Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3) (4 page)

“Dad? I’m pretty sure you’re
blushing
right now. What’s that about?” Eli crossed his arms over his chest.

“Oh! Oh, oh!” Jordan gasped. “Did you keep your promise? Is that a beautiful girl blush?”

Trying to ignore the sudden rabid interest of both his children, Theo stood and cut himself a piece of still-warm breakfast cake. “You boys should get dressed and get moving if you’re doing the town today. Lots of summer crowds.”

“Oh, no. You have to say! Did you meet somebody?”

In the past couple of years, since he’d gone off to college, Jordan had begun to fret about his father’s solitude. At first it had been little comments, offers to come home for weekends, things like that. But he’d been pushing harder and harder, and when Theo was awarded both a sabbatical and the grant, Jordan had decided that a sojourn in France was the perfect opportunity for his father to have a romance.

And hell, maybe he was right.

He looked at both of his sons now. He had their undivided attention. “I kept my promise and spoke to a beautiful girl—a woman, actually—last night, yes. We had a nice conversation. She’s even read
Orchids
.”

Jordan clapped. “Ooh! Then she knows you’re available
and
have a heartbreaking backstory! Somebody call Nicholas Sparks!”

Eli stood up and grabbed his plate. “Jordan, jeez. Sometimes you really suck, you know that?” He dumped his dishes in the sink and turned on the professional-style faucet.

Jordan simply shrugged.

Both boys adored their mother. Both boys had mourned her hard and mourned her still. But they had done so in different ways. Theo had written a little bit about it in the book in question. Eli’s way, like Eli himself, was more traditional, and thus more widely understandable. He was even now reticent to talk about his mom with anyone but the people in this kitchen, because he could not always trust himself to keep his cool.

Jordan was Jordan, and he grieved like he lived. The same wry aplomb that had carried him through an adolescence and a public school education as a proudly out young man, that had lifted him off the pavement when he’d been bullied and beaten, and that had spurred him to coat in fuchsia glitter the casts he’d had to wear on his arm on three separate occasions—that aplomb had carried him through the loss of his mother, too.

Eli understood that. But sometimes he didn’t.

Under that fuchsia glitter had been a devastated boy. But Jordan needed to keep that boy safe and tucked away. Only Theo had been allowed to see the brokenhearted child who’d lost his mother.

Theo’s own grief had eased over the years like a stone in a river. He would always love Maggie and the life they’d had together for twenty-two years, but the edges of his pain had worn away, and now he carried her memory like a smooth agate in his pocket—or, more concretely, like the jasper stone around his neck, a comforting reminder of a past that was no longer.

Jasper. A healing stone. Maggie’s best friend, Phyllis, had given it to him at the funeral.

He put his hand to his throat and picked up the pendants hanging there from leather cords. Two of them—the jasper circle, and a rough pewter disc engraved with the letter M.

Eli saw him do it and came to his side. “Mom would be glad. She told you she’d be pissed if you pined after her for the rest of your life. I think four and a half years is enough.” He grinned. “You’re gettin’ up there, you know, Dad. If you don’t get moving, you could croak, and then you’ve pined for the rest of your life, after all.”

“I haven’t been pining. Also, screw you.” He punched his eldest on the arm.

He honestly hadn’t been pining, not for the past couple of years, anyway. He just hadn’t been interested. Nobody compared to the woman he’d had, and dating and all that crap seemed like too much of a hassle without any real interest in the person he was with. He’d gotten used to a life without sex while Maggie was ill. She’d lingered, a shell of herself, for a long time. The transition from the watchful solitude of a caretaking husband to the true solitude of a widower had been so slow it had been almost imperceptible. So he hadn’t been desperate for physical companionship, either. It had simply been easier to be alone. Until there was somebody interesting enough to make that not true.

The mysterious and alluring Carmen had caught his interest.

Maybe when he took a run later, he’d head in that direction.

~oOo~

After the boys left for their sightseeing extravaganza, promising to let him know when they were on their way to the Louvre, Theo sat down to his Mac and got to work. He was supposed to be writing the follow-up to
Orchids in Autumn
. That was what the grant was for. He’d had no intention of writing a follow-up to that book until he’d been handed a big, fat check and eight months in Paris to do so.

Paris—because he and Maggie had honeymooned here long ago. He was supposed to be writing the story of the beginning of the great love for which he’d already written a story of the end.

Not exactly a topic that encouraged one to get on with one’s life.

Except, conversely, maybe perversely, it had. Reliving that part of his life with Maggie, muted though it was by the watercolor effect of time on memory, had brought a new kind of closure. He’d set lived grief aside years ago, but he’d done so by putting most of his wife away in a box in the back of the coat closet of his mind. Preparing to write this new memoir, he’d had to take the box out, sit down in the hallway with it in his lap, and go through the memories. He’d discovered that they were only moments to enjoy, not pains to be feared. Like the round jasper he wore, remembering Maggie now had no edges that might reopen fresh scars.

He wanted to see Carmen. Maybe that was nothing. Maybe last night was about the wine, and she was in fact a bitch. Or just not interested. But he hadn’t enjoyed a woman’s company like that in years.

Closing his laptop, he checked the ornate clock on the ornate mantle. Just past noon. He’d get in a run, and possibly…accidentally…trot by a certain apartment building across the street from Café Aphrodite—just to see—then come home to shower and meet up with his boys.

~ 3 ~

When Carmen got back to the apartment with coffee and pastries from the shop around the corner, Rosa was actually out of bed and in the shower. And before nine o’clock in the morning, no less.

She was even singing—though Carmen had no idea what song it was. Rosa’s taste in music, as in so many other things, tended to be of-the-moment. Her own taste was more of the Liz Phair, Ani DiFranco variety. Rosa called it bitchy music for bitches. Carmen couldn’t exactly deny it. If a woman who didn’t take shit she didn’t deserve was a bitch, then get her the club t-shirt.

Smiling as she listened to her baby sister’s tuneful voice belt out some pop ditty, she went into the kitchen and laid breakfast out on a hand-painted stoneware plate. She selected a chocolate croissant for herself, set it on a napkin, and took it and her coffee out to the balcony, where there was a little round table and a couple of chairs, and Carmen could watch the street start its weekday.

There was quite a bit of traffic on the street and sidewalk as people headed toward the Metro or their own transportation. A delivery truck parked in the side alley immediately across the street, and two workers from the flower shop there worked speedily to set up the sidewalk offerings of fresh-cut blooms. Carmen watched with keen interest; plants were her thing. Not cut flowers, she found cut flowers a little sad—to kill a living thing in order to appreciate its beauty seemed, at least, counterproductive, if not macabre. And yet, she couldn’t deny that the cut blooms being arrayed in huge bunches at the front of the shop stunned with vivid, vibrant color.

Carmen had more or less fallen into her career. She’d been an avid gardener since she was a little girl, when her mother had given her a tiny pair of rubber boots and a set of equally small, pink-trimmed gardening tools and led her out to ‘help’ in the garden on Caravel Road. When she’d gotten older, she’d spent as much time as she’d been allowed on job sites with her father and brothers. The affinity and knowledge for landscape design had been nurtured in those ways, but she’d never thought to make a career out of it until her mother got sick, and Carmen’s life had reverted to the size of Quiet Cove.

She was twenty-four when her mother died. For the next few years, all of her attention had been devoted to Joey and Rosa, the siblings who’d still been children. Their father’s grief had turned him inside out and made him useless at home, so Carmen and Carlo had taken over. But only Carmen had given up everything to do so. And even after their father had picked up the parental reins again, he’d needed Carmen close to help him.

When she had been able to think about her own life plans at all again, she had a philosophy degree and no related work experience years after college. Not that there was much one could do with a B.A. in philosophy, anyway. But she’d been helping people—friends, neighbors, even her father, on smaller jobs—design their green spaces for years, for free. So she started charging for it, asking people to get the word out.

Ten years later, Carmen Pagano Outdoor Design was a respected, well-established company, with a work range of about a hundred miles from the Cove.

Since her mother’s death, her entire life had had a range of about a hundred miles from the Cove. And once upon a time, she’d thought she’d live in Europe and travel to a new place in the world at least once a year.

She watched as the workers filled the shelves on the other side of the flower shop door with potted plants—lavender, hibiscus, orchids.

Orchids.
Orchids in Autumn
. Theo.

The effects this morning of the bottle of wine she’d drunk last night were mild—a little dry mouth, a light headache. One of the benefits, Carmen supposed, of a good bottle of wine was that it didn’t kick quite so hard the next morning. She rooted around in her head to see how she felt about her encounter with Theo Wilde. She’d certainly been more friendly with him than was her custom.

But she felt fine about it. She doubted she’d see him again, but she’d enjoyed herself. He’d even charmed her, and Carmen was tough to charm—especially by a man who’d approached her with the specific intent to be charming.

Last night, she’d seriously considered fucking him. He was hot. And smart. Talented—she knew that. Could be fun. But in the fresh morning breeze and brightening sun, she decided she didn’t need a fuck buddy in France, not even for a night. Why risk the complication? This trip was about Rosa.

Well, it was mostly about Rosa. She had work to do here, too—she had set up professional-courtesy tours of a few facilities, including some commercial lavender farms down south in Avignon.

Behind her, she heard Rosa walking through the living room to the kitchen, still singing, now under her breath. She turned and watched through the open balcony doors as her little sister went into the kitchen and then came out with a pastry and cup of coffee to match what Carmen had mostly finished. She came onto the balcony and sat at the table.

Rosa loved fashion—her version of it, anyway. She wasn’t necessarily an over-the-top dresser, but Carmen was often a bit baffled by her clothes, if only because she seemed to put far more effort into her ensembles than her schedule warranted. Today, for example: Rosa wore a miniskirt in what looked like pewter leather, with the iridescent sheen of material treated to look like metal. Over it, she wore a form-fitting white t-shirt, the short sleeves and the neckline trimmed with what looked for all the world to be a thin band of leopard skin.

They were sightseeing today, and the weather was warm. Carmen was wearing comfortable jeans with a black leather belt, low-heeled boots, and a black beater tank. Her one concession to style was that the beater was embellished with soutache braiding in a plum color.

“You’re chipper this morning, sis.”

Rosa grinned and sipped her coffee. “Ugh. It’s already cold.” Carmen waited for more fuss about that, but Rosa simply shrugged and took another drink. “Yeah. I guess I finally got on French time.” She crossed one leg over the other, and Carmen noticed that she was wearing strappy platform sandals with a serious heel.

“We’re going to be walking a lot today, hon. I don’t think you want to be wearing those shoes.”

Rosa scoffed. “Pfft. I wear heels all the time. I walked all over campus all day long in heels. I’ll be fine.”

“You sure? We’re going to have a problem if you want to bail halfway through the day. We’ve been here a week, and you’re finally dragging your ass into the city.”

“I’m
sorry
! I had
jetlag
!” She picked at her blueberry pastry.

“Nobody has jetlag for a week, Rosa.”

Well, Carmen should have kept her trap shut and enjoyed her sister’s good mood, because pushing her—and for no real reason—had brought the pouty face back.

“You’re being a bitch. As per
usual
.” Rosa raked her manicured fingers through her hair and stared out at the street. She was always doing something weird to her long, naturally dark brown locks. Usually, Carmen thought it looked overdone. Sometimes even trashy. But she liked this new color. In anticipation of commencement and this trip, Rosa had had some kind of ombre thing done, something close to her natural color at the top, then blending toward the bottom to a deep, rich burgundy. It looked good.

As for being called a bitch, Carmen was used to that. Regretting having poked at her sister on the day she’d finally been ready to face the world, Carmen let the insult slide. She even threw out an apology for good measure. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Let’s just have a good day today. You still want to do that?”

Rosa sipped her lukewarm coffee and made a little face. “Yeah. But if I have to see gardens and dusty old museums—”

Carmen cut her off. “The Louvre is not a dusty old museum, hon.”

“Whatever. I want good food, too. Someplace nice.”

“As nice as we can find that doesn’t require nicer clothes than we’re wearing.”

“But you dress like a farmhand,” Rosa huffed.

“I’m not dressing for dinner, precious. I didn’t even pack clothes for that kind of night. This is how I come today.”

“Fine. But we’re going shopping tomorrow, and you’re buying a cocktail dress or something. I want a fancy night out.”

Carmen chuckled. “You want a fancy date with your sister?”

“Do I have a choice of escort?”

“I guess you don’t,” she conceded with a sigh. “Fine. We’ll shop tomorrow, and I’ll buy some grossly overpriced dress and take you out for a fancy night in Paris.”

Rosa smiled broadly, her good mood restored. “We can be like Audrey Hepburn and…some other old-timey movie star.”

Carmen rolled her eyes. Yeah. Fun. Woot.

~oOo~

They took the Metro to the Bois de Boulogne. After two hours there, Rosa’s tolerance for parks had dried up. That was fine with Carmen; she hadn’t actually intended to drag her little sister through more. But one thing about managing Rosa—if she felt like she was getting a concession, her acceptance of the rest was much higher. Thinking that Carmen intended to visit two more gardens, Rosa would have bailed on this first one within an hour. But when, upon Rosa’s first complaint, Carmen said they could skip the others (which Carmen had already seen during Rosa’s sleep-a-thon) and just go have a nice lunch before the Louvre, Rosa perked right up and was a delight for the whole time Carmen wanted to study plants and arrangements in the Jardin de Bagatelle, inside the
bois
.

When Rosa had had her fill, instead of whining or bitching, she’d simply said she was getting hungry. She hadn’t even complained yet about her sore feet—though Carmen had seen her fidgeting often enough to know that she was regretting the strappy sandals. Oh, well, little sister. Live and learn.

Carmen knew that she was managing Rosa, who was twenty-two years old and a college graduate, like a spoiled toddler, but Rosa was a spoiled brat. Their father had compensated for his neglect of her in the years after their mother’s death by giving her everything she wanted, whether it was a real desire or a passing whim. Though she’d gone to a storied Ivy League university, she’d still been close to home, and her college experience had not penetrated the bubble of privilege and comfort she’d grown up in. She was a pampered, primped prima donna.

She was also really smart, and, at her core, she was a kindhearted, good person. Watching her with Carlo’s five-year-old son, Trey, Carmen had seen how good and nurturing Rosa was. But that bubble of entitlement had also given her an edge of rudeness, sometimes to the point of being a bully.

Some time back, Sabina had pointed out the ways in which the siblings had helped to create the monster that was Rosa. She’d also pointed out that they had, without seeing it, closed her out of the family in important ways, creating a vicious cycle that was disenfranchising her—spoiling her, not expecting anything from her, and then judging her because she was spoiled and never stepped up.

Sabina, with the clearer insight of someone who was just joining the family, had pointed it out, and then very little had changed. They’d all sort of acknowledged it, vowed to do better, and then gone back to the way things had been. Only Sabina had made any real effort to change things.

Well, enough was enough. Now it was time for Rosa to start her life, and Carmen would be damned if she was going to allow the only other Pagano girl out into the world without the tools to be as fantastic and successful as she could be.

But baby steps. On her first full day out in Paris, Carmen would manage the spoiled brat her sister still was and, hopefully, keep her open to the experiences of the day.

They took the Metro back into the center of the city and found a little café with a view of the Arc de Triomphe. There, in the guise of their waiter, Carmen encountered her first Paris resident whose English wasn’t sufficient to fill in the holes in her French. But Rosa’s French was fresher and stronger, so she let her little sister place their order. Rosa beamed with pride and did the hair-flip thing when the waiter— Frédéric, who was cute in the hipster way that was apparently a global trend—complimented her on her accent. Rosa’s Rhody accent was broader than anyone else’s in the family—it was the cliché, in fact—but she did have a decent French accent, it was true. Though Frédéric was probably flirting just a little.