Theo grimaced. “You’re sure you feel okay now? The pill didn’t leave you with side effects?”
“Nothing much. Some queasiness, some bloat. I’m good as new now.”
He mimed wiping his forehead. She laughed.
Coming around the desk, he reached for her hand. His was warm and firm and compatible as he held hers. “I like this plan of yours. Maybe we take it a little slower? Do some of that couple stuff, dinner and movies or so on?”
She leaned in. “And good-night kisses at the door?”
The playful wolf side of him came out to strut. “Oh, hell yeah. Some good morning kisses in your bed, too, if I can manage it.”
“Don’t push your luck.” But instead of pushing him away, she linked her arms over his shoulders.
He slid his palms to the small of her back, a ripple of warmth that spread all through her. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“Just so we understand each other.”
“Absolutely.”
Their bodies were flush and their grins almost too wide to allow their lips to whisper into a kiss. Almost. And when the kiss ended, and he asked if she was free that weekend, she didn’t feel the need to check for any waving flags before she said yes.
Chapter Seventeen
Neither of them cared about superhero movies. Both had kids, so both were aware, on the periphery of their lives, of the latest franchises and comic-based movers and shakers. It wasn’t enough to get them to a screening of any of the summer blockbusters.
She claimed to like horror, but nixed the one he texted her a trailer for. “Also nothing with subtitles, and don’t get me started on the dramatic lives of teenagers.”
He replied with a rolling-eyes emoji and went back to searching the movie listings. It felt like he would be messing up the mandate if they watched something on the small screen. Like he was ignoring her need to be deliberate about getting to know each other, in favor of a comfy couch and streaming services and a locked door between them and the world. He came up with a choice of three Saturday-night showings of new releases that weren’t immediate strikes for either one of them, and sent them Rachel’s way. Just in time, too, since Sergei sauntered in and leaned on the filing cabinet.
“Got a sec?”
“Sure.” Theo silenced his phone and slipped it into his pocket.
“I think I pissed off Ron, and I don’t know if it’s a problem or not.”
The three of them hadn’t met as a group for almost a week. Maybe Theo was hyper-focused on his personal life, but nothing around Elixir felt off to him. “How’s that, then?”
“Not real sure. He was talking to his nephew out front, and it looked to be heating up. There were a couple of tables looking round at them, so I approached and sort of herded both of them outside. Stuck around a couple of minutes to see if they’d calm down.”
“And did they?”
“Yeah, after a bit. The nephew headed out, and Ron took off towards the back entrance. But the look he gave me, it wasn’t friendly. So I gave him a few, checked everything was smooth out front, and popped back out there a minute ago. He told me to mind my own fucking business.” Sergei shrugged, hands in his pockets, faking casual for all he was worth.
Theo considered. He and Ron had worked together a good long time, which meant an equally long time for them to rub each other the wrong way. Theo was a peacemaker, and a planner. He preferred to avoid conflict by setting things up so it wasn’t necessary. Ron was impulsive. And never one to compartmentalize—work problems went home, home problems came to work. Obsessions about the current season of the Houston Astros stayed with him everywhere he went. So if his nephew Lonnie came around giving him problems, anyone in Ron’s line of sight would come under fire.
“He might be pissed, but if you stay out of his way, it’ll blow over.”
Sergei tensed up to shoulders, the final proof that his casual pose was a façade. “I was doing what’s right for Elixir. We can’t have one of our owners screaming at somebody in front of the hostess stand.”
“Never said we could. You handled it smooth as always, and I appreciate that.”
“Re, I’m not looking for a pat on the head.”
“I’m not clear what you are looking for. You came in acting concerned about you and Ron getting along.”
And out came Sergei’s pacing. Not a lot of room in their office, but he managed to fill it with his volatile energy. So now Theo knew what his employee’s conflict style was: cool and collected as he gathered his ammo, then explosions everywhere.
Soothing things over as always, Theo got Sergei to take the pat on the head and an increased tolerance for Ron’s moods and head back to work. Sinking back into his own desk chair, Theo glanced at the movie listings on his monitor, and wondered how someone could live with Sergei’s temper for all those years and still like horror flicks.
And there went his ability to compartmentalize. Because to him, it was clear: he and Rachel would be going public with their relationship at some point, and that meant informing Sergei. And that, in turn, meant that soon Ron wouldn’t be the only one who carted all his problems to work.
“That was terrible,” he said before they’d even tossed the dregs of their popcorn and sodas.
“It wasn’t that bad.” She was totally lying. It was.
He side-eyed her and she tried her damndest to look innocent and honest. Must not have worked, cause he caught her around the waist and pinned her between his body and the wall. She squeaked an inarticulate protest about the rest of the moviegoers streaming for the exits, and he swiveled his head left, then right, slow and deliberate. Then shrugged. Then kissed her.
“I know when something is good or not, Rachel.”
Ah, hell. She kissed him some more. “Fine. I do, too.”
The man was going to grow too big an ego by the time the night was over. They’d gabbed all through supper at a Cantonese cuisine spot owned by a woman he met at some kind of restaurant chamber of commerce. She hadn’t quite figured out the connection, but she’d devoured the soup dumplings and steel pot beef. He preened while she admired a video of Andres kicking a neon orange full-size soccer ball into the net.
“They make smaller ones, you know,” she’d said. She used them herself, for some of her patients with grip or balance issues.
“He’s all kitted out for when the fall season starts,” Theo assured her. “But that’s the one I gave him when he was learning to walk, ‘cause it always cracked us up to see him square up to it with his stubby little legs.”
She eyed him. “You have a lot of happy memories of those days?” She knew his divorce wasn’t a hotbed of acrimony like hers, but it seemed unique and enviable, the way he talked so casually about his ex. From the way he told it, their switch to co-parenting and even her move to the Dallas area proceeded smooth as water sliding over river rocks.
“Of Andres as a baby? Sure. Well, we moved into my condo three weeks after he was born, that wasn’t the wisest, but he was always an easy kid.” He stopped and tilted his head. “You don’t mean about his brief stint of colic, do you?”
She bit her cheek to not laugh at his self-depreciation. “It wasn’t the precise intent of my question, no,”
“Are we having the exes talk?”
He was so matter of fact, as if her ex wasn’t Sergei. Who on top of being a tough discussion topic for her, was also his employee. “If it’s a bad idea, say so,”
Theo shrugged. “Not on my end. But maybe we should avoid your divorce history until date five or six,”
“If we make it that far,” she quipped. Tried to quip. Somewhere between thinking of her marriage and nerves about making dating official, she’d lost the light in her banter.
He offered her a bite of curry and waited until she was chewing to cover her hand and say, “Rachel. In my mind, we’re making it well past date six.”
Foolish eyes burning. His curry wasn’t even that spicy. Nonsense. So she sipped her wine and got composed as can be be
fore prompting him for the tale of his broken marriage.
“Okay, but listen. Two things to start. The worst thing I think I did, and the worst thing I think she did. The rest is almost by the book. Not communicating, keeping score, presuming the worst motives.” His finger squiggled in the condensation of his water glass. Added quietly, “Presuming a baby could fix us.”
After a beat, she asked, “Was he the worst thing for you, or for her?”
“No! No, not worst.” He took a breath and sat back, modulated to a calmer key. “I mean, it didn’t work, I doubt it would for most people, but God, no. Andres is the best thing we did. For me, and for Annalisa. He’s a miracle. You know?”
She nodded, and squeezed his hand. She knew. Every cell of her knew.
After a pause for table clearing, he smiled. “I just now realized how long it’s been since I dated another parent. Not that I date tons of people, for the record. I like this. The shorthand of understanding.”
“I’ve never dated a dad.”
“Never?”
“Well, if I have, it hasn’t come up. Not that I’ve dated a ton since Sergei. Little hard while living with your former mother-in-law. Or single parenting a toddler.”
“Hence your preference for one-time encounters.”
She drained her wine glass and let him squirm a little longer than was polite. “You can call them something plainer if you want. I’m not ashamed.”
“No reason for you to be, not that you need me to tell you so.”
“Not needed but noted. So, yeah. That’s been easiest, because when I’ve gotten to dating anyone in some kind of official way, all the schedule nonsense trips them up. As if it’s so hard to gather I have every other weekend free.”
“Annalisa said something about that before she and Jamie—that’s the new husband—got together. Something or another came up and we switched around the schedule, and her then-boyfriend was put out that his plans had to change.”
“Right. ‘Can’t you get a sitter or something?’ As if that’s not a whole other kind of planning. Not to mention, my usual sitter now lives in Brenham, so downgrade the whining about reservations and think about what actual real life complications look like.”
Theo handed a credit card to their waiter, nodding. “Exactly. But you’re sidetracking me, and I’m not falling for your clever tricks.”
He was joking, but it lodged in her chest anyway. No one besides Aunt Johnston had called her clever in all her life. “You’re the one taking the bait so you get out of telling me the worst things.”
Funny how when Theo narrowed his eyes, it didn’t come across a threat, like it did in Sergei’s still-too-similar face. “Challenge accepted. Now you’ll hear my secrets, and after if you want to skip the movie and block my number, let me thank you now for having given me this much of a chance.”
“Quit being charming and get on with it.”
Leaning back to accept the receipt, Theo picked up the pen and began rolling it between his palms. “Any preference of whose I say first?”
It was more nerves than his usual. Only the night of the bust condom had she seen him more agitated. “Yours.”
If it sucked, she could walk out before he spoke ill of his ex. Plenty of that out in the world; no need to let him add to it.
Theo closed a fist over the pen. Nodded. Nodded again.
She was a complete and utter sucker. “Okay, wait. Tell me hers.”
Lines bracketed his face when he grimaced. She’d not noted them in any of his smiles before. “Rachel, you don’t need to take pity on me. I’m not fragile.”
She raised her brows. “Maybe I want to know what your tone is when you trash talk someone.”
Nope. No brackets when he grinned. His cheeks lifted into arcs around his eyes. “You are ruthless. I like that so much about you.”
Was she? Well then. That was acceptable. “Flattery won’t save you now.”
He sent a smile towards his friend who owned the restaurant. Then dropped the pen onto the bill presenter. “She bought me high-end golf clubs.”
Chapter Eighteen
Her expression was five-eighths confusion, a quarter annoyance, and just that last eighth amusement. “Talk.”
He checked the time. “Want to sit outside for a bit?”
She agreed, so he guided her onto Mary’s back patio. It wasn’t open for dining, but she had a couple of tables for employee breaks out among her herbs and vegetables. Both stood empty, and he guided her to a seat.
“I have to tell my friend Serena about this. Of course, she’ll want to trade cuttings with Mary if I do, so maybe not.”
“No, she’d love that. I’ll send you her number.”
She nudged his knee with hers. “Only if we’re still talking later, remember? Tell me about these fancy-ass golf clubs.”
It seemed from her teasing she’d adjusted her ratio of how irritating she found him. Encouraged, he launched in. “Annalisa and I met in grad school. I had a job right after undergrad; they supplemented my MBA after I worked there a year or so, it was a great deal. Or, that’s what I thought. The whole corporate culture of the place was pretty rancid, but of course once they started paying for my degree I didn’t feel like I could leave. Anyway, it came with this, like, expectation about networking, social stuff that you think is optional until your boss pulls you aside to let you know his boss noticed that you never go to the clubs or bars, and is wondering if you’re cut out for the environment. And some of the behavior, it’s stuff you’d like say something about. Except it’s obvious there’s a gross ‘boys will be boys’ rowdiness all those boss’s bosses are okay with, so who would you even say something to?”
“Your MBA is worth putting up with all that?”
He glanced away, not wanting to see any more of the way she closed in on herself a bit as he talked. “No. I mean, I’m glad I have it. But ultimately, the means weren’t sustainable. I took the path of getting out of night outings by claiming schoolwork, and, well, curried favor by falling in with the golf crowd instead. A couple drinks at the clubhouse after nine or eighteen holes wasn’t always going to lead to some kind of encounter with lightly-clad women.”
She made a throat-clearing noise that didn’t speak well of his past. Not that he disagreed. Some kinds of neon-and-spot-lit spaces still made his stomach tighten and set a thrumming tension up the back of his neck. Little too much time in Sunday school, his cousin always said, like the man didn’t spend what spare time he had working against sex trafficking. More power to anyone who chose the lifestyle of their own accord; his wrath was for those who used coercion, blackmail, and addiction to trap the vulnerable.
He shook off his glum. “Right. Yeah, so. Somewhere in there, I met Annalisa. She was also getting her MBA. Worked for a different company. Study groups turned into study dates turned into dates, and a relationship. So. She and I golfed together, and it was almost an in-joke at first, this hobby that is not, I’ll have you know, well suited to Houston for much of the year. At least, to me it wasn’t. It was all about the corporate ladder, the golfing, and I treated it like a more palatable resume-builder than, you know. The other.”
“I’m not going to faint if you mention strip clubs. I know they exist.”
The dim porch lighting acted as a damn welcome disguise for whatever embarrassment he was sure to be showing for going along with the corporate culture. He hoped. “Okay, yes. Point is, Annalisa and I got married, and finished our degrees, and after I felt I’d done enough repayment work for the MBA, I left that place and got a job with a company that did most of its networking in a way lower key. I sold the golf clubs, and got on with my quiet desk job. Give me a cup of coffee and some spreadsheets and I’m a happy man.”
“Sexy.”
“Everyone says so.” Theo’s chest filled with nice clean herb-scented air, and he savored the fact that he wasn’t surrounded by smoke and sweat and spirits. The fug of the strip clubs had lowered on him as he talked, and he blessed Rache
l’s snark for helping him escape it.
“I believe it. But I gather Annalisa wasn’t on board?”
“If this were a golf game, you’d have a hole in one. She kept up the golfing, except for a few months of pregnancy, and didn’t care to hear I didn’t like it.”
“You didn’t like her going?”
Her words put his back up, but her tone showed her own ire was brimming over its banks. Theo reminded himself of his dad’s relatives back East, and the way Depy enshrined every facet of Sergei, and did not ask what hobbies Rachel’s husband had set constraints on during their marriage. “Her golfing is not a problem for me. Never was. She’s good, she enjoys it, and it serves a professional purpose for her. And before you ask, I never played with her. We never formed the habit, and if I was in her foursome it made her impatient all game, knowing there was someone else, some coworker or boss or connection, who wasn’t on the fairway to bond with her.”
“She sounds a little cut-throat. I like it.”
He laughed. He could imagine them bonding over not letting some man hold them back, which amused him even if the man in question was him. “Right, well. Point is, our styles were so different. For work, for networking, for planning our futures. And she never would hear that her way wasn’t my way.”
He was sure he came off as whining in a not-at-all-sexy way. Poor Theo, forced to endure a slightly unpleasant thing in order to progress in his job. Like everyone else in every workforce.
Rachel didn’t look horrified. So he explained a little more—the country club, the pressure to apply at another company, the day Annalisa said, “It’s like I don’t even know you.” Matter of fact and condemning all at once. Then coldness and comments about this and that person who fit her expectations of success. She never needed to be snide, his ex-wife. She got her point across with calm but cutting words. And actions. Case in point: the birthday gift of Callaways in a sleek silver-accented bag.
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