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

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.