Читать книгу Propositioned by the Playboy - Cara Colter - Страница 10
ОглавлениеThe Top-Secret Diary of Kyle O. Anderson
BOY, people are dumb, even Miss Maple, who up until yesterday I thought might be one of the smarter ones. She was waiting for me when I got to school. I got the big lecture about saying things that can be misinterpreted. Is it so hard to figure out a kid who protects a frog isn’t likely to burn down the school?
Sheesh. I only said that because I had read it the night before in The History of Khan. Genghis Khan used to surround a city, and then he gave them the opportunity to surrender. If they didn’t surrender he’d burn it to the ground, until the streets ran with fat melting from bodies. Is that the scariest thing you ever heard? That’s where the expression “the wrath of Khan” comes from. Even Casper, who is really dumb, got it.
Miss Maple is dumb in a different way than Casper. Not just that she thought I might burn the school down when I couldn’t even hurt a frog, but I saw the look on her face yesterday when she left my uncle. Not much room to misinterpret that. All pink and flustered.
And him talking about bubble baths. If you want to know what embarrassment feels like, try your uncle telling your teacher to have a bubble bath. I didn’t miss the fact he’s progressed to her first name, either.
Not that I thought about it, but if I had, I could have guessed her name would be something like Beth or Molly or Emily.
I was hoping the frog thing would warn her off us, but it kind of backfired.
She and Uncle Ben, the lady-killer, ended up at Migg’s Pond together. Shoot. It’s full of mud and mosquitoes, but they were talking away as if they were having a glass of wine over dinner at a five-star hotel.
I didn’t know my uncle Ben came back here because of me and my Mom, though it could be a lie. I bet he knows exactly how to worm into the heart of someone as dumb as Miss Maple.
If they get together, I bet I’m out in a blink. Nobody wants a dorky eleven-year-old around when they’re getting ready to make kissy-face. Ask me. I’ve been through it before. With Larry and Barry.
The frog was lame. Well, not totally lame because I still have him. He’s not exactly a great pet, like a dog or a horse, but when I got to the pond, I couldn’t let him go. The weather’s getting colder and I’m not sure what frogs do when it gets cold. I don’t want to think about him dying, that’s for sure. Where would he go when he dies? I’m not sure about heaven. Even if there is one, I don’t know if they let frogs in. I don’t know if they’ll let my Mom in, either. She never went to church, and she sure swore a lot and stuff.
Miss Maple has the stupidest car you ever saw. It’s like a hundred years old, a red VW convertible. She loves that car. You can tell by the way she keeps care of it, all shiny all the time, the way she drives it with her nose in the air.
I guess if I really need her to hate me, I could always do something to the car. It would be just too much to hope that I could make her think my uncle did it. Maybe I better wait and think about this. My uncle will probably take my frog away if I do something that bad to Beth. I don’t know how somebody who has probably killed people with his bare hands deals with a frog, but whatever he does, I have a feeling it would be better than if Casper Hearn got his big fat mitts on it.
I hope I don’t have to do anything to Miss Maple’s car. That will be my last resort. And not because of Kermit. I’m not dumb enough to get attached to a frog.
I hope I don’t have to make her hate me too bad.
This was looking good, Ben thought, looking at the call display on his cell phone. Miss Beth Maple was calling him again. Two calls in two days.
Though maybe yesterday didn’t count, since his nephew had been missing. She was kind of obligated to call about something like that.
But even she couldn’t have two emergencies in two days.
He hoped she was calling to tell him about the bubble bath. Though the thought of her telling him such a thing made him want to laugh out loud, because it would be so impossibly not her. Delightful, though, if you were the one she decided to let down her hair for.
Because there was definitely something about her, just beneath the surface. It was as if, as uptight as she seemed to be, she just hadn’t had the right guy help her unlock her secrets. He thought of the line of her lips, wondered what it would be like to taste them, and then found he was the one to feel kind of flustered, like he was blushing, which was impossible. No one who spent eight years in the marines had anything like a blush left in them.
Unless what she had, innocence, was contagious.
And why did that make him feel oddly wistful, as if a man could ever be returned to what he had been before?
The truth was that Ben Anderson had had his fill of hard times and heartaches: his parents had died when he was young; he had lost his sister long before a doctor had told him she was going to die; he’d buried men he had shared a brotherhood with.
He could not ever be what he had been before. He could not get back the man who was unguarded, open to life. Long ago, he could remember being a young boy, Kyle’s age, and every day ended with the words “I love you” to his mom and dad.
He could not be that again.
A memory, unbidden, came to him. His mother getting in the car, blowing him a kiss, and mouthing the words “I love you” because at seventeen he didn’t want them broadcasted down the street.
Ben had not said those words since then, not ever. Was it insane to see them as a harbinger to disaster, to loss? He did not consider himself a superstitious man, but in this instance he was.
“Hello?” he said, aware that something cautious had entered his tone. He was not what she needed.
He was probably not what any woman needed. Damaged. Commitment-phobic.
“There were problems again today at school,” she said wearily.
Considering he had just decided he was not what any woman needed, Ben was inordinately pleased that she had phoned to tell him about her problems! Nice. She probably had a little ache right between her shoulder blades, that he could—
“Kyle put glue on Casper’s seat during recess. Not like the kind of glue we use at school for making fall leaves. I’ve never seen glue like that before.”
Construction-site glue, Ben guessed, amazingly glum she wasn’t phoning to share her problems with him. No, this was all about his problem.
“Casper stuck to the chair. And then he panicked and ripped the seat out of his pants when he tried to get out of the chair.” There was a strangled sound from her end of the phone.
“Are you laughing?” he asked.
“No.” It was a squeak.
“I think you are.”
Silence, followed by a snort. And then another, muffled.
“Ah,” he said. He could picture her, on the other end of the phone, holding back her laughter, trying desperately to play the role of the strict schoolmarm. He wished he was there to see the light in her eyes. He bet her nose crinkled when she laughed.
After a long time, struggling, she said, “There has to be a consequence. And he can never, ever guess I laughed.”
“Oh,” he teased, “a secret between us. This is even better than I could have hoped.”
“If you could be mature, I thought we should talk about the consequence together,” she said, her voice all grade-five schoolmistress again.
“I’ve always thought maturity was a good way to take all the fun out of life, but I will try, just for you.”
“I hope you didn’t suggest the glue to him!”
The truth was he might have, but his and Kyle’s relationship had not progressed to sharing ideas for dealing with the class bully. He decided it was not in his best interest to share that with Miss Maple.
“We have to be on the same page.” Sternly.
“Grown-ups against kids. Got it.”
Silence. “I wasn’t thinking of it that way. As if it’s a war.”
“A football game, then?”
“It’s not really about winning and losing,” she said carefully. “It’s about finding what motivates Kyle. The class has a swim day coming up. I was going to suggest Kyle not be allowed to go. I hope that doesn’t seem too harsh.”
“No less than what he deserves. I’ll let him know.”
“Thank you.” And then, hesitating, “You won’t tell him—”
“That you laughed? No. I’ll keep that to myself. Treasure it. It’s something no grade-five boy needs to know about his teacher.”
“Thank you for your cooperation,” she said formally, and hung up the phone.
Ben went and found Kyle. He didn’t have to look far. Kyle was in his room, the music booming. He was trying to get his frog to eat dead flies.
“Ah, Miss Maple just called. I heard about what you did to Casper.”
“They can’t prove it was me.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not going on the class swim trip that’s coming up because of it.”
“Boo-hoo,” Kyle said, insincerely. Unless Ben was mistaken, rather than seeing his absence on the class trip as a punishment, Kyle was gleeful about it!
Unremorseful, Kyle went back to feeding his frog. Its long tongue snaked out, and the fly he had thrown in was grabbed from the air and disappeared.
“Wow,” Kyle said. “Was that the coolest thing ever?”
Ben thought it was the first time he’d ever seen his nephew look truly happy. Silly to want to call Miss Maple back and tell her about it. Ridiculous to want to hear her laugh again.
If he wanted to hear laughter, he just had to turn on the television.
Except he didn’t have one anymore. It was in Kyle’s room. And besides, listening to a laugh track was going to seem strangely empty after hearing her trying to choke back her chortles.
“Wanna go for ice cream?” he asked Kyle. Too late, he realized he was letting down the home team. Since swimming had been no kind of consequence at all, he probably shouldn’t be taking Kyle for ice cream. It was almost like saying, Go ahead. Glue Casper to his seat. I think its funny.
Which, come to think of it, he did.
“Ripped the whole seat out of his pants?” he asked Kyle as they walked down to Friendly’s, the best ice cream store in Cranberry Corners.
“Yeah, and he had on blue underwear with cowboys on it.”
“Oh, baby underwear.”
And then he and his nephew were laughing, and despite the fact he was letting down the home team, Ben wouldn’t have traded that moment for the whole wide world.
She phoned again the following night.
“I think he was very upset about the swimming being canceled,” she confided in Ben. “Everybody else was talking about it all day, especially Casper. And he was left out.”
Ben remembered Kyle’s gleeful boo-hoo.
“He didn’t even try to do the class assignment, but I’m remiss to punish him again so soon. Just to punish him will make him feel defeated,” she told him. “You have to reward him when he does good things.”
“Look, the only thing he does around here is feed his frog. I can’t exactly reward him for that.”
“I think rewarding him for being responsible for his pet would be good!”
Ben mulled that over. “Okay. I’m going to take him for ice cream.” He hesitated. “Want to come?”
She hesitated, too. “I shouldn’t.”
“Why not? We’re on the same team, right? I bet you like vanilla.”
“That makes me sound dull.”
“Surprise me, then.”
And she did surprise him, for showing up at all, and for showing up on her bicycle with her hair down, surprisingly long, past her shoulders, her lovely cheeks pink from exertion.
“I didn’t know teachers wore shorts,” Kyle said, spotting her first. He frowned. “That should be against the law.”
Ben agreed. Even though Beth’s shorts would be considered very conservative, ending just above her knee, her legs could cause traffic accidents! They were absolutely gorgeous.
“What’s she doing here?” Kyle asked as she came toward them.
“She’s going to have ice cream with us.”
“Oh,” Kyle said, “you invited her.” He did not sound pleased. He did not sound even a little bit pleased, but what eleven-year-old wanted to have ice cream with his teacher?
She wouldn’t let Ben order for her or pay for her, but he watched closely all the same. When she joined them at a small table outside, she had ordered some hellish looking mix of orange and black.
“Tiger,” she informed Ben. Then she went on to prove that she could more than surprise him. Who would have guessed that watching that prim little schoolmarm licking an ice cream cone could be the most excruciatingly sensual experience of a somewhat experienced guy’s life? When a blob of the quickly melting brackish material fell on her naked thigh, he thought there wasn’t enough ice cream in the world to cool down the heat inside of him.
He leaped to his feet, consulted his watch with an astounded frown. “Kyle and I have to go,” he announced. “School night. That homework thing.”
She should have looked pleased that he was being such a responsible guardian. She would have looked pleased to know he was going if she knew what he was thinking about her thighs. And ice cream. In the same sentence.
He’d annoyed her. Actually, he thought she was more than annoyed. Mad. He didn’t blame her. He’d invited her for ice cream and then ditched her. She might never know how noble his departure had been. It had been for the protection of both of them.
Kyle seemed mad at him, too. When Ben pressed him about his homework, Kyle said, as regally as a prince who did not toil with the peasants, “I don’t do homework.”
And instead of thinking of some clever consequence, to go with the plan, Ben said, “Well, fail grade five then. See if I care.”
Ben Anderson wished his life could go back to being what it had been such a short while ago. Frozen dinners. Guy nights. A home gym in the spare bedroom.
And at the same time he wished it, he missed it when she didn’t call him the next night, or the one after that, either. That either meant the plan was working, or she was giving up.
Or that his foolish mixing of her professional life with her personal one had left her nearly as confused as it had left him. He doubted he’d been forgiven for leaving her in the lurch with her tiger ice cream. Now she had probably vowed not to speak to Ben Anderson again unless Kyle turned her world upside down.
Should he phone her? And tell her he rewarded Kyle every night for feeding and caring for his frog, trying to make up for the fifth-grade-failure comment. But the reward was ice cream, and Ben didn’t think it would be a very good idea to mention ice cream around her for a while.
Besides, after that shared moment of camaraderie over Casper’s unfortunate choice of underwear, Kyle had retreated into a sullen silence.
After a week of trying out excuses in his head to phone her, and discarding each one as more lame than the last, the decision was taken out of Ben’s hands.
The school’s number came up on his cell phone’s display. He knew it could be anyone. The principal, the nurse, Kyle himself. But he also knew it was telling him something important that he hoped it was Beth.
And then was reminded to be careful what he hoped for!
He had to hold the phone away—way away—from his ear. Kyle had been right about one thing. She did have kind of a screechy voice—when she was upset, and she was very upset.
She finally paused for breath, a hiccupping sound that made him wonder if she was crying. He did not want to think of Beth Maple crying.
“Let me get this straight,” he said uneasily. “While you took the class swimming, somebody took a nail and scratched my company name in the side of your car? Are you kidding me?”
He didn’t know why he said that because it was more than obvious she wasn’t kidding. He groaned when she told him what else was scratched in there.
“It sucks to be you.” And of course, Kyle had not been swimming.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said, and hung up the phone. It occurred to him it was totally inappropriate to be whistling. Totally inappropriate to feel happy that he was going to be seeing her again so soon.
She might be able to make eating ice cream look like something out of the Kama Sutra, but he had just been screeched at! He had already deduced he was not the kind of man who could give a woman like that one thing she needed.
Except she did need to be kissed. He could tell by the way she ate ice cream! And he had it on good authority he was very good at that.
But it was not the thought of kissing her that made him happy, because obviously kissing a woman like that would make his life rife with complications that it did not currently have.
As if an eleven-year-old boy armed with a nail was not enough of a complication for him at the moment.
What seemed to be causing the renegade happiness was the thought of the look on her face a long time ago when he had told her about swimming in the dark: a moment of unguarded wonder and yearning, before she had quickly masked whatever she was feeling.
He wanted to make her look like that again.
He supposed it was a guy thing. A challenge.
He reminded himself sternly that his big challenge right now was the person who was vandalizing people’s cars.
It was a big deal. A terrible thing for Kyle to have done. A betrayal of the teacher who had been nothing but good to him.
But Ben Anderson still whistled all the way to the school.
Beth Maple’s car was about the cutest thing he had ever seen, a perfectly refurbished 1964 Volkswagen Beetle convertible, finished in candy-apple red. The car was kind of like her—sweet and understated, with the surprise element of the candy-apple red, and the unexpected sexiness of a convertible top.
Unfortunately, the car was marred right now. On the driver’s side door someone had scratched “THE GARDEN OF WEDDING,” an unfortunate misspelling of the name of Ben’s business. Like most confirmed bachelors, he did not like weddings. He had never noticed before how close to the word wedding that weedin’ was.
He was startled and horrified that even being in the near vicinity of that word and Beth at the same time, he could picture her as a bride, gliding down an aisle in a sea of virginal white.
Was she a virgin?
He could feel his face getting red, so he frowned hard at the words scratched in the side of her car. What the hell was going on with him? His self-control was legendary, and yet here were these renegade thoughts, just exploding in his mind without warning, as though he had stepped on a land mine. First the naughty thoughts around ice cream and now this.
“There’s more,” she said.
Yeah, there was, because as hard as he was trying to crowd out the picture of her in a wedding dress from his mind, not to mention that terrible none-of-your-business question, once you had allowed your mind to go somewhere like that, it was very hard to corral the wayward thoughts.
He slid a glance at her face, her smooth forehead marred by a frown, distress in her eyes, as if this was the very worst thing that had ever happened to her.
He would guess she had lived a sheltered life.
He followed her around to the passenger side, looked where she pointed. In smaller letters, lower case, was scratched deep into that candy-apple red paint “it sucks to be you.”
As if Kyle wasn’t the prime suspect anyway, he might as well have signed his handiwork with his own name.
Ben glanced at Beth Maple again. The teacher was looking distressed and pale, as if she was hanging on by a thread and the slightest thing would make her burst into tears.
Which was something Ben Anderson did not want to see at all. The wedding thoughts and the question were about as much stress as he wanted for one day. A woman like that, in tears, could be his undoing. It could make a man feel all big and strong and protective. He didn’t want to feel like that. He was as unsuited to the role of riding in on his charger to rescue the damsel in distress as he was to the role of standing at the top of that aisle, waiting…
And reacting to tears moved a man toward emotional involvement, and as challenging as he found the prim schoolteacher, he wanted to play with her, that delicious wonderful exhilarating man/woman game where you parted with a kiss and no hard feelings when it was all over.
He did not want to play the game that ended with white dresses, no matter how lovely that vision might be.
He slid a look at her and wondered when he had become so imaginative. Today she was wearing a white sweater and a black skirt and a lavender blouse with lace on it.
Not an outfit that should make a man think of weddings or virginity. Or of bubble baths or swimming in dark ocean waters. At all.
But that is where his unruly male mind went nonetheless.
Her hair was still wet from the class trip, and he wondered what she had worn at the pool. A one-piece, he decided. Matching shorts, that she probably hadn’t taken off. Not what she would wear for a midnight swim with him.
He had the sudden, disturbing thought that it might not be exactly ethical to play with Miss Maple. She wasn’t the kind of woman who understood the rules he played by. The thought was disturbing because he did not think thoughts like that. She was an adult. He was an adult. Couldn’t they just dance around each other a bit and see where it went?
No. It was a whisper. His conscience? Or maybe his bachelor survival instincts. Beware of women who make you think of weddings.
Funny, that of all the women he had gone out with, she, the least threatening, and certainly the least sexy, would be the one who would make him feel as if he needed to be the most wary, the most on guard. Because she had a sneaky kind of sexiness that crept up on you, instead of the kind that hit you over the head.
He slid her another look. No. Not the least sexy. Not at all. No, that wasn’t quite it. She wasn’t overtly sexy. Sneaky sexy in this kind of understated virginal way that could set his blood on fire. If he let it. Which he wasn’t going to. He had set his formidable will and sense of discipline against greater obstacles than her.
He turned his focus to his nephew, a welcome diversion, even in these uncomfortable circumstances.
Kyle was also standing off to the side of the car, looking into the distance, as if all this kafuffle had nothing to do with him. He looked pale to Ben, his freckles standing out against the white of his skin. He met his uncle’s accusing gaze with nothing even resembling remorse.
But it wasn’t quite belligerence, either. Amazingly it reminded Ben of the look on young soldiers’ faces when they were scared to death to do something but did what they had to do anyway.
There was a weird kind of bravery in what Kyle had done.
Between her near tears and Kyle’s attitude, Ben’s happiness was dissipating more rapidly than a snowball in August.
“I love this car,” Beth said sadly.
And Ben could tell it was true. He could tell by the sparkle shine on the wax, and the buffed white of the convertible top. He could tell by the way her fingers trembled on the scratch marks that she had been hurt and deeply.
A man allergic to love, he should have approved of her affection for the car. Why did it seem like a waste to him? Why would a woman like that waste her love on what really was just a hunk of metal and moving parts?
Because it was safe. It was a startling and totally unwanted insight into her. He slid her a look. Ah, yes, he should have seen it before.
The kind of woman who could be least trusted with the kind of man he was. He liked things light and lively and superficial, and he could see, in this moment of vulnerability, that she had already been scarred by someone. Heartbroken. Bruised.
Along with the uncontrolled direction of his own thoughts, it was a back-off insight if he had ever had one. But instead of wanting to back off, he felt a strange desire to fix it. He felt even more like he wanted to see that look on her face again that he had seen when he had told her about swimming in the dark, a look of yearning, of wonder.
“I don’t understand,” Beth said to Kyle, struggling for composure. “Why would you do this to me? I’ve been good to you, haven’t I?”
Kyle didn’t look at her. “What makes you think I did it?” he tried for uncaring, but his voice wavered. “Are you going to get DNA from a scratch mark? It could have been Casper Hearn. He hates me. He would try and make it look like me.”
Beth had the bad judgment to look doubtful.
But Ben knew now was the wrong time to let his bewilderment at Kyle’s strange bravery, or sympathy for Kyle’s past, in any way temper his reaction to this. It was vandalism, and no matter what had motivated it, it couldn’t be tolerated or let go. It would be so much easier to let it go, to excuse it in some way, so that he didn’t have to tangle any further with a woman who made him think renegade thoughts of weddings and virginity.
But he couldn’t. This kid had been entrusted to him, and now he had to do the right thing. Every single time. They had tried Beth’s plan, her way, but they didn’t have time to fool with this any longer, to experiment with the plan that would work for Kyle.
The damage to Beth’s car was a terrible movement in the wrong direction for Kyle. If Ben let this slide, how long until the downward spiral of anger and bitterness could not be stopped? It seemed to him he had been here before, watched helplessly and from a distance, as a young person, Carly, had been lost to the swirling vortex of her own negative emotion.
“Kyle,” he said sternly. “Stop it. I know it was you.”
Beth looked as if she might be going to protest that they didn’t have any proof, but Ben silenced her with a faintly lifted finger.
“I don’t know why you did it,” he continued, “and I don’t want to hear excuses for the inexcusable. I do know Miss Maple didn’t deserve it. And neither did I. Man up.”
Something about those words man up hit Kyle. Ben could see them register in his eyes. He was being asked to be more, instead of less. Everything was going to be so much harder if Kyle made the wrong decision right now.
But he didn’t. After a brief struggle, he turned to his teacher. He said quietly, “I’m sorry.” The quaver in his voice worsened.
“But why?” she asked, and her voice was quavering, too.
Kyle shrugged, toed the ground with his sneaker, glanced at his uncle with a look so transparent and beseeching Ben thought his heart would break.
Care about me, anyway. Please.
And Ben planned to. But he was so aware of the minefield he was trying to cross.
The wrong kind of caring at this turning point in Kyle’s life could destroy him.
Funny. Ben was allergic to that word love. He never used it. And yet when he looked at his nephew, troubled, so very young, so needy, he knew that’s what he felt for him.
And that he could not express it any longer in a way that might be misconstrued as weakness. Kyle needed leadership right now. Strong leadership. Implacable.
Ben folded his arms over his chest and gave his nephew his most steely-eyed look.
“You made this mess,” he said quietly. “You’re going to have to fix it.”
“I don’t know how,” Kyle said.
“Well, I do. There’s probably close to a thousand bucks worth of damage there. Do you have a thousand dollars?”
“I don’t have any money,” Kyle said. “I didn’t even get allowance last week, cuz I didn’t take out the garbage.”
“Do you have anything worth a thousand dollars?”
“No,” Kyle whispered.
This was part of the problem. His nephew was the kid who perceived he had nothing of value. And he probably didn’t have the things the other kids in his class had and took for granted. There had been no fifty-inch TV sets, no designer labels. Ben had bought him a nice bicycle once, and as far as he could tell it had disappeared into the dark folds of that shadowy world his sister lived in before Kyle had ever even ridden it.
“I guess she’ll have to call the insurance company, then,” Ben said. “They’ll want a police report filed.”
Beth and Kyle both gasped.
“Unless you can come up with something you have of value.”
Kyle’s shoulders hunched deeper as he considered a life bereft of value. Beth was looking daggers at Ben.
Didn’t she get it? He deserved to be afraid. He needed to be afraid. Ben watched, letting the boy flounder in his own misery. He let him nearly drown in it, before he tossed him the life rope.
“Maybe you have something of value,” he said slowly.
“I do?”
“You have the ability to sweat, and maybe we can talk Miss Maple into trading some landscaping for what you owe her. But she’ll have to agree, and you’ll have to do the work. What do you say, Miss Maple?”
“Oh,” she breathed, stunned, and then the look of wonder was there, just for a fraction of a second. “Oh, you have no idea. My yard is such a mess. I bought the house last year, after—” She stopped abruptly, but Ben knew. The house was the same as the car. Safe. Purchased to fill a life and to take the edge off a heartbreak.
He could see that as clearly in the shadows of her eyes as if she had spoken it out loud.
Move away, marine. But he didn’t.
“And you’re willing to do the work, Kyle?”
Kyle still seemed to be dazed by the fact he had something of value. “Yeah,” he said quickly, and then, in case his quick reply might be mistaken for enthusiasm, shrugged and added, “I guess.”
“No guessing,” Ben said. “Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“Good man.”
And as hard as he tried not to show it, Kyle could not hide the fact that small compliment pleased him.
An hour later they pulled up in front of Miss Beth Maple’s house. Even if the tiny red car had not been parked in the driveway, Ben would have known it was her house, and his suspicions around her ownership would have been confirmed. It was like a little cottage out of Snow White, an antidote for a heartache if he’d ever seen one.
It was the kind of place a woman bought when she’d decided to go it on her own, when she had decided she was creating her own space, and it was going to be safe and cozy, an impregnable female bastion of good taste and white furniture and breakable bric-a-brac.
“It looks like a dollhouse,” Kyle said, with male uneasiness that Ben approved of.
It was a tidy house, painted a pale-buttercup yellow, the gingerbread and trim around the windows painted deep midnight blue. Lace curtains blew, white and virginal as a damned wedding dress, out a bedroom window that was open to the September breezes.
It was a reminder, Ben thought, getting out of the truck, that she was not the kind of woman a man could play with, have a casual good time for a couple of weeks or a couple of months and then say goodbye with no hurt feelings on either side.
No, the house spoke of a woman who wanted things, and was afraid of the very things she wanted. Stability. A safe haven. A world that she could trust.
Ben wanted to just drive away from all the things she would be shocked he could see in that neat facade. But he had to do the responsible thing now, for his nephew.
The yard was as neglected as the house was tidy. Yellow climbing roses had gone wild over the arbor over the front gate, and it was nearly falling down under their weight. Inside the yard, the grass was cut, but dead in places, a shrub under the front window had gotten too big and blocked out the front of the house and probably the light to the front room.
Beth Maple came out her door. Ben tried not to stare.
She had gotten home before they had arrived, and she’d had time to change. She was barefoot, and had on a pair of canvas pants, rolled to the knee, with a drawstring waist. Somehow the casual slacks were every bit as sexy as the shorts she had worn the night she had joined them for ice cream, though he was not sure how that was possible, since the delicate lines of her legs were covered.
Imagination was a powerful thing. The casual T-shirt just barely covered her tummy. If he made her stretch up, say to show him those roses, he could catch a glimpse of her belly button.
What would the point of that be, since he had decided he was not playing the game with her? That he was going to try and fix something for her, not make it worse! Seeing her house had only cemented that decision.
“It’s awful, I know,” she said ruefully, looking at the yard. “I only bought the place a year ago. I’m afraid there was so much to do inside. Floors refinished, windows reglazed, some plumbing problems.” Her voice drifted away in embarrassment.
Ben saw she had an expectation of perfection for herself. She didn’t like him seeing a part of her world that was not totally under control.
“I don’t imagine a thousand dollars will go very far,” she said.
But Ben was going to make it go as far as it needed to go to wear Kyle out, to make him understand the value of a thousand dollars, and the price that had to be paid when you messed with someone else’s stuff.
And working at Miss Maple’s would be a relatively small price compared to what it could have been if she called the cops.
“You might be surprised how far your thousand dollars will go,” he said, and watched as Kyle fixated on the large side yard’s nicest feature, a huge mature sugar maple just starting to turn color. It reminded Ben of the tree in her classroom.
His nephew scrambled up the trunk and into the branches. Ben was relieved to see him do such a simple, ordinary, boy thing.
Beth watched Kyle for a moment, too, something in her eyes that Ben tried to interpret and could not, and then turned back to him.
“What should we fix?” she said briskly. “The arbor? The railing up the front stairs? The grass?”
Suddenly Ben did interpret the look in her eyes. It was wistfulness. She wanted to climb that tree! To be impulsive and free, hidden by the leaves, scrambling higher, looking down on the world from a secret perch. Was her affection for the tree the reason she had reproduced it in her classroom? Was she even aware of her own yearnings?
“How do you want this yard to make you feel?” he asked.
“Wow. You can make me feel something for a thousand dollars?”
For some reason his eyes skidded to her lips. He could make her feel something for free. But he wasn’t going to.
“I can try,” he said gruffly.
“Okay,” she said, challenging, as if he’d asked for more than he had bargained for, “I want that summer day feeling. A good book. A hammock in the shade. An ice-cold glass of lemonade. I want to feel lazy and relaxed and like I don’t have to do a lick of work.”
Low maintenance. He began a list in his head. But when he thought of low maintenance, he wasn’t really thinking about her yard. He was thinking about her. He bet she would be one of those low-maintenance girls. She wouldn’t need expensive gifts or jewelry or tickets to the best show in town to make her happy.
A picnic blanket. A basket with fried chicken. A bottle of something sparkly, not necessarily wine.
Why did Beth Maple do this to him? Conjure up pictures of things he would be just as happy not thinking about?
Still what people wanted in their yards told him a great deal about them. It was possible that she just didn’t know what was available, what was current in outdoor living spaces.
“You know,” he said carefully, “lots of people now are making the yard their entertainment area. Outdoor spaces are being converted into outdoor rooms: kitchens with sinks and fridges, BBQ’s and bars. Hardscaping is my specialty. Last week I did an outdoor fireplace, copper-faced, and patio where you could easily entertain forty or fifty people.”
“Hardscaping?” she said. “I’ve never heard that term.”
“It means all the permanent parts of the yard, so walkways and patios, canopies, privacy fences or enclosures, ponds. Basically anything that’s made out of wood, concrete, brick or stone. I have other people do the greenscaping and the styling.”
“Styling?”
“You know. Weather-resistant furniture. Outdoor carpeting.”
“Obviously that isn’t on a thousand-dollar budget.”
“If there was no budget, what would you do?” he asked, having failed to find out how she felt about the posh entertainment area in her backyard.
She snorted. “Why even go there?”
“Landscaping doesn’t have to be done all at once. I like to give people a master plan, and then they can do it in sections. Each bit of work puts a building block in place for the next part of the plan. A good yard can take five years to make happen.” He smiled, “And a really good yard is a lifetime project.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “The plan for a yard, alone, is probably worth more than what Kyle owes me.”
“Well, if you don’t tell him, I won’t. He has nothing to give you right now, except his ability to work. If I take that away from him he has nothing at all.”
She nodded, a kind of surrender. Definitely an agreement.
“I want him to have blisters on his hands, and that little ache between his shoulder blades from working in this yard.”
“I’m not accepting charity from you,” she said, stubbornly.
“And I’m not offering any. You wanted a plan for my nephew, and yours, so far, doesn’t seem to be working that well. Now it’s my turn. There has to be a price to be paid for what he did to your car, and it has to be substantial. No more rewards for feeding his frog.”
“How long are you going to make him work for me?”
“Hopefully until he’s eighteen,” Ben said dryly. “So, tell me how you’d like to spend time in your yard.”
“To be truthful the whole entertainment thing, like an outdoor kitchen and fireplace isn’t really me. I mean, it sounds lovely, I’m sure you make wonderful yards for people, but I really do love the idea of simple things out here. A hammock. Lemonade. Book. I’d want a place that felt peaceful. Where you could curl up with a good book on a hot afternoon and listen to water running and birds singing, and glance up every now and then to see butterflies.”
It wasn’t fair, really. People did not know how easy it was to see their souls. Did he need to know this about her?
That in a world gone wild with bigger and better and more, in a world where materialism was everything, she somehow wanted the things money could not buy.
The miracle of butterfly wings, the song of birds, the sound of water.
She wanted a quiet place.
He imagined her bare feet in lush grass and was nearly blinded with a sense of desire. He was getting sicker by the minute. Now she didn’t even need to be eating ice cream for him to be entertaining evil male thoughts.
He saw her gaze move to Kyle in the tree again, wistful, and suddenly he was struck by what he wanted to do for her.
“What would you think about a tree house?” he said softly. And saw it. A flash of that look he had glimpsed twice, and now longed for. Wonder. Hope. Curiosity.
“A tree house?” she breathed. “Really?”
“Not a kid’s tree house,” he said, finding it taking shape in his mind as he looked at the tree, “an adult retreat. I could build a staircase that wound around the trunk of that tree, onto a platform in the branches. We could put a hammock up there and a table to hold the lemonade.”
He thought he would build her a place where the birds could sing sweetly, so close she could touch them. He would put a container garden up there, full of the flowers that attracted butterflies. Below the tree, a simple water feature. She could stand at the rail and look down on it; she would be able to hear the water from her hammock.
“That sounds like way too much,” she said, but her protest was weak, overridden by the wonder in her eyes as she gazed at that tree, beginning to see the possibility.
To see her at school, prim and tidy, a person would never guess how her eyes would light up at the thought of her own tree house. But Ben had always known, from the first moment, that she had a secret side to her. The tree in her classroom had held the seeds of this moment.
He was not sure it was wise to uncover it. And he was also not sure if he could stop himself, which was an amazing thought in itself since he considered self-discipline one of his stronger traits.
“We’ll take it one step at a time.” That way he could back off if he needed to. But then he heard himself committing to a little more, knowing he could not leave this project until he saw the light in her eyes reach full fruition. He did a rough calculation in his head. “We’ll come every day for two weeks after school. We’ll see if he’s learned what he needs to learn by then.”
She turned her attention from the tree and he found himself under the gaze of those amazing eyes. He knew, suddenly, he was not the only one who saw things that others did not see.
“There are a lot of ways to be a teacher, aren’t there, Ben?”
She said it softly, as if she admired something about him. In anyone else, that would be the flirt, the invitation to start playing the game with a little more intensity, to pick up the tempo.
But from her it was a compliment, straight from her heart. And it went like an arrow to his, and penetrated something he had thought was totally protected in armor.
“Thanks,” he said, softly. “We’ll be here tomorrow, right after school.” He turned and called his nephew.
They watched as he scrambled out of the tree.
“We’re going to come, starting tomorrow after school,” Ben told him. “We’re going to build Miss Maple a tree house.”
Kyle’s eyes went round. “A tree house?” For the first time since they had laughed together about Casper’s underwear, his defensive shield came down. “Awesome,” he breathed.
“Awesome,” she agreed.
Kyle actually smiled. A real smile. So genuine, and so revealing about who Kyle really was that it nearly hurt Ben’s eyes. But then Kyle caught himself and frowned, as if he realized he had revealed way too much about himself.
Ben turned to go, thinking maybe way too much had been revealed about everybody today.
There are lots of ways to be a teacher. As if she saw in him the man he could be, as if she saw the heart that he had kept invisible, unreachable, untouchable, behind its armor. He could teach her a thing or two, too. But he wasn’t going to.
