Cara Colter - Propositioned by the Playboy

Now, as she came out the door with her tray of goodies and set them on the worn picnic table that once had been the pathetic centerpiece of her yard, she watched Ben stop what he was doing. He walked toward her, scooping up his T-shirt as he came, giving his face and chest a casual swipe with it, before pulling it over that incredible expanse of naked male beauty.

“Milk and lemonade,” he said, grinning, eyeing the contents of the tray. “Interesting.”

“Why?” she demanded. She had just known he would read something into whatever choice she made! She should have known not making a choice had a meaning, too.

He laughed. “You’re trying to make everybody happy.”

“No,” she said, and put the tray down, stood with her hands on her hips staring at the reality of the staircase starting to gracefully curve around the tree, “you are. And look at my yard.” But she wanted to say Look at me. Can’t you tell how happy I am? Instead she said, “Look at Kyle.”

Kyle arrived at the picnic table, smudges of dirt on his face, glowing with something suspiciously like happiness even without the choice between lemonade and milk.

“Look,” he crowed, and showed her his hand.

A blister was red across the palm.

“Oh,” she said, “that’s terrible. I’ll get some ointment.”

But his uncle nudged her and shook his head. “It’s part of being a man,” he said.

Just loud enough for Kyle to hear him.

Kyle’s chest filled with air, and he grinned happily, dug into the cookies and didn’t look up until the plate was nearly emptied. He drank two glasses of milk and one of lemonade, and then leaped up and went back to what he’d been doing.

“Okay, I admit it,” she said, watching the boy pick up his shovel. “Your plan is better than mine. He loves this. He is a different boy than he was a few days ago.”

“Well, don’t say it too loud or he might feel driven to prove you wrong, but, yeah, it’s good for him.”

“It’s really good of you to do this. I’m sure today should have been your day off.”

“I don’t take much time off at this time of year. It gets slow when the weather changes, and then I take some time.”

“And do what?” Was it too personal? Of course it was. She didn’t want to know what he did with his spare time. Yes, she did .

“Usually I go back to Hawaii for a couple of weeks.” His eyes drifted to Kyle. “This year, I’m not sure.”

“How is your sister?” She could tell right away that this was too personal, by the way his shoulders stiffened, how he swirled lemonade in the bottom of his glass like a fortune-teller looking for an answer.

She could tell this was the part of himself that he didn’t want people to know about. It was easy for him to be charming and fun-loving. She almost held her breath waiting to see what he would show her.

And then sighed with relief when he showed her what was real.

He rolled his big shoulders, looked away from the lemonade and held her gaze for one long, hard moment. “She’s not going to make it.”

Beth had known Kyle’s mother was seriously ill. There was no other reason that Ben would have been appointed his guardian. But she was still taken aback at this piece of news.

She touched his arm. Nothing else. Just touched him. And it felt as if it was the most right thing in the world when his hand came and covered hers. Something connected them. Not sympathy, but something bigger, a culmination of something that had started happening in this yard from the first moment he had said he would build a tree house for her.

She could have stayed in that wordless place of connection for a long time. But his reaction was almost the opposite of hers.

He took his hand away as if he could snatch back the feeling that had just passed between them. He smiled at her, that devil-may-care smile, and she realized a smile, even a sexy one—or maybe especially a sexy one—could be a mask.

“I’m going to kiss you one day,” he promised.

Was that a mask, too? A way of not feeling? Of not connecting on a real level? She looked at his lips.

The terrible truth was she was dying to be kissed by him.

But not like that. Not as part of a pretext, a diversion, a way to stop things from hurting.

“Actually, you’re not,” she said, and was pleased by his startled expression, as if no one had ever refused him a kiss before.

Probably no one had. And probably she was going to regret it tonight. Today. Seconds from now.

Before that weakness settled in, she got up and gathered up the tray and headed for the house. She pulled open the screen door with her toe and looked over her shoulder.

“You know,” she called back to him, “kissing can’t solve your problems. They will still be there after you unlock lips.”

He sat there, looking as if a bomb had hit him, and then got up and stalked across the yard, stood at the bottom of her steps, glaring up at her.

“How would you know what kissing solves or doesn’t solve?” he asked her darkly.

“What are you saying? That I look like I’ve never been kissed?”

“As a matter of fact, you don’t look like any kind of an expert on the subject!”

That exquisite moment when she had felt so connected to him was gone. Completely. Absolutely. The oasis was an illusion, after all.

“You pompous, full-of-yourself Neanderthal,” she sputtered.

“Don’t call me names over five syllables.”

“It was four! But just in case you didn’t get it, it’s the long version of caveman.”

He looked like he was going to come up the stairs and tangle those strong, capable hands in her hair, and kiss her just to prove his point. Or hers. That he was a caveman.

But his point would be stronger; she would probably be such a helpless ninny under his gorgeous lips, just like a thousand helpless ninnies before her, that she would totally forget he was a caveman. Or forgive him for it. Or find it enchanting.

She slid inside the door, let it slap shut behind her and then turned, reached out with her little finger from under the tray and latched it.

“Did you just lock the door?” he asked, stunned.

She said nothing, just stood looking at him through the screen.

“What? Do you think I’d break down the door to kiss you? ”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” she said. Pique made her say it. Not that it was a complete lie. She had spent most of junior high hiding from the overly amorous affections of Harley Houston. Once he had leaped out of a coat closet at her, with his lips all puckered and ready. That was certainly close enough to breaking down a door.

Ben regarded her with ill-concealed temper. “It probably would.”

“Look,” she said coolly, “I don’t understand, if you think I’m so incapable of inspiring great passion, why you’re the one, who out of the blue, with no provocation at all on my part, said you would kiss me someday. As if it wasn’t necessary for me to feel something first. Or you. As if you can just do that kind of thing because you feel like it and without the participation of the other person.”

“Believe me, if I ever kissed you, you’d participate.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said stubbornly, though she didn’t want to be put to the test. And did want to be put to the test. Which most certainly meant she would fail any kind of participation test that involved his lips. Still, there was no sense feeding his already oversize ego. He was impossible. And aggravating. Irritating.

She had known he would be from the first time he had come into her classroom. And instead of letting good sense reign, what had she done?

She had been swayed by the most superficial of things. By his enormous good looks and by his even greater charm. By the sound of laughter. By a tree house taking shape in her yard.