LITMIR.BIZ

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would guess she had lived a sheltered life.

      He followed her around to the passenger side, looked where she pointed. In smaller letters, lower case, was scratched deep into that candy-apple red paint “it sucks to be you.”

      As if Kyle wasn’t the prime suspect anyway, he might as well have signed his handiwork with his own name.

      Ben glanced at Beth Maple again. The teacher was looking distressed and pale, as if she was hanging on by a thread and the slightest thing would make her burst into tears.

      Which was something Ben Anderson did not want to see at all. The wedding thoughts and the question were about as much stress as he wanted for one day. A woman like that, in tears, could be his undoing. It could make a man feel all big and strong and protective. He didn’t want to feel like that. He was as unsuited to the role of riding in on his charger to rescue the damsel in distress as he was to the role of standing at the top of that aisle, waiting…

      And reacting to tears moved a man toward emotional involvement, and as challenging as he found the prim schoolteacher, he wanted to play with her, that delicious wonderful exhilarating man/woman game where you parted with a kiss and no hard feelings when it was all over.

      He did not want to play the game that ended with white dresses, no matter how lovely that vision might be.

      He slid a look at her and wondered when he had become so imaginative. Today she was wearing a white sweater and a black skirt and a lavender blouse with lace on it.

      Not an outfit that should make a man think of weddings or virginity. Or of bubble baths or swimming in dark ocean waters. At all.

      But that is where his unruly male mind went nonetheless.

      Her hair was still wet from the class trip, and he wondered what she had worn at the pool. A one-piece, he decided. Matching shorts, that she probably hadn’t taken off. Not what she would wear for a midnight swim with him.

      He had the sudden, disturbing thought that it might not be exactly ethical to play with Miss Maple. She wasn’t the kind of woman who understood the rules he played by. The thought was disturbing because he did not think thoughts like that. She was an adult. He was an adult. Couldn’t they just dance around each other a bit and see where it went?

      No. It was a whisper. His conscience? Or maybe his bachelor survival instincts. Beware of women who make you think of weddings.

      Funny, that of all the women he had gone out with, she, the least threatening, and certainly the least sexy, would be the one who would make him feel as if he needed to be the most wary, the most on guard. Because she had a sneaky kind of sexiness that crept up on you, instead of the kind that hit you over the head.

      He slid her another look. No. Not the least sexy. Not at all. No, that wasn’t quite it. She wasn’t overtly sexy. Sneaky sexy in this kind of understated virginal way that could set his blood on fire. If he let it. Which he wasn’t going to. He had set his formidable will and sense of discipline against greater obstacles than her.

      He turned his focus to his nephew, a welcome diversion, even in these uncomfortable circumstances.

      Kyle was also standing off to the side of the car, looking into the distance, as if all this kafuffle had nothing to do with him. He looked pale to Ben, his freckles standing out against the white of his skin. He met his uncle’s accusing gaze with nothing even resembling remorse.

      But it wasn’t quite belligerence, either. Amazingly it reminded Ben of the look on young soldiers’ faces when they were scared to death to do something but did what they had to do anyway.

      There was a weird kind of bravery in what Kyle had done.

      Between her near tears and Kyle’s attitude, Ben’s happiness was dissipating more rapidly than a snowball in August.

      “I love this car,” Beth said sadly.

      And Ben could tell it was true. He could tell by the sparkle shine on the wax, and the buffed white of the convertible top. He could tell by the way her fingers trembled on the scratch marks that she had been hurt and deeply.

      A man allergic to love, he should have approved of her affection for the car. Why did it seem like a waste to him? Why would a woman like that waste her love on what really was just a hunk of metal and moving parts?

      Because it was safe. It was a startling and totally unwanted insight into her. He slid her a look. Ah, yes, he should have seen it before.

      The kind of woman who could be least trusted with the kind of man he was. He liked things light and lively and superficial, and he could see, in this moment of vulnerability, that she had already been scarred by someone. Heartbroken. Bruised.

      Along with the uncontrolled direction of his own thoughts, it was a back-off insight if he had ever had one. But instead of wanting to back off, he felt a strange desire to fix it. He felt even more like he wanted to see that look on her face again that he had seen when he had told her about swimming in the dark, a look of yearning, of wonder.

      “I don’t understand,” Beth said to Kyle, struggling for composure. “Why would you do this to me? I’ve been good to you, haven’t I?”

      Kyle didn’t look at her. “What makes you think I did it?” he tried for uncaring, but his voice wavered. “Are you going to get DNA from a scratch mark? It could have been Casper Hearn. He hates me. He would try and make it look like me.”

      Beth had the bad judgment to look doubtful.

      But Ben knew now was the wrong time to let his bewilderment at Kyle’s strange bravery, or sympathy for Kyle’s past, in any way temper his reaction to this. It was vandalism, and no matter what had motivated it, it couldn’t be tolerated or let go. It would be so much easier to let it go, to excuse it in some way, so that he didn’t have to tangle any further with a woman who made him think renegade thoughts of weddings and virginity.

      But he couldn’t. This kid had been entrusted to him, and now he had to do the right thing. Every single time. They had tried Beth’s plan, her way, but they didn’t have time to fool with this any longer, to experiment with the plan that would work for Kyle.

      The damage to Beth’s car was a terrible movement in the wrong direction for Kyle. If Ben let this slide, how long until the downward spiral of anger and bitterness could not be stopped? It seemed to him he had been here before, watched helplessly and from a distance, as a young person, Carly, had been lost to the swirling vortex of her own negative emotion.

      “Kyle,” he said sternly. “Stop it. I know it was you.”

      Beth looked as if she might be going to protest that they didn’t have any proof, but Ben silenced her with a faintly lifted finger.

      “I don’t know why you did it,” he continued, “and I don’t want to hear excuses for the inexcusable. I do know Miss Maple didn’t deserve it. And neither did I. Man up.”

      Something about those words man up hit Kyle. Ben could see them register in his eyes. He was being asked to be more, instead of less. Everything was going to be so much harder if Kyle made the wrong decision right now.

      But he didn’t. After a brief struggle, he turned to his teacher. He said quietly, “I’m sorry.” The quaver in his voice worsened.

      “But why?” she asked, and her voice was quavering, too.

      Kyle shrugged, toed the ground with his sneaker, glanced at his uncle with a look so transparent and beseeching Ben thought his heart would break.

      Care about me, anyway. Please.

      And Ben planned to. But he was so aware of the minefield he was trying to cross.

      The wrong kind of caring at this turning point in Kyle’s life could destroy him.

      Funny. Ben was allergic to that word love. He never used it. And yet when he looked at his nephew, troubled, so very young, so needy, he knew

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