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

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 alot, huh?”

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

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_e1e11bf4-9b11-5da9-b2c1-8665119cd577)

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 havemet 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.