Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(23)
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.