Fiona Lowe – Propositioned by the Playboy: Miss Maple and the Playboy / The Playboy Doctor's Marriage Proposal / The New Girl in Town (страница 18)

He reminded himself they were unchaperoned. He was not even allowed to think anything that was vaguely erotic.

So, he concentrated on the crossword book. “A six-letter word for dumb?” he asked her, but spelled in his head B-e-n.

“Stupid?”

He scorned the pencil she handed him and picked up a pen off the table. “Nitwit.”

“You can’t fill it out in pen!” She didn’t look too happy about him touching her book while he was eating, either.

“We’re living dangerously,” he reminded her. “I’ll buy you a new book if I get pizza on it.”

“I wasn’t worried about my book!” she said huffily.

“Yes, you were. What’s a seven-letter word for hot spot?”

“Volcano? I wasn’t worried about the book.”

“Yes you were. Hell,” he said, pleased.

“Hell does not have seven letters!”

“Hellish, then,” he wrote it in, pressing hard on the pen so she wouldn’t get any ideas about erasing it later. “Eight-letter word for aggravation?”

“Anderson?” she said sweetly.

How did she count letters so darn fast? “Perfect,” he said approvingly, and wrote it in. “This is too easy for us. Next time the New York Times.”

Next time. Way to go, nitwit.

But somehow the evening did become easy. As they focused on the puzzle, she lost her shyness. She even was eating the pizza with relish. Her wall of reservation came down around her as she got into the spirit of wrecking the puzzle.

“Incognito,” she crowed.

“It doesn’t fit.”

Impatiently she took the pen from him, scowled at the puzzle and then wrote, “Inkono.”

“Miss Maple, you are getting the hang of this,” he said with approval. “That makes zuntkun down.”

“Zuntkun,” she said happily, “a seven-letter word for an exotic horned animal in Africa if I’m not mistaken.”

“Done,” he declared, half an hour later looking down at the mess of scribbles and crossed-out words and wrong words with complete satisfaction. So was most of the pizza. So was his control.

This close to her, he could smell lavender and vanilla over the lingering scent of pizza. He liked the laughter in her eyes, and the crinkle on her nose. He decided to make both deepen. He ripped the puzzle out of the book.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s a little something on you. From now on I have this to show your class how their teacher spells incognito in a pinch. If you make me happy, I’ll never have to use it.”

“How would I make you happy?” she asked warily.

“Use your imagination. Any woman who can spell incognito like that, and who can invent horned beasts in Africa, has to have a pretty good imagination.”

“I have a better idea. Just give it back.”

“I’m not one of your fifth-graders. I don’t have to do things just because you say so. You come get it,” he teased, and at the look on her face he pushed back his chair.

She moved toward him. “Give it!”

“Don’t make me run,” he said. “You have highly breakable bric-a-brac.”

She lunged at him. He turned and ran, holding the puzzle out in front of him. She chased him out of the kitchen and through the living room, around the coffee table and over the couch. The vases on the floor wobbled as he thundered by, but did not break.

She backed him into a corner up the hallway, by her open bedroom door. Decorated in many, many shades of virginal white. Unless he was going to mow her over, or move into her bedroom, which was out of the question, he was trapped. And delightfully so.

“Surrender,” she demanded, holding out her hand.

“Surrender? As in nine-letter word for give up? Not in the marine vocabulary.”

She made a snatch for it.

He held the puzzle over his head. “Come and get it,” he said, and laughed when she leaped ineffectually at him.

Her face was glowing. She looked pretty and uninhibited and ferociously determined to have her own way. After several leaps, she tried to climb up him.

With her sock feet on top of his sock feet and her full length pressed against him, she tried to leverage herself for the climb up him. With one arm around his neck, and one toe on his knee, she reached for the paper, laughing breathlessly, her nose as crinkled as a bunny’s.

She suddenly realized what she was doing. He wondered if it felt as good for her as it did for him. She went very still.

And then backed off from him so fast she nearly fell over. He resisted the impulse to steady her.

“Hmm,” he said quietly. “That made me happy. Your puzzle is safe with me, for now. Unfortunately, I have to go.” He looked at his watch. “Kyle will be home soon. I don’t want him to come into an empty house. I think there’s been a little too much of that in his life.”

“You’re a good man, Ben Anderson,” she said.

He felt the mood changing, softening, moving back to where it had been this afternoon when she had laid her hand on his arm and he had felt oddly undone by it.

So he waggled the puzzle at her, eager to keep it light. Maybe even hoping to tempt her to try and climb up him one more time to retrieve it.

“I’m not really a good man,” he said. “I have the puzzle, and I’m not afraid to use this. Don’t forget.”

“I’ll see you to the door,” she said, not lured in, and with ridiculous formality, given that she had just tried to climb him like a tree. She preceded him to it, held it open.

“Thank you for the pizza.” Again the formal note was in her voice.

“You’re welcome.”

He stood there for a minute, looking at her. Don’t do it, he told himself. She wasn’t ready to have her world rattled. She wasn’t ready for a man like him. There was no sense complicating things between them.

But, as it turned out, she made the choice, not him. Just as he turned to go out the door, he felt her hand, featherlight, on his shoulder. He turned back, and it was she who stood on her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his.

It was like tasting cool, clean water after years of drinking water gone brackish. It was innocence, in a world of cynicism. It was beauty in a world that had been ugly. It was a glimpse of a place he had never been.

So the truth was not that she was not ready for a man like him. The truth was that he was not ready for a woman like her.

Who would require so much of him. Who would require him to learn his whole world all over again. Who would require him to be so much more than he had ever been before.

“Well,” she said, stepping back from him, her eyes wide, as if she could not believe her own audacity, “I’m glad we addressed the elephant.”

But he wasn’t so sure. The elephant had been sleeping contentedly. Now that they had “addressed” it, they couldn’t go back to where they had been before. Now that they had “addressed” it, it was going to be hungry.

Now that they’d addressed it, her lips were going to be more an issue for him, not less.

The elephant was now taking up the whole room instead of just a corner in the shadows, swaying sleepily on its feet, not being too obtrusive at all.

She leaned toward him again, and he held his breath. If she kissed him again, he was not going to be responsible for what happened next. Didn’t she know the first thing about men?

But then she snatched the paper he’d forgotten all about from his hand, and laughed gleefully. Maybe she knew more about men than she had let on. She had certainly known how to collapse his defenses completely.

“Good night, Ben,” she said sweetly.

And all the way home he brooded about whether she had just kissed him to get her hands on that damned puzzle. He was still brooding about it when Kyle came through the front door.

He stopped brooding and stared at his nephew. Kyle was shining.

“Uncle Ben,” Kyle said breathlessly. “What does it mean when a girl kisses you?” And then, without waiting for an answer, “I guess she likes you a lot, huh?”

Ben contemplated that for a minute, and then said, “I guess she does.” Either that or she wants something, like her puzzle back.