“Why not me?”
“First of all, why aren’t you tethered to me to start with?” She pulled out her phone. “We’re going to start tracking each other, then we’ll feel better. And anyhow, I wasn’t meaning to exclude you. It’s something she offered, back when Hannah and I were moving into the apartment. At the time I didn’t plan on dating for ages. You’re right about the louse turd, or it felt that way for a while. But then I met this hot paramedic at work and thought, better to grab the moment when I had it, you know? So we grabbed the moment, just the one night, and I checked in with Serena before and after, and that turned into the system. I never thought about it like I was leaving you out.”
Gillian finished setting the app up on their phones and passed Rachel’s back to her. “I’m sanguine. You don’t need to justify yourself. And I’m very glad Serena was on top of it. You told her about Wednesday?”
Rachel nodded.
“Good. So that leaves one bright glowing unexamined question on the table.”
Rachel dug a tiny fork into one of her mussels, reluctant to meet her friend’s eyes for a moment. She had a feeling she knew what the question would be.
And she was right. Gillian dabbed at her lips with her napkin and asked, “Why, after months and months of not mentioning the people you banged, but days after insisting on re-rolling the dice for your perfect man, did you tell me about Theo?”
Hermes help him, but he caught himself googling ‘how soon until I call her’ like a proper fool. He’d made pointed mention of going to Fort Worth for a long weekend, back before kissing goodbye in the apartment parking lot. She’d failed to offer any indication of what was next for them. He could have asked. He should have suggested something. Anything indicative of future plans. He wasn’t clear why he was so keyed up over it.
Over her, sure. Rachel was ... great, in fact. Of all the available words, ‘great’ fit the bill. Bright and fun and direct and flirty and intriguing and in bed: electric. So, sure, he was a little keyed up over her.
Before sinking into the endless vortex of the r/relationships subreddit, he switched his browser to social media and searched for her, because that’s what his last girlfriend had done between early dates: messaged him a dinner invite. It had propelled them into the next few dates, which led to a few months of exclusivity.
Except none of the Rachel Groff profiles were her.
Fine. Hermes was no help, nor was technology. He went in search of Sergei. Maybe the guy needed his help handling Hannah again.
And then he stopped mid-step, because he couldn’t keep using a two-year-old to finagle his dates.
Theo diverted himself into a walk-through of the facility. Everything hummed along in that chill weekday way. A few large groups in for a late lunch, a few solo heads at the bar. All the staff seemed in control of their jobs. He couldn’t get further resolving their expeditor’s complaints about sauces until Ron answered his email. Nothing else tugged at his attention, and Sergei wasn’t around, and every square inch of his office felt like it had shrunk by twelve percent in ungeometric ways.
He lifted a hand in farewell to the bartender and headed to the shed adjacent to the loading dock. A few minutes’ effort and he’d loaded his kayak atop his SUV. An hour on the bayou would, gods willing, clear his head and leave him stuffed full of tranquility. And maybe some sort of plan, as well.
So maybe it messed with her mind some when Gillian made connections between sex with Theo and a game playing at finding her life partner. Maybe it made her over cautious.
Never mind that her second set of rolls suited Theo the same way the first set had. It was all guesswork and confirmation bias anyway. Any rules saying she had to get all relationship-minded with guys she slept with were outdated tools of the patriarchy. Rachel had long ago stashed all those tools in a tumbledown shed, thanks all the same.
And none of it influenced her decision to text Depy after she pulled into Elixir on Wednesday, asking her to retrieve Hannah from the parking lot.
She only did it because it was so hot out, and if she turned off her car to take Hannah in to Sergei, the interior wouldn’t begin to cool again until she was almost home. They were in for a long boiling summer, including a multi-day road trip up to see her sister and parents. Any time she avoided overtaxing her faulty a/c, she felt she was preserving its lifespan.
Depy managed to keep her voice sweet even as she said; “I’m surprised you aren’t sniffing after Mr. Boss Man in there tonight.”
“There are spare panties in the bag, but she did a great job on the potty right before we left home, so if you stick with the schedule I emailed you shouldn’t need them.”
“Pah and bosh.”
“Pah and bosh right back at you,” she said, but light so it seemed like she was teasing. “I had to throw out those pink overalls you sent because Sergei didn’t wash out the stain. Up to you if you want tonight’s outfit ruined, too.”
Depy pressed her lips closed, her favorite moue of disapproval. Probably she wanted to ask why Hannah wore the new dress if it was apt to get ruined. Too bad she’d pitched so many fits about never seeing Hannah wear the clothes she purchased.
She waved a final goodbye and backed out in her still-cool car. An hour and a half of nothing scheduled, and flying high on scoring points against Depy. What could be better?
Ignoring the traitorous image of Theo’s naked ass that flashed in her overheated mind, she navigated home for some quality time with leftovers and her DVR.
Chapter Twelve
Her non-custodial weekend to-do list was crowded to overflowing. A couple extra work shifts to bank against her upcoming road trip. A few hours helping Mary Lynn box up fragile items and load them into Goldberg’s truck. Feeding Mary Lynn and Goldberg so they wouldn’t fret over cooking after packing all day. Groceries and laundry and an oil change and getting to the gas station in time to fuel up before going inside to wait for Sergei to drop Hannah back to her.
All in all, not a second to spare. Not to wonder if she should have called Theo. Or to debate if Sergei sending Theo to the gas station again would make her mad. Or to answer any of the insinuations in Gillian’s texts.
By Wednesday night, she gave up trying to fool herself. She likely couldn’t even fool Hannah, who kicked her heels against her car seat a good half-dozen times, sparking her light-up sandals, while Rachel slicked on bright lip gloss then fluffed out her curls.
She winked at her kiddo in the rearview mirror. “You ready to go find Daddy?” She didn’t add a word about Theo. That particular search was hers alone.
Months of Wednesday nights and every other weekends, a hefty percentage of them involving hand-offs at Elixir, and she’d never noticed Theo. Not until he’d turned up holding her daughter, and she’d mistaken him for her toasted turdball of an ex-husband.
Now if she didn’t quite seek him out at the brewery, she was aware he was there. Cognizant of his movements. Alert to the interplay of her pulse and his proximity.
Damned inconvenient, if she got right down to it. Hard to pretend someone was only there for casual sex if he inserted himself uninvited in all kinds of her thoughts.
She and Hannah hadn’t cleared the vestibule before she was facing a whole bad dream, good dream, nightmare trio of faces. Depy, Theo, and Sergei all approached. Hannah tugged loose of Rachel’s hand and wrapped her arms around Sergei’s legs, which diverted him before they had to make polite conversation for their daughter’s sake.
Another point in the ‘when Mama doesn’t treat Elixir like a house of horror, Hannah transitions are easy’ column.
Speaking of scary, Depy was visible behind Theo’s shoulder. She’d secured her wiry gray hair into her most disapproving bun, the one she fashioned to alert everyone to her dire mood. Even Sergei struggled to please her when she wore that bun. He’d trailed off mid-rant about needing an amniocentesis paternity test before the divorce was settled, merely because Depy collected her loose coil of hair and twisted it int
o the Bun of Displeasure.
It still marked the most in-her-favor statement Depy had ever made for Rachel.
But the woman was no longer her mother-in-law. No longer the provider of a roof over her and her infant’s heads.
Rachel ignored the bun, and the bristling woman wearing it. “Hi,” she said to Theo.
He rubbed the back of his neck. It was a feeble defense against the emotion-laden darts Depy was surely shooting at them both. “Hi.”
“How’ve you been?” She knew her voice was over-bright. Not much she could do about controlling it.
He shrugged, which gave her a nanosecond of Depy being invisible. “Good. Pretty good. You?”
When she pressed her lips together to mute her helpless giggle, the smooth glide of her gloss nearly undid her composure. “Not too bad. Want to duck away from prying ears and chat a minute?”
A damn cute blush bloomed on his cheekbones, and Rachel held herself still to absorb the sight. His hand dropped to reach towards her, and he was nodding.
She passed him the diaper bag. “Can you give that to Depy?”
His shoulders shook off his laugh, and he turned. “Here you go, Yia Yia.”
She muttered something too low and ungracious for Rachel to bother attending to it. Sergei was peering at the three of them like he was capable of solving the puzzle, so Rachel supposed his mother hadn’t gone straight to him after last week, telling tales. Interesting, but not her problem. She swooped in to give Hannah a good-bye kiss and headed out.
She didn’t have to look back to know Theo was following right behind her.
It was getting so he thought of the Elixir parking lot as ‘their’ place. So next time his cousin accused him of being an old romantic, Theo would call up the image of tire marks on pervious concrete bright with late-evening heat waves, and know Tomás was delusional.
She did shine, though, there with the sun bouncing off the hood of her car. “So I think Depy is on to us.”
She snorted. “Clever deduction. You must win every game of Clue.”
“Well, I don’t like to brag.”
If Tomás knew earning Rachel’s smile endeared the parking lot more to Theo, his cousin would fall about with mirth. Good thing he wasn’t a mind reader.
“So, listen.” Too brisk, too devoid of flirtatiousness.
He answered as if it would never occur to him she might blow him off. “Always happy to hear what you’re saying.”
Rachel crossed her arms, shrugging. “You’re right about Depy. I know it’s your place and you can do anything you want, but I’d prefer if you’re not right in the area when I bring Hannah in.”
“Okay.” He watched, but his quick reply didn’t get her to lower her shoulders. “I get it, I do. She reminds me enough of my great-aunts to keep me on my toes when you and I meet.”
She pursed her lips, but not in a sultry way.
“Hey,” he said, going for tempting, “how about dinner? You have any plans now?”
“Are you trying to distract me?”
“No.” He knew she knew it was a lie. Her shoulders shook, and she slipped her hands into her pockets.
“Don’t be cute.”
“You’re the cute one. We established that.” He watched, but she didn’t even blink at his words. Not a hint that she’d been mentally transported back to her bedroom with him.
“I’ve eaten.”
He glanced at his phone. It was early, but he didn’t live with a schedule that involved getting a kid to daycare first thing every morning.
She shrugged. “I was hungry.”
“Fair enough. How about we do something else? Or get dinner another time? Lunch, if that’s easier. So you don’t have to get a sitter.”
“Theo.”
“Casual. You said casual, and I’m being casual. Just, in a persistent way. Lunch is casual.”
At least he’d gotten another smile. “Lunch is only casual if it doesn’t mean all kinds of scheduling and dealing with the hospital parking garages and any number of other things.”
“Okay. No lunch. Want to bring Hannah over to swim at my place? Andres will be down in a couple of weeks, we can let them splash in the shallow end together.”
Rachel stepped back. “Are you feverish? Introducing each other to our kids is the very definition of not casual.”
He laughed. “I’ve known Hannah for months.”
“Still. That’s not the same as a play date. And she’s two; seven year olds don’t want to play with two year olds.”
“He’s six.”
“Still.” Her lips pressed like that was the last word on the subject.
Casual. Not while she was at work. Not with the kids. He drew a deep breath. “Coffee. Either before you go to work, or before you pick up Hannah at the end of the day. No big interruption to your schedule, no involving the kids. Just me, getting up early or bailing on this place at happy hour, driving to you and sharing some caffeine as we chat about our lives. Come on, Rachel. What do you say?”
Fresh haircut and new lip color aside, Theo was asking a lot of her.
Or, if not quite a lot, he was asking.
She somehow, in all her careful not thinking about him, hadn’t prepared for him to be asking.
Before he could finagle her work schedule and favorite latte flavor out of her, she said, “I’ve got an hour—seventy-eight minutes, maybe—before I pick Hannah up for bedtime. How far away is your place?”
That shut him up. Good. He cleared his throat. “Um, about two miles?”
“So it takes less time to get there than to mine?”
“Yeah.” Theo nodded, a promising half-grin stealing over his face. “About five minutes.”
“Great. You interested in spending a lot of minutes between now and seven twenty-five naked with me?”
She liked when he swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple shifted his beard around. She liked the flush of his warm skin and the heat of his eyes and the way her body sizzled when they were close to each other.
He dug his keys out of his pocket. “Want me to drive?”
She regarded him.
“Go on and text your friend first. Tell her where you’ll be.”
“Where will that be, exactly?” She tried to sound challenging. Not like his reading her mind and anticipating her need for safeguards was both a comfort and a turn-on.
Theo smiled like she’d fallen into a trap. Except not a trap, since he always left her feeling like there were plenty of escape routes if she needed them. “If only I had your cell number, I could text my address to you, and then you could forward it to her.” His raised brows and waggling phone and light tone squeegeed away any worries about how often he spoke to Sergei.
She’d shared the same info with Depy, after all, and heaven knew she trusted Theo three thousand times more than she did Depy. She recited her number, and swiped her screen to check the incoming message.
“Okay?”
She nodded. “You drive. I’ll text Serena and Gill.”
He held the car door for her. He closed it gently after she was seated. His jeans, now she got a view from the rear, seemed to have a crush on his ass.
It was possible they weren’t alone in that.
Chapter Thirteen
“This is me.” He shifted into park and looked over at her. She wasn’t asking to be taken straight back to Elixir, so he supposed this was happening.
The about-to-get-laid part of him strutted around dancing the zembekiko. It was about boisterous enough to drown out the voice noting that she wasn’t so interested in his ‘let’s date and start a relationship’ overtures.
But she hadn’t ruled it out. Also, he was about to get laid.
Entering the condo, she said the same thing as everyone else. “Wow, your kitchen is huge.”
“You hungry?”
She pivoted to look at him. “Hungry for something huge?”
Gods, her every syllable was full of lascivious intent. Not enough a/c in the house
to keep him cool now. He stripped off his shirt, kicked off his shoes. She dropped her bag on his sofa and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
He hadn’t spent the weeks apart overestimating the effect of her mouth on his. It was as luscious and encompassing as he’d remembered. Maybe more so. He tightened his hold on her, brought their bodies flush. Hitched her up a bit to ride on his thigh.
“Better give me the rest of the tour fast, or we’ll be screwing on your island before you know it.”
“Are you trying to end things early? Do you know how many pie crusts I roll out on that countertop? No naked flesh on the island, please.”
She laughed, which made for some excellent undulating contact between their torsos, and he set about removing her top. “Well, aren’t you precious? I’d let you fuck me on my kitchen counters.”
“Sure. You say that now. Next time you’re dicing carrots for dinner, you think about this conversation and get back to me.” His mind was blown. She was wearing a lace bra the color of green apples, and her skin glowed, and her nipples were riveting. It was a lot to process and still speak coherently, and he was impressed with his ability to put together a logical sentence in the face of so damn much beauty.
“Carrots?”
“Potatoes? Onions? I don’t know what you dice.”
“Please stop talking about food and show me your bedroom.”
Like he could walk straight, hard as she’d gotten him. He peeled his hands from her ass, detached his lips from her neck. “Bedroom. Tour. Right.”
“Don’t tell me—this is the living room, that’s the dining room, and the kitchen is the huge, sterile pride of your life.” Okay, so it was a self-explanatory space. She sure did relish lifting her chin to grin at him, though.
“You’re terribly easy to get along with. Not a single challenging molecule to you.”
“Are you judging me?”
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