Propositioned by the Playboy

An hour later, just as school was letting out and she was watching the children swirl down the hallway in an amazing rainbow of energy and color, the outside doors swung open and Ben Anderson stood there, silhouetted by light. He came through the children, the wave parting around him, looking like Gulliver in the land of little people.

There was something in his face that made Beth feel oddly relieved, even though his expression was grim and Kyle was not with him.

“Did you find him?” she asked.

The hallway was now empty. The absence of little people did not make Ben Anderson seem any smaller. In fact, she was very aware that she felt small as she stood in his shadow.

Small and exquisitely feminine despite the fact she was wearing not a spec of makeup, her hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense bun and she was dressed exactly like the fifth-grade teacher that she was.

“Not yet. I thought he might be at home, but he wasn’t.” He was very calm, and that made her feel even more as if he was a man you could lean into, be protected by.

Without warning, his finger pressed into her brow. “Hey, don’t worry, he’s okay.”

“How could you possibly know that?” she asked, aware that the certain shrill note in her voice had nothing to do with the loss of a child who had been in her charge, but everything to do with the rough texture of his hand pressed into her forehead.

“Kyle’s eleven going on 102. He’s been looking after himself in some pretty mean surroundings for a long, long time. He’s okay.”

He said that with complete confidence. He withdrew his hand from her forehead, looked at it and frowned, as though it had touched her without his permission. He jammed it in his pocket, and she felt the tiniest little thrill that the contact had apparently rattled him, as well as her.

“If he’s not at home, where did he go?” she asked him. The news was full of all the hazards that awaited eleven-year-old boys who were not careful. In the week and a half that Kyle had been in her class, he had shown no sign that he was predisposed to careful behavior.

Of course, his uncle did not look as if he had ever been careful a day in his life, and he seemed to have survived just fine.

Probably to the woe of every female within a hundred miles of him.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Kyle’s not that familiar with Cranberry Corners yet. Is he hiding somewhere? How much trouble does he think he’s in?”

“It’s not just about the frog,” she told him, and repeated Kyle’s awful remark.

“The aisles will run with the fat melting from your bodies?” Ben repeated. She couldn’t tell if he was appalled or appreciative. “He said that?”

“Do you think he was threatening to burn down the school?” she whispered.

Ben actually laughed, which shouldn’t have made her feel better, but it did. “Naw. He’s a scrawny little guy. He used his brains to back down the bully, and it worked. Boy, where would he get a line like that?”

She was oddly relieved that it was not from his uncle!

“The History of Khan?” she guessed.

“Bingo!” he said, with approval for her powers of deduction.

She could not let herself preen under his approval. She couldn’t. Wanting a man like him to approve of you could be the beginning of bending over backward to see that appreciative light in his eyes.

“Now if we could use those same powers of deduction to figure out where he is.”

“You know him better than me,” she said, backing away from the approval game. Besides, she really was drawing a blank about Kyle’s whereabouts.

She saw the doubt cross his face, but he regarded her thoughtfully. “You said he still had the frog, right?”

She nodded.

“You said the other boys wanted the frog and he wouldn’t give it to them.”

Silly to be pleased that he had listened so carefully to what she had said. Troublesome how easily he could nudge down her defenses, even before they were rebuilt from the last collapse!

“So, let’s assume he cared about the frog. Maybe he wanted to return it to where he got it from.”

That made such perfect sense Beth wished she had thought of it herself.

“We went on a little field trip for science class last week. Migg’s Pond,” she said. “It’s not far from here. We walked.”

“I’m sure I can find it.”

She was sure he could, too. But she was going with him. And not to spend time with him, either. Not because just standing beside him made her feel soft, and small and delicate.

She would go because this wasn’t really about Ben nor her, nor even about a frog. It was about a child who, despite the fact he was street smart, was still a child. Somehow, someway, somebody needed to let him know that. That they would come for him when he had lost his way.

“I’ll just get my jacket,” she said. “And my boots.” The boots were hideous, proof to herself that she was indifferent to the kind of impression she was making on Ben Anderson. No woman with the least bit of interest in how he perceived her would be seen dead in a skirt and gum boots by him.

“It’s wet by the pond,” she said, pleased with how rational she was being. She even leveled her grade-five-teacher look at his feet.

And then was sorry she had because her eyes had to travel the very long length of his hard-muscled legs to find the feet at the end of them.

“I’m not worried about getting my feet wet,” he said, something flat in his voice letting her know that he had been in places and experienced things that made him scorn small discomforts.

Today Beth was wearing a plaid tartan skirt, which did not seem as pretty to her now as it had when she put it on this morning. The boots, unfashionable black rubbers with dull red toes, were kept in the coatroom for just such educational excursions. They looked hideous with her skirt, but since they were going to a swamp and she was determined to not try and impress him, she thought they were perfect for the occasion.

Still, when she saw the laughter light his eyes as she emerged from the coatroom, she wished she hadn’t been quite so intent on appearing indifferent to his opinions. She wished she would have ruined her shoes!

In an effort not to look as rattled as she felt in her gum boot fashion disaster, she said conversationally, “I like the name of your business. Garden of Weedin’. Very original.”

He glanced down at his shirt and grinned. A knowing grin, that accused her of studying his chest, which of course she had been.

“Very creative,” she said stiffly, keeping on topic with stern determination as he held the door open for her to leave the school.

“Yeah, well, I stole it.”

“What?”

“I saw it on a sign in a little town I was passing through a long time ago. It kind of stuck with me.”

“I don’t think you can steal names,” she said. “That would be like saying my mother stole the name Beth from the aunt I was named after.”

“Beth,” he said, pleased, as if she had given away a secret he longed to know.

The way he said it made a funny tingle go up and down her spine. You could imagine a man saying your name like that, like a benediction, right before he kissed you. Or right before he talked you into his bed, the promise of bliss erasing the fact there had been the lack of a single promise for tomorrow.

She shot him a wary look, but he was looking ahead, scanning the terrain where the playground of the school met an undeveloped area behind it.

“Migg’s Pond is out of bounds,” she said. “The children aren’t supposed to come back here by themselves.”

He grunted. With amusement?

“Are you one of those people who scoffs at rules?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” he said, but his amusement seemed to be deepening.

“You are! I can tell.”

“Now, how can you tell that?” he drawled, glancing at her with a lazy, sexy look that made her tingle just the way it had when he had spoken her name.

“I’m afraid I can picture you in fifth grade. Quite easily. Out of bounds would have just made it seem irresistible to you.”

“Guilty.”

“Frog in the teacher’s drawer?” she asked.

“Only if I really liked her.”

She contemplated that, and then said, “I don’t think Kyle likes me at all.”

“I would have, if I was in grade five. Not that I would have ever let on. How uncool would that be? To like the teacher.”

How uncool would it be to feel flattered that a man would have liked you in grade five? It didn’t mean he liked you now. Only a person without an ounce of pride would even pursue such a thing.

“What makes you think you would have liked me in grade five? I’m very strict. I think some of the kids think I’m mean.”

He snorted, and she realized he was trying not to laugh.

“I am! I always start off the year at my most formidable.”

“And I bet that’s some formidable,” he said, ignoring her glare.

“Because, you can’t go back if you lose respect from the start. You can soften up later if you have to.” She sounded like she was quoting from the teacher’s manual, and Ben Anderson did not look convinced by how formidable she was capable of being!

“Well, I would have liked you because you were cute. And relatively young. And obviously you are into the Aristotle school of learning, which would mean really fun things like have everyone making a fall leaf with their name on it to hang from the roof.”

He hadn’t just used the tree to flatter her, which she had suspected at the time. He’d actually liked it. Why else would he have noticed details? She could not allow herself to feel flattered by that. Weakened.

He’d been a marine. He was probably trained to notice all the details of his environment.

They arrived at the pond. As she had tried to tell him, the whole area around it was muddy and damp.

But it wasn’t him who nearly slipped and fell, it was her. She found his hand on her elbow, steadying her.

His grip, strong, sure, had the effect, again, of making her feel tiny and feminine. A lovely tingling was starting where his fingers dug lightly into her flesh.

She stopped and removed herself from his grip, moved a careful few steps away from him and scanned the small area around the pond with her best professional fifth-grade-teacher look.

As good as her intentions had been in coming here, and even though she had placed Kyle first, she had challenged herself as much as she intended to for one day.

“He’s not here,” she said. “I should go.”

But Ben tilted his head, listening to something she couldn’t hear. “He’s here,” he whispered.

She looked around. Nothing moved. Not even the grass stirred.

“How do you know?”

With his toe, he nudged a small sneaker print in the mud that she would have completely overlooked.

“It’s fresh. Within an hour or so. So is this.” His hand grazed a broken twig on a shrub near the pathway.

She didn’t even want to know how he knew how fresh a print was, or a broken branch. She didn’t want to know about the life he had led as a warrior, trained to see things others missed. Trained to shrug off hardship, go where others feared to go. Trained to deal with what came at him with calm and control. She didn’t want to know all the multi-faceted layers that went into making such a self-assured man. Or maybe she did. Maybe she wanted to know every single thing about him that there was to know.

“Well,” she said brightly, afraid of herself, her curiosity, terrified of the pull of him, “I’m sure you can take it from here. I’ll talk to Kyle tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he said, scanning her face as if she didn’t fool him one little bit, as if he knew how uncomfortable he made her feel, how aware of her needs.

“Are you going to follow the print?” she asked when he didn’t move.

“I’d like him to come to us.”

Us? She had clearly said she was leaving.

“Are you going to call him?” she asked.

“No. I’m going to wait for him. He knows we’re here.”

“He does?”

“Yeah.”

She could go. Probably should go. But somehow she needed to put all her self-preserving caution aside, just for the time being. She needed to see this moment. Needed to be with the man who understood instinctively not to chase that frightened child, but to just wait. Or was that the pull of him, overriding her own carefully honed survival skills?

Ben took off his jacket, and put it on the soggy ground, patted it for her to sit on, just as if she had never said she was leaving, and just as if he had never said okay.

Something sighed in her, surrender, and she settled on his jacket, and he went down on his haunches beside her. Ben Anderson was so close she could smell his soap and how late-summer sunshine reacted to his skin.

“So,” he said after a bit, “why don’t you tell me something interesting about yourself?”

She slid him a look. This whole experience was suffused with an unsettling atmosphere of intimacy, and now he wanted to know something interesting about her? He had actually asked that as if he had not a doubt there was something interesting about her.

“What you consider interesting and what I consider interesting are probably two different things,” she hedged.

“Uh-huh,” he agreed. “Tell me, anyway.”

And she realized he wanted Kyle to hear them talking, to hear that it was just a normal conversation, not about him, not loaded with anger or anxiety.

She suddenly could not think of one interesting thing about herself. Not one. “You first,” she said primly.

“I like the ocean and warm weather,” he said, almost absently, scanning the marshy ground, the reeds, the tall grass around Migg’s Pond, not looking at her. “I like waves, and boats, swimming and surfing and deep-sea fishing. I like the moodiness of the sea, that it’s cranky some days and calm others. I was stationed in Hawaii for a while, and I still miss it.”

She tried not to gulp visibly. This was a little too close to her desert-island fantasy. She could picture him, with impossible clarity, standing at the water’s edge, half-naked, sun and salt kissing his flawless body and his beautiful golden skin, white-foamed waves caressing the hard lines of his legs.

As if that vision had not made her feel weak with some unnamed wanting, he kept talking.

“I used to swim at night sometimes, the water black, and the sky black, and no line between them. It’s like swimming in the stars.”

“It sounds cold,” she said, a pure defensive move against the picture he was painting, against the wanting unfurling within her like a limp flag in a gathering breeze.

“No,” he said. “It’s not cold at all. Even on colder days, the ocean stays about the same temperature year round. It’s not warm like a bathtub, but kind of like—” he paused, thinking “—like silk that’s been left outside in a spring breeze.”

He did not look like a man who would know silk from flannel. But of course he would. The finest lingerie was made of silk, and no doubt he had worlds of experience with that.

“Parachutes,” he said succinctly.

“Excuse me?”

“Made of silk.”

As if it was that easy to read her mind! She hoped he wasn’t going to ask her about her interesting experiences again. She had nothing at all to offer a man intimately familiar with night swimming, silk and jumping out of airplanes.

“Have you ever gone swimming in the dark, Beth?”

She hoped she was not blushing. This was totally unfair. Totally. She couldn’t even sputter out a correction, that she wanted him to call her Miss Maple. Because she didn’t. She wanted him to call her Beth, and she wanted to swim in the darkness. And run out and buy silk underwear. And maybe sign up for skydiving lessons while she was at it.

The problem with a man like him was that he could make a person with a perfectly normal, satisfying life feel a kind of restless yearning for something more.

A restless yearning that had made her throw caution to the wind once before, she reminded herself. In her virtual romance with Rock, she had dared to embrace the unknown, the concept of adventure.

It had ended badly, and it would be worse if she let this man past her defenses, defenses which had seemed substantial until an hour ago.

Ben Anderson, conqueror of thousands of hearts, she reminded herself desperately. Possibly more!

“No,” she managed to choke out. “I’ve never gone swimming in the dark.” It felt like a confession, way too personal, desert-island confidences, not swamp exchanges.

“Too bad,” he said, and looked at her, his pity real, as if it was written all over her she’d never swum in the dark.

She wondered, suddenly, horribly, if his nighttime swimming escapades had included swimming trunks.

Another thing she could add to the list of things she had never done, skinny-dipping. And would never do, either, if she had an ounce of self-respect!

Never mind that the thought of silk warm water on naked skin triggered some longing in her that was primal, dangerous and sensual.

“Though, I love to swim,” she said. “We always had a pool.”

“Ah, a pool,” he said, as if that sounded tame indeed.

“Couldn’t you have lived there?” she asked, wishing he had stayed there. “In Hawaii?”

“I guess I could have.”

“Then why didn’t you?” She didn’t mean it to come out as an accusation, but it did anyway. She felt as if her whole life could have remained so much safer and so much more predictable if he had made that choice. She certainly wouldn’t be sitting here, longing for sensuality!

Buck up, she told herself sternly, you can have a bubble bath when you get home.

“I grew up here. My sister was here,” he said, softly. “And Kyle.”

She saw a nearby patch of rushes rustle, and realized Kyle had been that close all along, listening. He had heard every word. How had she missed that he was there?

Her eyes met the boy’s. “Why, Kyle,” she said. “There you are! We came here hoping to find you.”

She hoped she had not spoken too soon, that he would not get up and bolt away, not ready to be found.

But Kyle stood up awkwardly and made his way over the slippery ground toward them. Which was a relief, not just because he was safe, and found, but because she didn’t have to try and come up with something interesting to share with his uncle about herself.

As if she had anything that could compare to swimming in the dark in Hawaii!

Ben stood up then, and if he was affected by the long wait, crouched on his haunches, it did not show. Kyle came with no hesitation. Beth could see he was relieved to have been found, relieved his uncle was not angry with him. He had heard his uncle, and somehow his uncle had said exactly the right thing, exactly what that child needed to hear.

That someone had come back for him.

No man left behind.

Watching him watch his nephew, his gaze calm and measured, she understood Ben Anderson was a man who knew instinctively how to get the job done and, more importantly, how to do the right thing. He was a man who trusted his instincts, and his instincts were good, sharp-honed by the fact that he, unlike most men she had met, had relied on his instinct, his gut, for his survival, and for the survival of his brothers.

If ever there was a child who needed that, it was Kyle.

But the sneaky appalling thought blipped, uninvited and uncensored through Beth Maple’s brain, And if ever a woman needed that, it is me.

Wrong, she told herself. He was a man who could turn a swamp into a desert island. She was a woman who could turn a nonexistent person into her prince in shining armor.

She wasn’t risking herself. She’d learned her lesson. She was sticking to teaching school, giving all her love to the children who came to her year after year.

A rather alarming picture of her in her dotage: alone, white hair in a crisp bun, marking papers with a cat on her lap crowded into her mind. But she pushed it away and jumped to her feet. The damp had seeped through the jacket Ben had set so chivalrously on the ground for her.

“Well,” she said brightly, fighting an urge to swipe at her sodden rear end. “Child found. Emergency over. Goodbye.” Totally unprofessional. She needed to discuss the events of the day with Kyle. There had to be consequences for putting the frog in her desk. For uttering the threat. For running away from school.

Instead she waggled her fingers ineffectually at Kyle, and made the mistake of looking once more at Ben.

He was looking at her with those sea-green amused eyes, a hint of a smile turning up his way-too-sexy mouth, and she turned briskly away from him and did not look back.

Because she knew his amusement would only deepen when he saw the condition of her dress, and she could not handle his amusement at her expense.

She could not handle him at all. He was a little too much of everything—too good-looking, too good with his instincts, too charming, even, stunningly, too poetic.

Her world was safe, and a man like that spelled one thing, danger.

“Hey, Beth?” he called after her.

She turned reluctantly, planning to tell him it was Miss Maple, especially in front of children, but somehow she couldn’t. Somehow they had progressed beyond that, without her permission, when he had told her about swimming in the warm Pacific Ocean with the stars.

She hoped he wasn’t going to remind her of her responsibilities, that they needed to deal with Kyle.

Oh, no, it was so much worse than that.

“You should have a bubble bath when you get home. It will take the chill off.”

She was that transparent to him. He probably knew just how his tales of swimming in the dark had tugged at some secret place in her, too. She spun on the heel of her rubber boot so fast she nearly made her exit even more graceless than it already was by falling.

She heard the rumble of his laughter behind her, but she didn’t turn to look again.

CHAPTER THREE

The 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.