Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(4)
Not exactly a career-oriented choice, but one she’d enjoyed immensely. The world of the philosophy department had been delightfully open to ideas. She’d basically gotten a degree in arguing. It suited her well.
She’d knocked around for awhile after graduation, doing her own thing, serving at a diner near campus, still living with Izzie, who was finishing a Master’s program. They’d been planning to move to Europe together and see what happened.
Then Carmen’s mother had gotten sick, and Izzie had gone to Europe on her own.
And they’d seen what happened.
Marc, a server who’d had her table before, smiled when she came into the café. He sat her at a good table near the window and took her order for a bottle of pinot gris. They spoke English, which was good, because Carmen had discovered that she’d lost most of the French she’d learned after three years of study in high school and three more in college. Fifteen years was a long time away from a language.
While she waited for her wine, she perused the menu, which helpfully had English translations under every item. Marc brought her pinot, made the usual production of pouring and tasting and approving, and took her order of a chicken entrée in a mushroom sauce on a bed of wild rice—which was called Suprêmes something and made Carmen sing old Diana Ross songs in her head. Then Carmen settled comfortably, sipped her wine, and opened the bookshelf on her tablet to confront the goings-on at the Enfield Tennis Academy.
oOo
“Pardon, mademoiselle.”
Well, that French accent was worse than hers—and hers came with a touch of Rhody. Carmen looked up from her tablet and her half-eaten meal and found a man standing at her table. He was tall and good looking, in a blond, sunbaked, wind-blown, California way. Which, she supposed, was the traditional way to be good looking. He had blue eyes and a face a bit on the rugged side. Handsome, not pretty. Maybe forty or so.
He wore a crisp, cotton button-down shirt in emerald green, heavily faded jeans, and a brown leather jacket. His shirt was open at the throat, and she could see at least two stone pendants on leather cords around his neck. Yep. Definitely California.
He looked vaguely familiar, but Carmen chalked that up to the way that all Americans seemed to stand out to her in Paris. There was some kind of ‘home’ vibe to them, or something. Or maybe it was that Parisians all seemed to be so glamorous and put together, and Americans as a group looked like schlubs in comparison.
She didn’t answer, just lifted her eyebrows to signal that if he had something to say, he should get on with it.
“Parlez-vous anglais?”
“Wow. Your accent sucks. Do you speak English better than you speak French?”
He grinned then, showing perfect, white teeth and long, deep dimples, and for the first time, Carmen was a little interested. She had a thing for dimples. “Thank God. Yeah, I’m not good with French. But my facility with the English language is solid, I think.”
He was cute—okay, hot—but Carmen was ensconced in her private moment, maybe her last private moment of the summer, once she got Rosa up. She wasn’t in the mood for company. “Good for you. Is there something you wanted?”
Her terse rejoinder didn’t erase his grin. Instead, he cocked his head and lifted an eyebrow as if accepting a challenge. “Yes, actually. I was hoping you could help me. I made a promise that I wouldn’t go home until I’d spoken with a beautiful girl. It’s been days now, and I really want my bed. I don’t suppose you’d speak with me?”
Carmen rolled her eyes and set her tablet down. Immediate deduction of at least six hot points for starting off with a lame line like that. “Seriously? Is that line something you practiced in front of the mirror? Because I’m here to tell you, bud. Your mirror lies. You should never use that again. There. Now you’ve spoken to a beautiful woman. Home you go.” She picked up her tablet and her wine glass and tipped it to her mouth to empty it.
Instead, the stranger pulled out the empty seat at her little table and sat. He extended his hand. “I’m Theo.”
Ignoring the hand looming over her dinner, Carmen set her empty wine glass down and filled it from the bottle Marc had left. “No. This is not our Woody Allen meet-cute. You are not charming. And you are not invited. Go away.”
But he would not be dissuaded. “See, according to the terms of my promise, I have to have an actual conversation. I have to speak with a beautiful girl, not simply to her. And we both agree you’re beautiful.” He finally dropped his hand and sat back. “That’s refreshing, by the way. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a woman refer to herself as beautiful before.”
Carmen knew what she looked like. She wasn’t proud of her looks—genetics, being out of her control, were nothing to be proud of—but she knew her appearance made some things in her life easier. And other things harder. Enjoying a quiet meal alone, for instance.
She sighed and set her tablet down again. “Theo—is that right?”
He nodded, his widening Cheshire grin suggesting that he thought he’d won something here. It was a good smile, she’d give him that. Nice hands, too. She’d noticed while it had hovered over her table. Not too smooth. Good size. No rings. The sleeve of his jacket had pulled back to show a wide, brown leather cuff around his wrist and a hint of golden hair on his forearm.