That Special Smile/Whittenburg

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  “I’m glad to hear he’s still wearing a shirt on your dates.”

  Juliette wrinkled her nose. “Just because you and Max are – ”

  “ – are planning to run away together and live on nothing more than mad, wild love, on some deserted beach in California is no reason for you to change your plans.” Sylvie slid to the end of the bed and smiled benignly at her sister.

  “You’re absolutely right, Sylvie Anne. I think I hear Benton’s car. He has the absolute best timing!” Juliette walked to the bedroom door, where she stopped, pirouetted gracefully, and allowed the mischief back into her eyes. “Send a postcard as soon as you’re settled in, Syl. I can see it now: Max, wrapped in terry cloth, standing beside a tiny, just big enough, grass hut.”

  “Forget the hut, Juliette, it will be an old Victorian house that you will vaguely remember as being yours.”

  “That isn’t nice, Sylvie. But I swear on the key to my teenage diary that we’ll spend tomorrow working. There, how’s that?”

  She looked so pleased with herself that Sylvie didn’t have the heart to tell her how, exactly, that was. With a sigh she stood. “Good night, Juliette. Have fun.”

  Juliette became suddenly serious. “Listen, Sylvie, anytime you need to talk. About Max. Or … or anything at all. I don’t mind. In fact, I probably get more out of these sisterly chats than you do.”

  Of that, at least, Sylvie was certain.

  * * * *

  “It’s a phase, Max.” Sylvie locked the door and stepped back to admire the stained glass inset, as she did each time she entered or left the old Victorian house. She was leaving now, having spent the day steaming, scraping, and squinting at a section of wallpaper, trying to decipher the original color and print. Renovation was definitely a challenge, one she hadn’t planned on tackling alone. “Juliette will get tired of Benton’s strict ideas about how the world should run. Or he’ll get bored with her impulsive disregard for schedules.”

  “That’s probably why he canceled his afternoon appointments and took Juliette to the War Eagle Arts and Crafts Show,” Max agreed, tongue in cheek. “Lucky thing I’m not bored with you, Sylvie. I might have taken you to War Eagle.”

  She frowned her lack of appreciation for his sense of humor. “Lucky for you, I had work to do. Not everyone…,” she said with a pointed look. “…can afford to idle away the day dispensing unsolicited advice.”

  He held his hands, palms up, as he waited for her to join him at the bottom of the stairs. “Not everyone knows someone so desperately in need of advice.”

  “I thought we agreed not to discuss Juliette’s lack of interest in restoring this house.”

  “You agreed, Sylvie. I cast my vote for not discussing Juliette at all.”

  He touched her arm as they turned together and began walking down Main Street toward home. Max touched her often, and Sylvie had finally stopped protesting. It wasn’t, she reasoned, anything serious. His touch, as well as his occasional goodnight kiss, was too casual to make a protest worthwhile. He would only tease her, ask her why it bothered her, and that was a discussion she did not want to have.

  “Then why are we having this conversation?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Because you think if you keep talking I’ll forget that you owe me dinner.”

  “I seem to owe you dinner three out of four nights.”

  “And I do appreciate it. If you weren’t such a lousy card player, I might starve.”

  “If I weren’t so easy, Max, I wouldn’t let you win in the first place.”

  His smile tightened a bit at the corners. “You’re many things, Sylvie Anne, but easy is not one of them.”

  * * * *

  Max entered The Attic through the back door and sniffed the unmistakable aroma of brewing coffee. Miriam, as usual, had come in early.

  “Hi,” she said as she pushed aside the doorway curtain that separated the workroom from the rest of the store. “I didn’t expect to see you so early. Guilty conscience?”

  He took off his coat, hung it on a hook, and turned to look at his assistant. Miriam Rogers was a former schoolteacher from Albuquerque who had retired to Eureka Springs with her husband. She’d begun working with Max the first month he’d opened the store and he’d thanked his lucky stars for her ever since. Her personality was as bright as a newly minted penny and her cheery common sense was worth more to him than he could ever pay her. She was tall, slender, elegant, and ageless. And she knew more about him than he’d ever willingly confided to his own mother.

  “You’re looking great, Miriam. Must have been a wild weekend at War Eagle.”

  “Wet is the word, Max. It was rainy, muddy, and awful, not necessarily in that order.” She placed a narrow strip of lace on the workbench and retrieved a pencil from behind her ear. “If I hadn’t seen Henry Casey and Grace and Greta Amos, it would have been a wasted trip. I sold one doll, one wooden truck, and told some woman the history of the Crescent Hotel. Can you believe that?”

  “Sounds like a typical arts and crafts show to me. You can stop making the circuit of the annual fairs anytime you want, Miriam. We don’t have to have those contacts and sales we needed early on. You know as well as I do, that we have enough orders now to keep us solvent until I’m eighty-four. Maybe longer, if we don’t throw any wild parties.”

  “You know me, Max. I like to complain about the craft shows almost as much as I like to attend them. Where else can I get together with old cronies like Henry and the Amos sisters? Where else would anyone consider me an authority on the Crescent Hotel? I know you don’t need the exposure, but I suppose I do. However, if I come down with pneumonia this week, I’m sending you the doctor bills.”

  Max settled onto a stool and studied the tiny porcelain parts of a ready-to-be-assembled doll. It was going to be Merlin, a part of the King Arthur’s Court series of limited edition dolls. It was a project that Max had envisioned years before and had finally begun sculpting. But now he couldn’t seem to remember where he’d left off.

  Sylvie, although she wasn’t anywhere around, was distracting him.

  “How are things at the restoration site?” Miriam asked, divining his train of thought as intuitively as Merlin might have divined King Arthur’s.

  “Progressing,” he answered. “Sylvie says there’s no point in delaying the work simply because of a legal technicality. The lien, according to Prestridge, is just an inconvenience and will be dismissed as soon as the Erikson-estate dispute is settled. I suppose Sylvie’s right to continue the renovation, one way or another, it will have to be done.”

  “So that’s how you spent your time while I was holding an umbrella at War Eagle.”

  He shrugged a sheepish admission. “How did you guess?”

  She made a broad sweep of the room with one hand. “You never leave the workroom this neat, Max. You didn’t even open the shop while I was gone, did you?”

  “No one was in town, anyway.”

  “Save your reasons for Sylvie. It would suit me fine if you closed for the season today and devoted all your energy to ... other things.” Bending her head, Miriam let the sentence fade as she began to pin the lace to a tiny satin costume. “I suppose Juliette and Benton are still an item?”

  “You suppose right, Miriam. Sylvie swears it’s just a passing infatuation, but I think it’s serious. And every day Juliette goes off and leaves something else for Sylvie to handle. I don’t know how she manages to keep her cool.”

  Miriam smiled around the pins she held between her lips. “Sylvie assumes responsibility regardless of the circumstances. Besides, she has you to counteract the frustration she must be feeling toward her sister.”

  Max lifted Merlin’s slender hand and examined the detail against the light. “I guess Sylvie does have me.” A weighty frustration began pressing on his good humor. “The question is, what is she going to do with me?”

  Miriam’s laughter rang out rich and mellow. “Oh, I think the question is, what do you want her to do?”<
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  * * * *

  Max thought a lot about that during the next few days. He’d begun the relationship with Sylvie – if it could be called a relationship – because he was restless and she offered a challenge. Someone new to talk with, to argue with and to tease on occasion.

  Nothing complicated.

  He had thought Sylvie would add a touch of laughter, a bit of spice, to an otherwise uneventful season.

  And she had.

  Totally, it seemed, against her better judgment.

  And that, he decided, was what both puzzled and intrigued him. Sylvie enjoyed the time they spent together as much as he did. She even admitted it, but there was an element of reserve, as if she were waiting for the other shoe to drop. As if she expected him to tell her it was all a joke, that he’d just wanted to see how far the game could stretch before they both had a good laugh about it.

  Max didn’t understand her reaction, but he knew the game had progressed far past the point of laughter.

  At least, for him.

  Not that there had never been a point at which he could have laughed about his relationship with Sylvie. He’d fallen hard for her early on.

  If he were honest, he’d have to admit he’d felt the immediate snap of attraction the first second he’d seen her standing on his front porch. And the heart-deep knowledge that this woman was the right one.

  Finally.

  But he didn’t know how to reach past her protective layer of sophistication, and he wasn’t sure what to expect if he did. He did know that, despite the reservations she had about his sincerity, she was attracted to him. And he knew that eventually her attraction would take a serious turn. Until then, Max would simply have to wait and see what developed.

  * * * *

  “Did you miss me?” Max sank onto the couch, cupped his hands at the back of his head, and settled his canvas-clad feet on the corner of the coffee table.

  Sylvie frowned at the scene of contentment and pushed his feet off the edge so she could get past him and sit at the other end of the couch.

  “Actually,” she said. “I did miss you. Spending Thanksgiving at Dad’s is always a trial, but add the world’s most devoted couple, Juliette and Benton, and it becomes a real endurance test. I wished several times that you’d been able to come with us. There were moments....” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Honestly, you wouldn’t have believed the conversation during Thanksgiving dinner. I think that’s when I missed you most. I certainly needed your sense of the ridiculous then.”

  Just the idea that she had associated a feeling of need with him was encouraging. He wished he had spent the holiday in Oklahoma with the Smiths, but he’d gone to his sister’s in Louisville. And he’d missed Sylvie, more than he’d thought possible.

  He glanced over at her. She appeared relaxed and comfortable. Max wondered what she would do if he leaned across the cushions and kissed her. A long, sensuous, serious kiss. He’d like to think she would respond, but he could more easily imagine her pushing him away with a laugh and a quit-kidding-around scold.

  “How was your holiday?”

  “Noisy.” Max again propped his feet on the coffee table. “Mom asked about you.”

  “Your mom?” Stupid question, Sylvie thought. And silly to be pleased at the knowledge that Max had mentioned her to his family. “Why would she do that?”

  “She’s always interested in the people I meet, especially when I spend a lot of time talking about them.”

  “Your holiday is beginning to sound as boring as mine.” Sylvie adjusted her glasses and ran a hand through her hair. “I take that back. It wasn’t boring, it was just redundant. Dad had to have every other word repeated because he won’t wear his hearing aids, and Juliette – who knows better – missed all the words in between because her ‘heart was listening to Benton’s heart.’ ”

  Sylvie turned a wry smile toward him. “Really, Max, you should have been there.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Upstairs. On her phone, I’m sure. Talking or texting with him. After all, it’s been nearly an hour since she saw him.”

  “Oh, come on, Sylvie Anne. There are worse things than being in love.”

  “Name one.”

  “Being in business with your sister.”

  “All right. Try for two.”

  “Did you get a chance to talk to her about the work that needs to be done? I thought you were definitely going to make an opportunity for discussion.”

  “I intended to, but there wasn’t enough time between her coming in the door and going upstairs. Her brain is attached to him like a barnacle and she can’t go ten seconds without thinking of something she ‘just has to tell him.’ ”

  “Sylvie, you can’t go on making all the decisions, trying to do everything and just hoping Juliette is going to redevelop an interest in the dress shop. She has to face the responsibility of starting her own business sooner or later.”

  “We’ve had this conversation before. Last week and the week before and the week before that. I’ll tell you now what I told you then: I’ll….”

  “…take care of it.” He held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’ll change the subject. Guess what we’re going to do this week.”

  Sylvie tucked her feet beneath her and reclined lazily against the sofa arm. “I’m working. I couldn’t begin to guess what you’ll be doing.”

  “You, Miss Smith, and I are going on the Christmas Candlelight Tour of Homes and also to the Community Theater’s annual production of A Christmas Carol. No arguments, please. Or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  “I won’t help with your wallpaper project this week.”

  Sighing in mock distress, Sylvie shook her head. “You’re confusing me with my sister. I can manage quite well without your assistance. Besides, all you do is stand around, distracting me and pointing out that Juliette should be the one working.”

  “Every job needs a supervisor.”

  “So you’ve told me. Forget what I said before,” she said dryly. “I didn’t miss you after all.”

  “That’s all right.” He reached across the sofa cushion to cover her hand with a warmly tender touch. “I missed you enough for both of us.”

  She didn’t know what to say. He was teasing. Wasn’t he?

  Satisfied with catching her momentarily off guard, Max patted her hand, slipped his feet from the edge of the table, and stood.

  “Don’t forget, Sylvie, we have a date. You can choose the night, providing it’s Saturday, and I’ll provide the candles.”

  “Should I bring a match?” she asked with a droll smile.

  “A match made in heaven?”

  “No, just the ordinary kitchen variety.”

  “I’ll take care of lighting the candles...and any other fires we might want to set.” With that leading statement, he opened the door. “Good night, Sylvie Anne. Dream of me.”

  “Max?” She couldn’t control the impulse that made her call to him. And she couldn’t prevent herself from asking, “You are going to help me with the wallpaper, right?”

  He grinned. “Oh, I’ll be around.”

  As the door closed softly behind him, Sylvie sank back against the sofa arm.

  Around.

  Max was always around. Tampering with this, helping with that, telling her she was doing more than her share of Juliette’s work and taking care of too many details that rightfully belonged to her sister. She knew he was right, but still, somehow, she resented his interference. And she resented always having him around, although she would have to admit that she was learning to like it.

  With a forefinger and thumb she adjusted the fit of the tortoiseshell frames on the bridge of her nose. The problem was….

  She sighed. The problem was she didn’t know what the problem was.

  She wanted to feel indifferent toward him; she didn’t.

  She didn’t want to like him; she did.

  She wished he would stop teasing her
in that half-sensuous, half-serious way.

  But she was half-afraid her heart would stop beating if he did.

  Chapter Seven

  December arrived with the crisp, clean scent of winter, and, overnight it seemed, the town wrapped itself in Christmas colors. Downtown buildings donned the gay trappings of a Victorian Yule and the air was rich with spicy fragrances and the sound of carols. It took longer to walk from one end of Spring Street to the other, simply because the handmade decorations and holiday store windows along the way were so enticing.

  Sylvie found herself stopping time and again to admire a white oak basket with a big plaid bow that decorated the sidewalk in front of an antique store. And in the candy-shop window, atop a miniature tree, there was a gossamer angel made with delicate detail and a lacy design.

  Max said it was made of sugar, spun by an elf, sculpted by fairies, and hung up to dry in the moonlight. Sylvie said it was crocheted by human hands, if not in direct sunlight, at least beneath an incandescent bulb.

  But the magic slipped beneath the surface of her practical nature and urged her to purchase several brightly patterned bows, the white oak basket, and various other decorations. Sylvie surprised herself by obeying the impulse, but Max merely smiled.

  He helped her drape garlands along the porch railing of the old Victorian house and it was his idea to place a single candle in the window. Inside, the house was still a work in progress, but on the outside it looked as finished and welcoming as any of the other restored homes in the town.

  Juliette got into the Christmas spirit one day by dressing in a vintage costume and putting a bit of mistletoe in her hair and hanging some around the house. As usual, she overdid the idea, but she was so pleased with herself that Sylvie didn’t have the heart to remind her there was still plenty of real work to be done.