Propositioned by the Playboy. Cara Colter

have thought, He’s out of my league. Or What would a guy like this ever see in me?

      But the new Beth had played with him, had done crosswords and eaten pizza with her hands and held a hammer and defied him by sitting way out on the branch of a tree. She liked being with him, and she was pretty sure he liked being with her, too.

      “Do you want to kiss me again?” she asked, thrilled at her boldness.

      “Miss Maple, do you know what you’re playing with?”

      “Oh, I think I do, Mr. Anderson. Look at me. Have you ever seen a woman more ready to fly?”

      He hesitated, momentarily caught, and then he leaned toward her, and she saw his nostrils flare as he caught the scent of her. His eyes closed, and he came closer.

      “Beth,” he said, and her name on his lips right before he kissed her sounded exactly as she had known it would, like a benediction.

      His lips touched hers, as light as a dragonfly wing. And she touched his back, felt again that delicious sense of coming home, of knowing truth about someone that was so deep it could never be denied.

      But then the lightness of the kiss intensified. He took her lips, and she felt his hunger and his urgency, the pure male desire of him.

      It occurred to her maybe she didn’t know what she was playing with, at all, but the thought was only fleeting, chased away by intensity of feeling such as she had never known.

      This was not a picket fence kind of kiss.

      It was the kiss of a warrior. The claim. It was fierce and it was demanding, and she knew another truth.

      A man like this would take all a woman had to offer. She would have to be as deep and as intense, every bit as strong as he was. With a man like this there would be few quiet moments in the safety of the valleys.

      He would take you to the peaks: emotional highs that were as exhilarating as they were terrifying and dangerous.

      You would go higher than you had ever been before.

      And you could fall further than you had ever fallen.

      Unless you could fly. And hadn’t she just asked that of him, if he had ever seen a woman more ready to fly?

      Only, now that she was here, standing on the precipice of flight or falling, she was not sure she could fly at all.

      Was she strong enough? Hadn’t she broken a wing?

      “Gross.”

      Ben pulled away from her as if he had been snapped back on a bungee cord. Neither of them had expected Kyle’s solo flight be quite so brief.

      But there he was, sitting on his bike, glaring at them, looking pale and accusing. Ben jumped up, reached back for her and pulled her to her feet, put her behind him as if he was protecting her from the look on his nephew’s face.

      “It wasn’t gross,” he said evenly, and something in the warrior cast of his face warned Kyle not to go further with his commentary, and Kyle didn’t.

      Still, Beth could clearly see that Ben either regretted the kiss or regretted getting caught, and it was probably some combination of the two. Clearly, unlike Kyle’s bike ride, her flight was not going to be solo. And flying with someone who had doubts would be catastrophic. If the choice would be hers to make at all!

      “There are some swans on the river down there,” Kyle said, obviously sharing his uncle’s eagerness to move away from that kiss. “I wanted you two to see them. They’re too pretty to see by yourself.”

      And in that she heard wariness and longing, as if Kyle was showing them all how they felt about this relationship.

      There were things too pretty about life to experience it all by yourself.

      But trusting another person to share them with you was the scariest journey of all. Things could get wrecked by following a simple thing like a kiss to the mountaintop where it wanted to go.

      It did feel like you could fly. But realistically, you could fall just as easily.

      Kyle was only eleven and he already knew that.

      Beth felt her first moment of fear since she had adopted the new her. Ben studiously ignored her as he got back on his bike and followed his nephew down the trail. She followed, even though part of her wanted to ride away from them, back home, to her nice safe place.

      Funny it would be swans she thought, gazing at them moments later, the absolute beauty of jet black faces and gracefully curving white necks.

      Funny they would be swans when she could feel herself beginning the transformation from ugly duckling. It was a transformation that was unsettling and uncertain.

      And being unsettled and uncertain were the two things Beth Maple hated the most.

       The Top-Secret Diary of Kyle O. Anderson

      When I came down that bike path and saw my uncle and Miss Maple kissing, I felt sick to my stomach. I’ve seen my mom do this. Along comes the kissing part, and she’s looking for a place to put me where no one will know I’m around.

      So, I waited. I thought, my uncle will give me ten bucks and tell me to go get some more ice cream, but he didn’t.

      We went and looked at the swans and then we went back to Miss Maple’s house and worked on the tree house some more. They didn’t touch each other or kiss in front of me.

      Miss Maple gave me the bike to take home, and my uncle and I went riding again after supper.

      It’s easy to ride a bike. I asked him if it was just as easy to swim and to learn to skate and he said a man could do anything he set his mind to.

      As if he thinks of me as a man.

      “Is there anything you’re scared of?” I asked him.

      And he didn’t say anything for a long time. And then he said, “There’s something everyone is scared of.”

      But he didn’t tell me what it was, and you know what? I didn’t want to know, because I bet whatever he’s scared of is really, really bad, worse than Genghis Khan being at the gate and telling you to surrender or else.

      I wish my uncle Ben wasn’t afraid of anything, because it’s been really easy, working on Miss Maple’s tree house, and eating pizza and ice cream, and going out with Mary Kay to the planetarium, to think maybe there is a place where I can feel safe and maybe I’ve found it.

      Ha, ha. It’s always when you think you have something that it gets taken away. Always.