A Minute to Smile Page 12

  “All right.”

  “I’ll need to stop by my office first.”

  They climbed the steps side by side toward the high room. Esther felt a strange, cloying darkness emanate from him in spite of the fact that outwardly he looked exactly the same. It occurred to her that this distant Alexander was the one who’d earned his reputation for aloofness and a part of her protested—couldn’t they see it was pain that made him lock himself away?

  Alexander unlocked his office door and Esther heard a flutter of wings. She followed him in and saw a cluster of finches on a branch outside the open window, their heads cocked toward the crumbs yet left on the windowsill.

  “Did we disturb you, little ones?” she said softly.

  Alexander took a bag from a desk drawer and reached into it, pulling out a handful of birdseed. “We’ll leave you in a minute,” he said, the British syllables sounding more clipped than usual, as if he were holding things in so tightly that he couldn’t even risk drawling a word.

  Esther silently joined him. “What a serene view.”

  “Yes.” A shadow crossed his face as he stared out over the quadrangle and she heard him take a breath. “Esther—”

  “Shh.” Instinctively she turned, pressing her fingers against his lips. “Don’t say it.”

  The bleakness in his eyes burned like an unholy fire. If she didn’t stop him, he would push her away in his pain, unaware that what he most needed was the warmth of a woman again in his life.

  Without a thought, she took a step closer to him. Her fingers were still pressed gently against his mouth and she spread them out over the firm curve of his sensual lips. Helplessly he reached out to brush a wisp of hair from her face, his eyes following the gesture hungrily. And for just an instant, the bleakness in his eyes faded, pushed away by the familiar wash of desire.

  A swell of ancient, womanly power grew in Esther’s chest. She smiled slowly in invitation, moving her fingers to his cheek to urge him closer. If ever a man needed to lose himself in a kiss, this one did now.

  “There’s that smile,” he said huskily and bent his head to her lips, touching them lightly, his fingers trailing over her jaw. A languid fever swam through her veins, slowing time, compressing all of life into this single moment.

  He wrapped his arms around her and tugged her close to him. Their thighs brushed, their bellies, their chests. “God, you’re beautiful,” he said, and his hand circled around her neck, his thumb tipping up her chin. He caught her lower lip between his own and sucked it into his mouth, and his teeth nipped the tender flesh once before he let go to kiss her in haste and hunger. His fingers tangled in her hair and roved over her back and he clasped her bottom in his palm.

  Esther heard her soul respond to the fierce petition. As his caresses intensified, she found her own hands exploring the long fluid lines of his back and his tightly muscled shoulders below the cotton shirt. She felt the shifts of his body so intimately it was almost as if he were another part of her. A soft sound of pleasure escaped her lips at the discovery.

  As if he’d been awaiting the signal, he tugged her away from the window, moving backward without easing his grip until he sat on the edge of his desk. He pulled her between his legs, his mouth falling savagely to her neck and the top swell of her breasts, moving with heat over her throat and chin.

  In answer, Esther pushed her hands into his hair, her body sizzling with the demanding slashes of his mouth over her. Against her thigh, his manhood was a blunt heat. A wave of sharp dizziness swept her as she thought of opening to that hidden power, offering shelter and relief and peace. “Alexander,” she whispered, loosening his tie in a sudden urgency of her own. She worried free the buttons of his shirt and at last put her palms flush against the sculpted flesh of his chest. His small male nipples pricked the pads of her hands and Esther felt her breath catch in her throat, watched his chest rise and fall with the hurried breath of hunger.

  In return, Alexander’s hands fell upon her breasts below the gauzy cotton, his fingers and palm lifting them to gauge the soft weight as his mouth opened, hot and wet on her throat. Her fingers curled reflexively on his naked chest.

  She had felt the source of all things flowing through her, had felt Alexander’s need as a compelling task. But as he made a low, growling, purely male noise of hunger, she forgot all that and leaned away from him enough that his hand could free the buttons on her dress to expose the lacy black slip below. The silk barely covered her and she was glad she had worn it as his fingers roamed the open weave with a touch as light as dust motes.

  Time ceased. Esther clutched his shoulders, thrilling to the dark, heady passion in his face, a passion that had utterly erased the bleakness of a few moments before. As if in slow motion, she watched him bend his broad head to pull one rigid nipple into his mouth and felt simultaneously the heat of his tongue flick over the aching point.

  The dizziness spun from her head to spin through her limbs, electrifying every cell so that even the rasp of his trousers against the outside of her thigh felt gloriously sensual. She held on to him to keep from melting into a pool of heat on the floor, her breath gone, her thoughts a whirl.

  Then he was kissing her again, with his unique blend of tenderness and violent hunger and his hands roamed with restless need over her body.

  It was the sound of voices in the hall that tore them from the drifting plane where only the two of them existed and dropped them back in the slightly cluttered terrain of Alexander’s university office. The voices swelled as they approached the closed door. Clasped together, Esther and Alexander turned as one toward the sound, their hearts beating hard, their breath still unsettled.

  The voices passed, and in giddy reaction, Esther laughed weakly. Alexander pressed his face into the cushion of her breasts. “Lord, I want you, Esther.” He brushed his beard back and forth over the sensitive flesh and she shuddered.

  “You’re turning me into a wild woman, Alexander.”

  There was still no sign of the bleakness as he lifted his head, only a blazing turquoise fire. “I’m glad,” he said. He touched her chin and frowned. “I’m too rough with you.”

  “You aren’t too anything, except too good for my ego. You make me feel like the sexiest woman in the world.”

  “You are,” he whispered. He smoothed her hair away from her face, a soberness touching his mouth. “I was going to tell you I couldn’t see you anymore.”

  “I know.”

  “Just knowing you has changed me, Esther.” His broad palms slid over her shoulders. “It may take me a long time to work through the things being with you has brought up.”

  “I’m a very patient woman.” She grinned and began to button his shirt. “It was part of my nurses’ training.”

  An odd little flicker of disturbance furrowed his brow for an instant, then was gone. “I’m glad.” He fixed her dress, then kissed her again. “Am I released from my promise?” he asked lightly.

  She flushed, then realized how belated it was. “I was trying to protect both of us from rushing into something we weren’t ready for.” She looked at his broad nose and high cheekbones, at the neat silver and mahogany beard and the full lips that gave such pleasure. Finally she met his lightning eyes. “But sometimes you have to throw caution to the wind and take what comes.”

  “Sometimes,” he returned quietly, “it isn’t a matter of choice.”

  In that instant, as he gently released her and shoved his fingers through his disheveled hair, Esther realized she was dangerously close to falling in love with him. She smoothed her dress and hair with her hands to give herself time to absorb the heady new knowledge, not at all sure whether it pleased or dismayed her.

  Chapter Nine

  That evening, still restless, Alexander headed for the dojo. The hard exercise of his warm-up served to burn off some of the pent-up energy he seemed to carry around with him lately, but he had a hard time keeping away from the tactile memory of Esther’s flesh pressed against his.
>
  A man challenged him to a sparring match and glad of the distraction, he agreed. But even the demands of physical combat didn’t completely keep thoughts of Esther at bay. She had been like a magnificent, seductive goddess in his arms today. The fact that her somnolent smile had blotted out his despair was a good sign that perhaps it was beginning to lose its hold over him. And yet, something niggled at him, something that wasn’t quite right.

  His wandering thoughts betrayed him and his sparring partner took advantage, dropping Alexander to the mat. The man was on his first round of training and had attained a second degree black belt, but Alexander knew he should have been able to avoid the fall. He held up a hand. “Perhaps we’d be better off going again another day,” he commented. “I’m not much of a partner today.”

  He got to his feet and they bowed, then Alexander wandered toward the wall and sat down for a few moments. Tugging reflectively upon his beard, he frowned to call up her image: standing before the mullioned window in his office, reaching up to silence him—

  The niggling sense of unease clarified—she had shed her reserve in order to help him over his despair. Damn.

  She was one of the most naturally empathetic human beings he’d ever met, a natural healer. Today that empathy had told her that what Alexander needed was an old-fashioned laying on of hands. As he remembered how easily his despair had been submerged under her ministrations, he had to admit it was effective. She was a very passionate and sensual woman. When she let those instincts have free rein, she was a force to be reckoned with.

  The glimpse he’d had of that inner woman today had been exquisite, enticing, inflaming. Thinking of it now, even with the sound of grunts and thuds and feet slapping against the mats as background, he was transported. He thought of the way her pink mouth had parted on a sigh of pleasure and of the strange sensation of her skin heating as they explored each other. Every inch of him tightened in hunger. He wanted to set that inner woman free, the one she hid, the one she seemed to think so shameful. He wanted her to see how absurd it was that she should experience everything else in her life with such open-ended absorption and yet hold back in the most sensually pleasing pursuit available to humankind.

  But if she opened herself to him only to heal him, he didn’t want it. He wanted Esther to come to him as inflamed with passion as he had been himself this morning. He wanted her to come to him without reservation, without ulterior motive—because she wanted him and could not bear another minute without their joining.

  He ached at the very thought, ached to bring that moment within reach.

  He stroked his beard. The promise he’d made was now cast aside. There was nothing to stand between them except the children. He smiled to himself. Children slept. With a sense of great anticipation, he began to reel out his plan.

  Ah, Esther! he thought.

  * * *

  Sunday was to be the last weekend day Esther would have with her children for a full month. In order to wring the most possible from the day, she planned carefully.

  Saturday night, she baked cookies and brownies and a long loaf of French bread, then rose at five to pack bananas, oranges, apples and raisins, peanut butter and crackers and a dozen other kinds of imperishables into a backpack. From the freezer, she took small plastic bottles of frozen juice and lemonade and brick-solid candy bars. A carton of eggs and a pound of bacon went on top of these in another backpack.

  She showered and tied her hair back into a French braid, then went to the children’s room. Jeremy lay in the top bunk, flat on his back, legs and arms flung out, completely secure even in sleep. In contrast, Daniel curled around a soft plush teddy bear, everything but his little nose covered by the sheet. For a moment she just watched them, smelling the sweetness of their little-boy bodies.

  Children had never been a part of her great life plan. Like most girls, she’d earned money baby-sitting and spent time in nurseries at church and at her mother’s bridge games. But she’d never given much thought to actually bearing any of her own—it had mainly been inconceivable to think of herself as a mother. Mothers were tidy people with a firm handle on the long-term consequences of things. Not absentminded and vaguely dreamy like Esther.

  And yet these small boys were the best part of her. They had focused her. She couldn’t imagine her life without them, couldn’t imagine how she had ever thought she wouldn’t like being a mother. It somehow didn’t matter that she burned the corn bread or sometimes let their hair get too long or didn’t make the beds some days because she was doing something else.

  A tear touched her eyes. I’m going to miss you! her heart cried. A month. Thirty long days without them.

  Then she sniffed and wiped the tear away and bent over each one, touching first Jeremy’s soft curls, then Daniel’s sleek straight hair. “Time to get up, boys,” she said gently. “We’re going to the mountains.”

  Jeremy sat straight up and stretched hard. He blinked. “The mountains? Oh, boy!” He threw his arms around her. Esther’s heart squeezed.

  Daniel rolled over more slowly and patted her leg. “Can we go to the chipmunk place?”

  “I thought we could have breakfast there, then hike up to the meadows for lunch.”

  Jeremy scrambled down. “Can we wade in the creek?”

  “Sure.” She touched Daniel’s shoulder. “I’ve got your clothes ready downstairs.”

  “Is Alexander coming with us?” Daniel asked with a yawn.

  “No, I just thought of this last night.”

  “Can we call him?”

  Esther frowned. “It’s pretty early. We might wake him up.”

  “But maybe he’d be really disappointed if we didn’t even ask.”

  The idea was appealing. She hesitated. Did he even like hiking? The one they had planned was long. Then she thought of his ripplingly muscled thighs and the pleasure he took in physical activity of any kind.

  “Please?” Daniel asked.

  What would it hurt to ask him? “Okay. You two get dressed and get your teeth brushed and I’ll go call him.”

  But as she picked up the phone in the kitchen, she felt oddly shy. What if she did awaken him? It was only seven o’clock. And really, did she want him to see her in this back-to-nature mode? There was no point to wearing makeup for a hiking trip—it smeared and wore off anyway. And although her walking shorts were loose fitting, they exposed a lot more of her legs than she ordinarily let show. On her feet were sturdy boots and thick socks.

  She bit her lip. Illusion or reality—that’s what it came down to. Did she want to be real with him or keep him at arm’s length, a casual acquaintance?

  Thinking of the things they had talked about, the way his life and hers seemed to be getting tangled, the choice was obvious—and had already been made. She dialed his number.

  But it rang three times with no answer, then a fourth. Esther’s heart sank in disappointment. She was about to hang up after the fifth ring when it was suddenly picked up. “Hello?”

  “Alexander, this is Esther. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “No. I was gardening. Is anything wrong?” She bit her lip. “Nothing at all. I know it’s short notice, but I’m calling to invite you to come with us to the mountains. We’re going to have breakfast, then hike up into the meadows and have lunch.” Before he could reply one way or the other, she added, “It would mean leaving within the hour, if you’d like to go.”

  “That sounds wonderful.” There was no mistaking the hearty approval in his tone. “I’m already dressed, so I’ll just walk over. Do you need anything?”

  Her spirits soared, the anticipatory pleasure she had already been feeling jumping a hundred points. “I have enough food for an army. Just bring yourself.”

  “All right then. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  They drove Esther’s economy-model station wagon into the foothills and she parked in a broad graveled area. The morning sun had just begun to penetrate the quiet stands of trees as Esther adeptly lit a f
ire in a grate provided for picnickers, then started the bacon frying in a skillet. The boys wanted bread and she gave it to them. “Remember, you have to be calm about it.”

  “What are they doing?” Alexander asked as he peeled an orange.

  She pointed with a spatula to a broad sandstone wall covered with holes ranging from the size of a quarter to the size of a bowling ball. “Chipmunk condominiums,” she said with a grin. “It’s amazing.”

  “You would think the number of people who come here would chase them away.”

  Esther flipped the bacon. “Are you kidding? They probably eat better than any other clan in a tri-state area. The little scoundrels have made an art form of begging.” Hearing Jeremy giggle, she looked up and pointed. “See?”

  The boys sprawled on their knees in a small hollow, tossing bits of food toward three little chipmunks who chattered and scolded among themselves, their bushy tails flicking.

  Alexander chewed an orange section. “Cute little devils, aren’t they?”

  “Adorable.”

  “Not quite as adorable as you are, however.” He leisurely eyed her legs. “I’ve never seen you in anything but a skirt.”

  “Well, you’ll have to suffer through.” She lifted a slice of browned meat from the pan. “Not even I am comfortable in the mountains in a skirt.”

  “I’ll suffer, all right.” The turquoise glow in his eyes promised it was not quite the way she had intended. A shout from the boys drew his attention.

  “Look!” squeaked Daniel. “Babies!”

  Alexander popped another slice of orange into his mouth and ambled over to investigate. Esther watched him squat with the children, giving them each a slice of orange to toss bit by bit to the chipmunk babies. He looked utterly at home.

  He always did, she thought. It was one of the things she liked about him—his ability to be comfortable in any circumstance. She grinned to herself. Somehow, he always managed to look exactly right, as well: in the classroom, where he wore the crisp professorial clothes that gave him such an air of distinction, in the dojo where his bare feet and gi lent him a mysterious aura. In her backyard in jeans, playing with the children, he gave the impression of being an energetic and cheerful father. And now, in well-worn shorts and a T-shirt that advertised an Irish pub, with a wine-colored chamois shirt thrown over the top for warmth, he looked like a man who belonged in these mountains.