He looked super eager. She sensed something subterranean happening with his mood. “Is it any good?”
“Yeah, I mean, I think so. Want to try?”
Now the man was gleaming, body canted towards the employee area. She shrugged and followed him, leaving the diaper bag on the nearest table. Sergei hadn’t bothered to collect it from her, and she reminded herself he was only incompetent when she was in the mood to insult him, not in actual fact. He could figure out where it was if he needed it.
Theo rambled on about savory and sweet and some old cookbook he’d found and the windowpane consistency of phyllo. And here she’d thought he was all about reports and meetings and spreadsheets and that sort of thing. So much for her roll of the computer for the ‘Jobs’ column. She’d been imagining his work life kind of the way her manager’s office was, a cluttered desk and lots of emails about proper formatting for case reports and color-coding or whatever.
Not that she’d been imagining his work life. Just, she’d gotten an impression, based on Generic Managerial Type, and was a tad taken aback—a tad charmed—by this dessert-obsessed side of him.
“You’re not allergic to nuts, are you? There’s a walnut paste layer in here.”
She shook her head and took the little pastry from the plate he offered. The man was almost giddy. It was absurd. And added even more to his charming side. She let herself forget her well-earned suspicions about men with charming sides.
Especially when his baking was yum. “Can I have another?”
“You like it? Serious?”
“Serious.” She reached for the plate, which he thrust her way with a start of haste. And then he took one for himself, and was all deliberate about setting the plate back down, and she wondered if there were laws against anyone being quite so charming on a random Wednesday evening. The cosmos should protect against that sort of thing.
He cleared his throat, lifted half his mouth in one of those wry smiles like every rogue on TV, asked, “So it’s okay for Hannah to eat these?”
“So long as I don’t eat them all myself first, sure.”
His gaze flickered away, then back at her. “Confession time.”
“You’ve got a confession?”
“Yeah.” He rubbed his neck. “Two, I guess.”
Sometimes she swore she could feel each vertebra stack up as she straightened. She grabbed a napkin and wiped phyllo from her fingers. “Oh. Kay. Go on, then.”
“Right. So, I made these as, well, kind of an excuse for waylaying you today.”
She didn’t answer, no matter how expectant a pause he left.
“I was hoping to ask you out, but I didn’t want to be, you know, obvious about it. I didn’t want to complicate anything with you and Sergei, or, I should say, I didn’t want to decide for you how we should be around Sergei. If there’s going to be a ‘we’, which, I’m not taking you for granted. I’m very good at this, aren’t I? I’m trying to say I’ll respect your boundaries, whatever that means for you. Dating me, not dating me, making out with me on top of the bar.” His smile held maybe more hope than self-deprecation, and his eyes seemed to be full of pleas that she speak up.
She wiped her mouth, and noted the sheen of her lip-gloss on the napkin. Balling it up, she lobbed it towards the tall garbage bin by the door. A perfect shot—her trash sailed into the bin’s depths. “That last one isn’t super likely.”
His own vertebrae shifted, sinuous, as he swiveled towards her. “So the others might be?”
“What’s the second confession?”
“Oh.” He slumped. “It’s not that dramatic. But it would feel odd not to mention it. I asked Sergei if I could give one of these to Hannah, and he asked if there were nuts in them. He said he knew daycare was nut-free, but didn’t know if she was.”
There went her spine, fusing again. “Excuse me?” Not that she hadn’t heard him.
He winced. “I know. Don’t—well, do what you want. I offered to find out if you’d mind Hannah trying them, and he asked if I could find out if it was okay without first telling you he didn’t know, and technically I did. Find out first, that is. But probably he meant for me not to tell you at all. Not ‘probably.’ I’m sure he didn’t want me to. But that’s kind of bullshit, and how would it be decent of me to hide that from you one minute and ask you out the next?”
Two factions battled over her reaction. Stay still, the better to be charmed by his aggrieved babbling, or storm off to pluck her child from the arms of a man who couldn’t be bothered to remember the most basic facts about her. “Her friend Rishi has a peanut allergy. But the daycare is peanut-free in all classrooms regardless.”
“Hey.”
“Hey what?” The more she thought about it, the stronger the storming off to yell at Sergei impulse was growing. Theo’s cautious gentleness also veered too close to patronizing for her to stay glamoured by his charm.
“He’s ridiculous.”
“Rishi? He’s two. I’m sure he’ll conquer putting his shoes on the correct feet soon enough.”
Laughing, he squeezed her hand. “You’re breathtaking, Rachel. Your ex is thoughtless, but listen, I’ve seen him with Hannah enough to know he isn’t—whatever dangerous thing you’re imagining. Setting her down in the middle of the parking lot. Turning her loose in the kitchens to play with the knives and the ovens.”
She rolled her eyes, but didn’t retrieve her hand. “Thanks for the new mental images.”
“So? What do you say?”
“About what?”
“Our whole dating thing?”
His charm was downright dangerous to her resolve. Her gut was beguiled by cheese pastries, and her fingers were warm against his palm, and she knew he was right. Sergei wasn’t actively endangering Hannah. Or even passively endangering her. Brain weasels aside, she trusted him with their daughter.
Still. She wasn’t sure about anything else Theo was offering. His intentions verged on romantic, all this talk of dating and of making public declarations and of advising her about dealing with her own ex-husband.
“Look, Theo—”
The door squeaked open and she turned to find Depy framed in the opening. Feet planted wide, eyes narrowed, arms tightening around Hannah’s squirming to get down.
It was only when Theo let go that she realized she’d been tugging her hand away from his.
“Hey, Depy,” he said, calm and even affectionate.
Not that her ex-mother-in-law was anywhere beguiled by that damn charm. “Theodoros.”
Those months she and Hannah had lived with Depy after the divorce, she’d gotten more than intimate with all the woman’s ways of expressing her displeasure. She’d even, in time, gotten good at rising above it. So she stacked up those vertebrae, ending with a lift of her chin. Turned her back to Depy long enough to meet Theo’s eye-wide look. “Meet you in the parking lot?”
She wasn’t quiet on purpose, or loud. If Depy overheard, she overheard. If she ran off to wail at her son, so be it.
Theo didn’t even half-glance at the duo over her shoulder, to his credit, and good thing. If he had she’d really be questioning her impulses. He nodded. She grinned, and paused to grab a napkin and a cheese pastry before heading towards her bright beacon of a daughter.
Depy’s grip had nothing on Hannah’s determination to scuttle into her mama’s arms. “Hey, Hannah Banana. Look here what Theo made for you. Want bites?”
By the time she’d carried the girl back to Sergei, she was covered in buttery flakes of phyllo that turned her goodbye kisses even sweeter than usual. Rachel handed over the child but not the napkin, and congratulated herself. For once, the transition wasn’t teary.
When she headed into the parking lot to wait for Theo, she didn’t feel one single urge to turn around and spy through the bar windows as father and daughter got on with their visit.
Chapter Nine
He grabbed the keys and checked to see had his wallet and some portion of his brain. He was inclined to sneak out via the do
ck, but that was ridiculous. Sergei wasn’t paying him any attention, and if things went the way he was thinking, he might need to have a conversation with the man anyway. No point trying to hide if he was going to see as much of Rachel as he hoped.
Which reminded him to yank open the bottom left drawer of Sergei’s neglected desk and snag a couple of condoms. “Better safe than sorry,” the guy always said during orientation for new hires, offering them access to the stash alongside boilerplate about workplace relationships. He never saw anyone take one, but it hadn’t been a week since Sergei mentioned that the supply was getting low. And the near-empty bowl suggested his employees waited until Theo was out of the office before helping themselves.
Any eon now, he told himself, it would be great to stop thinking about sex and Rachel and Sergei all at once.
Terrible idea. Doomed. Decision fueled by frustration and flirt-blindness and fear, even. Fear of sinking into a life made of nothing but motherhood; fear of managing that life with one of her safety nets moving off to Brenham; fear of Depy shuffling into the role of default co-parent; fear of how angry and helpless and powerless and mad and furious and useless Sergei made her feel.
Fear Theo was another man like her ex, and everything else—her sex-starvation, his smolder, the way Hannah burrowed her forehead into his neck like she knew something good and safe and trustworthy—was a trap. A ruse. A pit she may as well throw herself down now, to test the depths. And while she was down there, if she caught a flutter of a red flag from Theo, she could claw her way back to the nice safe surface of her life.
At least while she found out more, she’d get to have sex. The teeth he flashed her as he strode her way were a promise of nips to come. The width of his stance when he stopped in front of her invited her into his personal space. His direct gaze deliberately didn’t track her body, a statement of his intent to scrutinize when he had her alone.
She’d played all these games before. She knew how to throw these dice, to collect these cards, to rack up these points.
So: doomed, yes. Maybe. Yes. But Rachel leaned a hip against her car and cocked her head. “I suppose I should ask you out for drinks, but it seems pointless. Considering.”
He cut his eyes towards the brewery. “Pretty much.”
She pressed her lips together to stop the flirt-high grin. That grin had an agenda and didn’t care who knew it. It got things done, that grin. Done in the carnal sense. How many bar parking lots, how many hot-enough men, how many Saturday nights with nothing else on the agenda had that grin made an appearance? Not for ages, sure. She wasn’t in high school any more; she wasn’t still in college.
Sergei hadn’t killed that grin.
On the thought, the pressure straining her cheeks drained. Her mouth deflated. She stopped thinking about her wilder years, banished every grim thing about her married days and those post-divorce nights with a newborn. Leaned towards Theo, who was frank and focused and who fired her up. And if she had to guess based on his reaction, the smile that overtook her then was sexy as fuck.
Hell, she lit him up. He tried to find polite, coherent things to say. “So, no drinks.”
She shook her head slowly.
“And you know I’m trying to ask you out, right?”
Her nod was even slower. His pulse kicked up in response.
“Rachel. I don’t want to overstep, but you need to give me a clue if you want me to, you know, back off a little. My mind’s got only one track right now. One very crude, slip and slide, ride me now track. I’m not trying to be coy about it, but I’m not an ass. I’m not making demands. I want you. But if it’s no, or not right now, or something else, just say so.”
“And like that you’ll head back to work?”
He tried to cut off the inarticulate noise. “Well. I’d need a minute.”
She let her eyes drop to his crotch, which didn’t help in the least. “And if I take you home now you’re not demanding sex?”
“Fuck. No. Of course not. No demands. It’s your call.”
“Not a single demand?” she asked, a tad taunting.
Damn her provocations. He edged closer. “I could be persuaded. If that’s what you wanted.”
“And you’ve got some free time?”
The report for investors. Ron’s refusal to give up on the bottling machine. Approving the shift schedule. He palmed his phone, but didn’t quite manage to look at the screen.
Her eyebrows danced. “If you’ve got calls to make, do it now. We’ll be busy later.”
He shook his head. Cleared his throat. “Nothing urgent. Plenty of free time.”
“Give me your phone.”
He unlocked it and handed it over. She glanced down then handed it back.
“Never mind. You type it; I don’t like these keyboards.”
He got over the stutter of panic that her ‘never mind’ was calling everything off, and added her address to his contacts.
“The rule is, never give that to Sergei.”
“Okay.” It hit him. “Wait, what?”
“He doesn’t get my address. Depy has it in case of emergency. So don’t give it to him, but do follow me to my place. Clear?”
He was nodding but the cogs in his brain were shifting in opposition to his head’s movement. Dizzying. He should think with his cock instead.
How about that for something he’d never guessed he would have to tell himself to do.
Between Mom car and Mom purse, the very least she should have handy was a brush. Or anything not made of fuchsia sparkles to pull her hair into one of those casual chic knots Natalie could make blindfolded.
On the way out of the parking lot, she found a tube of her favorite tinted lip balm in the car door pocket. At a stop sign, she popped a couple of soft mints from her bag. But her foraging yielded no brush. No comb. A teal polka dot scrunchie. A couple of barrettes too flimsy for Hannah’s hair, so she tossed them in the trash bag hanging from the gearshift.
Red light. She got methodical with her search. Nothing in the glove box, crumbs in the cup holders, useless crap in the center console. Finally, wedged under Hannah’s car seat, a wet-hair comb with mostly intact bristles.
Good enough. She yanked it through a few of the tangled curls, made a face at her reflection in the visor, and put it all behind her as she led her asshole ex-husband’s boss to her home.
For a while—maybe not long enough but for a while—he was in a divorce support group. Most of the members were parents. Not everyone. Enough that he got a sense of the usual kinds of custody arrangements, the usual types of communications. Some co-parents were excessively polite with each other, and some played Bribe Baby For Affection. Some got flighty about visitation schedules. But Theo couldn’t remember any who hid their location from their ex.
It wasn’t like she avoided seeing the man himself. She’d been talking to him half an hour earlier. He’d ignored Hannah and barely nodded at her instructions, but he didn’t menace or shout or ... Theo didn’t know what. Nothing he’d observed about their interactions screamed of mistrust. Sergei seemed far likelier to forget to pick Hannah up than to go throw midnight rocks through Rachel’s windows.
Maybe it was her place that was messed up. Something askew about her living situation, something the would cause Sergei to ... and he was stuck again. He tried to picture Annalisa living in some way that would alarm him or start a fight. Neglect or seediness or drug paraphernalia strewn across the parking lot. Holes in the roof and rats everywhere and eighteen people in a two-room place. And even then, he’d want to know. Want to help her find a sanitary, safe place to live. And nothing about Rachel—or Hannah, who in some ways he knew better, after playing with her at Elixir a few times a month all year long—suggested they lived in condemned housing.
He followed her car. It was still dusted yellow with tree pollen, even this late in Houston’s purported springtime. The bumper stickers were a mixed bunch: liberal politics and knitting jokes and her other car was a bicycle and even o
ne for Elixir. As they idled at a red light, he plugged her address into the map.
Huh.
She lived closer to Sergei’s place than either did to the gas station where they’d first met. Another three turns and they’d be at her door.
And yet she made a habit of exchanging custody another couple of miles down the freeway. Sergei sure as shit hadn’t seemed to mind, beyond acting inconvenienced by the need for drop-off at all. Theo drove more than three hours each way every other weekend to see Andres, so, sure, it was all relative. And he knew where Annalisa lived.
Another turn, and he also knew where Rachel lived. A smallish, tidy but outdated apartment complex. Gates across the drive that stayed open long enough for him to follow her in. She waved him at a parking space and continued on to pull her car under a carport. Her lips pressed together, as he approached, holding in one of those shooting comet grins of hers.
“Come on, it’s up this way.” She brushed her warm, light fingers along his arm while gesturing to a set of stairs with the other hand.
Even in the shaded overhang of the carport, Rachel’s blue eyes played color tricks. Little flashes of dark, hints of light. It kept him staring at them. Or she did. Her micro-expressions, her deliberate masks, her wary desire.
How long had they been divorced? How many people had she led to the apartment she kept hidden from Sergei? How much psychic weight had the man left in his wake?
Why hadn’t any of the questions intruded back at Elixir?
She’d turned to him because she needed an outlet from the flack Sergei and Depy had sprayed when she dropped Hannah off. So it wasn’t time to trade stories. To compare his months of post-divorce partner turnover to her, what? Single mom of a little one. Depy intruding in her business every day she could. When Andres was a baby, a toddler, it took him and Annalisa combined to manage all the playing, the supervision, the chores, their jobs. Forget about date nights, forget about time for themselves, forget about sex.
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