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

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.