"I imagine you've been busy at work," he suggested graciously. Theodore didn't like to think he'd given her reason to avoid him, but he never discounted anything in the analysing, insecure part of his mind -- the part he never vocalised but always heard. His politeness was deeply ingrained, though, and he would have died before saying something passive aggressive in a ploy for sympathy. Not that he felt she owed him anything (he wasn't quite so self-centred), but he liked running into friendly faces. It seemed to make up for the decidedly unfriendly faces that seemed to be so common.
"A bit of light reading?" He teased, turning the spine just enough so that he could read the spine. It was hardly the kind of thing most people filled their afternoons with -- these were proper books, dry and clinical and probably not even illustrated.