Ben 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 Beth made the choice, not him. Just as he turned to go out the door he felt her hand, feather-light, 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.

Cara Colter lives on an acreage in British Columbia, with her partner, Rob, and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of the Romantic Times BOOKreviews Career Achievement Award in the ‘Love and Laughter’ category. Cara loves to hear from readers and you can contact her, or learn more about her, through her website: www.cara-colter.com

Enjoy a winter warmer from Cara Colter in December:

Snowbound Bride-to-Be

Dear Reader

As I write, it is fall in Canada—a gorgeous season of vibrant colour, cold nights and sunshine-filled days. Yesterday I rode my Appaloosa, Dakota, on a winding forest trail, the leaves crunching under his feet, the crisp, clean aroma of autumn in the air. I was so aware that this experience of total connection, of intense engagement with my senses and my surroundings, was becoming part of who I am and what I bring to the world. I was drawing this perfect experience deep within me, as a source of energy and inspiration to tap during the long coming months of winter.

Everyone has something that makes them feel all will be right in a mixed-up world. Whether it is dancing or gardening, or curling up with a wonderful book, I encourage each of you to find that place that sends you back to your daily life rejuvenated and ready to take on the challenges of everyday life. I am deeply honoured that some of you choose to do that through my stories.

With warmest wishes

Cara

MISS MAPLE AND
THE PLAYBOY

BY

CARA COLTER

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Chris Bourgeois,

aka riding buddy, drifter, equine therapist

CHAPTER ONE

“IT SUCKS to be you.”

Ben Anderson opened his mouth to protest and then closed it again. He contemplated how those few words summed up his life and decided the assessment was not without accuracy. Of course, the truth of those words was closely linked to the fact he had become guardian to the boy who had spoken them, his eleven-year-old nephew, Kyle.

It was a position Ben had held for precisely ten days, the most miserable of his life, which was saying quite a bit since he had spent several years in the Marine Corps, including an eight-month tour of duty in the land of sand and blood and heartbreak.

At least over there, Ben thought, there had been guidelines and rules, a rigid set of operating standards. Becoming Kyle’s guardian was like being dropped in the middle of a foreign country with no backup, no map, and only a rudimentary command of the language.

For instance, did he tell Kyle he was sick of the expression It sucks to be you or did he let it pass?

While contemplating his options, Ben studied the envelope in front of him. It was addressed to Mr. Ben Anderson and in careful brackets Kyle’s Guardian just so that where was no wriggling out of it. The handwriting was tidy and uptight and told Ben quite a bit about the writer, though Kyle had been filling him in for the past ten days.

Miss Maple, Kyle’s new teacher at his new school was old. And mean. Not to mention supremely ugly. “Mugly,” Kyle had said, which apparently meant more than ugly.

She was also unfair, shrill-voiced and the female reincarnation of Genghis Khan.

Kyle was a surprising expert on Genghis Khan. He’d informed Ben, in a rare chatty moment, that a quarter of the world’s population had Khan blood in them. He’d said it hopefully, but Ben doubted with Kyle’s red hair and freckles that his nephew was one of them.

Ben flipped over the envelope, looking for clues. “What does Miss Maple want?” he asked Kyle, not opening the letter.

“She wants to see you,” Kyle said, and then repeated, “It sucks to be you.”

Then he marched out of his uncle’s kitchen as if the fact that his old, mean and ugly teacher wanted to see his uncle had not a single thing to do with him.

Ben thought the responsible thing to do would be to call his nephew back and discuss the whole “it sucks” thing. But fresh to the concept of being responsible for anyone other than himself, Ben wasn’t quite sure what the right thing to do was with Kyle. His nephew had the slouch and street-hardened eyes of a seasoned con, but just below that was a fragility that made Ben debate whether the Marine Corps approach was going to be helpful or damaging.

And God knew he didn’t want to do anymore damage. Because the hard truth was if it sucked to be someone in this world, that someone was Kyle O. Anderson.

Ben’s parents had been killed in a car accident when he was seventeen. He’d been too old to go into the “system” and too young to look after his sister, who had been fourteen at the time. Ben went to the marines, Carly went to foster care. Ben was well aware that he had gotten the better deal.

By the time she’d been fifteen, Carly had been a boiling cauldron of pain, sixteen she was wild, seventeen she was pregnant, not that that had cured either the pain or the wildness.

She had dragged Kyle through broken relationships and down-and-out neighborhoods. When Ben had been overseas and helpless to do a damn thing about it, she and Kyle had gone through a homeless phase. But even after he’d come back stateside, Ben’s efforts to try and help her and his nephew had been rebuffed. Carly saw her brother’s joining up as leaving her, and she never forgave him.

But now, only twenty-eight, Carly was dying of too much heartbreak and hard living.

And Ben found himself faced with a tough choice. Except for Carly, his life was in as close to perfect a place as it had ever been. Ben owned his own business, the Garden of Weedin’. He’d found a niche market, building outdoor rooms in the yards of the upscale satellite communities that circled the older, grittier city of Morehaven, New York.

A year ago he’d invested in his own house, which he’d bought brand-new in the well-to-do town of Cranberry Corners, a community that supported his business and was a thirty-minute drive and a whole world away from the mean streets of the inner city that Kyle and Carly had called home.

Ben’s personal specialty was in “hardscaping,” which was planning and putting in the permanent structures like decks, patios, fireplaces and outdoor kitchens that made the backyards of Cranberry Corners residents superposh. It was devilishly hard work, which suited him to a T because he was high energy and liked being in good shape. The business had taken off beyond his wildest dreams.

Ben also enjoyed a tight network of buddies, some of whom he’d gone to high school with and who enjoyed success and the single lifestyle as much as he did.

Did he disrupt all that and take sucks-to-be-him Kyle O. Anderson, with his elephant-size chip on his shoulder, or surrender him to the same system that had wrecked Carly?

Since Ben considered himself to be a typical male animal, self-centered, insensitive, superficial—and darned proud of it—he astonished himself by not feeling as if it was a choice at all. He felt as if sometimes a man had to do what a man had to do, and for him that meant taking his nephew.

Not that either his nephew or his sister seemed very appreciative.

Not that that was why he had done it.

Ben opened the tidy envelope from Miss Maple. He read that Kyle’s behavior was disrupting her class, and that she needed to meet with him urgently.

Ben decided if Miss Maple had a plan for dealing with Kyle’s behavior, he was all for it. Having decided against the drill-sergeant method, since it was untested on eleven-year-olds who were facing personal tragedy, Ben was at a loss about how to deal with the mouthiness, the surliness, the belligerence of his eleven-year-old nephew. There always seemed to be an undertow of hostility from Kyle.

Unfortunately, the note said he was supposed to meet with the much maligned Miss Maple fifteen minutes ago.

“Kyle?” he called down the hallway. There was no answer, and Ben went down the hall to Kyle’s room.

He stood in the doorway for a moment. The room used to be Ben’s home gym, complete with a wall-mounted TV and a stereo system with surround-sound speakers. Now all his workout stuff was in the basement, though he’d left the TV and stereo for Kyle.

Kyle was sprawled on the unmade bed. Highly visible were the cowboy sheets Ben had bought for him, along with the new twin-size bed, when he’d confirmed his nephew was coming to stay for good.

Kyle, naturally, had glared at the sheets and proclaimed them “for babies.” Ben could see his point, as at the moment he was listening to ominous-sounding music in a foreign language and flipping the pages on a book with a title that looked like it might be Greek.

“When did your teacher give you this note for me?”

Kyle shrugged with colossal indifference.

“Not today?” Ben guessed dryly.

“Not today,” Kyle agreed.

Ben glanced at his watch and sighed. “Let’s go see Miss Maple,” he said. “We’re late.”

“Miss Maple hates tardiness,” Kyle said, obviously mimicking his teacher’s screechy voice. He sounded quite pleased with himself that he had managed to get Ben in trouble with the teacher before they had even met.

Ben felt uneasily like a warrior going into the unexpected as he held open the door of Cranberry Corners Elementary School, and then followed Kyle down the highly polished floor of a long hallway. Was he going into battle, or negotiations? Strange thoughts for a man traveling down hallways lined with cheerful drawings of smiling suns and stick people walking dogs.

He stopped, just outside the doorway of the class Kyle pointed to, and frowned at what he saw inside. A woman sat at a lonely desk at the front of the class, mellow September sunshine cascading over her slender shoulders.

“That can’t be Miss Maple.”

Kyle peered past him. “That’s her, all right.”

It was because he’d been expecting something so radically different that the first sight of Miss Maple made Ben feel as if he had laid down his weapons somewhere. He felt completely disarmed by the fact that it was more than evident that not one thing Kyle had said about her was true. Or at least not the “mugly” or “old” part. He’d have to wait and see about the “mean.” And the screechy voice.

There was something disarming about the classroom, too. A huge papier-mâché tree sprouted in one corner, the branches spreading across the ceiling, dripping with brightly colored fall leaves with kids’ names on them. The wall contained charts full of shining stars, artwork, reprints of good paintings. This was the space of someone who loved what she did. From Kyle’s attitude, Ben had pictured something grimmer and more prisonlike for Miss Maple’s lair.

But then, Miss Maple was not the Miss Maple he had imagined, either, and Ben struggled to readjust to the picture in front of him. In fact, the teacher was young, not more than twenty-five. She was concentrating on something on her desk, and her features were fine and flawless, her skin was beautiful, faintly sun-kissed, totally unlined. Her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, was the exact dark golden color of the wildflower honey that Ben kept in a glass jar on his countertop.

Of course, she could still be mean. Ben had known plenty of gorgeous women who were mean straight through. You could tell by their eyes, diamond flint and ice.

But then she lifted her eyes, and he was momentarily lost in their softness and their color, an astounding mix of jade and aqua and copper.

Nothing mean in those eyes, he decided, and tried out his best easygoing boy-next-door grin on her.

An unexpected thing happened. She frowned. It didn’t make her look mean precisely, but he understood perfectly how an eleven-year-old boy could be intimidated by her.

“Hello,” she said, “I think you must be lost.” Her voice wasn’t screechy at all. It was quite amazing, with the bell-like tone of a church bell ringing on a cold, pure morning. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms over her chest, as if she had suddenly reached the alarming conclusion she was alone in this end of the building.

Women weren’t generally alarmed by him, but the fact she was here at five in the evening probably meant she was sheltered in some way. The atmosphere in the classroom really was a testament to no life. How long did it take to make a tree like that? She’d probably been in here all summer, cloistered away, working on it!

More’s the pity, since Ben could clearly see her chest was delicately and deliciously curved, though it occurred to him it was probably some kind of sin to notice that about the grade-five teacher, and the fact that he had noticed probably justified the alarm in her eyes.

Or maybe that was nuns a man was not supposed to think manlike thoughts about.

Which she was dressed like, not that he was an expert on how nuns dressed, but he suspected just like that: high-buttoned blouse in pristine white, frumpy sweater in forgettable beige.

He would have liked a glimpse of her legs, since he was unfortunately curious about whether she was wearing a skirt or slacks, but the desk totally blocked his view.

He moved forward, leaned over the desk and extended his hand. He couldn’t think of a way to lean over far enough to see her legs without alarming her more than she already was, so he didn’t.

“I’m Ben Anderson, Kyle’s uncle.” He deliberately turned up the wattage of his smile, found himself wishing he had changed out of his work clothes—torn jeans with the knee out, his company T-shirt with Garden of Weedin’ emblazoned across the front of it.

Miss Maple took his hand but did not return his smile. Any idea he had about holding her hand a little too long was dismissed instantly. Her handshake was chilly and brief.

“You are very late,” she said. “I was about to leave.”

Ben was astounded to find he felt, not like six foot one of hard-muscled fighting machine, but like a chastened schoolboy. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kyle slide in the door, and roll his shoulders inward, as if he was expecting a blow. Ben found he didn’t have the heart to blame his nephew for not giving him the note.

“Uh, well,” he said charmingly, “you know. Life gets in the way.”

She was not charmed, and apparently she did not know. “Kyle, will you go down to the library? I had Mrs. Miller order a copy of The History of Khan for you. She said she’d leave it on her desk.”

“For me?” Kyle squeaked, and Ben, astonished by the squeak glanced at him. The hard mask was gone from his eyes, and his nephew looked like a little boy who was going to cry. A little boy, Ben thought grimly, who had seen far too few kindnesses in his life.

He was aware the teacher watched Kyle go, too, something both troubled and tender in her eyes, though when she looked back at him, her gaze was carefully cool.

“Have a seat, Mr. Anderson.”

Miss Maple seemed to realize at about the same time as Ben there really was no place in that entire room where he could possibly sit. The desks were too small, and she had the one adult-size chair.

He watched a faint blush rise up her cheeks and was reluctantly enchanted. He decided to smile at her again. Maybe she was one of those women who liked the real-man look, dirt and muscles. He flexed his forearm just a tiny bit to see if she was paying attention.

She was, because her blush deepened and she took a sudden interest in shuffling some papers on her desk. She apparently forgot she’d invited him to sit down.

“Your nephew is a bit of dilemma, Mr. Anderson,” she said in a rush, shuffling frantically to avoid further eye contact with his muscles.

“Ben,” he offered smoothly, hoping she might give up her first name in return.

But she didn’t. In fact, she stopped shuffling papers and pressed her lips together in a firm line, gazed at him solemnly and sternly, the effect of the sternness somewhat tempered by the fact she picked that moment to tuck a wayward strand of that honey-colored hair behind her ear.

Ben had the unexpected and electrifying thought that he would like to kiss her. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe as a shortcut to the woman underneath that uptight outfit and the stern expression.

She was not the kind of woman he usually went for. And he was pretty sure she was not the kind of woman who usually went for him.

She was the kind of woman where there wouldn’t be any kind of shortcuts at all. If a guy were to date her, it wasn’t going to end in her backyard hot tub after midnight.

Not that Miss Maple would have a hot tub! He regarded her thoughtfully, trying to guess at her after-school activities. Knitting, possibly. Bird-watching, probably. Reading, definitely.

No, she was not his type at all.

Which probably explained why he felt intrigued by her. He wasn’t quite sure when he’d become so sick to death of the kind of women who were his type, though that covered a lot of ground from supersophisticated debutantes, to rowdy party-hearty girls, to experienced divorcees, to free-spirited and very independent career women. None of them intrigued him anymore, and hadn’t for a long time. For a while nobody had noticed, but lately his buddies were looking at Ben’s ability to go home alone as if he had contracted a strange disease that needed to be cured before it became contagious.

The demure little schoolteacher made Ben Anderson feel challenged, the first interest he had felt in what the guys cheerfully called “the hunt” for a long, long time. Or maybe, he told himself wryly, he was looking for a little diversion from his sucks-to-be-you life.

Whatever it was, he now had a secret agenda that was making it very hard to focus on what she was saying about Kyle.

A contract for Kyle to sign. With goals and challenges and rewards.

“Mr. Anderson,” she said, ignoring his invitation to call him Ben. “Your nephew has been held back once and has dismal test scores. He won’t do his homework, and he doesn’t participate in class discussions. But I think he reads at a college level and with complete comprehension.

“If I implement this plan for him,” Miss Maple continued sternly, “it is going to take a tremendous amount of work and commitment on my part. I need to know you will be backing me at home, and that you are willing to put in the same kind of time and commitment.”

Ben had been around long enough to know he should be very wary of a woman who tossed around the word commitment so easily.

He threw caution to the wind. “Why don’t we discuss your plan in a little more detail over dinner?” he asked.

Miss Maple looked completely uncharmed. In fact, she looked downright annoyed.

He felt a little annoyed himself. Women didn’t generally look annoyed when he asked them out for dinner. Delighted. Intrigued. He thought he should be insulted that the fifth-grade teacher didn’t look the least delighted about his invitation or the least intrigued by him.

She was probably trying to be professional, trying to backpedal since he had seen her blush when he’d flexed his muscle. She wasn’t as immune as she wanted him to think.

“I’m afraid I don’t go for dinner with parents,” Miss Maple said snippily.

Despite the fact he was amazed by her rejection, Ben assumed an expression that he hoped was a fair approximation of complete innocence. “Miss Maple,” he chided her, “I am not Kyle’s parent. I’m his uncle.”

There was the little blush again, but Ben was almost positive it was caused by irritation, not the flexing of his forearm.

“I don’t date the family members of my students,” she said tightly, spelling it out carefully.

“Date?” Ben raised a surprised eyebrow. “You misunderstood me. I wasn’t asking you on a date.”

Now she had the audacity to look faintly hurt!

The problem with a woman like Miss Maple, Ben thought, was that she would be way more complicated than the women he normally took out. Challenge or not, he knew he should cut his losses and run for the door.

Naturally, he did nothing of the sort.

“I just thought we could get together and go over your plan in more detail.” Ben looked at his watch. “Kyle hasn’t eaten yet, and I’m trying to get him into regular meals.”

That was actually true. His nephew was alarmingly small and skinny for his age, a testament to the Bohemian lifestyle Carly had subjected him to. At first he had resisted Ben’s efforts to get him to eat good food at regular intervals, but in the last few days Ben thought he noticed his nephew settling into routines, and maybe even liking them a bit.

He found himself sharing that with Miss Maple, who looked suitably impressed.

“He’s had it tough, hasn’t he?” she whispered.

Ben could see the softening of the stern line of her face. It made her look very cute. Time to pounce. If he asked her for dinner again right now, she’d say yes.

But he was surprised to find he couldn’t. Instead he could barely speak over the lump that had developed in his throat. He couldn’t even begin to tell her just how tough that kid had had it.

Even though he knew he was capable of being a complete snake, Ben found he could not use Kyle’s tragic life to get what he wanted.

Which was a date with Miss Maple. Just to see how it would end. But he’d leave it for now because, whatever else he might be, he had a highly developed sense of what was fair. She genuinely cared about Kyle. That was obvious. And nothing to be played with, either. His nephew had had few enough people care about him without his uncle jeopardizing that in search of something as easy to find as a date with an attractive member of the opposite sex.

Yes, he needed to think the whole thing through a little more carefully.

So, naturally, he didn’t. He found himself giving her his cell-phone number, just in case she needed to consult with him during the day. At least that was putting the ball in her court.

She took it, but reluctantly, as if she sensed what he really wanted to consult with her about was her after-school activities.

Kyle came back in the room, clutching his new book to his chest.

“How long can I keep it?” he demanded rudely.

“It’s yours,” Miss Maple said gently. “I ordered it just for you.”

Kyle glared at her. “I’ve read it before. It’s stupid. I don’t even want it.”

Ben had to bite back a desire to snap at his nephew for being so ungrateful for the kindness offered, but when he looked at Miss Maple, she was looking past the words, to the way Kyle was hugging the book. She said, not the least ruffled, “You keep it anyway. Your uncle might enjoy it.”

Ben looked at her sharply, to see if there was a barb buried in the fact Miss Maple thought he might enjoy a stupid book, but nothing in her smooth expression gave her away.

He felt that little flutter of excitement again. He recognized it as a man with a warrior spirit exploring brand-new territory, where there was equal opportunities for success or being shot down.

“I like the tree,” Ben said, thinking, Flattery will get you everywhere.

“Thank you,” she said. “We made it last year as our class project.”

It must have shown on his face that he thought that was a slightly frivolous use of school time, because she said haughtily, “We use it as a jumping-off point for all kinds of learning experiences in science, math and English. ‘What is learned with delight is never forgotten.’ Aristotle.”

After they left the school, Ben took Kyle for a burger.

“Your teacher didn’t seem that old to me,” he said. Of all the things he could have picked to talk about, why her? A woman who quoted Aristotle. With ease. Whoo boy, he should be feeling warned off, not intrigued.

Kyle didn’t even look at him, he was so engrossed in his new book. “That’s because you’re not eleven.”

Leave it. There were all kinds of ways to make conversation with an eleven-year-old. How about those Giants?

“She didn’t seem all that ugly, either.”

The burgers had arrived, and Kyle was being so careful not to get stains on his new book that he barely would touch his dinner.

“Well, you haven’t seen her face when you don’t hand in the homework assignment.”

“It would be good if you handed in the homework assignments,” Ben said, thinking Kyle was lucky to have a teacher who was so enthusiastic and who actually cared. He remembered “the plan.” “If you do it for a month without missing, I’ll get us tickets to a Giants game.”

Kyle didn’t even look up from his book.

On the way home they stopped in at the hospital to see Carly, but she was sleeping, looking worn and fragile and tiny in the hospital bed. Pretty hard to interest a kid whose mom was that sick in a Giants game, Ben thought sadly. Still, he didn’t know how to comfort his nephew, and he felt the weight of his own inadequacy when they got home and Kyle went right to his room without saying good-night and slammed his bedroom door hard. Moments later Ben heard the ominous sounds of a musical group shouting incomprehensibly.

He suddenly felt exhausted. His thoughts drifted to Miss Maple and he didn’t feel like a warrior or a hunter at all.

He felt like a man who was alone and afraid and who had caught a glimpse of something in the clearness of those eyes that had made him feel as if he could lay his weapons down and fight no more.

The Top-Secret Diary of Kyle O. Anderson

Once, when I was little, my mom told me my uncle Ben was a lady-killer. When she saw the look on my face after she said it, she laughed and said it didn’t mean he killed ladies.

It meant women loved him. Now that I live with him, I can see it’s true. Whenever we go anywhere, like the burger joint tonight, I see women look at my uncle like he is the main course and they would like to eat him up. They get this funny look in their eyes, the way a little kid looks at a puppy, as if they are already half in love, and they haven’t even talked to him.

I know where that look goes, too, because I’ve seen it on my mom’s face, and I’m old enough to know simple problem math. Love plus my mom equals disaster. It probably runs in the family.

I like diaries. I have had one for as long as I can remember after I found one my mom had been given and never used. It had a key and everything. Having a diary is like having a secret friend to tell things to when they get too big to hold inside. I stole the one I am using now because it has a key, too, and I didn’t want anyone to laugh at me when I bought it, though afterward I felt bad, and thought I could have said I was buying it for my older sister for her birthday. Which is a lie because I don’t have an older sister. I wonder which is a worse bad thing, telling a lie or stealing?

There’s lots of things people don’t know about me, like I don’t really like to do bad things, but it kind of keeps anyone from guessing that I’m so scared all the time that my stomach hurts.

My mom is going to die. She weighs about ninety pounds now, less than me, and I can see bones and blue veins sticking out on her hands. There’s a look in her eyes, like she’s saying goodbye, even though she still talks tough and as if everything’s going to be okay and she’s coming home again. Anybody, even a kid, can see that that’s not true.

Not that I feel like a kid most of the time. I feel like I’ve been looking after my mom way longer than she’s been looking after me.

Not that I did a very good job of it. Look at her now.

My mom is not like the moms in movies or storybooks. She drinks too much and likes to party, and she falls in with really creepy people. Her boyfriend right now is a loser named Larry. He doesn’t even go visit her in the hospital unless her welfare cheque has come and he needs it signed. Uncle Ben moved her to the hospital closer to us, so, gee, Larry would have to take the bus and transfer twice. At least he never hit her or me, which is different than the last one, who was a loser named Barry. That is the sad poem of my mom’s life.

Here is another secret: even though I am scared of her dying, I am scared of her living, too. I try not to let my uncle know, but I like it at his house. It’s not just that it’s nice, even though it is, it’s that everything is clean, and he always has food, even if it’s dorky stuff like bananas and apples and hardly any cookies or potato chips.

I feel safe here, like I know what’s going to happen next, and there aren’t going to be any parties in the middle of the night where people start screaming at each other and breaking bottles and pretty soon you hear the sirens coming.

It’s weird because one of the things I’m scaredest of is that my uncle won’t like me. What will happen to me if he sends me away? And even though that makes me so scared I want to throw up, I am really mean to him. My mom was always mean to him, too. Whenever he turned up, even though he always had groceries for us, she’d yell at him to get lost and it was too late and we didn’t need him, and then as soon as he left, she’d slam the door behind him and say, “Why can’t he ever say he loves me,” and cry for about a week. Which is kind of how I feel after I’m mean to him, too.

He bought all new stuff for my room at his house, and he let me have his supercool TV set and stereo. I never had new stuff before—a brand-new bed and sheets that were so new they felt scratchy the first night I slept in them. It made me want to cry that he bought them just for me, and that he left the television set in there, even though he doesn’t even have one in his own bedroom. It kind of made me hope maybe I was staying for good, but I am old enough to know that hope is the most dangerous thing. Maybe that’s why I acted mad instead, and told him how lame the cowboy were.

My uncle Ben used to be a marine. He’s big as a mountain, and he’s probably killed all kinds of people. Maybe with his bare hands. I can’t be a crybaby around him.

At my new school everything is new and shiny, and you don’t have to go through a metal detector at the front door. The library has lots of books in it, but I’m trying not to care about that too much, either, in case everything changes. You don’t want to put too much faith in a place with a corny name like Cranberry Corners. It’s not even real. Do you see any cranberries around here?

It is the same with Miss Maple, like she is too good to be true. She does really nice things for me, like the book tonight, but it makes me wish I was little and could just climb on her lap and cry and cry and cry. See? There’s that crybaby thing again.

Have you ever seen those movies where people live in a big house on a nice block, with a golden retriever and the kind of yard my uncle builds? All flowers and fountains and that kind of stuff?

Miss Maple is the mom in that movie. You can tell by looking at her, when she gets married and has kids there will be no parties where things get smashed in the night!

No sirree, she will have baked cookies and would serve them warm with milk before bed. And then a nice bath, every single night, whether you are dirty or not, and then I bet she would get right in bed with her kid and read him stories about something lame like turtles that talk.

She would have stupid rules like brushing your teeth, and saying please and thank you and not being tardy, and that’s why I act like I hate her, because she is the mom I wanted and sure didn’t get, and I feel guilty for thinking that when my own mom is going to die.

I told my uncle she was old and mean and ugly because it would have been so much easier for me if that’s what she had been. Plus him being a lady-killer and all, I didn’t want him to ever get anywhere near her. Because who knows what would happen next?

I like knowing what is going to happen next. Even though it is supergross to think of your uncle and your teacher liking each other, I had an ugly feeling that it was a possibility. I am always thinking of possibilities, trying really hard not to be surprised by life.

I guess I should never have given him the note from her, because it was worse than I imagined when they saw each other. I know that look. It usually happens just when my life is getting good, too. Just me and my mom, then that look between her and the latest loser and it’s a straight downhill slide from there. Not that my uncle or Miss Maple are losers, but I still think if it runs in the family, I’m doomed.

I can probably scare her off my uncle. Sheesh. He comes with a kid. The most rotten kid in her class. She’s no dummy. She can do math, too. But what if he decides to have her and get rid of me?

This is the kind of question that makes my stomach hurt. I will just keep her from ever wanting to get mixed up with us.

I wonder if Miss Maple will scream if I put a frog in her desk?

I saw one, a really big one, at Migg’s Pond, which is behind the school and out of bounds, except for the science-class field trip. We didn’t go on field trips in my old school.

And just thinking about that, how to capture that frog, instead of my mom lying alone in a hospital, and whether or not my uncle is going to keep me, or whether my uncle and Miss Maple are going to progress to the making-eyes-at-each-other stage, eases the ache in my stomach enough that I can go to sleep, finally.

But only if I leave the light on.

CHAPTER TWO

BETH Maple heard a slightly muffled snicker just as she was sliding open her top desk drawer looking for a prize for Mary Kay Narsunchuk, who had just won the weekly spelling bee.

During the whole spelling bee, out of the corner of her eye, Beth had seen Kyle O. Anderson looking absently out the window, seeming not to pay attention, unaware his mouth was silently forming every letter of every word she had challenged the class with, including the one that had finally stumped Mary Kay, finesse. But every time she had called on him to spell a word, Kyle had just frowned and ducked his head.

It was an improvement over last week’s spelling bee. Whenever she had called on Kyle that time, he had spelled a word, all right, but never the word he’d been given. When the word was tarry, he spelled tarantula, when she gave him forte, he spelled, or started to spell fornication. She had cut him off before he’d completed the word. Thankfully, no one in her grade-five class seemed to have any idea what that exchange had been about.

But Kyle was being suspiciously well-behaved for this spelling bee. At her most optimistic she hoped that meant his uncle had talked to him after their meeting last night about the plan, and had implemented the reward system at home.

It was probably that momentary lapse, thinking about Kyle’s uncle, that made Beth react slowly to the snicker as she was opening her desk drawer. Her brain shouting “Beware” did not get to her hand in time. Of course, her brain could just as well have been warning her off the gorgeous, full-of-himself, Ben Anderson, as the contents of her desk drawer!

A blob of green exploded from the desk, and collided with her hand, unbelievably squishy and revolting. Beth did what no grade-five teacher should ever do.

She screamed, then caught herself and stuffed her fist in her mouth. She regarded the largest frog she had ever seen, which sat not three feet in front of her on the floor, glaring at her with beady reptilian eyes.

It’s only a frog, she told herself sternly, but nevertheless she screamed again when it leaped forward. She could hear Kyle’s satisfied chortles above all the other sounds in a classroom that was quickly dissolving into pandemonium.

Twelve economy-size knights rushed to rescue their teacher, aka damsel-in-distress, though she was not naive enough to believe chivalry had trumped the pure temptation of the frog.

Casper Hearn led the charge, a big boy, throwing desks and hysterical girls out of his way as he stampeded around the room in pursuit of the frog.

But somehow, out of the melee, it was Kyle who emerged, panting, the frog clutched to his chest. Now he faced the other boys, something desperate in his pinched, pale face as they surrounded him. His freckles were standing out in relief he was so white.

“Give me the frog,” Casper ordered Kyle with distinct menace.

“I’ll warn you once to stay away from me,” Kyle said, a warning that might have been more effective if his voice wasn’t shaking and Casper didn’t outweigh him by a good thirty pounds.

Casper laughed. “Is that so? Then what?”

“Then the aisles will run with the fat melting from your bodies!” Kyle shouted, slipping the frog inside his shirt.

Casper took a startled step back from Kyle. The classroom became eerily silent. Casper stared at Kyle, shook his head and then went and sat down, followed by the other boys.

Kyle gave Beth a look she interpreted as apologetic and darted out the door, Kermit happily ensconced in his shirt.

When he didn’t return, she realized with a horrible sense of resignation she was going to have to inform Kyle’s uncle she had lost his nephew.

And the truth was, Beth Maple would have been just as happy if she never had to speak to Ben Anderson again.

Or at least the part of her that hadn’t nearly swooned from the pure and powerful presence of the man would be happy.

The other part, despicably weak, yearned for just one more peek at him.

Beth thought that Ben Anderson was the type of man who should have a warning label on him. There was that word again. “Beware.” Followed by “Contents too potent to handle.”

She did not think she had ever been around a man who was so casually and extraordinarily sexy. When he had walked into her room yesterday, it was as if everything but him had faded to nothing. No wonder she had thought he was in the wrong place, hopelessly lost amongst the welcoming fall leaves that dripped from her ceiling and brushed the top of his head.

Ben Anderson was all masculine power. Every single thing about him, from the ease with which he held that amazing male body, to the cast of features made more mesmerizing by the fact his once-perfect nose had the crook of a break in it, radiated some kind of vital male energy.

He oozed strength and self-assurance, from the ripple of muscle, to the upward quirk of a sexy lip. But somehow all that self-assurance was saved from becoming arrogance by the light that danced in eyes as green as a summer swimming hole. Ben Anderson’s eyes were warm and laughter filled. Kyle’s propensity for mischief was undoubtedly genetic.

Still, something lurked behind the easy laughter of his eyes, the upward quirk of that sexy mouth. There was an untouchable place in Ben Anderson that was as remote as a mountaintop. But unfortunately, rather than making him less attractive, it intrigued, added to a kind of sizzling sensuality that tingled in the air around him.

Ben Anderson had that certain indefinable something that made women melt.

And he knew it, too, the scoundrel.

Beth, sharing her classroom with him last evening, had been totally aware she was an impossibly unworldly grade-five teacher, with nothing at all in her experience to prepare her for a man like that.

You didn’t meet a man like Ben Anderson on the university campus. No, his type went to high, lonely places and battlefields. Even if Kyle had not mentioned to Beth that his uncle had been a marine, she would have known he had something other men did not have. It was in the warrior cast in his face, and the calm readiness in the way he carried himself.

He was not the kind of man she met at the parent-teacher conference, the kind who had devoted himself to a wife and children and a dream of picket fences. She met the occasional single dad, attractive in an expensive charcoal-gray suit, but never anything even remotely comparable to Ben Anderson.

Ben’s eyes resting on her face had made her feel as if an unwanted trembling, pre-earthquake, had started deep inside of her.

She hated that feeling, of somehow not being in control of herself, which probably explained why she had been driven to explain the educational benefits of her classroom tree to him. And to quote Aristotle! Who did that to a man like him?

But Beth Maple loved being in control, and she especially loved it since her one crazy and totally uncharacteristic trip outside her comfort zone had left her humiliated and ridiculously heartbroken.

She had known better. She was the least likely person to ever make the mistake she had made. She was well educated. Cautious. Conventional. Conservative. But she had been lured into love over the Internet.

Her love, Rock Kildore, had turned out to be a complete fabrication, as if the name shouldn’t have warned her. “Rock” was really Ralph Kaminsky, a fifty-two-year-old married postal clerk from Tarpool Springs, Mississippi. What he was not was a single jet-setting computer whiz from Oakland, California, who worked largely in Abu Dhabi and who claimed to have fallen hopelessly in love with a fifth-grade teacher. Even the pictures he’d posted had been fake.

But for a whole year, Beth Maple had believed what she wanted desperately to believe, exchanging increasingly steamy love letters, falling in love with being in love, anticipating that moment each day when she would open her e-mail and find Rock waiting for her. Beth had passed many a dreamy day planning the day all his work and travel obstacles would be overcome and she would meet the love of her life.

She had been so smitten she had believed his excuses, and been irritated by the pessimism of her friends and co-workers. Her mother’s and father’s concern had grated on her, partly because it was a relationship like theirs that she yearned for: stable but still wildly romantic even after forty years!

The youngest in her family, she hated being treated like a baby, as if she couldn’t make the right decisions.

After her virtual affair had ended in catastrophe that was anything but virtual, Beth had retreated to her true nature with a vengeance. Most disturbing to her had been that underlying the sympathy of her mom and dad had been their disappointment in her. Well, she was disappointed in herself, too.

Now she had something to prove: that she was mature, rational, professional, quiet and controlled. These were the qualities that had always been hers—before she had been lured into an uncharacteristic loss of her head. They were the qualities that made her an exemplary teacher, and that she returned to with conviction.

Teaching would be enough for her. Her substantial ability to love would be devoted to her students now. Her passion would be turned on making the grade-five learning experience a delight worth remembering. And she was giving up on pleasing her parents, too, since they didn’t seem any happier when she announced her choice to be single forever than they had been about Rock.

But looking at Ben Anderson, she had felt rattled, aware that all her control was an illusion, that if a man like that ever touched his lips to hers, she would surrender control with humiliating ease, dive into something hitherto wild and unexplored in herself.

Looking at Ben Anderson, Beth had thought, No wonder I liked virtual love. The real thing might be too hot too handle!

But even more humiliating than the fact Beth had recognized this shockingly lustful weakness in herself was the fact that she was almost positive he had recognized it in her, as well! There had been knowing in his eyes, in the little smile that tickled the firm line of his lips, in the fact his hand had touched hers just a trifle too long when he had passed her his business card with his cell-phone number on it.

Ben Anderson had obviously been the conqueror of thousands of hearts.

And all of them left broken, too, Beth was willing to bet.

Not that she had let the smallest iota of any of that creep into her voice when she had spoken to him. She hoped.

When he had handed her his business card, just in case she had needed to consult with him, she’d had the ugly feeling he expected her to find some pretext to use it.

And here she was, dialing his number, and hating it, even if this was a true emergency. And at the same time she hated it, a wicked little part of her was completely oblivious to the urgency of this situation, and wanted to hear his voice again, and compare it to her memory. No man could really sound that sexy.

Except he did.

His voice, when he answered, was deep and mesmerizing. Beth asked herself if she would think it was that sexy if she had never met him in person.

The answer was an unfortunate and emphatic yes.

There was a machine running in the background and Ben sounded faintly impatient, even when Beth said who she was and even though she could have sworn he would be pleased if she called him.

“Mr. Anderson, Kyle has gone missing.”

“I can’t hear you. Sorry.”

“Kyle’s gone,” she screamed, just as the machine behind him shut off.

The silence was deafening, and she rushed to fill it, which was what a man like that did to a woman like her, took all her calm and measured responses and turned them on their head.

She explained the frog incident. Ben listened without comment. She finished with, “And then he ran off. I checked all the usual hideouts, under the stage in the gym, the last stall in the boy’s washroom, the janitorial closet. I’m afraid he’s not here.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” Ben said. “Don’t worry.”

And then Beth was left holding a dead phone, caught between admiration for his I-can-handle-this attitude when obviously he was fairly new and naive to the trouble little boys could get themselves into, and irritation that somehow, just because he had told her not to worry, she did feel less worried.

He was that kind of man. Ridiculous to plan picket fences around him, and yet if you had your back against the wall, and the enemy rushing at you with knives in their teeth, he was the one you would want to be with you.

Beth told herself, sternly, it was absolutely idiotic to think you could know that about a man from having seen him once, and heard his supersexy voice on the phone. But she knew it all the same. If the ship was sinking, he would be the one who would find the life raft.

And the desert island.

She spent a silly moment contemplating that. Being with Ben Anderson on a desert island. It was enough to make her forget she had lost a child! It was enough to remind her her ability to imagine things had gotten her into trouble before.

An hour later, just as school was letting out and she was watching the children swirl down the hallway in an amazing rainbow of energy and color, the outside doors swung open and Ben Anderson stood there, silhouetted by light. He came through the children, the wave parting around him, looking like Gulliver in the land of little people.

There was something in his face that made Beth feel oddly relieved, even though his expression was grim and Kyle was not with him.

“Did you find him?” she asked.

The hallway was now empty. The absence of little people did not make Ben Anderson seem any smaller. In fact, she was very aware that she felt small as she stood in his shadow.

Small and exquisitely feminine despite the fact she was wearing not a spec of makeup, her hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense bun and she was dressed exactly like the fifth-grade teacher that she was.

“Not yet. I thought he might be at home, but he wasn’t.” He was very calm, and that made her feel even more as if he was a man you could lean into, be protected by.

Without warning, his finger pressed into her brow. “Hey, don’t worry, he’s okay.”

“How could you possibly know that?” she asked, aware that the certain shrill note in her voice had nothing to do with the loss of a child who had been in her charge, but everything to do with the rough texture of his hand pressed into her forehead.

“Kyle’s eleven going on 102. He’s been looking after himself in some pretty mean surroundings for a long, long time. He’s okay.”

He said that with complete confidence. He withdrew his hand from her forehead, looked at it and frowned, as though it had touched her without his permission. He jammed it in his pocket, and she felt the tiniest little thrill that the contact had apparently rattled him, as well as her.

“If he’s not at home, where did he go?” she asked him. The news was full of all the hazards that awaited eleven-year-old boys who were not careful. In the week and a half that Kyle had been in her class, he had shown no sign that he was predisposed to careful behavior.

Of course, his uncle did not look as if he had ever been careful a day in his life, and he seemed to have survived just fine.

Probably to the woe of every female within a hundred miles of him.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Kyle’s not that familiar with Cranberry Corners yet. Is he hiding somewhere? How much trouble does he think he’s in?”

“It’s not just about the frog,” she told him, and repeated Kyle’s awful remark.

“The aisles will run with the fat melting from your bodies?” Ben repeated. She couldn’t tell if he was appalled or appreciative. “He said that?”

“Do you think he was threatening to burn down the school?” she whispered.

Ben actually laughed, which shouldn’t have made her feel better, but it did. “Naw. He’s a scrawny little guy. He used his brains to back down the bully, and it worked. Boy, where would he get a line like that?”

She was oddly relieved that it was not from his uncle!

“The History of Khan?” she guessed.

“Bingo!” he said, with approval for her powers of deduction.

She could not let herself preen under his approval. She couldn’t. Wanting a man like him to approve of you could be the beginning of bending over backward to see that appreciative light in his eyes.

“Now if we could use those same powers of deduction to figure out where he is.”

“You know him better than me,” she said, backing away from the approval game. Besides, she really was drawing a blank about Kyle’s whereabouts.

She saw the doubt cross his face, but he regarded her thoughtfully. “You said he still had the frog, right?”

She nodded.

“You said the other boys wanted the frog and he wouldn’t give it to them.”

Silly to be pleased that he had listened so carefully to what she had said. Troublesome how easily he could nudge down her defenses, even before they were rebuilt from the last collapse!

“So, let’s assume he cared about the frog. Maybe he wanted to return it to where he got it from.”

That made such perfect sense Beth wished she had thought of it herself.

“We went on a little field trip for science class last week. Migg’s Pond,” she said. “It’s not far from here. We walked.”

“I’m sure I can find it.”

She was sure he could, too. But she was going with him. And not to spend time with him, either. Not because just standing beside him made her feel soft, and small and delicate.

She would go because this wasn’t really about Ben nor her, nor even about a frog. It was about a child who, despite the fact he was street smart, was still a child. Somehow, someway, somebody needed to let him know that. That they would come for him when he had lost his way.

“I’ll just get my jacket,” she said. “And my boots.” The boots were hideous, proof to herself that she was indifferent to the kind of impression she was making on Ben Anderson. No woman with the least bit of interest in how he perceived her would be seen dead in a skirt and gum boots by him.

“It’s wet by the pond,” she said, pleased with how rational she was being. She even leveled her grade-five-teacher look at his feet.

And then was sorry she had because her eyes had to travel the very long length of his hard-muscled legs to find the feet at the end of them.

“I’m not worried about getting my feet wet,” he said, something flat in his voice letting her know that he had been in places and experienced things that made him scorn small discomforts.

Today Beth was wearing a plaid tartan skirt, which did not seem as pretty to her now as it had when she put it on this morning. The boots, unfashionable black rubbers with dull red toes, were kept in the coatroom for just such educational excursions. They looked hideous with her skirt, but since they were going to a swamp and she was determined to not try and impress him, she thought they were perfect for the occasion.

Still, when she saw the laughter light his eyes as she emerged from the coatroom, she wished she hadn’t been quite so intent on appearing indifferent to his opinions. She wished she would have ruined her shoes!

In an effort not to look as rattled as she felt in her gum boot fashion disaster, she said conversationally, “I like the name of your business. Garden of Weedin’. Very original.”

He glanced down at his shirt and grinned. A knowing grin, that accused her of studying his chest, which of course she had been.

“Very creative,” she said stiffly, keeping on topic with stern determination as he held the door open for her to leave the school.

“Yeah, well, I stole it.”

“What?”

“I saw it on a sign in a little town I was passing through a long time ago. It kind of stuck with me.”

“I don’t think you can steal names,” she said. “That would be like saying my mother stole the name Beth from the aunt I was named after.”

“Beth,” he said, pleased, as if she had given away a secret he longed to know.

The way he said it made a funny tingle go up and down her spine. You could imagine a man saying your name like that, like a benediction, right before he kissed you. Or right before he talked you into his bed, the promise of bliss erasing the fact there had been the lack of a single promise for tomorrow.

She shot him a wary look, but he was looking ahead, scanning the terrain where the playground of the school met an undeveloped area behind it.

“Migg’s Pond is out of bounds,” she said. “The children aren’t supposed to come back here by themselves.”

He grunted. With amusement?

“Are you one of those people who scoffs at rules?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” he said, but his amusement seemed to be deepening.

“You are! I can tell.”

“Now, how can you tell that?” he drawled, glancing at her with a lazy, sexy look that made her tingle just the way it had when he had spoken her name.

“I’m afraid I can picture you in fifth grade. Quite easily. Out of bounds would have just made it seem irresistible to you.”

“Guilty.”

“Frog in the teacher’s drawer?” she asked.

“Only if I really liked her.”

She contemplated that, and then said, “I don’t think Kyle likes me at all.”

“I would have, if I was in grade five. Not that I would have ever let on. How uncool would that be? To like the teacher.”

How uncool would it be to feel flattered that a man would have liked you in grade five? It didn’t mean he liked you now. Only a person without an ounce of pride would even pursue such a thing.

“What makes you think you would have liked me in grade five? I’m very strict. I think some of the kids think I’m mean.”

He snorted, and she realized he was trying not to laugh.

“I am! I always start off the year at my most formidable.”

“And I bet that’s some formidable,” he said, ignoring her glare.

“Because, you can’t go back if you lose respect from the start. You can soften up later if you have to.” She sounded like she was quoting from the teacher’s manual, and Ben Anderson did not look convinced by how formidable she was capable of being!

“Well, I would have liked you because you were cute. And relatively young. And obviously you are into the Aristotle school of learning, which would mean really fun things like have everyone making a fall leaf with their name on it to hang from the roof.”

He hadn’t just used the tree to flatter her, which she had suspected at the time. He’d actually liked it. Why else would he have noticed details? She could not allow herself to feel flattered by that. Weakened.

He’d been a marine. He was probably trained to notice all the details of his environment.

They arrived at the pond. As she had tried to tell him, the whole area around it was muddy and damp.

But it wasn’t him who nearly slipped and fell, it was her. She found his hand on her elbow, steadying her.

His grip, strong, sure, had the effect, again, of making her feel tiny and feminine. A lovely tingling was starting where his fingers dug lightly into her flesh.

She stopped and removed herself from his grip, moved a careful few steps away from him and scanned the small area around the pond with her best professional fifth-grade-teacher look.

As good as her intentions had been in coming here, and even though she had placed Kyle first, she had challenged herself as much as she intended to for one day.

“He’s not here,” she said. “I should go.”

But Ben tilted his head, listening to something she couldn’t hear. “He’s here,” he whispered.

She looked around. Nothing moved. Not even the grass stirred.

“How do you know?”

With his toe, he nudged a small sneaker print in the mud that she would have completely overlooked.

“It’s fresh. Within an hour or so. So is this.” His hand grazed a broken twig on a shrub near the pathway.

She didn’t even want to know how he knew how fresh a print was, or a broken branch. She didn’t want to know about the life he had led as a warrior, trained to see things others missed. Trained to shrug off hardship, go where others feared to go. Trained to deal with what came at him with calm and control. She didn’t want to know all the multi-faceted layers that went into making such a self-assured man. Or maybe she did. Maybe she wanted to know every single thing about him that there was to know.

“Well,” she said brightly, afraid of herself, her curiosity, terrified of the pull of him, “I’m sure you can take it from here. I’ll talk to Kyle tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he said, scanning her face as if she didn’t fool him one little bit, as if he knew how uncomfortable he made her feel, how aware of her needs.

“Are you going to follow the print?” she asked when he didn’t move.

“I’d like him to come to us.”

Us? She had clearly said she was leaving.

“Are you going to call him?” she asked.

“No. I’m going to wait for him. He knows we’re here.”

“He does?”

“Yeah.”

She could go. Probably should go. But somehow she needed to put all her self-preserving caution aside, just for the time being. She needed to see this moment. Needed to be with the man who understood instinctively not to chase that frightened child, but to just wait. Or was that the pull of him, overriding her own carefully honed survival skills?

Ben took off his jacket, and put it on the soggy ground, patted it for her to sit on, just as if she had never said she was leaving, and just as if he had never said okay.

Something sighed in her, surrender, and she settled on his jacket, and he went down on his haunches beside her. Ben Anderson was so close she could smell his soap and how late-summer sunshine reacted to his skin.

“So,” he said after a bit, “why don’t you tell me something interesting about yourself?”

She slid him a look. This whole experience was suffused with an unsettling atmosphere of intimacy, and now he wanted to know something interesting about her? He had actually asked that as if he had not a doubt there was something interesting about her.

“What you consider interesting and what I consider interesting are probably two different things,” she hedged.

“Uh-huh,” he agreed. “Tell me, anyway.”

And she realized he wanted Kyle to hear them talking, to hear that it was just a normal conversation, not about him, not loaded with anger or anxiety.

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