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

He held his breath, but he got the stock Miss Maple answer.

“I need not to get involved with a family member of one of my students. On a lover level.”

She blushed when she said it. What a relief. She couldn’t even say lover let alone invite him to have a wild fling with her.

Her cheeks, staining the color of the beets his mother used to can, told him a truth about her. And about himself.

A man could never take her as a lover. She was the kind of woman who required way more than a recreational romp in the hay, whether she knew that about herself or not. She was the kind of woman who needed commitment. He’d known that from practically their first meeting when she had tossed that word around so lightly!

She was the kind of girl who would never be satisfied with the superficial, who would demand a man leave his self-centered ways behind him.

To be worthy of her. Which he was pretty darn sure he wasn’t.

Thank God.

“Well, I’m glad we got that sorted out,” he said doubtfully.

“Me, too,” she said.

“It’s not that I didn’t like kissing you.”

“I understand.”

“So, you won’t kiss me again?” What had his life become? He was begging a very pretty woman not to kiss him!

For her own good. Maybe he was becoming a better man, despite himself.

“I’ll do my best,” she said solemnly. And then, just when he thought she totally got what he was trying to tell her, she giggled, tried to hold it back and snorted in a most un-Miss Maple way.

He scowled at her.

“Rein myself in,” she promised, and then snickered again. “Wanton floozy. I didn’t mean to throw myself at you.”

“Nobody says things like that,” he said, irritated. “Wanton floozy.”

She was laughing and snorting in an effort to restrain herself. “Oh, you know us readers of romance novels.”

“You know, that’s another annoying thing about you—” besides the fact that she looked absolutely glorious when she laughed, and her nose wrinkled like that “—you have this mind like a computer, and you store away every single thing a person ever says to you for later use. Against them.”

She finally got the laughter under control, thankfully. Though now that he thought about it, he was not sure he liked that thoughtful, stripping way she was looking at him any better.

“You know what else was missing from your past relationships? Besides friendship?”

It was very obvious she planned to tell him, whether he wanted to hear it or not. Which he didn’t. At least not very much. He glared at her, folded his arms over his chest.

“Brains,” she said, softly. “No wonder you were bored.”

“I never said I was bored!” But he realized he had been. Every single time, after the initial thrill, bored beyond belief.

“Well, based on what you said about your past history, someone was bored.”

“Relationships can end for reasons other than that.” She wasn’t insinuating the other person had been bored with him, was she?

“Yes, that’s true. Maybe you’re a bad lover.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but caught the gleeful twinkle in her eye, and snapped it shut again before he gave her more cause to laugh.

He wasn’t sure he even wanted to be friends with her after all, he thought, a trifle sullenly. She saw way too much. And said too much.

But what choice did he have? He had to finish building her tree house. And Kyle was going to be in her class for another nine months or so.

Excuses. Because it really did seem like his life the way it had been before she came along was not what he wanted anymore.

He’d been lonely. He knew that now.

She had been right. He needed a friend. He needed a friend just like her. As long as they didn’t go and wreck it all by changing it to something else.

Feeling as if he had just navigated a minefield where he had managed, just barely, not to get himself blown to smithereens, he retreated to his truck and drove home. When they got in the house, Kyle announced he was going to do his homework.

Ben decided it would be counterproductive to remind Kyle he didn’t do homework. Instead he contemplated that development, and allowed himself to feel a moment’s satisfaction about how his plan was working the miracle that hers had not. But maybe it was bike riding that had worked the miracle, and that had been her idea. Turned into a project in cooperation. An outing with a family feeling to it.

Maybe that was at the heart of the miracle. That feeling of family. Ben’s wisdom in saying nay to the kisses was confirmed, though there was a sharp and undeniable tingle of regret that went with it every time he thought about it. Or her lips.

He was still contemplating that when the phone rang. Miss Maple’s personal number on his call display. He hadn’t even been away from the many and varied temptations of her for an hour! Once upon a time, he remembered he had hoped she would call him. But that was before he’d known how capable she was of shaking up his world.

Still, it was not reluctance he felt when he answered the phone, much as he knew it should be.

“I can call you now that we’re friends, right?” she asked. “It’s not against your rules, like kissing?”

He hoped she wasn’t going to mention kissing at every opportunity, because the whole idea was he didn’t want to think about it.

“Of course you can phone me at anytime,” he said foolishly. The pathetic truth was he couldn’t think of anything he’d like more than talking to her. And the phone was so safe. He didn’t even have to see her lips.

“You don’t see my calling you as being too forward? Bordering on wanton?”

“No,” he said sharply, trying to disguise how much he was liking this. “Are you amusing yourself at my expense?”

“Of course not. Actually, I called about Kyle, so this is definitely not wanton.”

“Definitely,” he agreed, disappointed that she had called about Kyle, even though he did appreciate her concern for his nephew’s well-being. Besides, what could be better? That was a nice and safe topic.

“He told me he was going to do his homework,” he whispered into the phone. It occurred to him there was no one else in the world who cared about that except her. It made him feel an unwanted nudge of tenderness for her. “Try not to make too big a fuss when he turns it in tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry, Ben, I’m not insulted that you think you have to tell me how to conduct myself in my classroom.”

“Don’t be so prickly.” So much for tenderness. Which was good, tender thoughts probably would lead directly back to lip thoughts.

“Don’t be so overbearing.”

Boy, he was glad he had decided against complicating things!

“I’m not overbearing,” he growled.

“Just far too used to calling the shots?”

“I run my own business!”

“You can’t run your personal life like your business.”

Had he actually been slightly happy to see her number on the call display? Why? She was bossy, opinionated and prickly. Who was she to tell him how to run his personal life? As far as he could tell, she didn’t have one.

But if he said that, he was probably going to end up on her doorstep with pizza, apologizing again. And that led to lips, too. Instead he said, “Was there a reason you called?”

“I’ve been thinking about Kyle not knowing how to swim,” she said, moving on quickly from the topic of his overbearingness, which he was glad about, even though he might have liked to talk about her prickliness a little more.

“It really bothers me,” she said.

And just like that they were beyond the prickliness to that other side of her, so soft it beckoned like a big feather bed on a cold winter’s night.

“Me, too,” Ben agreed, and then found himself adding, “It’s like he hasn’t had a childhood.”

“It’s never too late.”

“It isn’t?” he said skeptically.

“My mom and dad have an indoor pool. It would be a nice private place to introduce him to the water and give him a few pointers on swimming. Don’t you think a public pool might be too humiliating?”

But his mind was stuck on the “her mom and dad” part.

He did not like meeting his female companion’s parents. Of course, he had just finished making it clear to her she was not going to be his female companion in the way he generally had female companions. So why not?

It wasn’t until the next night, after school, at her parents’ very upscale house in the hills, that he realized why not.

Beth met them outside in the curved driveway and led them around to a separate pool building behind the main house, glassed in and spectacular. He was relieved to note there were no parents in sight.

She pointed him and Kyle to a place to change, spalike and luxurious, and moments later he was in the pool, testing the depth of the water for Kyle, who looked scrawny, goose-bumped and terrified of this new experience.

And then Beth emerged from her own change room. She shuffled up to the edge of the pool, drowning in a too-large pure-white thick terry cloth robe, and then, looking everywhere but at him, she took a deep breath and dropped the covering.

He really hadn’t needed to see a woman he had sworn off kissing in a bathing suit. He really hadn’t needed to see that at all. Because Beth Maple, out of her schoolmarm duds was unbelievable. Oh, he’d seen hints of this in the way she dressed at home, casually, but nothing could have prepared him for Beth Maple in the flesh.

Literally.

He wouldn’t have ever thought she was a bikini kind of gal. In fact, for the school outing he had guessed she would wear a one-piece with matching shorts, not removed. Wrong. Though, he had just enough wits about him to see that the shimmery copper-colored hanky she was wearing looked brand-new. It had never been at a school outing! Was she tormenting him, deliberately, with his choice to just be friends?

Surely not! There was nothing conniving about Miss Maple, was there?

Ha. She knew exactly the effect all those scantily covered curves would have on his resolve. Nobody was that innocent!

Proving her own boldness was making her at least as uncomfortable as it was him and that she had no experience with the fact that the kind of swimwear she was wearing was not actually designed for swimming, Beth dove headlong into the water. And came up with one arm crossed firmly across her chest, and the other tugging away at something he couldn’t see—but could clearly imagine—below the water.

“Problems?” he purred.

Nope, those little scraps of fabric were definitely not attire designed to get wet. At least her hair made her look like a drowned rat instead of a femme fatale making a play for his soul.

“No,” she snapped, but made some tightening adjustments to the little threads holding everything together.

Now satisfied everything was going to stay on, she soon forgot to be self-conscious about her attire. After a few minutes of waiting, hopefully, for things to fall apart, he began to realize the bathing suit proved to be not nearly as revealing as her absolute joy and freedom in the water.

Her enthusiasm was contagious, and soon she had Kyle in the water and doing what she called a “motorboat,” blowing bubbles with his mouth to get him over his fear of getting his face wet.

Never once did she make it seem like a swim lesson. Kyle’s first time in the pool was all about fun. She never asked him to get out of the three foot end of the pool.

The three of them splashed and played tag. She got out a volleyball for them to throw around. An hour passed in the blink of an eye.

The whole experience made Ben want to get her alone, to swim with her in the Pacific on one of those nights when the sky and the water became one. Was that something someone wanted to do with their friend?

They had no sooner gotten out of the pool than the moment Ben dreaded, meeting her parents, arrived. Her mom provided them all with thick white robes that matched the one Beth had come out on the pool deck in. She got sodas out of the fridge as they all plopped down on the comfy furniture in the poolside lounging area.

Ben didn’t miss the way Beth’s mother’s eyes popped at her daughter’s bathing suit before Beth managed to get herself covered up.

So, Miss Maple did have a conniving side! He’d bet his business that her bathing suit was brand-new and carefully chosen to fluster. Though at the moment, trying to tug an uncooperative robe over her wet skin, Ben was pleased to see she seemed to be the flustered one.

After a few minutes her father joined them.

Ben was good at meeting people, and because of his line of work he was not intimidated by wealthy people. Despite his reluctance to meet parents, he realized he didn’t have to act like a high school kid picking up his prom date, because he and Beth were not dating.

Her parents were easy people to be with, but Ben became aware he had avoided this kind of gathering since the death of his parents. Mr. And Mrs. Maple were obviously devoted to their youngest child and each other. It soon became evident that family was everything to them, their lives were centered on their children and their grandchildren. It was the main reason they had a pool.

Family.

That thing he had turned his back on so long ago, because it filled him with such an intense sense of yearning for what he could never have back.

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