Propositioned by the Playboy: Miss Maple and the Playboy / The Playboy Doctor's Marriage Proposal / The New Girl in Town

And then she was laughing, which the unruly machine took advantage of by taking off across her lawn and ripping out a patch of it, until Ben grabbed it and shut it off and gently put her away from it.

“Miss Maple?”

“Yes?”

“You’re fired.”

When had she last laughed like that? Until her sides hurt? Until everything bad that had ever happened to her was washed away in the golden light of that shared moment? The laughter had made her feel new and alive, and as though life held possibilities that she had never dreamed of.

Possibilities as good as or even better than the tree sanctuary that was becoming a reality in her backyard.

The world she had allowed herself to have suddenly seemed way too rigid, the dreams she had given up on beckoned again. Everything shimmered, but was it an illusion of an oasis or was it something real?

Watching Ben work made it harder to see those distinctions, flustered her, and made her feel off balance. When a concrete truck had arrived, she had watched as Ben, so sure of himself, so in charge, so at ease, had directed that spout of creamy cement, pouring concrete footings, a pad for the staircase and a small patio.

It was his world. He was in charge. Competent. Decisive. All business and no nonsense as he showed Kyle what needed to be done. The concrete work seemed so hard, and yet there was nothing in him that shirked from it, he seemed to enjoy using his strength to create such lasting structures. That alone was deeply attractive in ways she didn’t quite understand, but it was when the concrete was beginning to set that he added the shimmer.

The stern expression of absolute concentration fell away. He set down the trowel he’d been using and showing Kyle how to use. “Come on over, Beth, let’s show them forever who did this.”

Not a man you wanted to use your name in the same sentence that contained the word forever. Even if you did dream such things.

And he bent over and put his hands in the setting concrete.

And then he insisted she leave her prints there beside his. Kyle added his handprints happily, writing his name under his handprint, giving her a sideways look.

“Can I write, it sucks to be you?”

And then they had all laughed. Again. That beautiful from-the-belly laughter that felt as if it had the power to heal everything that was wrong in the world. Her world, anyway.

“Did you know,” Ben asked her solemnly, “that your nose crinkles when you laugh?”

She instinctively covered her nose, but he pulled her concrete-covered hand away.

“You don’t want to get that stuff on your face,” he said, and then added, “It’s cute when your nose does that.”

She had been blissfully unaware until very recently that there was anything in her world that was wrong, that needed to be healed.

Beth had been convinced she was over all that nonsense with Rock/Ralph. Completely.

But now, as her world got bigger and freshened with new experiences and with laughter, and with a man who noticed her nose crinkled when she laughed and thought it was cute, she saw how her hurt had made her world small. Safe, but small.

Now it was as if something magic was unfolding in her yard, and the three of them were helpless against its enchantment. She had actually considered having Kyle put those words in there, it sucks to be you, because with those words this funny, unexpected miracle had been brought to her.

Not just the tree house.

Maybe the tree house was even the least of it. This feeling of working toward a common goal with other people, of being part of something. This feeling of the tiniest things, like washing the concrete off their hands with the hose, Ben reaching over and scrubbing a spec of stubborn grit off her hand, being washed in light, the ordinary becoming extraordinary.

Who was she kidding? The feeling was of belonging. The feeling was of excitement. It was as if something was unfolding just below the surface, as if the excitement in her life had just begun. As that the yard took shape, her staircase beginning to wind around the tree, it was as if she saw possibility in a brand-new way.

Now, as she came out the door with her tray of goodies and set them on the worn picnic table that once had been the pathetic centerpiece of her yard, she watched Ben stop what he was doing. He walked toward her, scooping up his T-shirt as he came, giving his face and chest a casual swipe with it, before pulling it over that incredible expanse of naked male beauty.

“Milk and lemonade,” he said, grinning, eyeing the contents of the tray. “Interesting.”

“Why?” she demanded. She had just known he would read something into whatever choice she made! She should have known not making a choice had a meaning, too.

He laughed. “You’re trying to make everybody happy.”

“No,” she said, and put the tray down, stood with her hands on her hips staring at the reality of the staircase starting to gracefully curve around the tree, “you are. And look at my yard.” But she wanted to say Look at me. Can’t you tell how happy I am? Instead she said, “Look at Kyle.”

Kyle arrived at the picnic table, smudges of dirt on his face, glowing with something suspiciously like happiness even without the choice between lemonade and milk.

“Look,” he crowed, and showed her his hand.

A blister was red across the palm.

“Oh,” she said, “that’s terrible. I’ll get some ointment.”

But his uncle nudged her and shook his head. “It’s part of being a man,” he said.

Just loud enough for Kyle to hear him.

Kyle’s chest filled with air, and he grinned happily, dug into the cookies and didn’t look up until the plate was nearly emptied. He drank two glasses of milk and one of lemonade, and then leaped up and went back to what he’d been doing.

“Okay, I admit it,” she said, watching the boy pick up his shovel. “Your plan is better than mine. He loves this. He is a different boy than he was a few days ago.”

“Well, don’t say it too loud or he might feel driven to prove you wrong, but, yeah, it’s good for him.”

“It’s really good of you to do this. I’m sure today should have been your day off.”

“I don’t take much time off at this time of year. It gets slow when the weather changes, and then I take some time.”

“And do what?” Was it too personal? Of course it was. She didn’t want to know what he did with his spare time. Yes, she did.

“Usually I go back to Hawaii for a couple of weeks.” His eyes drifted to Kyle. “This year, I’m not sure.”

“How is your sister?” She could tell right away that this was too personal, by the way his shoulders stiffened, how he swirled lemonade in the bottom of his glass like a fortune-teller looking for an answer.

She could tell this was the part of himself that he didn’t want people to know about. It was easy for him to be charming and fun-loving. She almost held her breath waiting to see what he would show her.

And then sighed with relief when he showed her what was real.

He rolled his big shoulders, looked away from the lemonade and held her gaze for one long, hard moment. “She’s not going to make it.”

Beth had known Kyle’s mother was seriously ill. There was no other reason that Ben would have been appointed his guardian. But she was still taken aback at this piece of news.

She touched his arm. Nothing else. Just touched him. And it felt as if it was the most right thing in the world when his hand came and covered hers. Something connected them. Not sympathy, but something bigger, a culmination of something that had started happening in this yard from the first moment he had said he would build a tree house for her.

She could have stayed in that wordless place of connection for a long time. But his reaction was almost the opposite of hers.

He took his hand away as if he could snatch back the feeling that had just passed between them. He smiled at her, that devil-may-care smile, and she realized a smile, even a sexy one—or maybe especially a sexy one—could be a mask.

“I’m going to kiss you one day,” he promised.

Was that a mask, too? A way of not feeling? Of not connecting on a real level? She looked at his lips.

The terrible truth was she was dying to be kissed by him.

But not like that. Not as part of a pretext, a diversion, a way to stop things from hurting.

“Actually, you’re not,” she said, and was pleased by his startled expression, as if no one had ever refused him a kiss before.

Probably no one had. And probably she was going to regret it tonight. Today. Seconds from now.

Before that weakness settled in, she got up and gathered up the tray and headed for the house. She pulled open the screen door with her toe and looked over her shoulder.

“You know,” she called back to him, “kissing can’t solve your problems. They will still be there after you unlock lips.”

He sat there, looking as if a bomb had hit him, and then got up and stalked across the yard, stood at the bottom of her steps, glaring up at her.

“How would you know what kissing solves or doesn’t solve?” he asked her darkly.

“What are you saying? That I look like I’ve never been kissed?”

“As a matter of fact, you don’t look like any kind of an expert on the subject!”

That exquisite moment when she had felt so connected to him was gone. Completely. Absolutely. The oasis was an illusion, after all.

“You pompous, full-of-yourself Neanderthal,” she sputtered.

“Don’t call me names over five syllables.”

“It was four! But just in case you didn’t get it, it’s the long version of caveman.”

He looked like he was going to come up the stairs and tangle those strong, capable hands in her hair, and kiss her just to prove his point. Or hers. That he was a caveman.

But his point would be stronger; she would probably be such a helpless ninny under his gorgeous lips, just like a thousand helpless ninnies before her, that she would totally forget he was a caveman. Or forgive him for it. Or find it enchanting.

She slid inside the door, let it slap shut behind her and then turned, reached out with her little finger from under the tray and latched it.

“Did you just lock the door?” he asked, stunned.

She said nothing, just stood looking at him through the screen.

“What? Do you think I’d break down the door to kiss you?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” she said. Pique made her say it. Not that it was a complete lie. She had spent most of junior high hiding from the overly amorous affections of Harley Houston. Once he had leaped out of a coat closet at her, with his lips all puckered and ready. That was certainly close enough to breaking down a door.

Ben regarded her with ill-concealed temper. “It probably would.”

“Look,” she said coolly, “I don’t understand, if you think I’m so incapable of inspiring great passion, why you’re the one, who out of the blue, with no provocation at all on my part, said you would kiss me someday. As if it wasn’t necessary for me to feel something first. Or you. As if you can just do that kind of thing because you feel like it and without the participation of the other person.”

“Believe me, if I ever kissed you, you’d participate.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said stubbornly, though she didn’t want to be put to the test. And did want to be put to the test. Which most certainly meant she would fail any kind of participation test that involved his lips. Still, there was no sense feeding his already oversize ego. He was impossible. And aggravating. Irritating.

She had known he would be from the first time he had come into her classroom. And instead of letting good sense reign, what had she done?

She had been swayed by the most superficial of things. By his enormous good looks and by his even greater charm. By the sound of laughter. By a tree house taking shape in her yard.

She, Beth Maple, who really should have had so much more sense, had allowed their lives to tangle together! Given him her address, for God’s sake. Allowed him into her yard. Baked him cookies. Fed him milk and lemonade.

She had shamelessly watched him take off his shirt and allowed him to put his big mitt prints in her concrete! Which would be a constant and irritating reminder of the fact that, given a chance, she could make a greater fool of herself for this man than she had for Rock aka Ralph!

She closed the inside door firmly, and locked it with as much noise as she could manage, too. But it wasn’t until she was slamming dishes into the dishwasher that she realized he had gotten exactly what he wanted, after all, and it had never really been about a kiss.

He had been feeling something when he had told her his sister was going to die.

Sadness. Vulnerability. Maybe even trust in Beth.

And whether with a kiss or by starting an argument, he had managed to distance himself from his discomfort, move on.

No sense feeling a little soft spot for him because of that. It was a warning. There was no future with a man who was so shut off from his emotional self, who was so frightened of it.

When exactly had some sneaky little part of herself started contemplating some kind of future with that man?

“Never,” she told herself later, as she watched him load up his tools and his nephew and drive away without saying goodbye, without even glancing at her windows. “I hope he never comes back,” she told herself.

But when she wandered out in the yard and saw that the framework for the staircase was nearly completed, she knew he was coming back. If he was a quitter, he would have left right after the argument, and he hadn’t.

The argument. She’d had her first argument with Ben Anderson.

And as silly as it seemed, she knew that real people disagreed. They had arguments. It was not like her relationship with Rock, which had unfolded like the fantasy it had turned out to be. Full of love notes and tender promises, not a cross word or a disagreement, only the gentlest of chiding on her part when Rock had been compelled to cancel yet one more rendezvous with his myriad of creative excuses.

“I’m probably not ready for real,” she decided out loud, peering up through the thick leaves to where the platform would be.

But it was like being ready to be kissed by him. He didn’t care if she was ready. If she wasn’t very careful, he was just going to take her by storm whether she was ready or not.

And just like a storm, her life would be left in a wreckage after he was done blowing through. That’s why storms of consequence had names. Hurricane Ben. Batten the hatches or evacuate?

“You’re overreacting,” she scolded herself. But she bet a lot of people said that when there was a storm brewing on the horizon.

To their peril.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Top Secret Diary of Kyle O. Anderson

I THINK Miss Maple and Uncle Ben had a fight. After she brought us out cookies and drinks—lemonade and milk—she went in the house and didn’t come back out. My uncle didn’t say goodbye to her when we left. He was pretty quiet on the drive home, but when I asked him if anything was wrong, he looked surprised and said, no everything was great, and how did I enjoy work today.

The truth? I really like working with my uncle. I love Miss Maple’s tree house. I never, ever thought about the future before. I’m not one of those kids who always dreamed about being a fireman when I grew up.

Getting through each day seemed like a big enough undertaking to me.

But working with my uncle made me realize I like building things. And he says I’m good at it, too. When I suggested a way to change the steps so that they would work better, he said I was a genius. And one thing about my uncle, you can trust that when he says something like that, he means it.

If he did have a fight with Miss Maple, I’m really glad he didn’t tell me about it. My mom always told me everything that was going on in her life, and if you think it feels good knowing all about grown-up problems, think again. Still, it’s kind of funny, because I thought I wanted Uncle Ben and Miss Maple not to get along, but now that they aren’t I feel worried about that.

When we got home, the phone was ringing and my uncle picked it up and gave it to me. The only person I could think of who would call me is my mom, so I nearly dropped the phone when it was Mary Kay Narsunchuk. She said that the planetarium was having a special show called Constellation Prize and would I like to go with her?

At first I thought it was a joke, like if I listened hard enough I would hear her girlfriends laughing in the background, but I didn’t hear a sound.

“Why are you asking me?” I said, trying to sound cool and not too suspicious.

“Because you are the smartest person I know,” she said, and I liked her saying that, even though we don’t really know each other. And then she said she liked it that I protected the frog against Casper, even though she doesn’t really like frogs.

She told me she hates Casper, which means we have something in common already.

Her mom picked me up at Uncle Ben’s house and drove us to the planetarium, which was kind of dorky. I’ve been taking public transit by myself since I was six, and I don’t really think the planetarium is in a rough neighborhood, so I thought the warnings to stand right outside the door when she came back to pick us up were hilarious, though I didn’t laugh, just said yes, ma’am.

On the way in, I noticed Mary Kay is at least three inches taller than me, and had on really nice clothes, and that bad feeling started, like I’m not good enough. Then I told myself it wasn’t like it was a date or anything, and when she asked what I had done today I told her about building the tree house for Miss Maple, and she thought that was the coolest thing she had ever heard.

The weirdest thing happened when we took our seats. The lights went out and she took my hand.

That was all. But the stars came on in the pitch-blackness, like lighted diamonds piercing black velvet, and I thought, All of this is because of Kermit. The tree house, and being with Mary Kay right now, and her thinking I was smart, and not even seeming to notice I was way shorter than her, and not dressed so good, either.

The stars above us made the universe look so immense. That’s when I had the weird feeling. That good could come from bad, and that maybe I was being looked after by the same thing that put the stars in the sky, and that maybe everything was going to be okay.

It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever felt that way. Like I didn’t have to look after anything at all.

And all that was nothing compared to what happened later. Believe me, my uncle Ben and Miss Maple were about the furthest thing from my mind.

It was the first time Ben Anderson had had an evening to himself since Kyle had become a permanent part of his life. At first, watching his nephew go down the walk in front of the house and get into an upscale SUV, Ben felt heady with freedom.

He cocked his head and listened. No steady thump of the bass beat from down the hall.

“I could rent a movie, with bad language and violence,” he said out loud, contemplating his options. “Man stuff.” He beat his chest to get in the mood for man stuff, something he’d refrained from doing to avoid being scoffed at by his roomie.

Strangely, he discovered he could feel ridiculous all by himself. It was the influence of the annoying Miss Maple. Somehow, even though he was all alone, he could just picture her eyebrows shooting up at chest beating.

“I’ll show her,” he decided. “I’ll call Samantha.” But before he got to the phone he found his steps slowing at the thought of an evening with Samantha, pretty as she was. He’d given up on her even before Miss Maple, so imagine how dumb he’d find her now that he had someone to compare her to. Someone who could quote Aristotle, no less!

“Okay,” he said. “Hillary, then.” But Hillary hadn’t had a moment of wonder for at least twenty-five years, and he didn’t feel in the mood for worldliness or cynicism.

Pam had always been light-hearted, but he knew he’d find her giggling grating after the day Miss Maple had been hi-jacked by the compactor and he had heard her laughter. And seen her crinkle her nose.

“Okay,” he said, annoyed with himself. “I’ll call the guys.”

But lately the guys were on a campaign to get him back in the game, as they called it, and the very thought of that made him feel more tired than a day of pouring concrete.

The truth was, once he stopped talking out loud, Ben thought the house felt oddly empty without Kyle. Ben had become accustomed to the bass boom in the background, the squeak of the refrigerator door, the feeling of being responsible for something other than himself.

For a man who had never even succeeded at looking after a houseplant, the fact that he had taken to his guardian duties was a surprise.

Maybe he was maturing. Becoming a better man.

But then he thought of how he’d behaved this afternoon at Beth Maple’s, and he didn’t feel the least bit proud of himself.

“I think I will rent a movie,” he said out loud, and reached for his jacket. At the movie store he picked up Jackals of the Desert a movie with a military theme, and a rating that would have never allowed him to watch it with Kyle, even though Kyle rolled his eyes at his uncle’s adherence to the rating system.

But before he got to the cash register, he turned around and put the movie back on the shelf. There, under the bright lights of the video store, Ben faced the truth about himself.

He was trying to run away, fill space, so that he didn’t have to look at an ugly fact about himself.

He’d hurt her. He’d hurt Miss Maple.

And he’d done it because telling her his sister was not going to make it, and feeling her hand rest, ever so slightly on his arm, had made him come face-to-face with a deeply uncomfortable feeling of sadness about his sister, and vulnerability toward Beth. He didn’t want to face his feelings. He didn’t actually even want to have feelings, messy, unwieldy things that they were.

So, not facing his feelings was nothing new, but hurting someone else?

Not okay.

Especially not okay because it was her.

By taking on the tree house project, Ben was trying to repair the damage that had been done to her, not cause more.

All she’d done was touch him when he’d told her Carly wasn’t going to make it. But something in that touch had made him feel weak instead of strong. As if he could lay his head on her lap, and feel her fingers stroking his hair, and cry until there were no more tears.

No wonder he’d lashed out at her. Cry? Ben Anderson did not cry. Still, he could now see that it had been childish to try to get his power back at her expense.

“Man up,” he’d said to Kyle when Kyle had been trying to shirk from the damage he had caused.

Now it was his turn.

He went out of the video store, and was nearly swamped by the smell of fresh pizza cooking. He hadn’t eaten yet.

And that’s how it was that he showed up on Beth Maple’s doorstep a half an hour later with a Mama Marietta World-Famous Three-Topping Pizza and a six-pack of soda.

Beth opened the door, which gave him hope, because she’d peeked through the security hole and clearly seen it was him. But then she had folded her arms over her bosom like a grade-five teacher who intended not to be won over by the kid who had played hooky.

She was wearing a baggy white shirt and matching pants, that sagged in all the wrong places. Pajamas?

The outfit of a woman who did not get much company of the male variety by surprise.

And that gave him hope, too, though what he was hoping for he wasn’t quite ready to think about.