by the tears, but he quickly masked his reaction.
“Big deal,” Ben said, with the perfect touch of casualness. Somehow, he was beside his nephew, his strong arm around those thin shoulders. “Riding a bike is not rocket science. I bet I can teach you to ride a bike in ten minutes.”
Beth knew if she lived to be 103, she would never forget this moment, Ben’s strength and calm giving Kyle a chance to regain his composure.
Ben met her eyes over Kyle’s head, and she realized the whole thing was tipping over for her. The look in his eyes: formidable strength mixed with incredible tenderness shook something in her to the very core.
It wasn’t about living dangerously.
It was about falling in love. But wasn’t that the most dangerous thing of all?
“Ten minutes?” Kyle croaked.
“Give or take,” Ben said.
Of course he couldn’t teach Kyle to ride a bike in ten minutes.
“Are you in?” Ben asked her.
It wasn’t really about teaching Kyle to ride a bike. It was about so much more. Going deeper out into unknown waters. Going higher up the treacherous mountain.
It was about deciding if she was brave enough to weave her life through the threads of his.
What were her options? Her life before him seemed suddenly like a barren place, for all that she had convinced herself it was satisfying. It had been without that mysterious element that gave life zing.
“I’m in,” she said. And she meant it. She was in. Totally surrendering. She’d never been a marine, anyway. It was perfectly honorable for her to give in to whatever surprises life had in store for her, to be totally open to what happened next.
It was like riding a bike. There was no doing it halfheartedly. You had to commit. And even if you ended up with some scrapes and bruises, wasn’t it worth it? Wasn’t riding a bike, full force, flat-out, as fast as you could go, like flying? But you couldn’t get there without risk.
They selected a bike for Kyle from her garage and took it out on the pavement in front of the house. Soon they were racing along beside him, Ben on one side, she on the other, breathless, shouting instructions and encouragement. Just as in life, they had to let go for him to get it. Kyle wobbled. Kyle fell. Kyle flew. They were so engrossed in the wonder of what was unfolding that no one noticed when ten minutes became an hour.
“I think we’re ready for the inaugural ride,” Ben finally said. “Let’s go to Friendly’s for ice cream.”
“Really?” Kyle breathed.
“Really?” she asked. Friendly’s was too far for a novice rider. There would be traffic and hills. Try out those brand-new skills in the real world?
Maybe there was a parallel to how she felt about Ben. Try it out in the real world, away from the safety of her yard and her world? She remembered last time she’d been at Friendly’s with Ben, too.
He’d gotten up abruptly and left her sitting there, by herself, with a half-eaten ice cream cone!
It reminded her he was complex. That embracing a new world involved a great deal of risk and many unknown factors.
But again she looked at her choices. Go back to what her life had been a few short weeks ago? Where reading an excellent essay full of potential and promise had been the thing that excited her? Or where finishing a really tough crossword had filled her with a sense of satisfaction? Or where building a papier-mâché tree for her classroom had felt like all the fulfillment she would ever need?
Her life was never going to be the same, no matter what she did.
So she might as well do it.
“Let’s go,” she said.
They rode their three bikes down to Friendly’s Ice Cream. And then, after eating their ice cream cones, instead of riding back to her place, they took the bike trail along the river and watched Kyle’s confidence grow. He was shooting out further and further ahead of them now, shouting with exuberance when they came to hills, racing up the other side, leaving them in his dust.
“You go ahead,” Ben said to him. “You’re wearing me out. Me and Miss Maple are going to do the old people thing and lie under this tree until you get back.”
There were miles of bike trails here and they watched him go.
“Are you sure he’s ready?” she asked, watching Kyle set off.
“Yup.”
“How?”
“Look at him. Have you ever seen a kid more ready to fly?”
They sat there, under the tree, enjoying the sunshine and the silence, the lazy drift of the river. They talked of small things: the tree house, the wonder of Friendly’s ice cream, bicycles and kids.
Beth was aware of a growing comfort between them. An ease as relaxed as the drift of the river. But just like the river, how smooth it looked was deceiving. A current, unseen but strong, was what kept the water moving.
And there was an unseen current between them, too. An awareness. She was so aware of the utter maleness of Ben Anderson. She had seen the way the women in the ice cream parlor looked at him, knew the body language of the women who jogged by on the bike path.
The old Beth would have been intimidated by that. The old Beth would 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.
