Ben folded his arms over his chest and gave his nephew his most steely-eyed look.
“You made this mess,” he said quietly. “You’re going to have to fix it.”
“I don’t know how,” Kyle said.
“Well, I do. There’s probably close to a thousand bucks worth of damage there. Do you have a thousand dollars?”
“I don’t have any money,” Kyle said. “I didn’t even get allowance last week, cuz I didn’t take out the garbage.”
“Do you have anything worth a thousand dollars?”
“No,” Kyle whispered.
This was part of the problem. His nephew was the kid who perceived he had nothing of value. And he probably didn’t have the things the other kids in his class had and took for granted. There had been no fifty-inch TV sets, no designer labels. Ben had bought him a nice bicycle once, and as far as he could tell it had disappeared into the dark folds of that shadowy world his sister lived in before Kyle had ever even ridden it.
“I guess she’ll have to call the insurance company, then,” Ben said. “They’ll want a police report filed.”
Beth and Kyle both gasped.
“Unless you can come up with something you have of value.”
Kyle’s shoulders hunched deeper as he considered a life bereft of value. Beth was looking daggers at Ben.
Didn’t she get it? He deserved to be afraid. He needed to be afraid. Ben watched, letting the boy flounder in his own misery. He let him nearly drown in it, before he tossed him the life rope.
“Maybe you have something of value,” he said slowly.
“I do?”
“You have the ability to sweat, and maybe we can talk Miss Maple into trading some landscaping for what you owe her. But she’ll have to agree, and you’ll have to do the work. What do you say, Miss Maple?”
“Oh,” she breathed, stunned, and then the look of wonder was there, just for a fraction of a second. “Oh, you have no idea. My yard is such a mess. I bought the house last year, after—” She stopped abruptly, but Ben knew. The house was the same as the car. Safe. Purchased to fill a life and to take the edge off a heartbreak.
He could see that as clearly in the shadows of her eyes as if she had spoken it out loud.
Move away, marine. But he didn’t.
“And you’re willing to do the work, Kyle?”
Kyle still seemed to be dazed by the fact he had something of value. “Yeah,” he said quickly, and then, in case his quick reply might be mistaken for enthusiasm, shrugged and added, “I guess.”
“No guessing,” Ben said. “Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“Good man.”
And as hard as he tried not to show it, Kyle could not hide the fact that small compliment pleased him.
An hour later they pulled up in front of Miss Beth Maple’s house. Even if the tiny red car had not been parked in the driveway, Ben would have known it was her house, and his suspicions around her ownership would have been confirmed. It was like a little cottage out of Snow White, an antidote for a heartache if he’d ever seen one.
It was the kind of place a woman bought when she’d decided to go it on her own, when she had decided she was creating her own space, and it was going to be safe and cozy, an impregnable female bastion of good taste and white furniture and breakable bric-a-brac.
“It looks like a dollhouse,” Kyle said, with male uneasiness that Ben approved of.
It was a tidy house, painted a pale-buttercup yellow, the gingerbread and trim around the windows painted deep midnight blue. Lace curtains blew, white and virginal as a damned wedding dress, out a bedroom window that was open to the September breezes.
It was a reminder, Ben thought, getting out of the truck, that she was not the kind of woman a man could play with, have a casual good time for a couple of weeks or a couple of months and then say goodbye with no hurt feelings on either side.
No, the house spoke of a woman who wanted things, and was afraid of the very things she wanted. Stability. A safe haven. A world that she could trust.
Ben wanted to just drive away from all the things she would be shocked he could see in that neat facade. But he had to do the responsible thing now, for his nephew.
The yard was as neglected as the house was tidy. Yellow climbing roses had gone wild over the arbor over the front gate, and it was nearly falling down under their weight. Inside the yard, the grass was cut, but dead in places, a shrub under the front window had gotten too big and blocked out the front of the house and probably the light to the front room.
Beth Maple came out her door. Ben tried not to stare.
She had gotten home before they had arrived, and she’d had time to change. She was barefoot, and had on a pair of canvas pants, rolled to the knee, with a drawstring waist. Somehow the casual slacks were every bit as sexy as the shorts she had worn the night she had joined them for ice cream, though he was not sure how that was possible, since the delicate lines of her legs were covered.
Imagination was a powerful thing. The casual T-shirt just barely covered her tummy. If he made her stretch up, say to show him those roses, he could catch a glimpse of her belly button.
What would the point of that be, since he had decided he was not playing the game with her? That he was going to try and fix something for her, not make it worse! Seeing her house had only cemented that decision.
“It’s awful, I know,” she said ruefully, looking at the yard. “I only bought the place a year ago. I’m afraid there was so much to do inside. Floors refinished, windows reglazed, some plumbing problems.” Her voice drifted away in embarrassment.
Ben saw she had an expectation of perfection for herself. She didn’t like him seeing a part of her world that was not totally under control.
“I don’t imagine a thousand dollars will go very far,” she said.
But Ben was going to make it go as far as it needed to go to wear Kyle out, to make him understand the value of a thousand dollars, and the price that had to be paid when you messed with someone else’s stuff.
And working at Miss Maple’s would be a relatively small price compared to what it could have been if she called the cops.
“You might be surprised how far your thousand dollars will go,” he said, and watched as Kyle fixated on the large side yard’s nicest feature, a huge mature sugar maple just starting to turn color. It reminded Ben of the tree in her classroom.
His nephew scrambled up the trunk and into the branches. Ben was relieved to see him do such a simple, ordinary, boy thing.
Beth watched Kyle for a moment, too, something in her eyes that Ben tried to interpret and could not, and then turned back to him.
“What should we fix?” she said briskly. “The arbor? The railing up the front stairs? The grass?”
Suddenly Ben did interpret the look in her eyes. It was wistfulness. She wanted to climb that tree! To be impulsive and free, hidden by the leaves, scrambling higher, looking down on the world from a secret perch. Was her affection for the tree the reason she had reproduced it in her classroom? Was she even aware of her own yearnings?
“How do you want this yard to make you feel?” he asked.
“Wow. You can make me feel something for a thousand dollars?”
For some reason his eyes skidded to her lips. He could make her feel something for free. But he wasn’t going to.
“I