shifted on the sofa, moving toward her, ready to take hold of her, but she stood abruptly and reached for the forgotten, empty glass that was still in his hand. She set it on the table next to her empty wine glass. Then she held out her hand.

“C’mon. Bed’s this way.”

She led him into another airy, spacious room. Not palatial in scope or appointment. Cozy and comfortable, done in warm neutrals and simple antiques.

“Your friend has great taste.”

“Yeah, she does.” Her voice was muffled; she already had her black tank pulled halfway off. Apparently, there would be no sensual mutual undressing.

But Theo couldn’t simply begin shedding his clothes. What was before him was too beautiful a sight to miss. Not seeming to notice her avid audience, Carmen discarded her little top, then toed off her boots—the same low-heeled boots she’d worn the night before—then opened her belt and jeans and rid herself of them, as well. Wearing nothing but a matching set of black lace underwear—bra and thong—she walked to a mirrored dresser and pulled the elastic free of her hair. She tousled her hair then, so that the part that had been banded settled in with the rest.

Still not paying him any attention, she turned to the windows, which were covered only by sheer under-panels. The heavier drapes were tucked back behind decorative hooks. “Oh, shit,” she muttered and then went to drop the heavier material over the windows, giving them privacy. She turned to him.

“Sorry. At home, I don’t have curtains in my bedroom. I keep forgetting not to flash the neighbors across the way.”

She was standing there in her lovely, sexy dainties, showing a body more beautiful than any he’d seen. She was tall and lithe, the muscles in her back, legs, arms, belly flexing subtly but visibly as she moved. Her breasts were fantastic—larger than average but firm and round. Maggie had been smaller than average in every way. He’d loved her body, cherished it as he’d cherished her. But she had not been the kind of beauty who might have stopped traffic.

Carmen could stop traffic in space.

A bolt of guilt sliced through his thoughts, the first he’d felt. Being with Carmen was not wrong. He felt no guilt for what they were doing, about to do. Comparing Maggie against her, though—that was bad news. It was Carmen he was with, Carmen’s body he was about to have in his hands, so he set Maggie gently aside.

“Beautiful girl.” He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until Carmen cocked her head and smiled.

As she reached with both hands around to her back, she retorted, “That’s cheesy as fuck, you know.”

He went to her then and wrapped his hands around her arms, pulling them forward before she could unclasp her bra. “It’s accurate. And I want to do that.”

With a cheeky grin, she put her hands in the open collar of his shirt and began unbuttoning buttons. “You’re way behind me, though. Need to catch up.” As she undid each button, her fingers scratched gently at his chest, and then his belly. Sweet Christ, she felt good. Years since he’d been touched like this. Years.

When his shirt was open, she brought her hands to his shoulders and pushed the fabric from them. He shrugged and let it fall to the floor behind him. She noticed his ink, her eyes widening as her fingers traced the black-and-grey piece from shoulder to elbow on his right arm. A highly stylized landscape scene: mountains, pines, and wind. Home.

“You surprise me.” Her voice had a husky tone that he felt right in his cock.

“Why?”

“You didn’t strike me as a man who would have ink—especially not a big piece like this.” She smiled. “Maybe some silly reminder of a drunken night with the frat brothers—a Superman emblem or something. But not this.” Her hand slid over the piece and down his arm, circling the leather cuff at his wrist.

A light ripple of offense went through him. With his other hand, he lifted her chin until her eyes met his. “What does that mean?”

Unapologetic, she shrugged. “You know. Writer. Poet. Sensitive soul. Puffy white shirts, not badass body art.”

“Ouch.” But he couldn’t find a strong foundation for offense, not while her hands were on him, not while she stood there before him, smiling at him, her body warm and supple and offered to him.

She grinned up at him, and it was all sex. “Well, you’ve shown me my error, that’s for sure. Jesus, you’re gorgeous.”

Then her hands were on him with more intent, tracing the line of his shoulders, then down, over his chest, pausing to tweak lightly at his nipples before moving down the center of his belly and then hooking into his jeans. His cock surged to sense her so close.

He stood there and let her, savoring the magnificent sensations of being touched in this way, and by a woman whose beautiful, dark eyes were fiery with desire. Her fingers came back up and moved through the hair on his chest, and she made a sound like a purr. For a moment longer, he closed his eyes and simply felt.

And then she lifted the pendants that lay at the top of his breastbone, and he opened his eyes. Shit. He should have taken those off. Wait—should he have? What would it mean if he did?

While he grappled with that cosmic question, she asked, “M. Is that for your wife?”

He took them from her and palmed them, letting his fist rest on his chest. “Yes. I’m sorry. I guess I should have taken them off.” Should? Probably. He was still undecided about whether he
could
, though.

But she shook her head. “No. It’s fine. There’s nothing going on here that gives me cause to be threatened that you want to remember your wife. And, anyway, I like it. It’s poignant.” She kissed his knuckles.

He released the jasper stone and pewter disc and pushed that hand around her neck, into her hair. Then he pulled her against his chest, his other arm circling her waist. His bare skin against hers, almost as bare, set fire to his nerves and to his self-control. No longer could he stand still and let her study his body with her hands. He brought his mouth to hers, pushing his tongue into her mouth immediately and with force. He felt raw and exposed, and he needed to take something from her to salve what she’d made ache.

Last night, when he’d kissed her, he’d been gentle, hesitant, doing something he hadn’t done for years, and with someone he had not yet known. He’d been unsure of himself and of her. Tonight, it didn’t even occur to him to wonder. But she responded favorably to his force, moaning into his mouth, snaking her hands up over his shoulders and into his hair, claiming fistfuls, holding him to her even as her hands pulled, the tension at the roots of his hair prickling his scalp.

They were standing near a wall; he turned and pushed her up against it, leaning hard into her, shoving his leg between her thighs. Needing more of her body, he tore his mouth from hers, and a wrenching, wild sound fled his throat. Fighting her hold in his hair, he trailed his mouth down the side of her neck, over her shoulder, pulling her bra strap out of his way.

He sucked and nipped as if her body were his dessert, and as he did so, she flexed on him, drawing herself back and forth along his thigh. From her wild moans and frantic breath, and from the wet heat seeping through the denim on his leg, he knew she was getting herself off on him. That was unbelievable—to have a woman so hot for him that she couldn’t wait for his touch? Christ. That alone might undo him.

He grabbed her hips and stilled them, chuckling at her frustrated growl. Then he kissed his way down her body, over her tantalizing breasts, suckling each nipple in turn, through the black lace of her bra, making her twitch and moan. He continued downward until he was kneeling before her. She had resisted at first, pulling his hair, trying to keep him in position with his leg hard on her, but when she saw what he intended, her grip changed. When he looked up, he met dark, dark, eyes, two deep pools of need.

As they stared at each other, a Bruce Springsteen song—‘Rosalita’—suddenly began to play in the room. For a sliver of a second, Theo thought he was having a stroke or an aneurysm or something.

Then Carmen tensed and let go of his hair. “Fuck. That’s Rosie calling.” At the same time, his own phone buzzed in the pocket of the jeans he still had on, alerting a text.

He stepped back, and Carmen went to her jeans, where they lay in a puddle on the floor. As Theo tried to force his head back into gear, his phone buzzed again, and he shoved his hand into his jeans. He grazed his aching-hard cock through the pocket and bit back a groan. Talk about shitty timing.

The text was from Eli.
Sry. Need R’s address. Sorta got her drunk. Sorta really.

A few feet from him, Carmen was saying into her phone, “Sissy, I can’t understand you. Put one of the boys on…Don’t cry, Rosie. It’s okay…Hi, Jordan. It’s 71 Rue de la Lavande…Yeah, he’s here…It’s okay.”

She ended the call and turned to him with a rueful smirk. Her skin was flushed, and her breath was still rough.

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah. Just wicked drunk. She gets stupid and weepy when she is. I’ve had to rescue her a few times since she discovered party libations. Guess I’m in for a night of holding her hair and promising her that I’ll always love her no matter what.” She pulled her bra strap back over her shoulder and resettled her breasts in their cups. The sight made him ache. Then she met his eyes again. “Rain check?”

While she was on the phone, he’d texted Eli that Jordan had the address. Now, he put his phone back in his pocket and closed the distance between him and this beautiful girl standing aroused and nearly naked with him. He brushed her hair from her face. “Rain check. Yes. Absolutely.”

~ 5 ~

Theo and Carmen had time to get their clothes back on and get themselves under control. They had time to make out a little more and almost lose that control again before Eli knocked on the door.

Theo really was gorgeous, and he really was hot. Carmen had been turned on to full blast, and now she felt frustrated and restless. But also relieved—there’d been surprising intensity between them even as they’d merely talked, and maybe even hooking up with Theo at all would lead her down a path she wasn’t prepared to travel. She’d need to think about it. Rosa’s woo-hoo girl tendencies might have saved the day here.

Eli carried Rosa into the apartment, with Jordan coming in right behind. Rosa was conscious, but boy, was she drunk.

Theo took in the tableau of Eli holding Rosa draped drunkenly in his arms. “This is how you take care of a lady, Elias?”

Ignoring his father, Eli turned to Carmen. “Where should I take her?”

Rosa stirred then and giggled. “Take me to bed, Mountain Man!” At least, Carmen thought that was what she’d said. Her mouth and tongue weren’t exactly on the same wavelength. But Eli looked embarrassed, and maybe a little annoyed, so yeah…Rosa had said something along those lines.

Carmen hoped her sister would black out. She didn’t need to remember this display. As she indicated to Eli that he should follow her to Rosa’s room, Carmen noticed that her little skirt had hiked up. She was wearing a thong, and Eli’s hand was smack on her bare ass.

He saw her notice and had the courtesy to look sheepish. “Sorry…I just…it shifted and…”

“It’s fine. Let’s just get her tucked in.”

Carmen turned the covers back, and Eli laid Rosa down—gently, gentlemanly. Suddenly somber, with a chance of weepy, she grabbed his hand. “I’m sorry if you think I’m a slut or something and hate me.”

He gave her hand a squeeze. “I don’t. I think you’re drunk. Sleep it off, Jersey Shore. Big day tomorrow, remember.”

Carmen didn’t even have to ask why he’d called her Jersey Shore. She didn’t like it, but she knew what he meant. She’d thought the same thing herself. That was kind of the whole point of being in Paris—to shake the cliché off Rosa’s shoulders.

Rosa’s hand went slack and fell away, and she rolled over. “Fancy date,” she mumbled and then was quiet.

Eli gave Carmen another sheepish look and then left the room, closing the door after him. Carmen settled her baby sister better in bed, taking off her sandals—and oh, her feet looked sore—and removing her bigger jewelry. She’d have to sleep in her clothes and makeup, though.

As Carmen tucked her in, there was a knock on the door. When she opened it, Theo was standing there with a copper pot from the rack in the kitchen. “I thought she might need this?”

Carmen grinned and took the pot. “Good thinking.” She set the pot on the floor next to the bed, closed the curtains, and then left Rosa to sleep it off.

When she came back into the living room, the Wilde men were still there, in the midst of an argument on low volume. Theo was clearly pissed about the state Rosa had been returned in, and Eli was angry that he was being blamed. Jordan watched his family argue as if he were at a tennis match, his head swiveling back and forth, occasionally trying to intercede.

Carmen went to Theo and pulled on his arm, trying to back him off. “It’s okay. Rosa’s an adult. She makes her own choices.” She turned to Eli. “I assume you weren’t force feeding her booze?”

“No! I tried to get her to stop, and then she copped a big ‘tude about who was I to tell her what to do. So I shut up and kept an eye on her.”

Yep. Sounded like typical Rosa. Wild and then weepy. “You did fine. Thank you for keeping track of her. What did she drink?”

Jordan answered. “Banana daiquiris, mostly. And Jell-O shots.”

Well, crap. That was going to make a mess on the way back up. Gross. Carmen sighed. “How much?”

“A lot,” Jordan answered. “We did three of the shots, and then we moved to the daiquiris. Like six, maybe? At least?”

“You seem awfully sober, if you drank with her.” That was Theo, giving his younger son a censorious glare.

“I only had two. She was drinking them like Slurpees.”

The night was turning into a clusterfuck, and Carmen hadn’t gotten the kind of fuck she’d been going for, so she was not in the mood to stand here and watch these guys figure out who to blame and for what. “Enough. Thanks for bringing her home. Thanks for dinner. Whatever. I’ve got it from here. Good night.” She went to the front door and opened it.

Abashed, all three Wilde men headed in a line for the door. Eli went first, muttering “Sorry” on his way past. Jordan stopped at the threshold. “Wait—what about tomorrow? Shopping and dinner and all that? We’re still on, right?” His eyes pleaded at her.

“Jordan, go on, son.” Theo was standing right behind him.

But Jordan didn’t move. “Carmen?”

She sighed. “I have no idea. Right now, I don’t care. But I guess it’s up to Rosa and how she feels tomorrow.”

“We don’t have phone numbers! We need phone numbers!”

“I got it, Jordan. Go on.” Theo put his hand on his son’s shoulder and pushed him gently forward. “You and Eli go on down and wait.”

Jordan nodded and walked on, meeting Eli at the elevator. Theo watched until his sons closed the cage and started downward. Carmen watched Theo. When he turned back to her, he smiled. His face was wonderful—those dimples, the square jaw, the cleft in his chin. His blue eyes, serious and witty at the same time. “I’m sorry about all this. But I’m going to want to collect on the rain check soon. Can I have your number?”

“I don’t know, Theo. Maybe this is a bad idea.”

He stepped up, pushing her against the open door, and looked down at her, his eyes intent. “Why?”

Jesus, he smelled good. Carmen couldn’t identify what it was—not cologne, not bourbon (maybe a little bourbon), and, sadly, not sex. Just…
good
. Without intending to, she took a deep breath, and his scent made her tingle way down low. She blinked and cleared her head, trying to get control of herself before she did something stupid like grabbing him and dragging him to the sofa. There was a question in the air between them that she needed to answer.

But she couldn’t. The answer—that the intensity between them was making her anxious—would only open more questions. So she said simply, “I don’t know. It feels like a bad idea.”

“Not to me.” He brought his mouth down close to hers, within millimeters. “It feels like a very good idea to me.”

She wanted to kiss him. She’d barely have to move at all to make that happen. Instead, she shook her head. “No, Theo. This is the time to stop this.”

A heavy sigh, his breath caressing her face, and then he took a step back. “Will you let me have your phone for a sec?”

“What?”

He held his hand out. “I’ll give you my number. Then it’s up to you whether we see each other again.”

Failing to see the flaw in that idea, she handed him her phone, and he keyed his number into her contacts. He handed it back to her, then leaned in and kissed her cheek, a lingering brush of his lips over her skin.

“
Au revoir
, beautiful girl.” With that, he walked to the elevator.

She closed the door. His scent and touch filled her still.

~oOo~

The copper pot was nowhere near enough.

About an hour after Theo and his sons had left, while Carmen was sitting on the balcony stewing about the curse of discontent that seemed to follow her fucking everywhere for fucking ever, Rosa moaned loudly—really it was more of a scream—and Carmen jumped up and went to her. She found her on the floor of the bedroom, having already made a mess in and around the pot. Now she was trying to work her way to the bathroom.

Banana daiquiri and Jell-O shots, combined with whatever food had remained of Rosa’s dinner, made a particularly noxious concoction. Ugh. But Carmen picked Rosa up and led her to the bathroom. She held her hair while she puked some more. Then she sat on the marble floor, with Rosa’s head in her lap, stroking her hair and comforting her as she cried.

As predicted.

“I suck. I suck, I suck, I suck,” Rosa wailed.

“You don’t suck, sissy. You’re beautiful and smart. You just got drunk.”

“No—you think I suck. You think…you think I’m imm’chure and vasc…vasu…
vac-u-ous.
That’s what you said.”

Yes, she was immature. But no, in fact, Carmen did not think Rosa was vacuous. She thought she
played
vacuous. She scoured her brain, trying to think when she would have said that to her face. Shit, maybe she’d overheard something. Carmen had a tendency to rant. She might have said something along those lines to Luca or Carlo, maybe.

“You’re not vacuous, Rosie. You can’t graduate
cum laude
from Brown and be vacuous.”

Their bizarre discussion was interrupted by more tropical-flavored puking, and when Rosa resumed her pity party, she had moved on slightly.

“And now Eli thinks I suck, too, because I suck. And he’s so pretty and nice. And pretty. And nice.”

“You met him a few hours ago, sis. Even if he does think you suck, it doesn’t change your life at all.”

She cried harder, wrapping her arms around Carmen’s thigh. “You don’t know. You don’t know. Nobody knows.”

Feeling sad and guilty, Carmen cradled her sister close, pressed her lips to her hair, and held her.

~oOo~

Rosa finally emptied her belly around three-thirty and was able to keep some water down. Carmen got her back into bed and tucked her in. Then she stretched out on the comfy sofa with her tablet. Instead of taking on
Infinite Jest
at this ungodly hour, she opened
Orchids in Autumn
and scrolled through the passages she’d highlighted when she’d first read the book.

It is said that time heals all wounds. That is a lie. Time hardens wounds, leaves scars—flesh without feeling. Thick. Numb.

I treasure every moment that Maggie lingered with us, her bad days as well as her good, even the days toward the end when she was erratic and confused, when that confusion made her cruel. But sometimes I wish that it had been a bus or a train, even a gun, that had so changed our lives. Something quick, sudden, without time to prepare. Because there’s never time to prepare. There is no preparing. There is only time.

Loving someone for a generation is a way of being in the world that becomes comfortable, like a piece of clothing or jewelry worn every day—a watch. Something you think about when you need it, something you expect always to feel the presence of in some way only apparent by its absence. Losing Maggie was like losing my watch. I keep checking my heart and finding it bare. And I have no way left of marking the passage of my time.

Several other, similar passages were highlighted as well. She remembered that the title had come from a scene at the end of Maggie’s days, when Theo, Eli, and Jordan had gone on a mission to fill her room with her favorite flower, a mission made more difficult because she’d loved spring-blooming orchids but had died in October. They’d succeeded, and Maggie had died in a room teeming with her favorite, white and purple flowers. The title had nothing to do with time, other than it was the end of Maggie’s.

But Carmen had never before noticed how often the theme of time arose in Theo’s memoir, and she’d never thought about why those passages resonated with her enough to mark them. She knew that she’d loved the book because his musings on grief had spoken to how she’d felt when her mother was dying. Losing a spouse was different, she was sure, from losing a parent. But as personal and particular as Theo’s experience was, Carmen recognized herself in it. And, if her annotations were to be trusted,
time
seemed to be the pivot of her recognition. She wondered why.