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

She glanced at him again. He did look sincerely worried. “You’re the one who likes to live dangerously,” she reminded him.

“Yeah. Me.”

“You’ve encouraged me.”

“To my eternal regret. Beth, if you don’t come back here, I’m going to come get you. I mean it.”

“I doubt if the branch is strong enough to hold us both.”

“I doubt it, too.”

It was a terrible character defect that she liked tormenting him so much. Terrible. It was terrible to enjoy how much he seemed to care about her. Though caring and feeling responsible for someone were two entirely different things.

“Is it lunchtime yet?” Kyle called up the tree. “Hey, that looks fun, Miss Maple. Can I come up?”

“No!” she and Ben called together, and she scrambled in off the branch before Kyle followed her daredevil example. Ben leaned out and put his hands around her waist as soon as she was in reach. He swung her off the branch and set her on the top stair. But his hands stayed around her waist as if he had no intention of letting her go to her own devices.

“I’m safe now,” she told him.

But his hands did not move. They both knew that she was not safe and neither was he, and that what was building between them was as dangerous as an electrical storm and every bit as thrilling.

He let her go. “I’ll take Kyle and grab a bite to eat.”

She knew he was trying to get away from the intensity that was brewing between them.

“No need,” she said easily. “There’s lots of leftover pizza.”

And so even though surrender was not the marine way, she found Ben Anderson in her kitchen for the second time in as many days. The problem with having him in her space was that it was never going to be completely her space again. There would be shadows of him in here long after he’d gone.

And men like that went, she reminded herself. They did not stay.

And right now it didn’t seem to matter. At all. It was enough to be alive in this moment. Not to analyze what the future held. Not to live in the prison of the past. Just to enjoy this simple moment.

“Microwave or oven?” she asked of reheating the pizza.

They picked the oven, and while they waited she mixed up a pitcher of lemonade and asked Kyle about the program at the planetarium.

“Hey,” she said, catching a movement out of the corner of her eye. “Hey, put that back!”

But Ben had his prize. He held up the puzzle that she had tacked on her fridge the night before.

“Ah,” he said with deep satisfaction, and folded it carefully. He put it in his pocket.

“That belongs to me,” she said sternly.

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“It was on my fridge! It’s out of my book.”

“My. My. My. I thought by fifth grade you’d learned how to share.”

And then she couldn’t help it. She was laughing. And he was laughing.

Kyle, giving them a disgusted look, gobbled down the leftover pizza. “Is there any dessert?” he asked.

“Kyle!” Ben said.

But she was glad to see the boy eating with such healthy appetite. Since she didn’t have dessert, she said, “Let’s not go right back to work. Let’s take the bicycles down to Friendly’s and have an ice cream.”

“How many bikes do you have?” Ben asked, looking adorably and transparently anxious to keep her away from that staircase to nowhere and her perch on the tree branch.

“About half a dozen. I pick up good bikes cheap at the police auctions. Then if there’s a kid at school who needs a bike, there’s one available.”

“You really have made those kids, school, your whole life, haven’t you?”

He said it softly. Not an indictment, but as if he saw her, too. “You have a big, big heart, Miss Maple.”

And he said that as if a big heart scared him.

“Ice cream,” she said, before he thought too hard about their differences.

Kyle made a funny sound in his throat. “I don’t want ice cream,” he said. “You guys go. Without me.”

“Without you?”

They said it together and with such astonishment that some defensiveness that had come into Kyle’s face evaporated.

“I don’t know how to ride a bike,” he said, and his voice was angry even while there was something in his face that was so fragile. “And you know what else? I don’t know how to swim, either. Or skate.

“You know what I do know how to do? I know how to stick a whole loaf of bread underneath my jacket and walk out of the supermarket without paying for it. I know they put out the new stuff at the thrift store on Tuesday. I know how to get on the bus without the driver seeing you, and how to make the world’s best hangover remedy.”

Suddenly Kyle was crying. “I’m eleven years old and I don’t know how to ride a bike.”

He said a terrible swear word before bike.

Beth stared at him in shocked silence. And then her gaze went to Ben. He looked terrified by the tears, but he quickly masked his reaction.

“Big deal,” Ben said, with the perfect touch of casualness. Somehow, he was beside his nephew, his strong arm around those thin shoulders. “Riding a bike is not rocket science. I bet I can teach you to ride a bike in ten minutes.”

Beth knew if she lived to be 103, she would never forget this moment, Ben’s strength and calm giving Kyle a chance to regain his composure.

Ben met her eyes over Kyle’s head, and she realized the whole thing was tipping over for her. The look in his eyes: formidable strength mixed with incredible tenderness shook something in her to the very core.

It wasn’t about living dangerously.

It was about falling in love. But wasn’t that the most dangerous thing of all?

“Ten minutes?” Kyle croaked.