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

“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. Ithink 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.