But what choice did he have? He had to finish building her tree house. And Kyle was going to be in her class for another nine months or so.
Excuses. Because it really did seem like his life the way it had been before she came along was not what he wanted anymore.
He’d been lonely. He knew that now.
She had been right. He needed a friend. He needed a friend just like her. As long as they didn’t go and wreck it all by changing it to something else.
Feeling as if he had just navigated a minefield where he had managed, just barely, not to get himself blown to smithereens, he retreated to his truck and drove home. When they got in the house, Kyle announced he was going to do his homework.
Ben decided it would be counterproductive to remind Kyle he didn’t do homework. Instead he contemplated that development, and allowed himself to feel a moment’s satisfaction about how his plan was working the miracle that hers had not. But maybe it was bike riding that had worked the miracle, and that had been her idea. Turned into a project in cooperation. An outing with a family feeling to it.
Maybe that was at the heart of the miracle. That feeling of family. Ben’s wisdom in saying nay to the kisses was confirmed, though there was a sharp and undeniable tingle of regret that went with it every time he thought about it. Or her lips.
He was still contemplating that when the phone rang. Miss Maple’s personal number on his call display. He hadn’t even been away from the many and varied temptations of her for an hour! Once upon a time, he remembered he had hoped she would call him. But that was before he’d known how capable she was of shaking up his world.
Still, it was not reluctance he felt when he answered the phone, much as he knew it should be.
“I can call you now that we’re friends, right?” she asked. “It’s not against your rules, like kissing?”
He hoped she wasn’t going to mention kissing at every opportunity, because the whole idea was he didn’t want to think about it.
“Of course you can phone me at anytime,” he said foolishly. The pathetic truth was he couldn’t think of anything he’d like more than talking to her. And the phone was so safe. He didn’t even have to see her lips.
“You don’t see my calling you as being too forward? Bordering on wanton?”
“No,” he said sharply, trying to disguise how much he was liking this. “Are you amusing yourself at my expense?”
“Of course not. Actually, I called about Kyle, so this is definitely not wanton.”
“Definitely,” he agreed, disappointed that she had called about Kyle, even though he did appreciate her concern for his nephew’s well-being. Besides, what could be better? That was a nice and safe topic.
“He told me he was going to do his homework,” he whispered into the phone. It occurred to him there was no one else in the world who cared about that except her. It made him feel an unwanted nudge of tenderness for her. “Try not to make too big a fuss when he turns it in tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry, Ben, I’m not insulted that you think you have to tell me how to conduct myself in my classroom.”
“Don’t be so prickly.” So much for tenderness. Which was good, tender thoughts probably would lead directly back to lip thoughts.
“Don’t be so overbearing.”
Boy, he was glad he had decided against complicating things!
“I’m not overbearing,” he growled.
“Just far too used to calling the shots?”
“I run my own business!”
“You can’t run your personal life like your business.”
Had he actually been slightly happy to see her number on the call display? Why? She was bossy, opinionated and prickly. Who was she to tell him how to run his personal life? As far as he could tell, she didn’t have one.
But if he said that, he was probably going to end up on her doorstep with pizza, apologizing again. And that led to lips, too. Instead he said, “Was there a reason you called?”
“I’ve been thinking about Kyle not knowing how to swim,” she said, moving on quickly from the topic of his overbearingness, which he was glad about, even though he might have liked to talk about her prickliness a little more.
“It really bothers me,” she said.
And just like that they were beyond the prickliness to that other side of her, so soft it beckoned like a big feather bed on a cold winter’s night.
“Me, too,” Ben agreed, and then found himself adding, “It’s like he hasn’t had a childhood.”
“It’s never too late.”
“It isn’t?” he said skeptically.
“My mom and dad have an indoor pool. It would be a nice private place to introduce him to the water and give him a few pointers on swimming. Don’t you think a public pool might be too humiliating?”
But his mind was stuck on the “her mom and dad” part.
He did not like meeting his female companion’s parents. Of course, he had just finished making it clear to her she was not going to be his female companion in the way he generally had female companions. So why not?
It wasn’t until the next night, after school, at her parents’ very upscale house in the hills, that he realized why not.
Beth met them outside in the curved driveway and led them around to a separate pool building behind the main house, glassed in and spectacular. He was relieved to note there were no parents in sight.
She pointed him and Kyle to a place to change, spalike and luxurious, and moments later he was in the pool, testing the depth of the water for Kyle, who looked scrawny, goose-bumped and terrified of this new experience.
And then Beth emerged from her own change room. She shuffled up to the edge of the pool, drowning in a too-large pure-white thick terry cloth robe, and then, looking everywhere but at him, she took a deep breath and dropped the covering.
He really hadn’t needed to see a woman he had sworn off kissing in a bathing suit. He really hadn’t needed to see that at all. Because Beth Maple, out of her schoolmarm duds was unbelievable. Oh, he’d seen hints of this in the way she dressed at home, casually, but nothing could have prepared him for Beth Maple in the flesh.
Literally.
He wouldn’t have ever thought she was a bikini kind of gal. In fact, for the school outing he had guessed she would wear a one-piece with matching shorts, not removed. Wrong. Though, he had just enough wits about him to see that the shimmery copper-colored hanky she was wearing looked brand-new. It had never been at a school outing! Was she tormenting him, deliberately, with his choice to just be friends?
Surely not! There was nothing conniving about Miss Maple, was there?
Ha. She knew exactly the effect all those scantily covered curves would have on his resolve. Nobody was that innocent!
Proving her own boldness was making her at least as uncomfortable as it was him and that she had no experience with the fact that the kind of swimwear she was wearing was not actually designed for swimming, Beth dove headlong into the water. And came up with one arm crossed firmly across her chest, and the other tugging away at something he couldn’t see—but could clearly imagine—below the water.
“Problems?” he purred.
Nope, those little scraps of fabric were definitely not attire designed to get wet. At least her hair made her look like a drowned rat instead of a femme fatale making a play for his soul.
“No,”