A Minute to Smile Page 4

  And it was hard to be a single parent. She hated sending the boys off every other weekend. The rules at Daddy’s house weren’t quite the same as at Mommy’s.

  Hearing the self-pitying tone of her thoughts, she shook her head. What she had now was a hundred times better than what she’d had with John and she knew it.

  Dumping the toys into the children’s closet, she went to her own bedroom. A breeze lifted the lace curtains lightly, cool and sweet. As Esther settled by the window, she admired her flowers and the rich green of her lawn. None of it had been there when they had reclaimed the house four years ago. Her grandmother had spent the last years of her life in a nursing home, a period in which the house had been lackadaisically rented out to a series of tenants. Esther had been living in Denver and the problems with her marriage had necessarily drawn her attention away from anything outside herself. No one else had cared much about the lawns around the old house, and the management company hired by her grandmother had been remiss in repairs. As a result, there had been no yard left and the already deteriorating house had fallen into even deeper disrepair.

  She smiled. Now the naked ladies and irises her grandmother had loved were springing up in the backyard. Pincushion flowers and larkspur lined the front walk. Even the house itself was coming along. Last winter, she had torn up the aging carpets in the front two rooms that comprised her shop and buffed the hardwood floors below. Door by door, threshold by threshold, she was redoing the woodwork.

  One day her house would be as beautiful as the one Alexander lived in. It was worth it.

  Alexander. Her stomach flipped again and she glanced at the clock. Two hours. What in the world was she going to wear?

  * * *

  Long buttery fingers of sunlight slanted through the trees as Alexander approached Esther’s house. It was a beautiful evening, he thought, whistling as he rang the bell.

  She flung open the door. In the instant it took for her to smile and push the screen aside for him to enter, he was nearly stunned by her beauty. Her hair had been tamed a bit with combs, but tendrils escaped to cling to her long white neck. Her cheeks glistened with a rosy glow and she’d put some shiny color on her mouth.

  But it was the wide swath of her bare shoulders that seized him. All he could see for a moment was the pale expanse of naked flesh, as flawless as bridal satin above the simple green dress.

  “Will this be all right?” she asked uncertainly. “I wasn’t quite sure where we were going, so I wore something kind of in-between.”

  “It’s beautiful,” he said. “I’ll be the envy of every man we see.”

  Her ripe grin flashed and she raised one eyebrow archly. “As I will be the envy of the women.”

  Both of them said nothing more for a moment, then as if aware of the absurdity of the moment, both laughed. “I’m a little out of practice with these things,” she admitted.

  “So am I,” he said and took her hand. “If you’ll forgive my mistakes, I’ll overlook yours—not that I think you’ll make any.”

  Outside, he took her arm as they headed for his car.

  Esther paused on the sidewalk. “Are we going far?”

  “Not at all. Would you like to walk?”

  “It’s such a beautiful evening.”

  He glanced at her feet, expecting high heels. Instead she wore simple black flats. She followed his gaze. “I’m tall enough without them,” she explained. “I really hate heels.”

  There was a note of apology in her words. “I’ve never understood how women could stand them. And now we can enjoy ourselves without my having to be concerned over your feet.”

  She smiled and tucked her hand under his elbow.

  As he had promised, the restaurant wasn’t far. It was a small place, quiet, with a wide variety of foods on the menu. “I wasn’t sure,” Alexander said as they waited for the hostess, “if you were an organic sort of eater or not.”

  She laughed and leaned closer to him. In a confidential tone, she said, “I’m afraid I’m an infidel. I’ve got a fatal weakness for any food deemed evil by the Surgeon General.”

  The hostess led them to a small table in an intimate alcove. A fat candle burned in a jar next to the long windows that looked out toward campus. The sidewalks, while hardly as teeming as they would be later in the year, were filled with young people out for the evening.

  Alexander ordered a Gibson and looked at Esther. “I’m not sure yet,” she told the waitress, then bit her lip to hold back a wicked grin. “No, I know. Bring me a Gibson, too. On the rocks, with extra onions.” With raised eyebrows, she looked at him. “May as well live dangerously.”

  “Not many young women in America drink Gibsons.”

  “I’ve never had one,” she said. “But I used to make them for my father and they smelled wonderful.”

  Alexander grinned. “My wife despised the smell of them,” he commented, then wondered if it was the wrong thing to say. It had come out without much thought.

  Esther cocked her head. “Abe told me you’re a widower. I’m sorry.”

  The direct confrontation of a subject most people avoided took Alexander by surprise. “Thank you.”

  “I’m divorced,” she offered, taking a sip of water. “But I still sometimes feel married. Does that ever happen to you?”

  Ordinarily he avoided this subject at all costs, but there was something so calm about Esther’s attitude, he found himself not only unoffended but almost relieved. “Yes,” he said. “We were married twelve years and however unfashionable it may sound, I was married at heart.”

  “It’s not at all unfashionable in my book.” She smiled broadly. “Especially since I had the sort of husband that never did understand what marriage was all about.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Thank you.” She bent her head to the menu and Alexander let his eyes linger on the gentle curve of her cheek and the slope of her creamy shoulder for a moment. Her husband must have been a fool.

  * * *

  When the waitress had delivered their drinks and taken their orders, Esther lifted her Gibson and tasted it experimentally. It was strong, but she had expected that of gin and pickled onions. It was also very good, as refreshing as it smelled.

  “Well?” Alexander asked curiously.

  “Not bad.” She smiled at him, aware of a delightful sense of excitement and wonder at being here, alone with him. In the candlelight, his neat beard glittered with mahogany and silver lights and his eyes were so dark as to be nearly black. For the first time, she noticed his tie. The pattern, hand painted on silk, had seemed very ordinary at first. Now she realized it was made of whimsical, tiny cat faces. She grinned at him. “Clever,” she said.

  “Ah,” he breathed, touching the tie with long brown fingers. His eyes twinkled. “I thought you might like it. It was a toss-up between this and one with swords.”

  So he wasn’t as serious as he first appeared, she thought, delighted. “Where, speaking of cats, did you find that animal of yours?”

  “Piwacket?” He gave her a wry twist of his lips. “My wife dragged him home from the hospital one night.”

  “That’s an attack cat if I ever saw one.”

  “He’s not so bad when you get to know him. He has even been known to purr once or twice.”

  “You don’t strike me as the sort of man who would like cats.”

  “Oh?” His mouth curved in humor. “What sort of pet ought I have, then?”

  Esther pursed her lips in consideration. She ran through the possibilities in her mind—a terrier? Too nervous. Labradors? Too dependent. Birds? Too fussy. A picture of him with a tiger flashed through her mind—two fierce creatures, sleek and strong, with a veneer of civilization masking the wildness below.

  Her blood quickened at the picture, and she wondered what it would be like to unleash the passion she saw in his lightning eyes and sensual mouth, heard in his dusky voice.

  Aloud she said, “I take it back. A rough old Persian cat suits
you just right, although an obnoxious Siamese might even be better.”

  “My mother loved Siamese cats. We had bundles of them—or at least what she said were Siamese. She insisted most black cats were, and some pure white.”

  “Does she still live in England?”

  He glanced toward the darkened window. “She died when I was sixteen.”

  “Fate hasn’t been kind to you, has she?” Esther said, pierced at the thought of leaving her own children before they were fully grown. And then she could have bitten her tongue, because there was a swift and fleeting bleakness on his face for an instant. “Alexander, I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me say that.”

  He recovered so quickly that she wondered if the bleakness had been a product of her imagination. “It’s all right,” he said.

  “What was she like, your mother?”

  He settled back in his chair and gazed outside for a moment. Then he looked back at Esther. “Juliette was—” he paused, his mobile mouth shifting “—eccentric.” He raised a laconic eyebrow. “She was a spiritualist—believed in ghosts and mediums and all kinds of odd things.”

  Esther laughed. She had been expecting the story of a hardworking housewife. “Go on.”

  “She ran a little occult bookstore and gave Tarot readings and that sort of thing in the back. A New Ager, you’d call her now.”

  “Was she good? Or did she just tell fortunes to make people feel better?”

  He lifted his chin, touching his beard in what Esther assumed must be an habitual gesture. “I don’t know. She lost her whole family in the Blitz and I’ve always thought it sent her a bit over the edge.”

  “Really?” Esther leaned forward, intrigued. “What about your father?”

  “They were divorced when I was very small. I didn’t see much of him.”

  Again Esther felt that strange prick of sorrow on behalf of the boy he once had been. With it came a need to hug him close to her, the way she might hug one of her sons.

  Catching the drift of her thoughts, she straightened abruptly. Would she never learn? Men who needed healing were her specialty—and once they were healed, they went along on their merry way. She would not even consider trying to heal the wounds of this man.

  The waitress appeared with their food and Esther was grateful for the distraction. She had ordered a huge pork burrito, smothered with green chili and cheese. Lifting an eyebrow toward Alexander, she said, “See? Enough cholesterol to strangle a horse!”

  “Do horses need to watch their cholesterol?” he asked dryly.

  She laughed, relieved the conversation had taken a lighter turn. And as they ate, it stayed in the polite range. They discussed food, which Esther wryly admitted with a gesture to her rounded figure, was one of her favorite topics. He had predictably English tastes in food and a rather precise list of dislikes that amused her: fresh spinach, brussels sprouts, okra. She told him of her children’s preferences in food, which narrowed down to one fact: if Daniel loved it, Jeremy hated it and vice versa.

  After dinner, he suggested a walk in the mild evening. For an instant, she hesitated.

  He reached over to take her hand. “I’m not sure where it happened, Esther, but I lost you somewhere.”

  Esther swallowed and looked away, unable as always to hide her thoughts.

  His voice, when he spoke again, was teasing. “Whatever it was, I hope you’ll at least grant me the pleasure of a walk this evening.”

  His long, callused fingers stroked the back of her hand, more persuasive than he knew. A shimmering, liquid silver passed from his hand into hers and danced all the way down her spine, then doubled and traveled back the way it had come. He couldn’t be unaware of it.

  As she met his eyes, she watched the irises change from the near black the candlelight gave them to a lighter, almost greenish hue. Now he didn’t look at all like a man in need of healing, but one who would deliver it instead.

  She took a breath against the longing she felt for that soothing touch on her own soul. She ought to thank him for dinner and go home, but found she couldn’t resist the temptation to spend just a little more time with him tonight.

  She turned her hand to meet his, palm to palm, taking pleasure in the shock of awareness the callused heart of his palm gave her. “It’s much too beautiful an evening to waste,” she said.

  Outside in the night, with the sounds of unfettered collegiate excitement ringing in the air, Alexander took her hand. As they crossed the street to walk under the canopy of trees on campus, he asked, “Where are your children tonight?”

  “They spend every other weekend with their father.”

  “Hmm,” he murmured noncommittally. “Do you mind?”

  “Sometimes. I miss them on Sunday mornings when they aren’t here. We have big breakfasts—” She broke off, sure she had already spent more time than she should have talking about her children.

  “And?”

  She looked up at him. The streetlights gave his curly dark hair a halo of misty light. “You must get tired of my continual chatter about my children.”

  “No.” He looked toward the thicket of trees ahead with a pensive expression. “I always wanted some of my own. Your two are the sort I always imagined. They’re beautiful, you know.”

  “Of course I know,” she said, laughing. “They’re mine!”

  “I mean it. They’re very handsome boys. Do they look like your husband?”

  Again Esther laughed. “Does that mean they couldn’t possibly look like me because they’re handsome?”

  “Ah,” he said regretfully, leaning a hair closer to her. “You promised to overlook my little gaffes.”

  “You’re right. I did.” Tossing her head, she said, “The boys look very much like their father.”

  “Have you been divorced long?”

  It seemed a personal question, but she understood his asking it. “Three years. My house was the final straw.”

  “Your house?”

  “John absolutely refused to sink a penny into it—said it was a white elephant, or someone else in the family would have taken it.”

  “But you love it.”

  Esther glanced at him, surprised again at his perceptiveness. “Yes, I really do. My great-grandfather built it for his wife and it’s been in the family all those years. It would have broken my heart to let it go.”

  “There’s value in old things,” he replied. “I think you Yanks are only just now learning that.”

  Esther grinned. “But, Professor, doesn’t valuing old things lead to romanticizing them?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “We can certainly admire them, but it is very important to avoid attaching magic and wonder to them.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, a sword is a good example. It’s a beautiful bit of craftsmanship and it feels wonderful in your hand, but it was made to kill people.”

  “That’s oversimplification, Professor Stone,” she argued. “Those swords were also protection.” She paused, looking toward the points of pine trees against the starry sky. Something about his insistence upon harsh reality disturbed her. “And how can you take a legend like the one about King Arthur and reduce it to facts and figures?”

  “You don’t.”

  “But you said—”

  He smiled down at her. “I merely said I didn’t believe it.”

  They paused on a bridge spanning a small pond. Light spilled over the water, wavering in broken patterns in the blackness. “Then why do you have the prints on your walls?”

  “To remind me of my shed romantic illusions.” He braced one hip against the stone railing.

  “So, once you did believe,” she said.

  He leaned on the stone railing. As he seemed to mull over his reply, she watched his thoughts play over his craggy face. The reflected light from the water caught the silver in his hair and beard and threw shadows over his generous, mobile mouth. Rubbing her fingers unconsciously against her thumb, she wondered how those curls and beard wou
ld feel. When he looked at her again, she had forgotten what their conversation had been.

  “Once,” he said quietly, “I did believe.” He reached out and touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Looking at you now, I am inclined to believe in Guinevere again.”

  Esther lowered her eyes, feeling strangely shy and electrically aroused all at once. She was afraid her eyes would show how lusty his fingers on her face made her feel—and where would it lead?

  He stepped forward until his long, lean body was only inches from her own. In silence, he let his fingers travel over her jaw and down her neck. She looked up and found his eyes watching his hand as his fingertips grazed the flesh of her bared shoulder.

  He smelled like soap and spicy cologne and gin. The scent mixed with the perfume of pines carried by a breeze. Her nerves were so taut that when the breeze floated over her neck, she nearly shuddered. How long? she thought. How long since a man had made her feel this way? How long since she’d kissed anyone, or felt the hard muscles and angles of a man’s body against her own?

  Too long, she thought as he curled his fingers around her neck and lifted her chin with his other hand. Their chests touched lightly, and their thighs. And then their mouths.

  His lips were full against her own, and asked nothing at first. The hairs of his mustache and beard added a richness of sensation that she hadn’t expected, and she raised her palm to touch the masculine adornment, finding it as silky as she had imagined. His jaw was strong below the fur.

  After a moment, he tugged her closer and Esther found his lips also fulfilled the sensual promise they held. He kissed her slowly, as if each millimeter of her mouth warranted lingering exploration. He brushed kisses over the bow of her upper lip, the swell of the lower, the corners on either side. All without hurry.

  Esther felt her spine slowly weaken, the tiny bones refusing to support her. And she melted into him, languorously aware of how hard his chest and arms were. Kissing was never given the attention it deserved, she thought vaguely. How exhilarating to find someone who agreed it was a delight unto itself.

  And in that spirit, she let herself go a little. She explored the dips and curves of his lips, let his beard caress her chin, his mustache her upper lip and nose. His long fingers laced through her hair, cupping her scalp firmly.