Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3)

by Fanetti, Susan

  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 n
ow, 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.

  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 o
ff, 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.