Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(91)

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 in 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.