Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(5)

Yeah, she needed to stop checking him out.

“Theo. You say your command of English is good. So listen up.” She spoke slowly, as if he were in fact not a speaker of English. “You are not welcome at this table. I am not interested. Find somebody else to pester.”

Before Theo could respond to that, Marc came to the table. Carmen expected him to ask after her meal, at least, but he turned to her intruder instead. “M. Wilde, I may bring your dinner to this table, yes?”

All at once, Carmen knew why he’d looked familiar. “Wait. You’re Theodore Wilde?”

That was victory he was beaming at her now. Dammit. “Yes. You know me?”

She was remembering his author photo. “I read Orchids in Autumn a couple of years ago.” She’d had some issues with it, but overall, she’d loved it. Lyrical prose and a moving story. A memoir. About the death of his wife.

Marc was still standing there, his question unanswered. Theo lifted an inquiring eyebrow at her. Oh, f*ck. What the hell. “Yes, Marc. You can free up M. Wilde’s table.”

“Very good.” Marc gave a little bow, just a tip of his head, and moved quickly to bring Theo’s food and drink to her table. Carmen looked around and realized that the café had filled up almost to capacity.

She gave Theo a one-sided smile. His method of getting over here was still lame as hell, so he didn’t deserve the full wattage. “I guess you get to go home tonight. That’s a still a shitty line, though.”

“It’s not a line. I actually made a promise. I might have embellished with the part about how long I’ve been trying, though.” As she closed her tablet and slid it into her leather bag, he added, “What are you reading?”

“Infinite Jest. Trying to, anyway.”

Theo chuckled. “That’s a commitment, it’s true. But I really liked it. It’s a brilliant book.”

“Are you one of those people who say they’ve read it, but in reality only got fifty or so pages in?”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them he said, “‘I’m just afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN.’ That’s one of my favorite lines in the book.”

She smirked. “I like that line, too. I just read it tonight. But I’m only about two hundred and fifty pages in. Point not proved.”

“I could spoil the ending for you. Or are you one of those readers who reads the last page first?”

“No, I’m not. I hate spoilers. Fine. I’ll give you the point.” She remembered something and cocked her head. “Who’d you make the promise to? If that wasn’t just a stupid line.”

He had just bitten into a piece of roll from a basket on her table. Speaking around a mouthful of bread, he answered, “My sons. They think I’m alone too much.”

Ah, right. The lonely widower. With kids, no less. This guy was trouble.

On the other hand…summer fling? Oh, that had to be the wine talking.

A summer fling would be a bad idea. This summer was about connecting with Rosa and doing some research for work. “Are you and your sons on vacation?” Wine, shut up.

“I’m on sabbatical, actually. I have a writing grant. I’m here into December. The boys will come and go.” He dimpled at her. “You?”

“The summer.” She stopped there, her sober self pushing back into her head and telling her to keep personal details to herself. Better to keep him talking. “Sabbatical—you teach?”

“Yes. Creative writing and American literature. At a little private college in Maine.” He put his elbows on either side of his plate and leaned forward. “You’re from New England, right? I can hear it in your voice, just a tad. Boston?”

“Close. Rhode Island.”

“Ah. Wicked.” His grin had a sheen of mischief.

She laughed. “I don’t hear Maine at all in yours. You haven’t said ‘ayuh’ once. You’re pure California, aren’t you?”

“Nope. Born and bred in Wyoming.”

“A cowboy?”

“Not exactly. But I know my share.”

Carmen realized that she was enjoying herself quite a bit and, moreover, that she was spending an inordinate amount of time noticing things like his eyes, or the way his hair moved, just a little, when he shook his head. The way his throat moved when he spoke. The hint of golden hair in the open triangle of his shirt.

Shit.

She had two things in her life she focused on: her work and her family. She dated, a little. No—scratch that. She made booty calls which occasionally included takeout in bed. Some of the guys on her booty-call list were good friends, too, but for the most part, men, once they decided they wanted some kind of connection beyond friendship, bored her. She’d had two serious relationships with men who had not bored her. And they had both eventually forced choices on her about the balance in her life between them and her work and family. Carmen had a rule: the person who gave her an ultimatum would always lose.

What she didn’t do, then, was whatever was going on here. She wasn’t going to take him to bed, so what was going on here?

She emptied her wine glass again and set it down. He lifted her bottle and waved it as a question. When she nodded, he filled her glass, emptying the bottle into it. She’d had every intention of drinking the whole bottle—she was only across the street from the flat. But she’d also had every intention of drinking privately, with minimal opportunity for stupidity.