A Minute to Smile (8 page)

“Is it holy ground?”

“Pardon me?”

He pointed to her bare feet. “Shall I remove my shoes in order to walk more gently upon holy ground?”

“Oh!” She laughed. “I don’t know why I always take them off. I guess I just like the way the earth feels. You can leave yours on.”

But he’d already bent to remove them, shedding his socks as well. At the sight of his naked white toes, Esther felt a surge of orange hunger race through her body. She stared at his feet for an instant, taking in the high graceful arches and tapering shape, wondering with some dimly logical portion of her brain why bare feet should create such a reaction. Flustered, she let her eyes travel over his legs and chest, finally reaching his face, which was aglow with amusement. “Didn’t expect that, did you?”

“No.” She smiled softly. “You often surprise me.”

“Good.” He lifted that devilish eyebrow.

There was nothing much to say to that, so Esther turned and led the way over a narrow path through beds of apple-scented chamomile and heady sweet marjoram. “Herbs aren’t showy,” she said. Bending over, she plucked a spray of thyme, its stem dotted with tiny pale flowers, and handed it to him. “But they have their rewards. Smell.”

He obligingly held the spray to his nose. “Mmm—spaghetti.”

She rolled her eyes. “How romantic of you.” But she laughed and led him farther down the paths that circled the dense stands of herbs.

“This,” she said, stopping before a round bed filled with small, dense shrubs of silvery green, “is my pride and joy.”

Alexander paused, still twirling the thyme between his fingers. “And what is it?”

Esther bent in the gathering twilight, feeling a magical mood overtake her. Surrounded with gray light and the mingled perfumes of her herbs, she felt suddenly a little tipsy in spite of the fact that she’d only drunk a single glass of wine.

Kneeling in the cool earth by the plants, she reached out and gently bruised a stalk of lavender between her palms, covering her hands with the precious aromatic oil. She stood up again.

With a slow smile at Alexander, she rubbed her open palms over her neck and chest. “Lavender,” she said quietly. She tilted her head, and feeling dizzy at her boldness, added huskily, “Smell.”

His eyes darkened and he stepped forward, one hand settling around her waist in a light touch. Esther felt her breath quicken as he bent his curly head over her shoulder. His nose touched her skin just below her ear. “Mmm,” he rumbled. “It smells of night.”

She felt his beard move over the curve of her shoulder, and his lips touched her neck lightly. Esther sucked in a breath, feeling a tingle travel through her breasts and belly and loins. She reached up to grasp his arm as he continued his exploration, his mouth traveling downward along her neck to land on her collarbone. “It smells like stars,” he whispered, and moved against her, his body lean and hard against her softer curves.

Esther felt suspended in time as the gray light of evening deepened. A hush settled over the garden. She was aware only of Alexander’s teasing lips and the gentle scratch of his beard along her flesh. She felt deliciously aroused and yet perfectly safe.

But then he opened his mouth and settled his hot tongue in the hollow of her throat. At the same instant, his bared foot brushed over hers. She gripped his muscled arm fiercely.

The kiss the night before had been one of gentle exploration, a kiss of lips and introduction. This was nothing like that. Alexander pulled her roughly against him, pressing their bodies hard together as his mouth found hers, taking it with fervor. His tongue sizzled along the edges of her mouth, teasing and flicking to gain entrance to the heated cavern of her mouth. With a small, helpless moan, Esther opened to him, her hips going weak as he slanted his mouth over hers.

And yet for all the passion of this kiss, his skill was no less exacting now than it had been the night before. He suckled her lips and teased the tip of her tongue with the tip of his before plunging. Then he retreated and began again. His hands traveled over her back, skimming the upper rise of her hips, then explored her sides, up to her shoulders.

Esther lost herself in the glory of him, in the riotous feel of his curls clinging to her fingers, in the hard wall of his chest against the aching rise of her breasts, in the heat emanating from his body as he pressed into her urgently. He tasted of chocolate and wine and strawberries. She moved against him in unconscious invitation.

When his hands began to explore the outer swell of her breasts, Esther came with a sudden crash to her senses. They were in her garden, she thought with embarrassment, and broke away from him urgently.

For an instant, they stared at each other in stunned silence. His hair was mussed by her fingers and his changeable eyes were a dark, vivid turquoise. Her lips felt bruised, her knees shaky, and her body burned with his imprint. Shocked at the invitation she had issued—especially in light of the fact that she took great pains to avoid giving the wrong impression to men—she turned away, flushing painfully, and crossed her arms over her chest protectively. “I don’t know what got into me,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Alexander growled in frustration and touched her shoulder. “Look at me.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, keeping her head bent, remembering the wanton way she had moved against him, the provocative way she had rubbed lavender oil over her neck and chest. “I can’t,” she whispered.

He put his palms on her shoulders. “Esther.”

When she still would not turn, he let go of her. “All right. When you’re ready, we’ll talk.”

She knew her manners were horrible, that she ought to turn and tell hint she had enjoyed his company, but when she’d been ready to tear her clothes off for him and make love amid the herbs, polite pleasantries seemed a bit absurd. She kept her face resolutely turned away, imagining over and over her hands reaching up to cover her flesh with lavender oil, then cocking her head...

From the deep closet of her mind where the memories of her failed marriage were stored, she heard another voice, annoyed and tired:
Damn, Esther, all you ever want to do is jump into the sack.

As she listened to the whispering sounds of Alexander retreating through the garden, she ached at that old voice and the shame it made her feel. Intellectually she knew John had been lashing out at her to cover the guilt he felt over his inability to remain faithful to her. Emotionally—well, emotions were always harder.

Alexander’s voice reached her over the grass. “Good night, Esther.”

She couldn’t let him leave on this note, she thought wildly. Abruptly she turned. “Alexander,” she said on a note of entreaty.

He waited.

But she had no idea of what she wanted to say. “I’ll see you on Tuesday,” she said.

“Tuesday it is,” he replied.

Esther watched him go with a sinking feeling. This had all been a mistake, she thought. A great big mistake.

A
lexander bolted awake in the dead still of the middle of the night. Next to him, Piwacket glared at having been disturbed, but settled back down as Alexander got up.

He’d been dreaming of Esther. Not in any of the typically male ways his mind ordinarily conjured up in these circumstances. Instead, he’d dreamed of her standing on a rocky cliff overlooking the sea off the coast of England, her arms stretched out in jubilant celebration, her pale red hair tossing on a wild sea wind. It was night in his dream. A full moon gave her bare white shoulders a pearlescent wash and the wind pressed her dress against her lush, round figure.

Staring out the window of his bedroom to the sleeping landscape, he had to smile at his imagination. Almost equal measures of Maxfield Parrish and Guinevere—a vision of Esther brimming with power and holy strength.

He frowned. Not Guinevere, he decided—or a Maxfield Parrish painting, for that matter. Both were too wispy, too ethereal, too vague to be the robustly drawn Esther.

Again the dream flashed in his mind—the tossing sea and her lush figure, the bright moon glowing in the sky as if to illuminate the source of all womanly power…

He remembered her kiss in the garden, the flash of sensual heat in her eyes as she lazily opened her palms to spread lavender oil over her flesh, then casually, teasingly, offered the long white neck to him. He’d gone to her easily, his senses hungry for the taste and feel of her.

But the passion that had exploded within him at the taste of that smooth skin had stunned him. And when his tongue had found the hollow of her throat, he’d seen her nipples bud into taut, eager points below her dress, evidence of her own desire.

He’d been so instantly, vigorously aroused that he had worried he would frighten her away. Instead, she’d received him as naturally as if he were the rain and she a thirsty stand of lavender.

Even now, hours later, the memory of her luxuriant form cushioned against the hard angles of his own was enough to arouse him virulently.

Fleeting, lusty liaisons had never been his style. Like all men, he’d certainly experienced his share of wild hungers, but he’d found his mind, as well as his body, had to be engaged. Susan had been his match intellectually as well as physically and he had supposed that he was lucky to have found it once in his lifetime.

Yet in less than a month’s time, Esther had completely captivated him. He wanted her with a force that put any previous acquaintance with the word to shame—wanted her in his bed for weeks of nights spent tumbling and tangled, days spent resting for the night to follow. An aura of erotic promise surrounded her as completely and naturally as her red hair and smooth pale skin.

God help him.

For if it had been only that allure, he might have indulged the wish. Few men, after all, could contemplate that ripeness without seriously considering seduction at some point or other.

Tonight, he’d realized her effect upon him was deeper than the volatile chemistry between them. She intrigued him, made him laugh, took nothing too seriously.

He’d also learned she was not comfortable with her sensual nature, at least where it concerned men. For that reason alone, if no other, he couldn’t run the risk of hurting her in an affair based on passion that would burn itself out eventually.

Piwacket jumped from the bed to curl around Alexander’s feet, meowing in hopes of a midnight feeding. He glanced down distractedly as he considered the problem. No one with the exuberance she displayed should have to hide her true nature. It was practically a crime against nature.

For it was Esther’s complete adoration of the moment at hand that made her so irresistible. Whether it was hugging the body of a child or watching a karate match or admiring a rose, the instant in time that she occupied received her complete and undivided attention. It was a rare quality.

He smiled to himself, thinking how much his students would like her. Somehow, he would find a way to free the Esther within before she traveled on her way.

There was danger in the task, a danger his dream of her had spelled out very clearly. The very power he sought to free might ensnare and wound him.

But as if he’d already been bewitched, a ribbon of memory unfurled against the dark of his imagination, igniting sensual memories of Esther in the sweetly scented garden. On his tongue, he tasted her lips and satin skin. His hands burned with the feel of her hair. His ears reproduced her throaty sound of pleasure.

Against the onslaught of such vivid memories, the danger seemed very small.

* * *

Tuesday morning, Abe minded the shop and her children while Esther went to class. It was a perfect solution in many ways, she thought. Abe needed to be out, to work and feel valuable, but his physical problems made it difficult for him to find work elsewhere. She was surprised she hadn’t thought of asking him to fill in for her before this.

The class began at 10:30. Esther walked to the campus, steadfastly concentrating on the beauty of the early summer day rather than upon her upcoming encounter with Alexander.

After much thought, she had come to the conclusion that she could only allow herself to be friends with him. Aside from her nagging sense that he was drawn to her for the healing he needed, there was something about him that unleashed the wanton side of her nature. No matter how tempting it was, she couldn’t afford to let her guard down so completely.

The truth was, she was more than a little confused by the power of her response to him, and that seemed the best reason of all to keep the relationship purely platonic.

There was no avoiding the fact that there would be some sort of relationship. She would be seeing him every Tuesday and Thursday for the next eight weeks, and besides that, she liked him. He was intelligent and clever and interesting, a puzzle she had been hankering to solve. There had been little enough of that in her life of late, and her friendship with Abe proved men and women could be simply friends.

She found the classroom, high in a building facing the quadrangle. Alexander sat on the edge of a table, one foot swinging, the other bracing his weight. For an instant, Esther paused in the hall, waiting for her heart to stop its silly thudding.

Most men dressed in a shirt and tie would look businesslike. Alexander didn’t even look properly professorial. Not even crisp cotton could completely hide the hard curves of his shoulders or the nip of his lean waist. His casual pose put one thigh against the fabric of his slacks and even from across the room she should see how hard it was, how beautifully muscled. His unruly dark hair had been painstakingly brushed away from the craggy face, but already the curls were springing into their natural disorder. She longed to go in there and tousle them back to freedom.

A swelling tingle rushed through her. Maybe, she thought ruefully, she didn’t want to be friends with him after all.

When he caught sight of her, standing uncertainly in the doorway, he straightened and gave her a great, welcoming smile. “Esther!” He extended a hand. “Come in.”

“I’m a little early, I think,” she said.

“Not much. The students will be wandering in any moment.”