the older, grittier city of Morehaven, New York.
A year ago he’d invested in his own house, which he’d bought brand-new in the well-to-do town of Cranberry Corners, a community that supported his business and was a thirty-minute drive and a whole world away from the mean streets of the inner city that Kyle and Carly had called home.
Ben’s personal specialty was in “hardscaping,” which was planning and putting in the permanent structures like decks, patios, fireplaces and outdoor kitchens that made the backyards of Cranberry Corners residents superposh. It was devilishly hard work, which suited him to a T because he was high energy and liked being in good shape. The business had taken off beyond his wildest dreams.
Ben also enjoyed a tight network of buddies, some of whom he’d gone to high school with and who enjoyed success and the single lifestyle as much as he did.
Did he disrupt all that and take sucks-to-be-him Kyle O. Anderson, with his elephant-size chip on his shoulder, or surrender him to the same system that had wrecked Carly?
Since Ben considered himself to be a typical male animal, self-centered, insensitive, superficial—and darned proud of it—he astonished himself by not feeling as if it was a choice at all. He felt as if sometimes a man had to do what a man had to do, and for him that meant taking his nephew.
Not that either his nephew or his sister seemed very appreciative.
Not that that was why he had done it.
Ben opened the tidy envelope from Miss Maple. He read that Kyle’s behavior was disrupting her class, and that she needed to meet with him urgently.
Ben decided if Miss Maple had a plan for dealing with Kyle’s behavior, he was all for it. Having decided against the drill-sergeant method, since it was untested on eleven-year-olds who were facing personal tragedy, Ben was at a loss about how to deal with the mouthiness, the surliness, the belligerence of his eleven-year-old nephew. There always seemed to be an undertow of hostility from Kyle.
Unfortunately, the note said he was supposed to meet with the much maligned Miss Maple fifteen minutes ago.
“Kyle?” he called down the hallway. There was no answer, and Ben went down the hall to Kyle’s room.
He stood in the doorway for a moment. The room used to be Ben’s home gym, complete with a wall-mounted TV and a stereo system with surround-sound speakers. Now all his workout stuff was in the basement, though he’d left the TV and stereo for Kyle.
Kyle was sprawled on the unmade bed. Highly visible were the cowboy sheets Ben had bought for him, along with the new twin-size bed, when he’d confirmed his nephew was coming to stay for good.
Kyle, naturally, had glared at the sheets and proclaimed them “for babies.” Ben could see his point, as at the moment he was listening to ominous-sounding music in a foreign language and flipping the pages on a book with a title that looked like it might be Greek.
“When did your teacher give you this note for me?”
Kyle shrugged with colossal indifference.
“Not today?” Ben guessed dryly.
“Not today,” Kyle agreed.
Ben glanced at his watch and sighed. “Let’s go see Miss Maple,” he said. “We’re late.”
“Miss Maple hates tardiness,” Kyle said, obviously mimicking his teacher’s screechy voice. He sounded quite pleased with himself that he had managed to get Ben in trouble with the teacher before they had even met.
Ben felt uneasily like a warrior going into the unexpected as he held open the door of Cranberry Corners Elementary School, and then followed Kyle down the highly polished floor of a long hallway. Was he going into battle, or negotiations? Strange thoughts for a man traveling down hallways lined with cheerful drawings of smiling suns and stick people walking dogs.
He stopped, just outside the doorway of the class Kyle pointed to, and frowned at what he saw inside. A woman sat at a lonely desk at the front of the class, mellow September sunshine cascading over her slender shoulders.
“That can’t be Miss Maple.”
Kyle peered past him. “That’s her, all right.”
It was because he’d been expecting something so radically different that the first sight of Miss Maple made Ben feel as if he had laid down his weapons somewhere. He felt completely disarmed by the fact that it was more than evident that not one thing Kyle had said about her was true. Or at least not the “mugly” or “old” part. He’d have to wait and see about the “mean.” And the screechy voice.
There was something disarming about the classroom, too. A huge papier-mâché tree sprouted in one corner, the branches spreading across the ceiling, dripping with brightly colored fall leaves with kids’ names on them. The wall contained charts full of shining stars, artwork, reprints of good paintings. This was the space of someone who loved what she did. From Kyle’s attitude, Ben had pictured something grimmer and more prisonlike for Miss Maple’s lair.
But then, Miss Maple was not the Miss Maple he had imagined, either, and Ben struggled to readjust to the picture in front of him. In fact, the teacher was young, not more than twenty-five. She was concentrating on something on her desk, and her features were fine and flawless, her skin was beautiful, faintly sun-kissed, totally unlined. Her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, was the exact dark golden color of the wildflower honey that Ben kept in a glass jar on his countertop.
Of course, she could still be mean. Ben had known plenty of gorgeous women who were mean straight through. You could tell by their eyes, diamond flint and ice.
But then she lifted her eyes, and he was momentarily lost in their softness and their color, an astounding mix of jade and aqua and copper.
Nothing mean in those eyes, he decided, and tried out his best easygoing boy-next-door grin on her.
An unexpected thing happened. She frowned. It didn’t make her look mean precisely, but he understood perfectly how an eleven-year-old boy could be intimidated by her.
“Hello,” she said, “I think you must be lost.” Her voice wasn’t screechy at all. It was quite amazing, with the bell-like tone of a church bell ringing on a cold, pure morning. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms over her chest, as if she had suddenly reached the alarming conclusion she was alone in this end of the building.
Women weren’t generally alarmed by him, but the fact she was here at five in the evening probably meant she was sheltered in some way. The atmosphere in the classroom really was a testament to no life. How long did it take to make a tree like that? She’d probably been in here all summer, cloistered away, working on it!
More’s the pity, since Ben could clearly see her chest was delicately and deliciously curved, though it occurred to him it was probably some kind of sin to notice that about the grade-five teacher, and the fact that he had noticed probably justified the alarm in her eyes.
Or maybe that was nuns a man was not supposed to think manlike thoughts about.
Which she was dressed like, not that he was an expert on how nuns dressed, but he suspected just like that: high-buttoned blouse in pristine white, frumpy sweater in forgettable beige.
He
