Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(9)

Theo grinned. “Morning, gorgeous. How’d you sleep?”

With an irritated huff, Jordan came to the table. “Dad! We’re in Paris. Speak Parisian! And j’ai bien dormi.”

With Eli’s life concerns dwarfed by his little brother’s extravagant enthusiasm, the three Wilde men sat at the table in their borrowed Parisian kitchen and ate a gourmet breakfast, chatting about their plans for the day. Theo was writing. Eli and Jordan were going to do a sightseeing circuit, walking or using the Metro to catch the biggest highlights, starting with a ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower and ending at the Louvre.

Theo finished his omelet and pushed his plate aside. That crumb cake was calling to him. Maybe he’d write for a couple of hours and then take a run to burn off his son’s cooking. “Let me know when you’re heading to the Louvre. I’ll meet you. I know a secret way in—no line.”

Jordan clapped. “Dad has the goods. Okay, we’ll text. And I want dinner out. With wine.”

The mention of wine brought Carmen back. He’d gone to sleep thinking about that kiss—first he’d jacked off thinking about that kiss—but this morning his thoughts had been of his usual variety: his work, his sons. Now, he smiled as he recalled watching her become charmingly inebriated and increasingly, correspondingly friendly.

“Dad? I’m pretty sure you’re blushing right now. What’s that about?” Eli crossed his arms over his chest.

“Oh! Oh, oh!” Jordan gasped. “Did you keep your promise? Is that a beautiful girl blush?”

Trying to ignore the sudden rabid interest of both his children, Theo stood and cut himself a piece of still-warm breakfast cake. “You boys should get dressed and get moving if you’re doing the town today. Lots of summer crowds.”

“Oh, no. You have to say! Did you meet somebody?”

In the past couple of years, since he’d gone off to college, Jordan had begun to fret about his father’s solitude. At first it had been little comments, offers to come home for weekends, things like that. But he’d been pushing harder and harder, and when Theo was awarded both a sabbatical and the grant, Jordan had decided that a sojourn in France was the perfect opportunity for his father to have a romance.

And hell, maybe he was right.

He looked at both of his sons now. He had their undivided attention. “I kept my promise and spoke to a beautiful girl—a woman, actually—last night, yes. We had a nice conversation. She’s even read Orchids.”

Jordan clapped. “Ooh! Then she knows you’re available and have a heartbreaking backstory! Somebody call Nicholas Sparks!”

Eli stood up and grabbed his plate. “Jordan, jeez. Sometimes you really suck, you know that?” He dumped his dishes in the sink and turned on the professional-style faucet.

Jordan simply shrugged.

Both boys adored their mother. Both boys had mourned her hard and mourned her still. But they had done so in different ways. Theo had written a little bit about it in the book in question. Eli’s way, like Eli himself, was more traditional, and thus more widely understandable. He was even now reticent to talk about his mom with anyone but the people in this kitchen, because he could not always trust himself to keep his cool.

Jordan was Jordan, and he grieved like he lived. The same wry aplomb that had carried him through an adolescence and a public school education as a proudly out young man, that had lifted him off the pavement when he’d been bullied and beaten, and that had spurred him to coat in fuchsia glitter the casts he’d had to wear on his arm on three separate occasions—that aplomb had carried him through the loss of his mother, too.

Eli understood that. But sometimes he didn’t.

Under that fuchsia glitter had been a devastated boy. But Jordan needed to keep that boy safe and tucked away. Only Theo had been allowed to see the brokenhearted child who’d lost his mother.

Theo’s own grief had eased over the years like a stone in a river. He would always love Maggie and the life they’d had together for twenty-two years, but the edges of his pain had worn away, and now he carried her memory like a smooth agate in his pocket—or, more concretely, like the jasper stone around his neck, a comforting reminder of a past that was no longer.

Jasper. A healing stone. Maggie’s best friend, Phyllis, had given it to him at the funeral.

He put his hand to his throat and picked up the pendants hanging there from leather cords. Two of them—the jasper circle, and a rough pewter disc engraved with the letter M.

Eli saw him do it and came to his side. “Mom would be glad. She told you she’d be pissed if you pined after her for the rest of your life. I think four and a half years is enough.” He grinned. “You’re gettin’ up there, you know, Dad. If you don’t get moving, you could croak, and then you’ve pined for the rest of your life, after all.”

“I haven’t been pining. Also, screw you.” He punched his eldest on the arm.

He honestly hadn’t been pining, not for the past couple of years, anyway. He just hadn’t been interested. Nobody compared to the woman he’d had, and dating and all that crap seemed like too much of a hassle without any real interest in the person he was with. He’d gotten used to a life without sex while Maggie was ill. She’d lingered, a shell of herself, for a long time. The transition from the watchful solitude of a caretaking husband to the true solitude of a widower had been so slow it had been almost imperceptible. So he hadn’t been desperate for physical companionship, either. It had simply been easier to be alone. Until there was somebody interesting enough to make that not true.