Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3) (8 page)

That was a thought for another time. Her eyes were blurring; it was nearly four o’clock. She closed out of the highlight list. Before she could close down her tablet entirely, she noticed that she was on
Orchids
’ dedication page. Carmen rarely bothered reading dedications and acknowledgements in books; she considered them private messages meant for particular people. But now this one caught her eye:

To Elias and Jordan, who lost their watch, too.

Grab hold my hands, sons.

Grab hold each other.

Make a circle.

A dial.

Turn

Up your faces

And find our sun.

We’ll keep time together.

She’d been wrong. There was poetry in
Orchids in Autumn
. In truth, there was poetry on every page. He’d loved hard, he mourned hard, and he’d laid his open heart out on paper and offered it up to the world. She’d been wrong about that, too—he wasn’t invisible in his grief. He’d been subsumed by it.

Carmen’s eyes blurred acutely. She tried to tell herself that was fatigue. She tried to tell herself the lump in her throat was fatigue, too. But she knew better. She set her tablet aside and closed her eyes. As she drifted off, a certainty enveloped her—she should not call Theo. She should never see Theo again. Because she could feel things stirring inside her. Maybe once-in-a-lifetime things. He was making her feel them.

And he’d felt them for someone else.

~oOo~

When she woke, the sun was blazing bright in the room, and Rosa was moving about in the kitchen. Carmen opened her tablet and checked the time. Past ten. She tossed back the throw, which she didn’t remember covering herself with, and went to check on her sister.

Rosa was sitting at the small table, drinking coffee and nibbling a piece of toast. Her hair was wet, and she wore her fluffy blue robe. She’d showered; that was a good sign.

“Morning, glory. How’re you feeling?” Carmen went and got herself some coffee, too. She felt a little bit like
she’d
had a wild night out.

“I’m okay. Embarrassed, and a little wiggly, but okay.” She looked okay, too. Fresh-faced, even.

“No need to be embarrassed, sis. We don’t need to see those guys again.”

Rosa looked up from her coffee at that, her eyes sharp. “But I want to. I want to have the day we planned today.”

“It’s a bad idea. Let’s just move on.”

“But Theo—you like him.”

Carmen scoffed, but she had to look away. “Please. I barely know him.”

“No, you like him. You’re nice to him. And he looks at you like there’s a heavenly light shining down on your head. Plus, he’s hot. For an old guy, he’s wicked hot.” She sipped her coffee, which was half milk—Rosa liked it sweet and creamy and barely worthwhile. “He’s really old, though, isn’t he? I mean, he’s their
father
.”

Carmen shrugged. “Didn’t ask. Don’t care.” She’d done the math, however. Eli was twenty-five or so. There was mention in
Orchids
of him being twenty when Maggie died, and that was about five years ago, she thought. So Theo was mid-forties, probably. At least. But he looked closer to her own age.

“Pfft. You care. I can tell. And anyway, I like Jordan. He’s fun and weird and has amazing taste. I want to go shopping with him, and I want to do our fancy date. I want to see Eli in a tux.”

“You still like Eli? Even after last night?”

“Yeah. I don’t know if he likes me still, but he was nice to me. I remember everything. I wish I didn’t. I was obnoxious. But he was nice.”

He had been pretty nice to her, but one thing stuck in Carmen’s craw. “He was calling you Jersey Shore, Rosie. That didn’t seem so nice to me.”

She was quiet for a few seconds. “Yeah. That didn’t bother me last night, but I guess it does now. He’s not even right. Jersey and Rhody aren’t the same thing.” Again she paused. “Is my accent that bad?”

It was more than the accent—in fact, the accent was probably the least of it—but Carmen wasn’t about to take that all on during this morning-after moment. “It’s broad, yeah. But all your friends sound the same. At home, it’s not so noticeable, you know?”

“You and Carlo hardly have one at all. Luca and John, neither. Just me and Joey. How come?”

Joey’s wasn’t even as broad as Rosa’s—and Joey’s had been all but gone since his speech had changed. That answer was easy, and also difficult. “Mom wouldn’t let us. If we dropped our Rs or whatever, she’d make us say it again. She did that with you, too, but you were still young when she died. I guess you were still picking up your speech habits.”

She sighed. “Mom dying really fucked me up.”

Carmen agreed—she was just beginning to understand how much. She reached over and gave her sister’s arm a squeeze. “Okay. Theo gave me his number. If you’re sure you’re up for it, I’ll call and see if our plans are still on for today.”

They could have a nice dinner and then say good night. She could be around Theo and not have it ignite something. He was just a man. Beyond a booty call, for which Theo was no longer a candidate, she had no need of a man.

~oOo~

Theo had sounded relieved and thrilled to hear from her, but she tried not to encourage him. They arranged to meet for lunch, and afterward, he and Eli would go off for a few hours while Carmen allowed herself to be dragged around through boutiques with Rosa and Jordan.

Lunch was friendly. Carmen kept her distance, and after a few minutes, Theo let her. She made a point not to notice the looks he was sending her way and instead focused on Rosa and the boys. She was particularly interested to see how Eli treated her sister this morning. Though Jordan dominated the conversation with Rosa—he seemed to be, generally, a conversation dominator—Eli was friendly and kind, behaving as though he were still interested. Maybe he was. Rosa was certainly interested in him.

He called her simply ‘Rosa,’ and he asked, without snark, how she was feeling. Maybe the ‘Jersey Shore’ thing had mostly been about her drunkenness.

When the two groups separated after lunch, Theo caught Carmen’s eye. He didn’t say anything, though. He merely cocked his head and held her gaze, then turned and went the opposite direction with Eli.

Carmen felt guilty, and that was dumb. There was nothing between them, and so nothing to feel guilty about.

When she turned to Jordan and Rosa, they were both giving her a look, like they knew something she didn’t. She ignored them.

~oOo~

“Oh. My. Sweet. Fanciful.
Goddess
! Look at yourself!” Jordan clapped, his hands just under his chin, and Carmen wondered how much of his attitude was burlesque, a performance. He stood there with a long, ivory silk scarf draped around his neck—that and a vintage tie pin were his only purchases of the day thus far—and looked her up and down. “That’s it! Try nothing else on—you have found
the dress
.”

She went to a standing mirror and considered herself. The dress was form-fitting and mostly black. It was sleeveless, with a demure jewel neckline, and on the short side, the hem landing at about mid-thigh. She had good legs and knew it—long and shapely, with slender ankles. When she had to subject herself to dress-wearing, she liked this length. Not so short as to be trampy, but showing plenty of leg nonetheless. Along the sides, curving inward at the shoulders and at the waist, the black jersey gave way to panels that were quite close to Carmen’s olive skin tone. The effect seemed interesting.

She liked the dress first and foremost because it was comfortable. It was snug, but the jersey had some give, so she didn’t feel like she was trapped in it. The neckline was high, so she wouldn’t need to worry about keeping her boobs in place. And the length was such that she wouldn’t be on her bare ass when she sat.

Was she also thinking about what Theo would think of the dress? She couldn’t lie to herself. Yes, she was. In little more than twenty-four hours, he’d wormed his way into her head dangerously. Despite her best intentions, she kept flashing to the feel of him, the smell of him. The taste of him. And when she wasn’t thinking about that, she was remembering the highlighted passages of his book. She tried to cool all that by remembering his growing list of stupid lines, but those were becoming increasingly charming as all the other memories rubbed off on them.

She shouldn’t have called him. But she watched her sister bantering happily with his son, and, remembering Rosa’s drunken, naked despair of the night before, remembering her weeping in Carmen’s lap, she couldn’t deny her this day.

It had occurred to her that the fact that Rosa was a sad, weepy drunk was important. Carmen was realizing that there might be a lot going on under that trendy sheen.

Rosa stood on a platform amid three huge, ornately gilt mirrors. She was wearing a brilliantly spangled gold dress. The bodice was strapless and all large sequins. The flouncy skirt was silk tulle and dotted with more sequins. Wow. The skirt was trampy short, which was Rosa’s preferred length, and when she spun in place—as she was doing now—it was quite clear that if she bought Midas’s lampshade and planned to wear it, she would need to wear more substantial panties than the thong she currently had on.

“Rosie? What do you think?”

Rosa stopped her pirouetting and eyed Carmen up and down. “Oh, nice, Caramel. Not everybody can pull off an illusion dress without looking like they’re trying to hide something, but you totally rock it. That’s perfect. And it’s no knockoff. That’s a McCartney, right?” She turned again. “What do you think of mine?”

Carmen bit back the comment about Midas’s lampshade. Rosa obviously loved the dress. “It’s very glittery.”

“That’s an observation, not an opinion.” Rosa huffed and put her hands on her hips.

While Carmen smiled vaguely and tried to think of something not snarky to say about Rosa’s hooker ballerina getup, Jordan jumped in and saved the day.

“It’s going to catch all the lights and sparkle like crazy. No one will be able to take their eyes off you.”

That did the trick. Pleased and beaming in both face and body, Rosa turned back to the ostentatiously scrolled gilt mirrors. Which she matched.

This whole consignment shop had a Louis XVI vibe to it. Lots of faux decadence. But Carmen was more comfortable here than she’d been while they were browsing through the actual designer boutiques. A peek at a couple of price tags out there had nearly made her swallow her tongue. She was financially comfortable, but she was so because she didn’t buy
thousand dollar
pairs of shoes or
two thousand dollar
dresses. That was nuts. Rosa wanted designer, so they were shopping consignment. The shop advertised that the clothes were cleaned and refurbished before being offered for sale. Carmen supposed they could trust that. For an eighty-percent reduction in cost, she’d trust that.

“Now, ladies,” Jordan announced, “You need shoes.”

Carmen turned to see him standing with two pairs of shoes in his hands—gold strappy sandals with a mile-high heel, and nude platform pumps, also with a deadly high heel, though not as high as the sandals. Probably four inches, though. She would break a leg on those. Or her neck.

Rosa squealed at the gold sandals and snatched them from Jordan’s hand, but Carmen shook her head. “No. Those will kill me. Jordan, I wear work boots and sneakers every day of my life. There’s no way. I need a lower heel. And maybe black. How about boots? I’m good in boots.”

“Boots would be terrible with that dress. And the nude will extend the line of your
amazing
legs.” He waved the pumps at her. “Come on, just try. You’ll look so fantastic, it’ll be worth a death or two. You’ll see.”

She took them from him, to humor him and to prove her point. No shoe would look good enough to risk certain maiming.