Low maintenance. He began a list in his head. But when he thought of low maintenance, he wasn’t really thinking about her yard. He was thinking about her. He bet she would be one of those low-maintenance girls. She wouldn’t need expensive gifts or jewelry or tickets to the best show in town to make her happy.
A picnic blanket. A basket with fried chicken. A bottle of something sparkly, not necessarily wine.
Why did Beth Maple do this to him? Conjure up pictures of things he would be just as happy not thinking about?
Still what people wanted in their yards told him a great deal about them. It was possible that she just didn’t know what was available, what was current in outdoor living spaces.
“You know,” he said carefully, “lots of people now are making the yard their entertainment area. Outdoor spaces are being converted into outdoor rooms: kitchens with sinks and fridges, BBQ’s and bars. Hardscaping is my specialty. Last week I did an outdoor fireplace, copper-faced, and patio where you could easily entertain forty or fifty people.”
“Hardscaping?” she said. “I’ve never heard that term.”
“It means all the permanent parts of the yard, so walkways and patios, canopies, privacy fences or enclosures, ponds. Basically anything that’s made out of wood, concrete, brick or stone. I have other people do the greenscaping and the styling.”
“Styling?”
“You know. Weather-resistant furniture. Outdoor carpeting.”
“Obviously that isn’t on a thousand-dollar budget.”
“If there was no budget, what would you do?” he asked, having failed to find out how she felt about the posh entertainment area in her backyard.
She snorted. “Why even go there?”
“Landscaping doesn’t have to be done all at once. I like to give people a master plan, and then they can do it in sections. Each bit of work puts a building block in place for the next part of the plan. A good yard can take five years to make happen.” He smiled, “And a really good yard is a lifetime project.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “The plan for a yard, alone, is probably worth more than what Kyle owes me.”
“Well, if you don’t tell him, I won’t. He has nothing to give you right now, except his ability to work. If I take that away from him he has nothing at all.”
She nodded, a kind of surrender. Definitely an agreement.
“I want him to have blisters on his hands, and that little ache between his shoulder blades from working in this yard.”
“I’m not accepting charity from you,” she said, stubbornly.
“And I’m not offering any. You wanted a plan for my nephew, and yours, so far, doesn’t seem to be working that well. Now it’s my turn. There has to be a price to be paid for what he did to your car, and it has to be substantial. No more rewards for feeding his frog.”
“How long are you going to make him work for me?”
“Hopefully until he’s eighteen,” Ben said dryly. “So, tell me how you’d like to spend time in your yard.”
“To be truthful the whole entertainment thing, like an outdoor kitchen and fireplace isn’t really me. I mean, it sounds lovely, I’m sure you make wonderful yards for people, but I really do love the idea of simple things out here. A hammock. Lemonade. Book. I’d want a place that felt peaceful. Where you could curl up with a good book on a hot afternoon and listen to water running and birds singing, and glance up every now and then to see butterflies.”
It wasn’t fair, really. People did not know how easy it was to see their souls. Did he need to know this about her?
That in a world gone wild with bigger and better and more, in a world where materialism was everything, she somehow wanted the things money could not buy.
The miracle of butterfly wings, the song of birds, the sound of water.
She wanted a quiet place.
He imagined her bare feet in lush grass and was nearly blinded with a sense of desire. He was getting sicker by the minute. Now she didn’t even need to be eating ice cream for him to be entertaining evil male thoughts.
He saw her gaze move to Kyle in the tree again, wistful, and suddenly he was struck by what he wanted to do for her.
“What would you think about a tree house?” he said softly. And saw it. A flash of that look he had glimpsed twice, and now longed for. Wonder. Hope. Curiosity.
“A tree house?” she breathed. “Really?”
“Not a kid’s tree house,” he said, finding it taking shape in his mind as he looked at the tree, “an adult retreat. I could build a staircase that wound around the trunk of that tree, onto a platform in the branches. We could put a hammock up there and a table to hold the lemonade.”
He thought he would build her a place where the birds could sing sweetly, so close she could touch them. He would put a container garden up there, full of the flowers that attracted butterflies. Below the tree, a simple water feature. She could stand at the rail and look down on it; she would be able to hear the water from her hammock.
“That sounds like way too much,” she said, but her protest was weak, overridden by the wonder in her eyes as she gazed at that tree, beginning to see the possibility.
To see her at school, prim and tidy, a person would never guess how her eyes would light up at the thought of her own tree house. But Ben had always known, from the first moment, that she had a secret side to her. The tree in her classroom had held the seeds of this moment.
He was not sure it was wise to uncover it. And he was also not sure if he could stop himself, which was an amazing thought in itself since he considered self-discipline one of his stronger traits.
“We’ll take it one step at a time.” That way he could back off if he needed to. But then he heard himself committing to a little more, knowing he could not leave this project until he saw the light in her eyes reach full fruition. He did a rough calculation in his head. “We’ll come every day for two weeks after school. We’ll see if he’s learned what he needs to learn by then.”
She turned her attention from the tree and he found himself under the gaze of those amazing eyes. He knew, suddenly, he was not the only one who saw things that others did not see.
“There are a lot of ways to be a teacher, aren’t there, Ben?”
She said it softly, as if she admired something about him. In anyone else, that would be the flirt, the invitation to start playing the game with a little more intensity, to pick up the tempo.
But from her it was a compliment, straight from her heart. And it went like an arrow to his, and penetrated something he had thought was totally protected in armor.
“Thanks,” he said, softly. “We’ll be here tomorrow, right after school.” He turned and called his nephew.
They watched as he scrambled out of the tree.
“We’re going to come, starting tomorrow after school,” Ben told him. “We’re going to build Miss Maple a tree house.”
Kyle’s eyes went round. “A tree house?” For the first time since they had laughed together about Casper’s underwear, his defensive shield came down. “Awesome,” he breathed.
“Awesome,” she agreed.
Kyle actually smiled. A real smile. So genuine, and so revealing about who Kyle really was that it nearly hurt Ben’s eyes. But then Kyle caught himself and frowned, as if he realized he had revealed way too much about himself.
Ben turned to go, thinking maybe