LITMIR.BIZ

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happening in this yard from the first moment he had said he would build a tree house for her.

      She could have stayed in that wordless place of connection for a long time. But his reaction was almost the opposite of hers.

      He took his hand away as if he could snatch back the feeling that had just passed between them. He smiled at her, that devil-may-care smile, and she realized a smile, even a sexy one—or maybe especially a sexy one—could be a mask.

      “I’m going to kiss you one day,” he promised.

      Was that a mask, too? A way of not feeling? Of not connecting on a real level? She looked at his lips.

      The terrible truth was she was dying to be kissed by him.

      But not like that. Not as part of a pretext, a diversion, a way to stop things from hurting.

      “Actually, you’re not,” she said, and was pleased by his startled expression, as if no one had ever refused him a kiss before.

      Probably no one had. And probably she was going to regret it tonight. Today. Seconds from now.

      Before that weakness settled in, she got up and gathered up the tray and headed for the house. She pulled open the screen door with her toe and looked over her shoulder.

      “You know,” she called back to him, “kissing can’t solve your problems. They will still be there after you unlock lips.”

      He sat there, looking as if a bomb had hit him, and then got up and stalked across the yard, stood at the bottom of her steps, glaring up at her.

      “How would you know what kissing solves or doesn’t solve?” he asked her darkly.

      “What are you saying? That I look like I’ve never been kissed?”

      “As a matter of fact, you don’t look like any kind of an expert on the subject!”

      That exquisite moment when she had felt so connected to him was gone. Completely. Absolutely. The oasis was an illusion, after all.

      “You pompous, full-of-yourself Neanderthal,” she sputtered.

      “Don’t call me names over five syllables.”

      “It was four! But just in case you didn’t get it, it’s the long version of caveman.”

      He looked like he was going to come up the stairs and tangle those strong, capable hands in her hair, and kiss her just to prove his point. Or hers. That he was a caveman.

      But his point would be stronger; she would probably be such a helpless ninny under his gorgeous lips, just like a thousand helpless ninnies before her, that she would totally forget he was a caveman. Or forgive him for it. Or find it enchanting.

      She slid inside the door, let it slap shut behind her and then turned, reached out with her little finger from under the tray and latched it.

      “Did you just lock the door?” he asked, stunned.

      She said nothing, just stood looking at him through the screen.

      “What? Do you think I’d break down the door to kiss you?”

      “It wouldn’t be the first time,” she said. Pique made her say it. Not that it was a complete lie. She had spent most of junior high hiding from the overly amorous affections of Harley Houston. Once he had leaped out of a coat closet at her, with his lips all puckered and ready. That was certainly close enough to breaking down a door.

      Ben regarded her with ill-concealed temper. “It probably would.”

      “Look,” she said coolly, “I don’t understand, if you think I’m so incapable of inspiring great passion, why you’re the one, who out of the blue, with no provocation at all on my part, said you would kiss me someday. As if it wasn’t necessary for me to feel something first. Or you. As if you can just do that kind of thing because you feel like it and without the participation of the other person.”

      “Believe me, if I ever kissed you, you’d participate.”

      “I wouldn’t,” she said stubbornly, though she didn’t want to be put to the test. And did want to be put to the test. Which most certainly meant she would fail any kind of participation test that involved his lips. Still, there was no sense feeding his already oversize ego. He was impossible. And aggravating. Irritating.

      She had known he would be from the first time he had come into her classroom. And instead of letting good sense reign, what had she done?

      She had been swayed by the most superficial of things. By his enormous good looks and by his even greater charm. By the sound of laughter. By a tree house taking shape in her yard.

      She, Beth Maple, who really should have had so much more sense, had allowed their lives to tangle together! Given him her address, for God’s sake. Allowed him into her yard. Baked him cookies. Fed him milk and lemonade.

      She had shamelessly watched him take off his shirt and allowed him to put his big mitt prints in her concrete! Which would be a constant and irritating reminder of the fact that, given a chance, she could make a greater fool of herself for this man than she had for Rock aka Ralph!

      She closed the inside door firmly, and locked it with as much noise as she could manage, too. But it wasn’t until she was slamming dishes into the dishwasher that she realized he had gotten exactly what he wanted, after all, and it had never really been about a kiss.

      He had been feeling something when he had told her his sister was going to die.

      Sadness. Vulnerability. Maybe even trust in Beth.

      And whether with a kiss or by starting an argument, he had managed to distance himself from his discomfort, move on.

      No sense feeling a little soft spot for him because of that. It was a warning. There was no future with a man who was so shut off from his emotional self, who was so frightened of it.

      When exactly had some sneaky little part of herself started contemplating some kind of future with that man?

      “Never,” she told herself later, as she watched him load up his tools and his nephew and drive away without saying goodbye, without even glancing at her windows. “I hope he never comes back,” she told herself.

      But when she wandered out in the yard and saw that the framework for the staircase was nearly completed, she knew he was coming back. If he was a quitter, he would have left right after the argument, and he hadn’t.

      The argument. She’d had her first argument with Ben Anderson.

      And as silly as it seemed, she knew that real people disagreed. They had arguments. It was not like her relationship with Rock, which had unfolded like the fantasy it had turned out to be. Full of love notes and tender promises, not a cross word or a disagreement, only the gentlest of chiding on her part when Rock had been compelled to cancel yet one more rendezvous with his myriad of creative excuses.

      “I’m probably not ready for real,” she decided out loud, peering up through the thick leaves to where the platform would be.

      But it was like being ready to be kissed by him. He didn’t care if she was ready. If she wasn’t very careful, he was just going to take her by storm whether she was ready or not.

      And just like a storm, her life would be left in a wreckage after he was done blowing through. That’s why storms of consequence had names. Hurricane Ben. Batten the hatches or evacuate?

      “You’re overreacting,” she scolded herself. But she bet a lot of people said that when there was a storm brewing on the horizon.

      To their peril.

CHAPTER FIVE

       The Top Secret Diary of Kyle O. Anderson

      I THINK Miss Maple and Uncle Ben had a fight. After she brought

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