A Minute to Smile (36 page)

He moistened his lips and drew on the cigarette. “Is that right?”

She lowered her eyes. In the brief pause, she felt within her a strange psychic disturbance. A warning, like the shriek of a blue jay when a cat wanders by:
Danger! Danger! Danger!

“Where you from, Mary?” he asked.

Mattie turned to precisely place the coffeepot on the burner. “Here and there,” she said with a shrug. Nervously, she smoothed a wisp of hair from her face. “Do you want to look at a menu?”

He took his time pouring sugar into his cup. “No, I know what I want.” Slowly, he stirred. Even such a small act rippled the rounds of muscle in his arms, and at the collar of his shirt she could see the chest, too, was powerfully muscled.

He was deeply tanned. Probably, she thought disdainfully, some body-builder type that hung out in gyms striking poses.

The light green eyes accepted and deflected her examination – and made her revise that last conclusion. Norway this man played pretty boy for anyone. Maybe he’d been born well endowed or his work gave him muscles, but she knew without doubt that he didn’t spend time on weight machines to satisfy any vanity on his part.

“Sir?” she prompted. “Would you like to order?”

“Sir?” he echoed ironically. “Call me Zeke.” He grinned at her. “I’m not that old yet.”

The grin was her undoing. His mouth was wide with full, rich lips, and he had good teeth, though a trifle crooked. But that grin was full of knowledge, full of all the things Mattie had wondered about and wanted to learn in that secret, dark part of herself.

She knocked over a ketchup bottle.

He caught it with a deft movement. In his gaze, amusement danced. “Don’t get all flustered, now, Miss Mary.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“No, ma’am.” The grin lingered at the edges of that fine mouth. He sipped his coffee. “Get me a couple eggs, over easy, some toast and bacon and hash browns.”

Relieved, Mattie scribbled down the order, slapped it to the ring and spun it around, then escaped into the kitchen.

* * *

Zeke smoked and drank coffee idly, waiting for his food. A newspaper sat on the counter, but he didn’t pick it up.

Through the open door to the kitchen, he watched the waitress collecting plates from the dish machine. He’d been on one of his periodic restless road trips the past few weeks – this one down to the Gulf for the hell of it, and the new waitress had been hired in his absence. Not from around here, but he’d swear he knew her from somewhere.

She was hiding something, that much was sure. His eyes narrowed. Mary. If he asked her last name, she’d probably say Smith. Mary Smith from Peoria.

And he was John Doe.

He watched her as she put the plates away. A nice-looking woman if you liked the type, which he ordinarily didn’t. He preferred blondes, generally. Tall blondes, with lean bodies and hard eyes. This one was smaller, with tawny skin and dark hair. She tried to hide her figure under the loose-fitting uniform, but the curves were a tad too generous to be well hidden. Round breasts and naturally swaying hips. Her hair was short, but thick and silky-looking and he couldn’t help but admire the graceful turn of her neck above the white collar.

Nice-looking, with the emphasis on the nice. Probably Catholic school and the whole nine yards; a woman didn’t keep skin like that living hard.

Which meant she wasn’t someone he’d tangled with and forgotten. Zeke didn’t bother with good girls, sweet girls like this one. They were looking for things he just didn’t ever intend to provide for anyone.

He continued to watch her through the door to the kitchen. For a good girl, she sure had one hell of a mouth. Generous, with plump lips and a certain slanting curve at the corners that hinted the doe eyes might light with mischief when she wasn’t scared.

Maybe that’s what he remembered – a kissable mouth was his particular downfall, as he’d told himself more than once.

He wondered what a good girl had to hide, what she was running from.

And swore. A pretty mouth and a woman in trouble. Bad combination, especially on some sweet stranger he don’t know a damned thing about. An alarm bell triggered in his mind.

It would come to him. He’d figure out where he knew her from. In the meantime, he had troubles of his own.

The cook smacked a bell and slid Zeke’s order under the heat lamp. Mary wiped her palms on her apron and headed out to pick it up. Zeke caught her nervous glance in his direction, and taking the chance, frankly watched her breasts move under her blouse. It would irritate her. Push her away.

She pretended not to notice, but he could see by the flush in her cheeks that she had. “Would you like anything else to go with that?” she asked, slamming the thick plate down in front of him.

He looked at her. Big, big brown eyes, snapping now with both desire and fury. The unwilling desire sent a spiral of response through his nether regions, and he almost taunted her, just to see if he could kindle that flame a little bit. He almost said, “Yeah, I want you, nothing on it.”

But along with the desire and wariness in those enormous brown eyes, he saw innocence. It was one thing to play with a woman who understood the stakes, who didn’t expect a man to call back in the morning. Zeke had rules about virgins and innocents. “That’ll be it,” he said. “Thanks.”

She slapped the check on the counter and automatically refilled his coffee cup. Zeke pretended to ignore her, but as she turned back toward the coffee machine, he spied her hands. Burns. It triggered another sense of déjà vu. He frowned. “Mary. Where do I know you from?”

Her face went abruptly, sickeningly white. “You must have somebody else in mind,” she said, and hurried away.

Zeke felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. She was lying. And she was in trouble. Mary Smith from Peoria.

Right.

* * *

In the kitchen, over the roar of the dishwasher, Roxanne met Mattie. “Figures,” Roxanne said matter-of-factly. “I’ve been trying to catch Zeke Shephard’s eye since he showed up in Kismet. He walks in and takes one look at you and it’s fire.” She leaned over and sniffed Mattie’s neck. “Nope. No perfume .”

Mattie slapped her arm. “Just tell him if you want him. He doesn’t look like the type who’d say no.” She looked at Roxanne. Long blond hair and a lean body, with big blue eyes. “I can’t see too many men that would say no to you, anyway.”

Roxanne grinned. “Thanks.” She folded her arms across her chest and glanced out the kitchen door. “He wouldn’t say no, but I couldn’t catch him like that, either.”

“Catch him?”

“Yeah.” She lifted a shoulder with a coquettish smile. “One taste would never be enough. I’d want to hang on to him – at least for a little while. The woman that can tame him permanently probably hasn’t been born, but he could be coaxed to light for a few months, maybe.”

Mattie stared at her. In her other life, the women didn’t talk about taming men. They talked about engagement rings and weddings and finding a house. She licked her lips, curious. “Wouldn’t you fall in love?”

Roxanne nodded with a slight, one shouldered shrug. “Probably.”

“So how could you just sleep with him, knowing he would leave you?”

“Oh, honey. I pegged you for naive, but I didn’t think you were stupid.” Roxanne tugged Mattie’s sleeve, pulling her over to look out the door to where Zeke sat, eating heartily. Against the backlight of the window, his hair gleamed around the edges with a deep, burnished halo. In a low voice, Roxanne said, “I want you to think about that man in your bed, with nothing on except maybe a sheet.”

Mattie shot her an alarmed glance.

Roxanne smiled. “Just try it.”

Slowly, Mattie turned to look at him. Her heart shimmered in anticipation, a strange danger, but the old ways of living had landed her in more trouble than she could fathom. Maybe Roxanne was right.

She inclined her head and let her eyes wash over the broad shoulders and lean waist, and she called up a picture – his arms bare, with that hair tangling over his shoulders, his skin dark against the white sheet.

“You see?” Roxanne said quietly. “It would be worth it.”

He blotted his lips with a paper napkin, and Mattie noticed his hands were as enormous as the rest of him. For one single minute, she indulged in her first experience with pure lust and let herself imagine what that hand might feel like, gliding over her body.

As if he felt her gaze, he looked up suddenly. Caught in the forbidden thoughts. Mattie didn’t immediately look away. He met her gaze levelly, without emotion, acknowledging her stare without revealing anything of his own. His lips pursed as if in thought and still Mattie couldn’t stop staring.

He winked and blew her a kiss.

Mortified, she turned around and ran into Roxanne’s shoulder. “Oh, I’m so embarrassed,” she said, covering her eyes. “What a jerk.”

Roxanne laughed. “He’s cocky, all right. But that’s part of the game.”

A wisp of her heated imaginings brushed through her. Mattie shifted uncomfortably. “That’s not a game I want to play.”

“Too late, honey,” Roxanne said with a slow smile. “You already made the first move.”

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(Excerpt)

by
Barbara Samuel

One

A
blue jay feather lay on the sidewalk as Luke Bernali climbed from his truck. He almost stepped on it. A flash of iridescent blue caught his eye in time, and he bent over to pick it up.

Jessie.

The feel of her and the sense of warning were so strong, he had to resist the urge to look over his shoulder. Luke twirled the feather in his fingers, admiring the shimmer of color banded with sharp black stripes. Blue jays had been her favorite birds. Luke once made her some earrings from a pair of tail feathers.

He half smiled at the bittersweet memory. With the respect usually reserved for the feathers of eagles and hawks and other such birds of power, he nestled it between the folds of a paperback science fiction novel on the front seat of his truck. Jessie had cared little for traditional explanations of the qualities of feathers. Even if no one else in the world valued blue jays, she’d told him, she did. She liked their colors and their sass.

For just an instant, he felt another small wash of warning. He brushed it away. Silly. She’d been gone more than eight years.

With a quick glance at the dark storm clouds gathering in the November sky, he lifted a pile of Navajo weavings from the back of his truck and flung their solid weight over his shoulder. Mountains towered behind the bank of shops along the street, their deep blue color shadowed beneath the clouds obscuring their summits. Luke breathed deeply and smelled snow.

A young Indian girl danced alone on the sidewalk in front of the store he was about to enter. Against the wintry background of the approaching storm, she looked like a wood sprite or a flower swaying in the wind. Grinning at the unselfconscious beauty she projected, Luke paused to watch her.

Long black hair flowed like satin ribbons to her slim hips. Her limbs were lanky and long, promising willowy height one day. In the dusky rose of her cheeks, a dimple flashed, elusive and charming.

She was the spitting image of his sister, Marcia, at this age. Luke stepped forward, intending to ask the child about her clan.

She spun around and saw him watching her. Luke caught a swift impression of beaded earrings flashing in her great mass of hair before his attention was snared by her unusual, exquisite eyes.

Pure topaz.

The color alone was startling in her powerfully Navajo face, against her dusky skin and broad cheekbones. Together with their enormous size and calm expression, they were astonishing.

In that single split second, Luke’s world shifted abruptly. He blinked, took in a breath and looked at her again. She had stopped dancing to look at him with those beautiful eyes.

His jaw hardened. There was only one person in the world who had eyes just that color. This child, beautiful against the dark day, was not just a relative to his clan, as he had first suspected.

She was his daughter.

“Hi,” the girl said. “You must be the guy they’re waiting for.” She pointed with her lips toward the shop selling rugs and pottery and various other Southwestern artworks.

Luke took in another slow, deep breath, trying to keep his emotions soft, quiet, fluid. “Are they waiting?”

Her lids flickered over the topaz irises, then swept up again. Mischief flashed in her dimple. “Not too long. The man in there said you were probably on Indian time.”

Luke chuckled. “Just another kind of time.”

“Where’s Daniel?” she asked.

“He’s—” he cleared his throat “—he’s not feeling well. Is he a friend of yours?”

She nodded.

“I’m Luke. Daniel’s a friend of mine, too—or he used to be, a long time ago.”

“Luke?” The child measured him. Her gaze flickered toward the rugs he carried over his shoulder, then narrowed on his face. “Luke Bernali?”

If he’d had any doubt that one of the people he’d find waiting for him inside would be Jessie Callahan, it was now erased. “That’s right.”

She shook hair from her eyes. “There’s a picture of you in my mom’s office,” she said, as she glanced through the windows of the gallery and then back to Luke. “My mom’s inside.”

“Don’t go away,” he said and pulled open the door.

* * *

Jessie shifted impatiently. She wore no watch at which she could glance with pointed severity, so she folded her arms and sighed. Loudly.

The man on the telephone didn’t even look up. He’d been absorbed in his conversation since five minutes after her arrival, and it was no accident, she was sure. Geoffrey Wilkes wanted Jessie to know he was a powerful, important man, a force to be reckoned with.

At moments like this, she really wondered why she had given up cigarettes.

She shifted, strolling away from the man at the desk and into the showroom. Just beyond the window, her daughter, Giselle, danced to the imaginary tune playing in her mind, as she always did. Jessie smiled. What a kid.