by Cara Colter
Funny, that of all the women he had gone out with, she, the least threatening, and certainly the least sexy, would be the one who would make him feel as if he needed to be the most wary, the most on guard. Because she had a sneaky kind of sexiness that crept up on you, instead of the kind that hit you over the head.
He slid her another look. No. Not the least sexy. Not at all. No, that wasn’t quite it. She wasn’t overtly sexy. Sneaky sexy in this kind of understated virginal way that could set his blood on fire. If he let it. Which he wasn’t going to. He had set his formidable will and sense of discipline against greater obstacles than her.
He turned his focus to his nephew, a welcome diversion, even in these uncomfortable circumstances.
Kyle was also standing off to the side of the car, looking into the distance, as if all this kafuffle had nothing to do with him. He looked pale to Ben, his freckles standing out against the white of his skin. He met his uncle’s accusing gaze with nothing even resembling remorse.
But it wasn’t quite belligerence, either. Amazingly it reminded Ben of the look on young soldiers’ faces when they were scared to death to do something but did what they had to do anyway.
There was a weird kind of bravery in what Kyle had done.
Between her near tears and Kyle’s attitude, Ben’s happiness was dissipating more rapidly than a snowball in August.
“I love this car,” Beth said sadly.
And Ben could tell it was true. He could tell by the sparkle shine on the wax, and the buffed white of the convertible top. He could tell by the way her fingers trembled on the scratch marks that she had been hurt and deeply.
A man allergic to love, he should have approved of her affection for the car. Why did it seem like a waste to him? Why would a woman like that waste her love on what really was just a hunk of metal and moving parts?
Because it was safe. It was a startling and totally unwanted insight into her. He slid her a look. Ah, yes, he should have seen it before.
The kind of woman who could be least trusted with the kind of man he was. He liked things light and lively and superficial, and he could see, in this moment of vulnerability, that she had already been scarred by someone. Heartbroken. Bruised.
Along with the uncontrolled direction of his own thoughts, it was a back-off insight if he had ever had one. But instead of wanting to back off, he felt a strange desire to fix it. He felt even more like he wanted to see that look on her face again that he had seen when he had told her about swimming in the dark, a look of yearning, of wonder.
“I don’t understand,” Beth said to Kyle, struggling for composure. “Why would you do this to me? I’ve been good to you, haven’t I?”
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 enth
usiasm, 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.
Beth Maple came out her door. Ben tried not to stare.
She had gotten home before they had arrived, and she’d had time to change. She was barefoot, and had on a pair of canvas pants, rolled to the knee, with a drawstring waist. Somehow the casual slacks were every bit as sexy as the shorts she had worn the night she had joined them for ice cream, though he was not sure how that was possible, since the delicate lines of her legs were covered.
Imagination was a powerful thing. The casual T-shirt just barely covered her tummy. If he made her stretch up, say to show him those roses, he could catch a glimpse of her belly button.
What would the point of that be, since he had decided he was not playing the game with her? That he was going to try and fix something for her, not make it worse! Seeing her house had only cemented that decision.
“It’s awful, I know,” she said ruefully, looking at the yard. “I only bought the place a year ago. I’m afraid there was so much to do inside. Floors refinished, windows reglazed, some plumbing problems.” Her voice drifted away in embarrassment.
Ben saw she had an expectation of perfection for herself. She didn’t like him seeing a part of her world that was not totally under control.
“I don’t imagine a thousand dollars will go very far,” she said.
But Ben was going to make it go as far as it needed to go to wear Kyle out, to make him understand the value of a thousand dollars, and the price that had to be paid when you messed with someone else’s stuff.
And working at Miss Maple’s would be a relatively small price compared to what it could have been if she called the cops.
“You might be surprised how far your thousand dollars will go,” he said, and watched as Kyle fixated on the large side yard’s nicest feature, a huge mature sugar maple just starting to turn color. It reminded Ben of the tree in her classroom.
His nephew scrambled up the trunk and into the branches. Ben was relieved to see him do such a simple, ordinary, boy thing.
Beth watched Kyle for a moment, too, something in her eyes that Ben tried to interpret and could not, and then turned back to him.
“What should we fix?” she said briskly. “The arbor? The railing up the front stairs? The grass?”
Suddenly Ben did interpret the look in her eyes. It was wistfulness. She wanted to climb that tree! To be impulsive and free, hidden by the leaves, scrambling higher, looking down on the world from a secret perch. Was her affection for the tree the reason she had reproduced it in her classroom? Was she even aware of her own yearnings?
“How do you want this yard to make you feel?” he asked.
“Wow. You can make me feel something for a thousand dollars?”
For some reason his eyes skidded to her lips. He could make her feel something for free. But he wasn’t going to.
“I can try,” he said gruffly.
“Okay,” she said, challenging, as if he’d asked for more than he had bargained for, “I want that summer day feeling. A good book. A hammock in the shade. An ice-cold glass of lemonade. I want to feel lazy and relaxed and like I don’t have to do a lick of work.”
Low maintenance. He began a list in his head. But when he thought of low maintenance, he wasn’t really thinking about her yard. He was thinking about her. He bet she would be one of those low-maintenance girls. She wouldn’t need expensive gifts or jewelry or tickets to the best show in town to make her happy.
A picnic blanket. A basket with fried chicken. A bottle of something sparkly, not necessarily wine.
Why did Beth Maple do this to him? Conjure up pictures of things he would be just as happy not thinking about?
Still what people wanted in their yards told him a great deal about them. It was possible that she just didn’t know what was available, what was current in outdoor living spaces.
“You know,” he said carefully, “lots of people now are making the yard their entertainment area. Outdoor spaces are being converted into outdoor rooms: kitchens with sinks and fridges, BBQ’s and bars. Hardscaping is my specialty. Last week I did an outdoor fireplace, copper-faced, and patio where you could easily entertain forty or fifty people.”
“Hardscaping?” she said. “I’ve never heard that term.”
“It means all the permanent parts of the yard, so walkways and patios, canopies, privacy fences or enclosures, ponds. Basically anything that’s made out of wood, concrete, brick or stone. I have other people do the greenscaping and the styling.”
“Styling?”
“You know. Weather-resistant furniture. Outdoor carpeting.”
“Obviously that isn’t on a thousand-dollar budget.”
“If there was no budget, what would you do?” he asked, having failed to find out how she felt about the posh entertainment area in her backyard.
She snorted. “Why even go there?”
“Landscaping doesn’t have to be done all at once. I like to give people a master plan, and then they can do it in sections. Each bit of work puts a building block in place for the next part of the plan. A good yard can take five years to make happen.” He smiled, “And a really good yard is a lifetime project.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “The plan for a yard, alone, is probably worth more than what Kyle owes me.”
“Well, if you don’t tell him, I won’t. He has nothing to give you right now, except his ability to work. If I take that away from him he has nothing at all.”
She nodded, a kind of surrender. Definitely an agreement.
“I want him to have blisters on his hands, and that little ache between his shoulder blades from working in this yard.”
“I’m not accepting charity from you,” she said, stubbornly.
“And I’m not offering any. You wanted a plan for my nephew, and yours, so far, doesn’t seem to be working that well. Now it’s my turn. There has to be a price to be paid for what he did to your car, and it has to be substantial. No more rewards for feeding
his frog.”
“How long are you going to make him work for me?”
“Hopefully until he’s eighteen,” Ben said dryly. “So, tell me how you’d like to spend time in your yard.”
“To be truthful the whole entertainment thing, like an outdoor kitchen and fireplace isn’t really me. I mean, it sounds lovely, I’m sure you make wonderful yards for people, but I really do love the idea of simple things out here. A hammock. Lemonade. Book. I’d want a place that felt peaceful. Where you could curl up with a good book on a hot afternoon and listen to water running and birds singing, and glance up every now and then to see butterflies.”
It wasn’t fair, really. People did not know how easy it was to see their souls. Did he need to know this about her?
That in a world gone wild with bigger and better and more, in a world where materialism was everything, she somehow wanted the things money could not buy.
The miracle of butterfly wings, the song of birds, the sound of water.
She wanted a quiet place.
He imagined her bare feet in lush grass and was nearly blinded with a sense of desire. He was getting sicker by the minute. Now she didn’t even need to be eating ice cream for him to be entertaining evil male thoughts.
He saw her gaze move to Kyle in the tree again, wistful, and suddenly he was struck by what he wanted to do for her.
“What would you think about a tree house?” he said softly. And saw it. A flash of that look he had glimpsed twice, and now longed for. Wonder. Hope. Curiosity.
“A tree house?” she breathed. “Really?”
“Not a kid’s tree house,” he said, finding it taking shape in his mind as he looked at the tree, “an adult retreat. I could build a staircase that wound around the trunk of that tree, onto a platform in the branches. We could put a hammock up there and a table to hold the lemonade.”
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.