A Minute to Smile Read online

  Which, no doubt, he did. He seemed to do everything well. He knew wines and history and legends; how to send a man to his knees with the mysterious power of chi and how to tease small children to make them laugh. He could dance and laugh and kiss with equal fervor.

  What would it be like to make love with him?

  The thought sent a wave of heat through her middle. Hastily, she pulled the rest of the bacon out of the grease. His rich laugh floated into the still mountain morning, reedy and robust. She looked back, and her gaze lit upon his long legs, feeling her palm itch with the urge to explore the sleek, muscled length. Sun-bleached hair dusted the tanned flesh, promising an intriguing mixture of textures. She wondered how those legs would feel against her own…

  At that instant, she looked at his face and found him watching her, a gleam of laughter and desire mingling upon the bold features. He winked, as if in promise.

  Wiping the itching palm against her hip, she cracked eggs. Get ahold of yourself, she thought, a little annoyed.

  They ate breakfast on a blanket spread under the trees, then stowed the pans and extras needed only for the early meal into the car. Esther spread an herbal mixture over the boys’ arms and legs to repel ticks, and coated her own legs with sunscreen. Neither of them had inherited her fair skin, but Esther had worn a long-sleeved blouse and before they started out, put a straw hat on her head.

  Alexander cheerfully shouldered the heaviest of the two grown-up backpacks and the boys each carried a change of clothes in their smaller ones. Thus fortified and prepared, they started up the long path.

  It took almost two hours to hike the twisting, steadily rising trail to the summit. Because of the children, they stopped often for long sips of water from canteens they each carried. Along the path, sometimes dipping out of view, sometimes running right alongside, was a cold bubbling stream, and it attracted a wide variety of animal life. Jeremy, ever fascinated by birds, found feathers of all kinds to tuck away into the pocket of his pack, while Daniel simply dreamed along, absorbing the smells and sounds of the scene. Alexander hiked easily, sometimes taking the hand of a child or squatting with one of them to admire a rock encrusted with mica or a beautiful leaf.

  Esther simply walked from one moment to the next. She’d always loved the mountains. The fine light air was perfumed with the spicy scent of pines and sun-warmed earth and composting needles. Aspens fluttered shiny, coin-shaped green leaves against the breeze. Spruce and fir trees swayed graceful arms toward earth, stretching their necks toward a sky so crackling blue it seemed unreal.

  By the time they reached the high meadows, they were all a little worn and ready for a snack. Esther spread a blanket amid the wildflowers close to the stream and opened the pack with the food. The boys each grabbed a banana and a handful of cookies, then shed their packs and went to wade in the shallow stream. “Don’t get out of sight!” she warned.

  “We won’t!”

  “And Jeremy, that especially means you.”

  Alexander dropped down beside her on the blanket, helping himself to a brownie and a half-thawed bottle of orange juice. “Not even Jeremy can drown in three inches of water.”

  “You’d be surprised.” She peeled a banana and looked at him. “Your nose gets sunburned easily,” she commented with a smile.

  He touched it. “Red so soon?”

  “Not terribly, but I can see that it will be. Do you want some of my sunscreen?”

  “Sissy stuff.” He fell back on his elbows. “When you’ve lived with it as many years as I have, you get used to it.”

  She grinned. His nose was bold and straight and perfectly suited to his face. “You’d look silly with a teeny little nose.”

  His eyes, almost as blue as the Colorado sky, twinkled. “I suppose I would.” He brushed the back of his hand against her thigh. “Just as you would look silly with bird-stick legs.”

  “Don’t tease me about my thighs,” she said lightly, tugging on the hem of her shorts. “Especially when I have expressly come to the mountains to pig out.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of teasing you about something so delectable.” His voice had dropped a hair, and with a wicked gleam in his eye, he brushed his knuckles over the side of her leg again. “In fact, I feel distinctly vampirish at the sight of that tender flesh.”

  “Vampires are interested in necks.” She glanced toward the children to avoid his eyes.

  “I feel sure that any vampire worth his salt might give consideration to this thigh,” he returned.

  She slapped his hand. “Quit.” But she was unable to quell a chuckle.

  He leaned on one elbow and stretched his hand out to circle her foot with his fingers. “You do have lovely ankles, too, you know.” He winked. “The sign of a lady—trim ankles.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Mmm.” He sat up to shrug out of his chamois shirt, then reached for the hem of his black T-shirt and before Esther could blink, had shed it as well. Then as calmly as if he’d just passed out a syllabus, he stretched out on the blanket, closing his eyes.

  Esther was riveted once again by his magnificent body. His arms were flung over his eyes and one knee was cocked. Her eyes wandered over his bronzed shoulders and the tight muscles of his chest, across the taut stomach, then over his worn shorts to his thighs.

  Stop it. Disconcerted, she focused on the peeled banana in her hand and had to choke back laughter at the symbolism of the silly thing.

  But her eyes were drawn back to Alexander, to his beard with its silver strands, and to his unruly mahogany hair and back to the powerful chest. Everything about him invited tactile exploration—and promised satisfaction.

  She ate the banana without tasting it, and reached for a cookie automatically. She caught herself and sighed. It wasn’t cookies she was hungry for. Rather than make a glutton of herself, she stripped off her shoes and socks and went to wade in the brook with the children, leaving Alexander to doze.

  * * *

  He didn’t know when she got up and left exactly; he’d been drifting in the lazy warmth of the sun, his body pleasantly spent by the hike.

  But he opened his eyes and she was gone. He rolled to his side and saw her playing in the creek with her boys, her discarded socks and shoes in a heap near the edge of the blanket.

  Over a haze of blue and white columbines, he watched her wade upstream to a boulder in the sun. Her hair, so neatly braided this morning, had come loose. Tendrils clung to her neck and floated around her face. She brushed them away carelessly, bending to splash Jeremy lightly. The loose, gauzy blouse fell forward, affording Alexander a tantalizing glimpse of the smooth white flesh of her breasts. He shifted, feeling a sharp, familiar stir in his loins.

  How long had she sat there, raking him with her eyes? For the first few moments, he’d been amused—because although he’d considered a number of other ways he might lure her into his bed, using his own rather ordinary body had not been among them. He’d pulled off his shirt because he was hot.

  Esther’s soft gasp came as he stretched out. Covering his eyes in feigned drowsiness, he had watched her gaze trail over his body, feeling the path she followed almost as clearly as if she had lightly combed her fingers over him. That heated somnolence had entered her eyes, a rich, sleepy seductiveness that was almost unbearably ripe.

  It had pleased him deeply to be admired that way, but it was almost more than he could manage. To avoid embarrassing himself, he’d closed his eyes honestly and blocked the almost palpable feel of her gaze running over him.

  He shifted again now, uncomfortably aroused. And yet, he didn’t look away from her. He couldn’t. Every one of her gestures, no matter how innocent, aroused him further. The throaty sound of her laughter settled in his belly. Her dancing movements through the water rippled in his chest. The glitter of sunshine in her hair made him think of the pale red mass spread over a white pillow as she beckoned him closer. The thighs she hated so desperately were firm and strong and glistened with silvery water,
and he wanted to feel them strapped hard around him.

  She climbed to the rounded hump of another boulder and leaned back on her arms, tipping her face toward the sun for a moment in the pure enjoyment that was so typical for her. One leg dangled gracefully over the edge of the rock and Alexander slowly followed the smooth length upward, over the hem of her loose khaki walking shorts. At her blouse, he paused. Sunlight filtered through the thin white fabric, putting her figure in acute, beautiful silhouette.

  Ah, Esther, he thought, admiring her. A painfully swollen and conscienceless portion of his anatomy urged him to cross the wildflowers and pull her from her perch and drag her back to this soft blanket in the middle of a mountain field. Here, beneath the sweet heat of the sun, he would disrobe that glorious body and worship it properly, with his hands and his mouth and his tongue, until she ached the way he now did.

  Somehow, he knew he would emerge a changed man, that she would flow through him like some gilded nectar, right into the marrow of his bones and the shrunken fabric of soul.

  But there were, in this moment, other considerations. Soon, he promised himself. Soon.

  In the meantime, a dip in a cool brook certainly couldn’t hurt. With effort, he willed his body into submission, and he ambled through the ankle-high grass to the stream.

  “Decided to join us?” Esther said from her perch. Alexander touched Daniel’s head. “Who can resist wading?”

  “Look, Alexander.” Daniel pulled his hands from the water. They were red to the wrists from the cold. In his palms were several rocks, threaded with shiny veins. “Is it gold, d’you think?”

  “It could be.” He glanced at Esther, who smiled. “It isn’t mica.”

  Daniel tucked them away in the pocket of his shorts. “I’ll take them to the ranch with me. My grampa’ll know.”

  “Does he know a lot about gold?”

  “Yep.” The boy peered into the water. “He used to be a miner before he bought his ranch.”

  “My father was a miner,” Alexander offered and plunged a hand below the current to snag a rosy piece of quartz.

  “Did he mine gold?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” He frowned at the rock, then looked at Daniel. “I didn’t really know him, you see.”

  Solemn blue eyes met Alexander’s. “Did he die?”

  “Oh, no. He and my mother were divorced, like yours.”

  “I know my daddy, though. He’s going to take us to grandpa’s ranch for a whole month.”

  The sound of energetic wading alerted Alexander to Jeremy’s approach, but not quite fast enough. A furious spray of water splashed over him as Jeremy sat down in the shallow stream and kicked vigorously. He quit only because he was giggling too hard to stop—a heart-warming, deep little giggle that tightened the brown tummy and crinkled his eyes. Alexander splashed him back, gently, then more vigorously as he saw that’s what Jeremy wanted. Daniel ran away to the bank in protest.

  “Okay!” Jeremy gasped. “Okay, okay!”

  Alexander was soaked—and cooled considerably. He reached out to help Jeremy up, but as they reached the bank together, Alexander shook his head over the boy, sending a tiny shower over his body. In cheerful retaliation, Jeremy shook his curls. “I give!” Alexander protested. “Let’s get something to eat.” He glanced at Daniel. “You, too. Aren’t you hungry?”

  “I guess.”

  There was an unexpected coolness in his tone and Alexander frowned, then glanced at Esther. She shook her head almost imperceptibly, giving him a somehow sad lift of the eyebrows. He nodded and took Jeremy’s hand, leaving Daniel alone, as he obviously wished to be.

  * * *

  Later, as Esther ran a sink full of sudsy water for the picnic things, she thought that had been the only blot on an otherwise perfect day. She had given the children quick showers and settled them on her bed upstairs to watch reruns of Mr. Ed and Mork and Mindy. Both of them were probably out cold by now and would sleep like rocks till morning.

  She had shed her shorts for a comfortable, aging Indian cotton skirt, and padded around barefoot, her feet still hot from the long, long hike. The packs had all been unloaded, the dirty clothes tossed into the hamper, the food put away. Alexander had taken the car, against her protests, to wash mountain dust from it. All that was left were the plastic dishes.

  Late sunlight fingered the coleus and ferns in the windows, and absently, she gave the plants a drink, humming an old camp song under her breath. The mountains always gave her this lazy, sleepy sense of well-being. Fingering the soft, patchwork violet leaf of the coleus, she found herself amazed such color could exist. And as so often happened, the ripe sense of wonder spread to her own life. She was grateful to be so strong and healthy, to have borne such bright, beautiful boys, to live in the old house her grandfather had built.

  Thank you, she thought. Overflowing with a sense of blessedness, she gazed out the window toward the blue mountains and let the grateful tears flow over her cheeks. Thank you for this day.

  Alexander came in, carrying a blanket and two small jackets they had overlooked. “That’s everything,” he said.

  Esther wiped her face and turned, chagrined but amused to be caught. “Just put them on the table.”

  “Are you all right, Esther?” His tone was gentle.

  She nodded, smiling in embarrassment. “A little too full, I think.” With a small sigh, she looked at him. “The boys are going to be gone for a month.”

  “And you’ll miss them.”

  “Yes.” She turned away from the plant and slipped on her rubber gloves, an oddly fussy habit she’d developed as a young girl, loath to wash dishes. “But they’ll have a wonderful time. It’s important to let them go.”

  Alexander came to stand beside her. “I’m sorry about my little gaffe with Daniel this afternoon.”

  “It isn’t your fault.” She washed a handful of red plastic forks. “Jeremy doesn’t remember what it was like to have his daddy live in the house with us. Daniel does—and he still harbors a lot of hope that one day we’ll all live together again.” She looked at him. “Did you ever spin those fantasies as a child?”

  He settled against the counter, crossing his long, tanned legs at the ankle. “No. Like Jeremy, I was too young when my father left to remember him. And my mother, for all her eccentricities, made it seem as if it were perfectly normal for the two of us to live alone.”

  “I think I would have liked your mother.”

  “And she,” he said, brushing a finger along her arm, “would have liked you.”

  Esther looked up at him and for a moment, was once again snared by the sheer power of his physical presence. His hair was wind tousled. His cheekbones and nose were a deep red brown and his T-shirt clung to the broad stretch of his chest.

  She turned back to the dishes, speaking to the sudsy water instead of the man in an effort to overcome the longing the sight of him created within her.

  “I’m glad,” she whispered, fighting herself once again. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop wanting him. Her dreams at night paraded a thousand fantasies of him across her mind, leaving her hot and restless with morning, irritable and hungry and—“I like you, too,” he said quietly, and stepped up behind her. “This blouse drove me mad today.”

  She started when his hands fell onto her shoulders. “There’s nothing seductive about this shirt, Alexander,” she said to hide her nervousness. As if she didn’t notice his thumbs drawing circles along her collarbone, she dropped a plastic cup into the drainer. “It even has long sleeves.”

  His hair brushed her ear an instant before his lips touched her neck. “You really have no idea, do you?”

  “No idea?” she echoed weakly, closing her eyes as his tongue traced a spiral from the hollow below her ear to the edge of the blouse on her shoulder.

  “How magnificent you are.” His hands traveled down her arms and back up again. Against her back, his body radiated heat and strength. “You’re so strong and vibrant
and sexy.”

  “Peasant stock,” she said, struggling for a lightly mocking tone. But the words came out on a breathy note.

  “Mmm.” The sound vibrated from his mouth into her body. He suckled her earlobe, nibbling gently. His beard grazed her shoulder. He caught the airy fabric of her skirt and edged it upward until his palm, warm and callused, fell against her bare thigh. She sucked in a breath. “Alexander.”

  “I’ve wanted to do this all day,” he whispered. The voluminous fabric cloaked his hand, but his fingers traced erotic patterns over her thigh. “So strong and firm.” His other hand dropped and burrowed beneath her skirt on the other side, so his wide broad palms with their rough calluses were simultaneously moving over both legs. “Your skin is as soft as a cloud,” he murmured, pressing closer into her bottom until she felt his sudden and fierce arousal. Her hips weakened and she leaned into him, dangling her gloved hands in soapy dishwater.

  With his nose, he nudged the hair away from her neck and planted kisses at her nape, his fingers under her skirt circling higher on her thigh. “You are incredible, Esther.” He kissed her shoulder and neck and ear, his beard a tantalizing addition to each movement, the silky curls of his head brushing new fire into the cells of her cheek and ear and jaw.

  Esther felt as if every atom of her body were being caressed simultaneously and she trembled. She heard a small, helpless sound and realized vaguely it had come from her throat. She found her head falling backward to rest against his shoulder as his tongue danced against the edge of her ear, teasing, and then he burned a trail over her jaw. At the same time, he lifted her skirt and wrapped his bare leg around hers beneath the fabric. She sagged against him, lost in a haze of Alexander’s making.