“I love you, too, baby. We’ll always be here. You won’t lose your roots, but it’s time you let yourself reach up.” The words sounded stilted and tight, and Carmen looked up to see that her father, big and gruff, was crying. She slid off the chair and knelt at his feet, laying her head on his lap.
~oOo~
Sixty-three days after she was born, Teresa finally got to go home with her mother and father. Well, not home, exactly. They took her to the cottage, which was mostly packed up. They weren’t leaving for Maine until after the weekend. The pediatrician wanted her to stay close for a few days, to make sure the transition to home went smoothly. And the Paganos were having a party at the house on Caravel Road. Though tensions with the Uncles’ business were high, and there were still bodyguards with everyone, Carmen’s family was not about to send her and her family off with a whimper. So a welcome/farewell bash was in the works.
But on this late afternoon, by their request and her family’s grudging acquiescence, they were alone. Theo opened the back door of his Cherokee and unlatched Teresa’s car seat from its base. Carmen let herself out of the other back door, and they went into the cottage together.
She really loved this little house. Sure, the beach got crowded in the summer, and the weekenders didn’t respect her property line, but she woke up every morning to a sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean, and she went to sleep every night to the crash of the surf against the shore.
Her little house had been just perfect for her, too. Exactly the right size, decorated exactly to her taste, an effort of years. Maybe she had not been happy in her life, but she had loved this house. Here was where she’d kept herself—her self—for safekeeping.
But now, it was down to its bare bones, just the furniture that she was leaving John and the things they would need for the next few days left. Everything else was already loaded into a moving truck and on its way north. The walls echoed strangely, a hollow, sad sound.
The movers had brought her bed down from the loft, and the room that had been her office was now the bedroom for all three of them. The simple maple crib she’d bought, which was going to her father and Adele’s house, where they were setting up a nursery for visits, stood right next to the bed. Carmen sort of wished she’d bought the co-sleeping crib Andi had championed.
Teresa was sound asleep in her car seat. Standing in the bedroom, Theo looked lost, not sure where to put her. Carmen didn’t know, either. Hell, he was the one who’d done this before.
“Should we take her out of the seat?”
Theo smiled. “Best to let sleeping babies lie. She could make us pay if we wake her.”
Honestly, Teresa didn’t cry much and hardly ever screamed. Part of that was the circumstances of her birth—her lungs had not been ready to make much noise. But she had been active from her very first day, and she made her displeasure known. She simply did so more quietly than most babies. “Well, what, then?”
He lifted the carrier and set it in the middle of the crib. Then he turned the baby monitor on. The house was so small, they probably didn’t need one, but Carmen wanted every precaution possible. It was just a good standard monitor—Teresa’s breathing had improved so much that they had sent them home without an apnea monitor.
Theo took Carmen’s hand and started to lead her out of the room. “C’mon. I’ll call for pizza.”
But she couldn’t go. Watching her daughter sleep in a room in a house—her house, even if they were leaving it soon—and not in the hospital, standing here in the dim light of dusk, hearing only the faint sound of the surf and the adorable little squeaks Teresa was making in her sleep, Carmen could not leave the room. For two months, she had only held her daughter in a hospital room, with monitors and wires and beeping and PA systems and just noise and mental clutter.
“I want to get her out. I want to hold her. I want to lie in bed and snuggle with her.” She turned to Theo. “And you. I want to just be quiet with my family.”
“It’ll probably wake her.” But he smiled and went to the crib.
“Good. Then I’ll stick a boob in her mouth and watch her watch me while she feeds.” Theo was already unfastening the straps of the carrier. Carmen stripped naked and got into bed.
Teresa did wake and complain mightily about being woken. Her thing was to kick. She kicked and kicked when she was mad. Getting her diapered and dressed—which she hated—would probably have made a pretty decent rodeo event. As little as she was, just five pounds, three ounces when they left the hospital, she could really put up a fight.
Theo handed her over and Carmen settled her close, offering her a breast. Teresa went for it eagerly, resting her arm over her face, a position she favored, her little hand clenching and unclenching in time with her sucking.
Carmen looked over to see Theo stripping as she had. She was glad; she wanted him as close to them as he could get, not even the thickness of clothes between them. He slid in behind her and curved his body around hers. Then he rose up on his elbow and looked over her shoulder, watching their daughter nurse. She felt his hand on her side, tracing the scar on her ribs, where a bullet had entered, just missing her breast. It had traveled at a downward angle, miraculously missing her lung, but piercing her stomach and uterus, slicing through the right cheek of Teresa’s tiny bottom, and exiting near Carmen’s hip.
Teresa would be their only child. They had taken her badly damaged and hemorrhaging uterus when they’d taken the baby.
Theo seemed obsessed with her scars. He’d never said anything, and neither had she, but his fingers often went to them and traced the darkened, raised flesh. None of them was especially disfiguring, but they were noticeable. Carmen wondered what the fascination was, but she was afraid to know the answer. The violent state of the Pagano family was a topic they had trouble discussing without ending up fighting.
Finally, his hand moved from her side and went to rest on Teresa’s back so that he embraced them both. In this position, completely enclosed by the man she loved and the child they’d made together, Carmen felt a surge of love and peace so powerful and sudden that she gasped, and Teresa unlatched and wrinkled her tiny brow—she looked positively disgusted.
Theo saw the look and chuckled, his breath tickling Carmen’s shoulder. “I love that mad face. She looks just like you.”
Carmen helped Teresa back to the breast and then looked over her shoulder. “What are you talking about? I don’t make faces.”
Theo cocked his eyebrow. “Really?”
She couldn’t help but grin. A little. “Well, not intentionally.”
“I love your mad face. I like your make-up face even better.”
“My make-up face?”
He nipped at her bare shoulder. “Sure. You know, the one you make when I make you come so hard you forget why you were mad?” She felt him, then, hard and long against her ass.
“Jesus, Theo. Not now.”
“I know. I’m not going to start anything. I can’t help wanting you, though. All naked, all over me, making our little girl strong. It’s so damn sexy.”
She loved the way his voice got low and rumbly when he was turned on. She felt it deep inside, and it made her muscles and joints ache with need.
He buried his face in her hair, and she heard and felt him breathing deeply. Then he kissed her shoulder again. “I want to marry you, Carmen.”
He hadn’t said anything like that since that night in front of the fire in Maine. When she’d left him, the second time. She wasn’t ready yet, not for that. Too many changes were happening, and she was flying on faith with all of them. She needed some decisions to come to results before she could take that leap. “Theo, I’m not ready.”
He hesitated only briefly before he asked, “How can I help you be ready? What do you need?”
Watching her daughter nurse, she thought about that. “I need to know that the move is right. When I feel at home there, ask me again.”
“Fair enough.” He didn’t push any harder. He simply settled i
n to watch their daughter with her. When Teresa fell asleep, he put her in her crib, and then he came back into the bed, and they had slow, quiet, intense sex, gentle until he put his hand over her mouth to quiet her, and, in the throes of her release, she bit the meat of his palm.
~ 24 ~
Theo finally brought his new family home to Maine in mid-April, on a warm, spring afternoon, the sun bathing the greening woods in a light that promised that winter was over and the world could safely shed its cloak. He pulled up the Cherokee and parked in front of the garage. Carmen, following him in her Tundra with Teresa fastened snugly in the back seat, pulled up alongside him.
His heart feeling full and light, Theo met her between their trucks as she was closing the driver’s door. He grabbed her and pushed her up against the side of the Tundra, took her face in his hands, and kissed her, his tongue plunging deep into her beautiful, perfect mouth. She resisted him briefly and then gave in, her arms sliding over his shoulders and her hands combing into his hair and taking hold.
He wanted to fuck her right there, and he ground his hips against her, letting her feel his need. She groaned and bit down on his lip. They could—they could fuck right now. Teresa was sound asleep in her car seat, and they were completely alone here in the Wilde Wood. Jordan was joining them for a few days, but not until tomorrow.
Theo pushed his hand into Carmen’s jeans, but she dropped a hand from his head and wrapped it around his wrist.
“No, Theo. Not now.”
“She’s sleeping.” He buried his face in her hair and bit lightly on the skin of her throat. The vibration of her moan on his tongue made him drive his hips against her again. “I finally have you here. I want to have you here.”
“And you will. But I don’t want to fuck against the door of the truck our kid is sleeping in. It seems…I don’t know. Tacky.”
Laughing, though no less horny, he finally leaned back. “When did you get all proper and prim?”
She punched his chest lightly. “I’ll make you pay for that. But later. Come on. I want to see the nursery. Jordan keeps texting me, asking if I’ve seen it yet.”
“Okay,” he sighed. “But I’m going to take you up on later.” He released her, and she went around to collect Teresa’s carrier from the base buckled into the back seat. While she did, he opened the Cherokee’s hatch and pulled out a couple of bags, including the backpack they were using as a diaper bag. Then he led his girls to their house.
There was a large wreath hanging on the front door, made of pink tulle, with the netting bound snugly around the ring and flaring out all around like a tutu. Little pink and white fabric roses climbed up one side, and small vinyl letters spelled out Welcome Teresa across the bottom and up the other side. A white satin bow topped the whole thing.
It was quite a sight, big and garish and obviously homemade, and Carmen wasn’t really a pink-tulle kind of woman. She looked at it as if it were covered with bugs. Or guts. Actually, she probably would have seemed less disgusted if it had been guts. “Theo, what the hell is that?”
“That, I imagine, is Marijean. Remember her? I asked her and Perry to check in on things while I’ve been running up and down between Colson and Quiet Cove, and I told her we were coming up. She stocked the kitchen and got everything ready for living again. And I guess she might be a little excited about the baby. She has all boys. We’ll probably see a lot of her for a while.”
Carmen made a face. She might not have realized it, but she made a lot of faces. “I didn’t much like her. She’s nosy.”
“Yeah, she’s a gossip, too. So anything she knows, we can expect all of town to know within a day or two. But she’s sweet, and she’ll sincerely do anything she can for anybody who needs it without a blink. She just likes to talk and be involved. And come on, the wreath is a nice gesture.”
Now Carmen made a face and a noise, both demonstrating contempt. “Yeah, I don’t like her.”
“You don’t like most people, Carm. Just remember to keep your secrets secret and give her a chance.” They were still standing outside the door. He unlocked it now, opened it, and stepped back, making way for her to enter first with Teresa.
But she stood where she was. “If you’re trying to make me a nice person, you’re in for a shock.”
“I love you just as you are, beautiful girl. Just as you are. You’re nice when it counts.” He winked. “And I like you naughty, too.”
She rolled her eyes and crossed the threshold. “Lame.”
He laughed and followed her in.
They were home.
The house looked bright and fresh and smelled of pine furniture polish and floor cleaner. The windows gleamed. He’d only asked for groceries and fresh linens, but Marijean had done a full spring clean. And she had draped pink tulle with white satin bows over all the doorways.
“Oh, Jesus,” Carmen muttered.
Theo set the bags down next to the sofa. “Once Marijean comes over to say hi and see the baby, we can take it all down. Come on. Let’s take her back to her room. I can tell she needs a change.”
Carmen wrinkled her nose. “Yeah. You’d think she’d notice that, but she sleeps right through it.”
He led them down to the room that had been Eli’s, where a lot more tulle and satin had been gathered and draped—and there was a little bit of embroidered cloth pinned in the middle, pink and purple threads spelling out Teresa Joy in elaborate letters.
“I’d say Marijean will be an enthusiastic babysitter, should we need one.”
On another harrumph from Carmen, Theo opened the door. “Courtesy of Jordan and Rosa, welcome to Teresa’s room.”
Again, Carmen went in first, and again, Theo followed her.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
Theo studied her, waiting for her reaction. The room his son and her sister had made up was no less girly than all the pink tulle and white satin Marijean had bombarded them with. But it was perfect, Theo thought. The perfect room to shelter his little girl.
The walls were painted lavender—his choice—and the furniture was a distressed off-white. French Country, Jordan had called it. Theo had liked that, too. She had been conceived in France. The area rug and all of the bedding were lavender, grey, and white. A simple, white Roman shade covered the paned window, which looked out onto the woods. A white gliding rocker with grey cushions was carefully positioned in front of the window. Using skills he’d learned in stagecraft courses in college, Jordan had painted a mural on the wall behind the crib—a large, white tree, its roots growing over the floorboards, its branches extending across the wall, sheltering the crib. He and Rosa had affixed leaves made of different kinds of white, purple, and grey fabric to the branches, and a pretty, white dove, made of fabric and feathers, perched on one branch. A bookcase held nearly a hundred children’s books, new and old, hand-me-downs from Eli and Jordan or dug up in New York bookshops, and an array of stuffed animals. On another wall, over the dresser that doubled as a changing table, hung a large, round mirror framed in mirrored petals. And the pièce de résistance: a crystal chandelier, all draping beads and teardrops, hung from the center of the ceiling. Rosa and Jordan had discovered that and the mirror in an antique shop in Chelsea.
It was a statement room, too be sure. Theo loved it all. It befit the lovely, miraculous gift that was Teresa Joy Wilde.
When Carmen seemed stuck, scanning the room with her mouth open, Theo asked, “Well?”
“It’s…I don’t know. It’s so…” She sighed and regrouped, and Theo realized that she was fighting emotion. “It feels like France. Like a little bit of Hunter’s apartment, and Izzie’s, and…and even Avignon. It’s all here.”
He brushed her hair back over her shoulder and let his hand rest there. “That’s what I thought, too. It’s where she started. Where we started.”
She nodded. “I love it.”
Teresa fussed then and woke, fighting the constraints of her carrier immediately. Carmen sat the carrier on the ground and g
athered their daughter into her arms. She went to the dresser. “Diapers? Or do I need the bag?”
“Top drawer.”
She nodded and went about changing Teresa’s diaper. Theo watched, simmering with love for both of his beautiful girls.
When Carmen opened the soiled diaper and lifted Teresa by her legs to replace it, though, Theo felt a sharp pang. He wondered if he would ever get used to the scar on his daughter’s bottom, a long, pink channel through her otherwise petal-perfect skin. While Carmen’s scars fascinated him, made him feel awed by her strength and resilience, Teresa’s made him feel inadequate. She was so precious, and he’d already failed to keep her safe. He should never have allowed Carmen to simply run from him. He should have gone after her right away. He should have fought. If she had stayed in Maine, she would have been safe.
He thought of something Jordan had said after the first time Carmen had broken them apart: Love is not disposable. It’s something you fight for. It’s something you cling to even when literally every other possible choice would be easier.
Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3) Page 30
