Theo drummed fidgety fingers on the countertop. He’d spent the day baking desserts for Elixir, which should have been soothing but left him restless like he’d substituted cardamom for cloves and had no idea how the recipe would come out. None of the pies themselves seemed off; he was the one without all the right ingredients.
He pulled out of clean rag and began wiping down his stand mixer. Thing was, yeah, he liked Rachel. She was sexy, complicated, bright, an excellent mom. Hot. Something about her coiled strength made him think it would be fuck ton of fun to be around when she decompressed.
And her ex was his manager. A friend of a friend of someone’s relative, in the way things worked in their community. Four résumés landed on his desk the day after someone at church heard about the open manager’s position. Of those, he’d picked Sergei, and neither he nor Ron regretted it.
He didn’t care—he didn’t think he cared—what the deal was with Sergei and Rachel’s marriage and divorce. In general, knowing their outline meant it wasn’t too hard to shade in the picture. Married young, discovered they one or the other or both had problems they couldn’t surmount, ended the marriage and figured out a way to co-parent despite whatever had gone wrong. Not a lot of closeness between them, but nothing alarming.
None of it impacted Sergei’s ability to do his job. Or erased any of the awkwardness that came with telling someone on his payroll, “I’m into your kid’s mom.”
It also didn’t mean he could avoid ever talking to Sergei about it, should his half-baked ideas about Rachel rise into reality.
The kitchen timer chimed. He extracted the blackberry-raspberry pie, slid in a tray of baklava, and decided to leave the washing up for another time, when being around the sweet spicy scents of his kitchen wouldn’t prompt such maudlin and too-hasty ruminations.
By Wednesday, he’d invented an excuse to ask Sergei if he would have Hannah at Elixir. Cobbled together some cheese and honey pastry bites, based on a hand pie recipe he’d run across. Claimed he wanted a kid’s initial reaction. He knew Hannah liked his baklava, but these had a more savory flavor profile. Theo thought it could be added to the children’s menu. If Hannah didn’t throw them on the floor.
“Are there nuts in them?” Sergei asked.
“Hannah’s allergic?”
“No,” he shrugged, “I don’t think so. Her daycare is nut-free.”
“But she can eat tree nuts, right? She’s had pistachios here.”
“She has?” He glanced at the daily specials board at the end of the bar, as if it held the history of his daughter’s menu choices. “Right. Sure. She can eat tree nuts.”
Theo wasn’t getting the answer he needed. If Hannah would be at the pub, Rachel would drop her off, and he could aim to waylay her and ask if she wanted to go out again sometime. Catch a movie or grab a meal. Or spend the next couple of hours naked with him. “So it’s okay for me to test these out on her tonight?”
“Right. Sure thing. But I’ll have to check with her mom.” He didn’t sound eager for the encounter.
Theo tried to channel casual disinterest. “Want me to ask her about it?”
“Who, Rachel?”
He nodded.
“Sure. That works.” Sergei checked his watch. “She should be here in like forty minutes. Do me a favor? Find out about the whole nuts thing without telling her you asked me first?”
He wasn’t going to play with his gift horse. “You got it.”
No matter what Gillian might accuse her of, Rachel did not reapply her lip-gloss before unlatching Hannah from her car seat. Well, she did, but it was because they were dry, not because Theo might be inside when she dropped Hannah off. And they were only dry because it was that kind of weather—an odd lack of humidity for a Houston summer. None of that had to do with Theo’s brown hair and computer-related job and the possibility he had a goldfish swimming around somewhere.
Not that she was looking for permanence of any kind, like Serena and Natalie had found rolling dice for their relationships. Just ... something a step up from occasional hasty single encounters between near-strangers. She’d had, for now, her fill of those.
She paused in the doorway of Elixir to let her eyes adjust, and to hunt down Sergei. In the dim light, it was natural she’d mistake the man over by the bar for her ex, with their same build and his back to her and all. Never mind that her stomach’s slight flip was so different from the distinct knot she got whenever she had to walk up to Sergei. Hannah, at least, seemed to know the difference between the men. She lunged at Theo as they approached, and he caught her up easily, settling her on his hip with a ready laugh and a kiss to her forehead.
Rachel decided her body language must explain it all. No matter how she worked to keep an upbeat tone about Hannah’s dad, her daughter must pick up on nonverbal cues, and that’s why every handoff to Sergei was a struggle. But with Theo, there was none of the clinging, or the repeating of ‘no no, Mama,’ or the occasional and dreaded toddler tantrums. She went to him as readily as she did to any of Rachel’s friends, or to Depy. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Sergei. Rachel had lurked in parking lots spying on them often enough to know her daughter was all smiles as soon as the door shut behind her. So she’d already suspected the bad handoffs were her fault, even without the periodic comments from Sergei telling her so.
Add another thing to the list of ‘ways Mama’s decision to divorce screwed up Hannah’s life.’
“Hey,” Theo touched her upper arm gently. “You okay?”
“Sure.”
He pressed a little harder, both with his fingers and with his words. “Seems like you’re shaken up or something.”
Rather than enlighten him about all the ways she was failing at the most essential responsibility of her life, she backed up and narrowed her eyes at him. “You think every time I come in here upset now you have to swoop in to my rescue?”
His deep brown eyes widened. “I wasn’t trying to talk you into anything.”
She looked at her daughter, kicking and content in the cradle of his arm. Told herself to dial down her stress levels so Hannah wouldn’t cry when she left. “All right. Sorry. How are you?”
“Good. Fine. Happy to see you again. I was going to call but I don’t have your number.”
She maintained her pleasant face. Reminded herself she’d had a good time with the man, and anyway, he wasn’t to blame for her bad parenting. “I didn’t think about that.” Not that she’d called him herself. Hadn’t planned to. Didn’t cross her mind to imagine doing anything further with him.
“Hey, little H.” Sergei came from behind her and lifted Hannah from Theo. The men exchanged a look she couldn’t quite decipher.
Theo turned back to her, nodding. “So, you know I make the desserts here?”
She shook her head.
“Yeah. Well, the baked ones. And I have a new one, a savory variation on baklava, I want to add it to the kids menu.”
“Right?” She wasn’t sure how it mattered to her.
“I thought I’d see if Hannah would be my taste-tester. If that’s okay with you?”
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.