Propositioned by the Playboy

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.

So he thought about why he had come.

“Peace offering,” he said, holding out the pizza box so she could see the name on it. Nobody in Cranberry Corners could resist a Mama’s three-topping pizza. “And apology.”

“Where’s Kyle?” she said, peering into the darkness behind him.

“No Kyle tonight.” And lest she think he was an irresponsible guardian, he said, “Kyle’s at the planetarium, with Mary Kay somebody.”

“Ah. I have to say I didn’t see that one coming. Or this one.”

She was speaking to him. After he’d been thoughtless and cruel and insinuated no one would break down a door to kiss her.

“Are you going to let me in?”

“I’m going to think about it.”

“You know something, Miss Maple? There’s such a thing as thinking too much.”

“Probably not a problem in your world, Mr. Anderson.”

“Not generally.”

And then her lips twitched, but she still didn’t open the door.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m getting the fact that somehow you are finding me resistible, but Mama’s pizza? Three-topping? Come on.”

“What three toppings?” she said.

“Mushroom, pepperoni and the little spicy sausages.” He could see her weakening at the mention of the sausages. Which under different circumstances could be quite insulting to a man like him. She could keep the door shut to him, but not sausages?

“There have to be some rules in place,” she said.

“There’s such a thing as too many rules, too.”

“There’s the whole thing about dating family members of my students.”

“This isn’t a date!” he protested. “It’s a pizza.”

“Well, there is the complication of the kissing that you brought up earlier.” She blushed when she said it.

“Okay,” he grumbled. “I won’t bring up kissing.”

“You can’t even think about it. Since we are unchaperoned this evening.”

“Miss Maple, you cannot control what I am thinking about!” Especially now. Because she’d mentioned it, and his male mind had locked in on the delicate curve of that puffy bottom lip.

Suddenly this whole thing seemed like a really stupid idea. What had he come here for?

To make amends or to steal kisses? What did you do with a gal like Miss Maple once the pizza was gone? Play chess? Who on earth used the word unchaperoned if they were over the age of twenty-one?

“Look, I’ll just leave the pizza. With an apology. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings this afternoon. By insinuating a man wouldn’t break down your door to kiss you. Because the right man probably would.” He was making a mess of this somehow.

“You just said you weren’t going to bring up kissing!” she said.

“But then you said I couldn’t even think about it. Which is ridiculous.” What man wouldn’t think about it in close proximity to those lips? “Miss Maple, there’s an elephant in the middle of the room. We can’t just pretend it’s not there. Maybe we should just get it over with.”

“What?” she squeaked. “Get what over with?”

He sighed. He couldn’t believe he’d actually said that out loud. “Do you want to share the pizza with me or not? It’s getting cold. I’m not asking you if you want to build a cabin in the wilderness with me and have my babies, for God’s sake, just because I find your lips, um, provocative.”

“I don’t think it’s wise for you to come in,” she said.

“I agree, but let’s live dangerously.”

She contemplated that, as if inviting him in would rate as the most dangerous thing she had ever done.

He better remember that when he was looking sideways at her damn provocative lips. She didn’t know the first thing about how to handle a man like him, despite her claim that her door had been knocked down for kisses before.

He actually wondered if he should do it. Just knock the door down and kiss her, so she could see it was not what she feared.

Except he had a feeling it might be more than he feared. If you kissed someone like her, you’d better not do it lightly, without thinking things all the way through to the end. That was the problem with him, and most men, no impulse control. Act now, pay later.

A little cabin in the woods filled with her and their babies didn’t seem like such a terrible consequence.

The thought nearly sent him backward off her step, nearly sent him running for the truck.

Except, the door squeaked open.

“Behave,” she told him in her sternest, grade-five-teacher voice.

“Yes, Miss Maple,” he said meekly.

He reminded himself as he stepped over her threshold that he had come here to make things better, not worse.

Her inner sanctum was as he had known it would be, and it made him feel big and clumsy and menacingly masculine. There were ceramic vases on the floor, where they could easily be toppled by a wayward size-eleven foot. There was a huge clear-glass bowl with real flowers floating in it right on the coffee table in front of her television. One too-enthusiastic cheer for a touchdown and it would be goodbye flowers. And bowl. Probably coffee table, too, flimsy-looking thing on skinny, intricate legs.

Beth’s was clearly a world for one: everything in its place, and everything tidy. Despite the fact the breakability factor made him somewhat nervous, there was nothing sterile or uptight about her home. Her space was warmed by tossed cushions and throw rugs, the walls were bright with beautifully framed artwork from her students.

She cast a look at her white slip-covered sofa, decided against it—whether because pizza and white didn’t go together, or because it looked too small to hold two people who were going to behave themselves, he wasn’t quite sure.

He did notice on the way through that this house was loved: hardwood reclaimed, moldings painted, windows shining. She led him through to the kitchen. It still smelled of the cookies she had baked that afternoon.

“What were you doing?” he asked, when she hurried over to the stove and shut off the burner.

“Making soup and doing a crossword puzzle. The soup couldn’t compete with the pizza.”

He stopped himself from asking how he compared to the crossword puzzle. It was still out, on a teeny kitchen table that could barely accommodate one, though there were two fragile chairs at it, with skinny, intricate legs that matched those on her coffee table. There were fresh flowers on that table, as well, and he was willing to bet she had bought them for herself.

The tinyness of the table, the crossword puzzle and the flowers were all stern reminders to him to behave.

She had a life she liked. She was the rarest of things. A person content with her own company and her own life.

“I’ll help you with the puzzle,” he decided, and took a careful seat. Did the chair groan under his weight?

He handed her the pizza since the table was not big enough to accommodate the box. He didn’t miss the fact she raised an eyebrow at him, but took the pizza, and got them plates.

“Knife and fork?” she asked him.

“Get real.” He squinted at the crossword puzzle. He should have known. It was one of the really hard ones, not like the sports one that came with the weekly TV guide in the local paper, which had supersimple clues like “Who is the most famous running back of all time?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her setting a knife and fork on one of the plates.

“No utensils or I’ll take my pizza and go home. Pizza is food you eat with your hands.” Loosen up, he wanted to tell her. But then he wasn’t so sure he wanted her to loosen up, especially when she complied with his instructions and brought over two plates, no utensils. She picked up her slice gingerly and took a tiny bite, then licked a wayward speck of sauce off her index finger.

He was not so sure he should have encouraged her. Watching Miss Maple eat pizza with her hands was a vaguely erotic experience, nearly as bad as watching her eat tiger ice cream.

He reminded himself they were unchaperoned. He was not even allowed to think anything that was vaguely erotic.

So, he concentrated on the crossword book. “A six-letter word for dumb?” he asked her, but spelled in his head B-e-n.

“Stupid?”

He scorned the pencil she handed him and picked up a pen off the table. “Nitwit.”

“You can’t fill it out in pen!” She didn’t look too happy about him touching her book while he was eating, either.

“We’re living dangerously,” he reminded her. “I’ll buy you a new book if I get pizza on it.”

“I wasn’t worried about my book!” she said huffily.

“Yes, you were. What’s a seven-letter word for hot spot?”

“Volcano? I wasn’t worried about the book.”

“Yes you were. Hell,” he said, pleased.

“Hell does not have seven letters!”

“Hellish, then,” he wrote it in, pressing hard on the pen so she wouldn’t get any ideas about erasing it later. “Eight-letter word for aggravation?”

“Anderson?” she said sweetly.

How did she count letters so darn fast? “Perfect,” he said approvingly, and wrote it in. “This is too easy for us. Next time the New York Times.”

Next time. Way to go, nitwit.

But somehow the evening did become easy. As they focused on the puzzle, she lost her shyness. She even was eating the pizza with relish. Her wall of reservation came down around her as she got into the spirit of wrecking the puzzle.

“Incognito,” she crowed.

“It doesn’t fit.”

Impatiently she took the pen from him, scowled at the puzzle and then wrote, “Inkono.”

“Miss Maple, you are getting the hang of this,” he said with approval. “That makes zuntkun down.”

“Zuntkun,” she said happily, “a seven-letter word for an exotic horned animal in Africa if I’m not mistaken.”

“Done,” he declared, half an hour later looking down at the mess of scribbles and crossed-out words and wrong words with complete satisfaction. So was most of the pizza. So was his control.

This close to her, he could smell lavender and vanilla over the lingering scent of pizza. He liked the laughter in her eyes, and the crinkle on her nose. He decided to make both deepen. He ripped the puzzle out of the book.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s a little something on you. From now on I have this to show your class how their teacher spells incognito in a pinch. If you make me happy, I’ll never have to use it.”

“How would I make you happy?” she asked warily.

“Use your imagination. Any woman who can spell incognito like that, and who can invent horned beasts in Africa, has to have a pretty good imagination.”

“I have a better idea. Just give it back.”

“I’m not one of your fifth-graders. I don’t have to do things just because you say so. You come get it,” he teased, and at the look on her face he pushed back his chair.

She moved toward him. “Give it!”

“Don’t make me run,” he said. “You have highly breakable bric-a-brac.”

She lunged at him. He turned and ran, holding the puzzle out in front of him. She chased him out of the kitchen and through the living room, around the coffee table and over the couch. The vases on the floor wobbled as he thundered by, but did not break.

She backed him into a corner up the hallway, by her open bedroom door. Decorated in many, many shades of virginal white. Unless he was going to mow her over, or move into her bedroom, which was out of the question, he was trapped. And delightfully so.

“Surrender,” she demanded, holding out her hand.

“Surrender? As in nine-letter word for give up? Not in the marine vocabulary.”

She made a snatch for it.

He held the puzzle over his head. “Come and get it,” he said, and laughed when she leaped ineffectually at him.

Her face was glowing. She looked pretty and uninhibited and ferociously determined to have her own way. After several leaps, she tried to climb up him.

With her sock feet on top of his sock feet and her full length pressed against him, she tried to leverage herself for the climb up him. With one arm around his neck, and one toe on his knee, she reached for the paper, laughing breathlessly, her nose as crinkled as a bunny’s.

She suddenly realized what she was doing. He wondered if it felt as good for her as it did for him. She went very still.

And then backed off from him so fast she nearly fell over. He resisted the impulse to steady her.

“Hmm,” he said quietly. “That made me happy. Your puzzle is safe with me, for now. Unfortunately, I have to go.” He looked at his watch. “Kyle will be home soon. I don’t want him to come into an empty house. I think there’s been a little too much of that in his life.”

“You’re a good man, Ben Anderson,” she said.

He felt the mood changing, softening, moving back to where it had been this afternoon when she had laid her hand on his arm and he had felt oddly undone by it.

So he waggled the puzzle at her, eager to keep it light. Maybe even hoping to tempt her to try and climb up him one more time to retrieve it.

“I’m not really a good man,” he said. “I have the puzzle, and I’m not afraid to use this. Don’t forget.”

“I’ll see you to the door,” she said, not lured in, and with ridiculous formality, given that she had just tried to climb him like a tree. She preceded him to it, held it open.

“Thank you for the pizza.” Again the formal note was in her voice.

“You’re welcome.”

He stood there for a minute, looking at her. Don’t do it, he told himself. She wasn’t ready to have her world rattled. She wasn’t ready for a man like him. There was no sense complicating things between them.

But, as it turned out, she made the choice, not him. Just as he turned to go out the door, he felt her hand, featherlight, on his shoulder. He turned back, and it was she who stood on her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his.

It was like tasting cool, clean water after years of drinking water gone brackish. It was innocence, in a world of cynicism. It was beauty in a world that had been ugly. It was a glimpse of a place he had never been.

So the truth was not that she was not ready for a man like him. The truth was that he was not ready for a woman like her.

Who would require so much of him. Who would require him to learn his whole world all over again. Who would require him to be so much more than he had ever been before.

“Well,” she said, stepping back from him, her eyes wide, as if she could not believe her own audacity, “I’m glad we addressed the elephant.”

But he wasn’t so sure. The elephant had been sleeping contentedly. Now that they had “addressed” it, they couldn’t go back to where they had been before. Now that they had “addressed” it, it was going to be hungry.

Now that they’d addressed it, her lips were going to be more an issue for him, not less.

The elephant was now taking up the whole room instead of just a corner in the shadows, swaying sleepily on its feet, not being too obtrusive at all.

She leaned toward him again, and he held his breath. If she kissed him again, he was not going to be responsible for what happened next. Didn’t she know the first thing about men?

But then she snatched the paper he’d forgotten all about from his hand, and laughed gleefully. Maybe she knew more about men than she had let on. She had certainly known how to collapse his defenses completely.

“Good night, Ben,” she said sweetly.

And all the way home he brooded about whether she had just kissed him to get her hands on that damned puzzle. He was still brooding about it when Kyle came through the front door.

He stopped brooding and stared at his nephew. Kyle was shining.

“Uncle Ben,” Kyle said breathlessly. “What does it mean when a girl kisses you?” And then, without waiting for an answer, “I guess she likes you a lot, huh?”

Ben contemplated that for a minute, and then said, “I guess she does.” Either that or she wants something, like her puzzle back.

CHAPTER SIX

SHE’D actually kissed Ben Anderson, Beth thought, as she put the leftover pizza in the fridge and the pizza box in the garbage.

Oh, no, not just kissed him, but instigated the kiss.

“What’s that about?” she asked herself. Well, he’d encouraged her. “Live dangerously,” he’d said.

Not wantonly, she chastised herself, floozy. And then she laughed at herself. Wantonly? Floozy? In this day and age a kiss like that wouldn’t be considered wanton. It wouldn’t make a woman a floozy.

She was twenty-five years old and she’d dared to brush lips with a man so attractive he made her heart stand still. She was glad she’d done it. She felt no regret at all. In fact, Beth Maple felt quite pleased with herself. There was something about being around him that made her want to be a different person.

Not reserved. Not shy. Not afraid. Not hiding from life.

She wanted to be a person who did the crossword all wrong and admitted it was so much more fun than doing it right. She uncrumpled her hard-won prize and looked at it, then moved into her kitchen and used a magnet to put it in a place of honor on her fridge.

The new Beth would break rules. The new Beth would not wait for a man to kiss her, but would kiss him if she felt like it.

She contemplated the experience of touching her lips to his and felt a quiver of pure pleasure. Imagine. She had almost gone through life without kissing a man like that! What a loss!

Ben Anderson had tasted even better than she could have hoped. It was as if the walls around her safe and structured little world had crumbled to dust when she had touched her lips to his.

Something was unleashed within her, and she wasn’t putting it away. The old Beth would have worried about the awkwardness when she saw him again. But the new Beth couldn’t wait.

She was alive. She had been sleeping, deliberately, ever since the fiasco with Ralph/Rock. She’d been wounded and had retreated to lick her wounds. She had convinced herself she was retreating for good.

And then, as if the universe had plans for her that she could not even fathom, along had come Kyle, and then his uncle, and then a tree house in her backyard, all the events of the past weeks beckoning to her, calling to her.

Live. She needed to live. Even if it was scary. She needed to embrace the wonderful, unpredictable adventure that was life. Not just live, she thought, but live by Ben’s credo: dangerously.

Hilarious to have a turning point over a crossword puzzle, but Ben had shown her that. Have fun. Throw out the rules from time to time.

Now it was Sunday morning, and his truck pulled up in front of her house, and he got out. Was his glance toward her window wary? As if he didn’t know what to expect?

That was good, because she had a sneaking suspicion that in the past he was the one in control when it came to relationships. He was the one who decided what was happening and when.

Ben Anderson, she said to herself, you have met your match. And then she contemplated that with wicked delight.

A week ago she would not have considered herself any kind of match for Ben Anderson.

For a moment caution tried to rear its reasonable head. It tried to tell her there was a reason she had not considered herself any kind of a match for him. Because he was obviously way more experienced than her. She didn’t really know him. They were polar opposites in every way.

But below the voice of reason, another voice sang. That it had seen how he was with his nephew, how calm and responsible and willing to sacrifice that he was. And it had seen his vision for her backyard taking shape, his plan, that whimsical tree house speaking to her heart and soul, as if he also saw the things about her that no one else did. Just as she had seen him, pure and unvarnished, when he talked about his sister.

And then, when she had kissed him last night she had tasted something on his lips.

Truth. His truth. Strength and loneliness. Playfulness and remoteness. Need and denial of need.

He had already strapped on his tool apron when she came out the door with hot coffee for him and a hot chocolate for Kyle. He took his coffee, said good morning, gruffly, as though they were strangers, but his eyes strayed to her lips before they skittered away.

“Guess what?” Kyle told her. “Mary Kay and I went to the planetarium last night.”

“And how was that?” she asked.

“Awesome,” he breathed.

She saw in him what she had always wanted for him, a capacity to know excitement, to feel joy, to be just an ordinary kid, a boy moving toward manhood, who could have a crush on a girl and still love tree houses at the very same time.

She glanced at Ben, and knew he saw it, too, and saw the incredible tenderness in his eyes as he looked at Kyle.

And she knew he could say whatever he wanted, but she would always know what was true about him.

“Could I bring her here and show her the tree house?” Kyle asked. “When we’re done?”

“Of course,” Beth said.

“It’s not going to get done if we stand around here, drinking coffee,” Ben said, and set his down deliberately. “Kyle, you can start hauling lumber from the truck for the platform. Stack it here.”

Ben looked like he intended to ignore Beth, but she had a different idea altogether. She had found an old tool belt in the basement, and she strapped it on, too, picked up some boards and headed for the stairs.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m helping.”

“You don’t know anything about building a staircase,” he said with a scowl.

“Well, you didn’t know anything about crossword puzzles, either.”

“We don’t want this to end like that,” he said. “Building things isn’t like doing a crossword puzzle. There’s a purpose to it.”

“There’s a purpose to crossword puzzles,” she told him dangerously.

“Which is?” he said skeptically.

“They build brain power.”

“But nobody gets hurt if they’re done wrong. If we don’t build this right, you could be up there in your hammock on a sunny summer day, sipping lemonade and reading romance novels, and the whole thing could fall down.”

“Romance novels?” she sputtered. Had she left one out last night, or was she just that transparent?

“It’s just an example.”

He saw her as a person who had filled her life with crossword puzzles and fantasies! And annoyingly it wasn’t that far off the mark!

But she was changing, but that made her wonder if it was true that nobody was going to get hurt from doing the crossword puzzle wrong. She was open in ways she never had been before, committed to living more dangerously. Rationally, that was a good way to get hurt.

She didn’t feel rational. She felt as if she never cared to be rational again!

“Show me how to hammer the damn steps down, and how to do it so that I and my lemonade and my romance novel don’t end up in a heap of lumber at the bottom of this tree,” she told him.

“Ah, ah, Miss Maple. Grade-five teachers aren’t allowed to say damn.”