Cara Colter - Propositioned by the Playboy

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.

Ben’s concern for the health of her tree had surprised her, showed her, again, that there was something more there than rugged appeal and rippling muscle. Ben had a thoughtfulness about him, though if she were to point it out, she was certain he would laugh and deny it.

She soon found out executing such a vision was not that simple. There had been digging, digging and more digging. Then leveling and compacting. She had insisted on having a turn on the compactor, a machine that looked like a lawn mower, only it was heavier and had a mind of its own.

Ben had turned it on, and while under his watchful eye she had tried to guide it around the base of the tree where there would be a concrete pad. The compactor was like handling a jackhammer. The shaking went up her whole body. She felt like a bobble-head doll being hijacked!

“Whoa,” she called over and over, but the machine did not listen. Despite all Ben’s efforts to be kind to the tree, she banged into the trunk of it three times.

Kyle finally yelled over the noise, begging her to stop, he was laughing so hard. And then she had dared to glance away from her work. Ben was laughing, too.

And then she was laughing, which the unruly machine took advantage of by taking off across her lawn and ripping out a patch of it, until Ben grabbed it and shut it off and gently put her away from it.

“Miss Maple?”

“Yes?”

“You’re fired.”

When had she last laughed like that? Until her sides hurt? Until everything bad that had ever happened to her was washed away in the golden light of that shared moment? The laughter had made her feel new and alive, and as though life held possibilities that she had never dreamed of.

Possibilities as good as or even better than the tree sanctuary that was becoming a reality in her backyard.

The world she had allowed herself to have suddenly seemed way too rigid, the dreams she had given up on beckoned again. Everything shimmered , but was it an illusion of an oasis or was it something real?

Watching Ben work made it harder to see those distinctions, flustered her, and made her feel off balance. When a concrete truck had arrived, she had watched as Ben, so sure of himself, so in charge, so at ease, had directed that spout of creamy cement, pouring concrete footings, a pad for the staircase and a small patio.

It was his world. He was in charge. Competent. Decisive. All business and no nonsense as he showed Kyle what needed to be done. The concrete work seemed so hard, and yet there was nothing in him that shirked from it, he seemed to enjoy using his strength to create such lasting structures. That alone was deeply attractive in ways she didn’t quite understand, but it was when the concrete was beginning to set that he added the shimmer .

The stern expression of absolute concentration fell away. He set down the trowel he’d been using and showing Kyle how to use. “Come on over, Beth, let’s show them forever who did this.”

Not a man you wanted to use your name in the same sentence that contained the word forever . Even if you did dream such things.

And he bent over and put his hands in the setting concrete.

And then he insisted she leave her prints there beside his. Kyle added his handprints happily, writing his name under his handprint, giving her a sideways look.

“Can I write, it sucks to be you ?”

And then they had all laughed. Again . That beautiful from-the-belly laughter that felt as if it had the power to heal everything that was wrong in the world. Her world, anyway.

“Did you know,” Ben asked her solemnly, “that your nose crinkles when you laugh?”

She instinctively covered her nose, but he pulled her concrete-covered hand away.

“You don’t want to get that stuff on your face,” he said, and then added, “It’s cute when your nose does that.”

She had been blissfully unaware until very recently that there was anything in her world that was wrong, that needed to be healed.

Beth had been convinced she was over all that nonsense with Rock/Ralph. Completely.

But now, as her world got bigger and freshened with new experiences and with laughter, and with a man who noticed her nose crinkled when she laughed and thought it was cute, she saw how her hurt had made her world small. Safe, but small.

Now it was as if something magic was unfolding in her yard, and the three of them were helpless against its enchantment. She had actually considered having Kyle put those words in there, it sucks to be you , because with those words this funny, unexpected miracle had been brought to her.

Not just the tree house.

Maybe the tree house was even the least of it. This feeling of working toward a common goal with other people, of being part of something. This feeling of the tiniest things, like washing the concrete off their hands with the hose, Ben reaching over and scrubbing a spec of stubborn grit off her hand, being washed in light, the ordinary becoming extraordinary.

Who was she kidding? The feeling was of belonging. The feeling was of excitement. It was as if something was unfolding just below the surface, as if the excitement in her life had just begun. As that the yard took shape, her staircase beginning to wind around the tree, it was as if she saw possibility in a brand-new way.