A Minute to Smile Page 10

“No, I’ll find my way.” He inclined his head. “Thank you for a lovely evening.”

  “The pleasure was mine,” she said, flexing her hands teasingly. Then, dropping the bantering tone, she said, “Really, Alexander, you were wonderful with my children tonight. Thank you.”

  “I found them easy to be wonderful with. How long has Daniel been practicing his magic?”

  “A long time. Abe taught him a card trick when he was about four, and he’s been obsessed ever since.” The talk of magic brought back a memory of standing in the tree, dropping the cantaloupe to the ground. “Alexander, I hope you don’t think I was too awful with Jeremy. I know it seemed dramatic—”

  “You forget I was here the day he fell from the tree before.” He touched her hand lightly, then took it away. “He’s a bit of a daredevil, isn’t he?”

  “That’s an understatement.” She looked at the tree, feeling a sick swoop of what if? “I’m terrified he’s going to get himself killed one of these days by just not paying attention. I don’t think I could stand it if something happened to either one of them.”

  “You’d be surprised,” he said in a grim tone.

  “No.” She looked at him. He’d lost both his mother and his wife in untimely ways and that gave him some insight into grief and loss. How could she explain the difference one felt toward a child? “It isn’t the same, Alexander,” she said finally, realizing there was no possible way to put it into words. To close the gloomy topic, she added, “Anyway, I think he got the message about the tree.”

  “I’m glad.” He touched her arm. “I’ll see you Thursday.”

  “The first lecture from the scary Dr. Stone. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “Good night, Esther.”

  “Good night, Alexander,” she said, mocking his formal tone.

  “Wicked wench,” he said over his shoulder.

  Esther laughed throatily, watching him walk away until the night swallowed him. Even then, she stood there a long time, staring up at the sky full of stars, feeling full and warm and deliciously infatuated.

  * * *

  By long-standing tradition, Esther met her friend Melissa Thursday evening, a habit born when they had worked together in an herb store in downtown Boulder four years before. Esther had been newly separated, though not yet divorced. Melissa had been finishing her doctorate in library science and had recently left a man she’d failed to change in ten years. The infamous Jesse was a wanderer, and Melissa had wanted to settle down.

  Tonight, Esther pushed open the glass door to a small upscale café and felt her lips twist wryly. She wondered if anyone in the place was below thirty—or over fifty.

  Worse, it was recently reviewed in the Daily Camera who gave the nouvelle cuisine high marks, the service and wine list even better scores.

  Joining Melissa at a small, exquisitely appointed table, she grinned. “We’re quickly becoming clichés, dear heart.”

  “There’s no law that says you have to remain in a state of rebellion your entire life, Esther Lucas.”

  “Who’s rebelling?” With a wave of her hand, she indicated the clientele. “This is—” Words failed her and she simply rolled her eyes.

  Melissa grinned in acknowledgement of Esther’s unspoken commentary. But in spite of the hip-length black hair that she wore in a single braid down her back, Melissa blended right in. Exquisitely ethnic with almond black eyes, a graceful sweep of cheekbone and dark honey skin, she was fabulously thin, elegantly dressed in a batik cotton dress and simple sandals. “Okay, next time it’s pizza. Indulge me tonight. I wanted crêpes.” She stubbed out a cigarette—her own form of rebellion. “So tell me everything.”

  “We haven’t even ordered,” Esther protested, feeling an unusual sense of reticence overtake her. There was little Melissa didn’t know about her, but Esther found she was unwilling to share anything having to do with Alexander. It was too new. “There isn’t much to tell, anyway.” She picked up the menu. “You start.”

  “I know this game,” Melissa countered. “I’ll tell you everything and then you’ll hem and haw and tell me nothing.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. I’m helping him with his class—that’s about it.”

  Melissa narrowed her eyes. “There’s never anything to tell when it’s important to you.” With a teasing shake of her head, she leaned over the table. “I’m supposed to be the stoic one here, all right?”

  “I forgot.” She touched her head with the tips of her fingers, then took a breath and blew it out. “He’s really scary, Melissa.”

  “Scary how?”

  Esther glanced at a vase on the table, a single Calla lily with statice. Critically she thought they ought to have left out the statice, then realized the thought was a dodge, a way to avoid thinking of Alexander. Because every time she called up a vision of his changeable, twinkling eyes or his boldly sculpted face or the woodwind notes of his laughter—

  “I can’t breathe,” she told Melissa. “Sometimes when he’s talking to me, I just forget or something, and then I have to stop and take a long breath.” She met her friend’s gaze. “Isn’t that silly?”

  “No.” Melissa touched her hand.

  To cover her embarrassment, Esther lifted her water glass and took a sip. She put it back down carefully and with a finger, joined the circles of condensation on the glass. “It’s really nothing right now. We’re just friends.”

  “Doesn’t sound like friendship.”

  Esther looked at her. “It has to be,” she said definitely.

  Melissa knew her well enough to take the hint. “Okay. Just one question.”

  “What?”

  “You aren’t playing Florence Nightingale, are you?” She frowned. “Abe told me a little about him.”

  “No.” She fingered the cloth napkin under her silver. “I think for once I may be the one healed.”

  “You look great.”

  “Thanks.” Esther lifted her water glass, in which a slice of lemon floated. “What’s the word on Jesse?”

  A secretive expression flitted over the shiny dark eyes. “I’d like to wait for a minute, if you don’t mind. We need a bottle of wine for that.”

  “Hmm. Sounds interesting.” But she waited while the waitress took their order, talking about the boys and the store and the class.

  Finally Melissa poured each of them a glass of delicately colored white zinfandel. Ceremoniously, she lifted her fluted glass toward Esther. “I would like to propose a toast to the end of a miserable, ridiculous period of my life,” she said with a rueful smile. “The famed Jesse appeared on my doorstep last night.”

  Esther’s eyes widened. “Really? And what happened?”

  “Nothing!” The sound of triumph that escaped her lips was very close to a chortle. “My heart didn’t go pitty-pat, my stomach didn’t flip over, my hands didn’t shake—I even invited him in and talked to him for a couple of hours.”

  “Wonderful!” She touched Melissa’s glass with her own.

  “No, wait. That’s not all.” She squared her shoulders. “I didn’t order him out of my life in a fit of tears, or beg him to tell me why he couldn’t settle down. I said it was good to see him and I hoped whenever he blew through town he’d stop by.”

  This moment of truth had been brewing for several months—in spite of Melissa’s panicked calls to Esther from time to time, her friend had finally grown weary of waiting for a man with incurable wanderlust. “How did he take it?”

  Melissa sighed. “I think he wanted to cry, but of course, men don’t do that. He told me he was sorry, and then he left.”

  “Whew!” This time they toasted in earnest. “I’m proud of you, Melissa.”

  “Me, too.” She bit her lip. “When I was with Abe at the concert on Friday, all we did was hold hands—but I felt more good things with him than I ever did with Jesse.”

  “You went to a concert with Abe?”

  Melissa nodded.

  A flutter of worry passed through h
er belly and she swallowed a cool sip of wine. “I think we’d best not talk about what happens with you and Abe. I’ll mother both of you to death.”

  Melissa touched her hand over the table. “Don’t worry, Esther.”

  There was something so strong and sure in her voice that Esther nodded. “Okay.” She smiled to herself. And she’d been thinking that the great improvement in Abe’s outlook had been due to the fact that he’d been working in the store a few times a week.

  * * *

  When she got home later, however, Esther heard Melissa’s question echoing in her mind. You aren’t playing Florence Nightingale, are you?

  She checked on her children, shed her dress in favor of a pair of sweats and brewed a cup of tea. In the blessed silence of boys abed, she drank it slowly, sitting at the kitchen table. The quiet was so welcome she didn’t even turn on the radio for company.

  Alexander Stone was undoubtedly wounded. But how many people reached their thirties without collecting wounds and sorrows? If she was to steer completely away from men with need of a healing touch, she’d end up an old maid.

  Well, not exactly an old maid, she thought with a smile. They were generally virgins.

  Restlessly she stood up and plucked a few yellowed leaves from the coleus in the window. Superimposed over the patchwork violet and green of the plant, she saw Alexander as he had been this morning in class.

  He’d worn his tie of little cat faces, a bit of whimsy in his elegant attire, just as his serious, weighty lecture was laced with jokes and a gentle ribbing of students who fell prey to his word games—walking right into a trap he’d set for them. He paced the classroom, gesturing, turning, tapping the desk or the podium or a student’s shoulder. As the hour had progressed, his hair, so neatly brushed into place at the beginning, had fallen into wild disarray, curls tumbling to his forehead.

  Sexy, she thought now. And intelligent. And funny. What woman in her right mind could resist such a man?

  It was only when she grew insecure and questioning that she even remembered that Alexander was anything but the most fascinating man she’d ever met. When she thought of him, it wasn’t his wounds she conjured up. His glittering eyes, yes—and his oboe-hued laughter, his delightfully sensual lips, his ease with her children. All those things.

  She hadn’t given much thought to her words before speaking to Melissa, but what she’d said was true. For once, she felt as though it was her own wounds that were being healed. All the tiny rips and tears her marriage had left in her heart were magically knitting themselves up.

  One of her father’s pet sayings came to mind:

  “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  The bottom line. The worst. She turned away from the window and poured a second cup of tea from the kettle on the stove, sobering.

  The worst? She could fall in love with him. Madly, deeply, eternally. There was something about him that intrigued and excited her in a way that no other man ever had. It was all too easy to imagine their relationship deepening, widening, spreading. She could see herself making love with him—now, and at forty and sixty and eighty—could see herself laughing with him and debating with him until they both needed canes to get around.

  It was easy to imagine spending her life uncovering every corner of his soul, learning all his memories and dreams and sorrows. Too easy. With a little shock, she realized that she was already half in love with him, after only weeks of knowing him.

  It was happening too fast. Too fast for her to be able to make any kind of solid judgment over the depth and breadth of his wounds, too fast for her to know whether or not he was a man like her ex-husband, who would never overcome his past.

  The bottom line. If she fell in love with Alexander Stone only to find his wounds so overgrown with scar tissue that he could not return that love, it just might be the last straw for her own heart. Not that she would wither up and die—but she wouldn’t be able to risk herself. Not again.

  With that in mind, she reaffirmed her weakening resolve to keep the delectable Alexander at arm’s length for a bit longer. No matter how much she wanted to let down her guard with him, she wouldn’t. Not until she was able to gauge the extent of his injuries.

  Chapter Eight

  For the next several weeks, life fell into a pattern. Esther worked in the store and gardens, took the children to their karate lessons, shared lazy suppers with Melissa and Abe, who seemed to be getting along quite well, much to Esther’s delight.

  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she gave a lesson on the medical practices of the dark ages or listened to Alexander’s lecture. After class, he sometimes invited her to share a cup of coffee with him and often popped in at her house for a few minutes on his way home in the afternoons. He allowed the children to practice their growing skills in martial arts with him and brought a soccer ball over to teach Daniel how to use his feet more gracefully.

  As the days passed, Esther felt her attraction to him growing, rather than receding as she had hoped it might. He stuck to his promise diligently, never touching her in any even faintly improper way.

  It didn’t matter. As he scuffled with the children in the backyard and his hair grew tousled, she longed to slip her fingers into the silky, wild curls. When he taught, she admired his quick bright mind and animated style, feeling the chills sometimes when his oboe-shaded laugh rang out over some particularly outrageous statement from a student. He laughed in an oddly robust manner, throwing back his head, his good teeth showing, his eyes crinkling up.

  And sometimes, Esther would be engrossed in something and look up to find Alexander very still, studying her. The barely concealed yearning in his eyes awakened by degrees something long silent within her, but she wasn’t quite brave enough to hold out her hand to him, to beckon him closer. The raw memory of herself doing just that in the herb garden still haunted her much too clearly.

  One weekend when her sons were with their father, Alexander invited her to come to his house for dinner. He broiled steaks on a grill outside while Esther admired his collection of roses. A heavy bank of clouds moved in before they could eat, however, and they settled in the kitchen with bottles of ale just as rain began to fall in earnest.

  Piwacket, chased inside by the storm, sprawled on the pale blue floor, his tail flicking. He glared at Esther with a malevolent yellow gaze as she ate. She ignored him at first, but after a while a part of her was piqued. Shifting in her chair, she looked right at him. “Just exactly what did I ever do to you?” she asked.

  The ratty gray tail switched and he most distinctly frowned.

  “I wouldn’t bother,” Alexander said. “He’s only come this far so that he can remind me not to throw out the peas when we’ve finished.”

  Esther chuckled. “Peas?”

  “He’ll eat the meat scraps, too, of course, but he’ll scratch your eyes out for peas.”

  Esther gave the cat a sidelong look. “Why is he named Piwacket?”

  “It’s from a children’s story.” He sipped his ale comfortably. “Susan taught second grade and that was a favorite of hers—it’s about the tattered cat of an English junkman that leads a band of cats to take over a neighborhood.” He lifted an eyebrow as he looked at the animal. “Suits him.”

  But in spite of the disparaging tone, Esther could see he was fond of the beast. She grinned. “Susan brought him from the hospital?”

  “Not that he ever had anything to do with her.” A shadow flickered over his face, then disappeared. “Do you know what he did the second day we had him?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Dragged a snake into the bathroom while I was shaving and dropped the damned thing at my feet.”

  “Was it dead?”

  “Very.” He grimaced.

  “Probably thought he was doing you a favor.” Esther cocked her head. “You know, like paying his keep.”

  As if he knew he was the subject of their conversation, Piwacket ambled over to a more visible spot and flopped down with a heavy
sigh, his torn ear twitching in annoyance as he studiously ignored them. His enormous belly rippled out in front of him. “Quite a spare tire there, old man,” Esther said.

  Piwacket swiveled his head and glared.

  She laughed.

  After dinner, Alexander gave the peas to his cat and led Esther into his comfortable living room. “I have a surprise for you,” he said, and a mischievous expression crossed his face.

  He picked up a rectangular plastic box—a rented movie for the VCR. As he handed it to her, he punched the buttons to turn the equipment on.

  Esther glanced at the title and grinned, clasping the box to her chest. “The Haunting,”she sighed. “Where did you find it?”

  When he turned to look at her, Esther could see that he was deeply pleased at her reception to his surprise. “At that giant place where they claim to have every movie ever made.”

  Just then, a huge crack of thunder rattled the windows and Esther laughed nervously. “Are you sure you’re up to this on a stormy night?”

  He raised a brow. “Are you going to cling to me in terror?”

  Esther bit her lip, smiling, and brushed by him to put the movie into the VCR. “We’ll see who’s clinging to whom, Dr. Stone.”

  A shimmer of light flashed over his eyes. “I suppose we shall.”

  They sat together on the couch. Not friends, but not lovers, either. Alexander almost casually settled his arm around her shoulders and she nestled ever-so-slightly closer to him. His lean body was warm and smelled of smoke from the outdoor grill, of cologne and that subtle undernote that belonged to him alone.

  “Have you ever seen this?” she asked him.

  He shook his head.

  As the black-and-white film unfolded, Esther reveled in the simple joy to be had in watching her favorite movie while nestled close to a man she was madly attracted to. His touch was casual, gentle, without demands, but she was aware of a seductive arousal growing softly between them, fueled by small brushes of his thigh against hers, his fingers against her shoulder, his hard chest against her arm.

  A laziness spread through her, as delicious as the heavy gold light that buttered the city in late afternoon.