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

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.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_ca270a77-b012-5368-b870-6ccb77aa66c4)

BETH Maple stood at her kitchen counter and listened to the steady thump of hammers in her yard. She contemplated how it was that her neatly structured life had been wrested so totally from her control.

“Uncle Ben, haven’t you ever heard of skin cancer, for cripe’s sake? The three Ss? Slam on a hat, slather on sunscreen and slip on a shirt.”

For a moment it only registered how sweet it was that Kyle was so concerned about his uncle.

But then she froze. Ben Anderson had takenoff his shirt? In her backyard?

“I’ll live dangerously,” Ben called to his nephew.

Now there was a surprise, she thought dryly. Don’t peek, she told herself, but that was part of having things wrested out of her control. Despite the sternness of the order she had given herself, she peeked anyway.

It was a gorgeous day. September sunshine filtering through yellow-edged leaves with surprising heat and bathing her yard in gold. Her yard actually looked worse than it had a few days ago, with spray-painted lines on her patches of grass, heaps of dirt, sawed-off branches and construction materials stacked up.

But the pure potential shone through the mess and made her feel not just happy but elated. Maybe when a person gave up a bit of control, it left room for life to bring in some surprises, like the one that was unfolding in her yard.

Of course, there was one place she had to keep her control absolute, and where she was failing, the order not to peek being a prime example. She had peeked anyway, and she felt a forbidden little thrill at what she was seeing.

Was it possible that sense of elation that filled her over the past few days had little to do with the yard?

Certainly the forbidden thrill had nothing to do with the landscaping progress in her yard.

No, there was enough heat in that afternoon sun that Ben Anderson had removed his shirt.

It was delicious to spy on him from the safety of her kitchen window, to look her fill, though she was not sure a woman could ever see enough of a sight like Ben Anderson, undressed.

He looked like a poster boy for sexy, all lean, hard muscle, taut, flawless skin, a smudge of dirt across the ridged plane of his belly, sweat shining in the deep hollow of his throat, just above the deep, strong expanse of a smooth chest. His jeans, nearly white with age and washing, hung low on the jut of his hips. His stomach was so flat that the jeans were suspended from hip to hip, creating a lip-licking little gap where the waistband was not even touching his skin.

Beth watched his easy swing of the hammer, the corresponding ripple of muscle. It made her feel almost dizzy. She had known from the start Ben Anderson needed a label. Contents toopotent to handle. She had never gotten a thrill like this over the Internet, that was for sure!

It was embarrassing to be this enamored with his physical being, but he was so real. No wonder she had found her Internet romance as delightful as she had. The presence of a real man was anything but; it was disturbing.

It was disturbing to feel so tense around another human being, so aware of them, and so aware of unexplored parts of yourself.

Beth felt she would have been quite content to go through life without knowing that she possessed this hunger.

Now that she did know she possessed it, how did she go back to what she had been before? What did she do about it? Surrender? Fight it?

Surely baking cookies was no kind of answer! But it bought her time. Which she should have used wisely. She could have done an Internet search for defenses against diabolicallyattractive men instead of spying from her kitchen window!

This was the third time Ben and Kyle had been here, twice after school, short sessions where his shirt had stayed on. Though for Beth, seeing him deal with that fragile boy with just the right mix of sternness and affection had been attractive in and of itself. She could see that her initial assessment of Ben Anderson—that he could not be domesticated—had been inaccurate. When she saw his patience with Kyle, and the way he guided the child toward making his own decisions, she knew she was looking at a man who would be a wonderful daddy someday, who was growing in confidence in this role of mentor and guardian.

Now it was Saturday and Ben had shown up this morning, way too early, announcing they would spend the whole day.

Saturday was her sleep-in day, and her grocery day, and her laundry day, and her errand day, and she had canceled everything she normally would have done without a second thought. Groceries or hanging out with Ben Anderson. Duh.

The buzzer on the oven rang, and Beth moved, reluctantly, from the window and removed the cookies, dripping with melted chocolate chips, from her oven. While she waited for them to cool, she debated, milk or lemonade? Milk would go better with the cookies, lemonade would go better with the day.

That’s what having a man like that in your yard did to you. Every decision suddenly seemed momentous. It felt as if her choice would say something about her. To him.

In the end she put milk and lemonade on the tray. To confuse him, just in case her choices were telling him anything about her.

He set down his hammer when he saw her coming, smiled that lazy, sexy smile that was setting her world on edge. Kyle, who was hard at work digging something, set down the shovel eagerly.

She had known Ben was a man with good instincts. This project was not just good for Kyle. The turn-around in his attitude seemed nothing short of spectacular. It was as if he had been uncertain he had any value in the world, and suddenly he saw what hard work—his hard work—could accomplish. He could see how the face of the world could be changed by him in small ways, like her yard. And the possibility of changing the world in big ways opened to him for the first time.

When Ben had unfolded his drawing of the yard, he had included his nephew and consulted with him, listened to him, showed respect for his opinions. And Ben had done the same for her.

The three of them were building something together, and in her most clear moments she was aware it was not just a tree house.

The plan that Ben had drawn for her tree retreat filled some part of her that she did not know had been empty. It was deceptively simple. A staircase spiraled around the tree trunk, though it actually never touched it, because Ben had been concerned about keeping the tree healthy, by not driving nails into the trunk or branches.

The staircase led to a simple railed platform that sat solidly in amongst the strongest branches, but was again supported mostly by the subtle use of posts and beams.