Propositioned by the Playboy: Miss Maple and the Playboy / The Playboy Doctor's Marriage Proposal / The New Girl in Town
MISS MAPLE AND THE PLAYBOYPrimary-school teacher Beth Maple is cautious and conventional until she becomes besotted with stand-in dad Ben Anderson, who appears at the school gates. Being around him makes her feel truly alive. But Ben is dangerously out of her league!THE PLAYBOY DOCTOR’S MARRIAGE PROPOSALNurse Emily Tippett is not what doctor Linton Gregory needs. An expert at protecting his own heart, he prefers to date and move on. But Linton has seen the beauty Emily is trying to hide. He’s ready to go from playboy doctor to husband-to-be, but is Emily interested?THE NEW GIRL IN TOWNPhotographer Zoe Kozlowski is transforming her new home into a bed and breakfast. Luckily for her, architect – and eligible bachelor – Mason Sullivan is there to help. Except Mason’s interests are more than just professional…
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Propositioned by the Playboy
Miss Maple and the Playboy
Cara Colter
The Playboy Doctor’s Marriage Proposal
Fiona Lowe
The New Girl in Town
Brenda Harlen
Table of Contents
CARA COLTER lives on an acreage in British Columbia, with her partner, Rob, and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in the “Love and Laughter” category. Cara loves to hear from readers and you can contact her, or learn more about her, through her website: www.cara-colter.com.
To Chris Bourgeois,
aka riding buddy, drifter, equine therapist
“IT SUCKS to be you.”
Ben Anderson opened his mouth to protest and then closed it again. He contemplated how those few words summed up his life and decided the assessment was not without accuracy. Of course, the truth of those words was closely linked to the fact he had become guardian to the boy who had spoken them, his eleven-year-old nephew, Kyle.
It was a position Ben had held for precisely ten days, the most miserable of his life, which was saying quite a bit since he had spent several years in the Marine Corps, including an eight-month tour of duty in the land of sand and blood and heartbreak.
At least over there, Ben thought, there had been guidelines and rules, a rigid set of operating standards. Becoming Kyle’s guardian was like being dropped in the middle of a foreign country with no backup, no map, and only a rudimentary command of the language.
For instance, did he tell Kyle he was sick of the expression It sucks to be you or did he let it pass?
While contemplating his options, Ben studied the envelope in front of him. It was addressed to Mr. Ben Anderson and in careful brackets Kyle’s Guardian just so that where was no wriggling out of it. The handwriting was tidy and uptight and told Ben quite a bit about the writer, though Kyle had been filling him in for the past ten days.
Miss Maple, Kyle’s new teacher at his new school was old. And mean. Not to mention supremely ugly. “Mugly,” Kyle had said, which apparently meant more than ugly.
She was also unfair, shrill-voiced and the female reincarnation of Genghis Khan.
Kyle was a surprising expert on Genghis Khan. He’d informed Ben, in a rare chatty moment, that a quarter of the world’s population had Khan blood in them. He’d said it hopefully, but Ben doubted with Kyle’s red hair and freckles that his nephew was one of them.
Ben flipped over the envelope, looking for clues. “What does Miss Maple want?” he asked Kyle, not opening the letter.
“She wants to see you,” Kyle said, and then repeated, “It sucks to be you.”
Then he marched out of his uncle’s kitchen as if the fact that his old, mean and ugly teacher wanted to see his uncle had not a single thing to do with him.
Ben thought the responsible thing to do would be to call his nephew back and discuss the whole “it sucks” thing. But fresh to the concept of being responsible for anyone other than himself, Ben wasn’t quite sure what the right thing to do was with Kyle. His nephew had the slouch and street-hardened eyes of a seasoned con, but just below that was a fragility that made Ben debate whether the Marine Corps approach was going to be helpful or damaging.
And God knew he didn’t want to do anymore damage. Because the hard truth was if it sucked to be someone in this world, that someone was Kyle O. Anderson.
Ben’s parents had been killed in a car accident when he was seventeen. He’d been too old to go into the “system” and too young to look after his sister, who had been fourteen at the time. Ben went to the marines, Carly went to foster care. Ben was well aware that he had gotten the better deal.
By the time she’d been fifteen, Carly had been a boiling cauldron of pain, sixteen she was wild, seventeen she was pregnant, not that that had cured either the pain or the wildness.
She had dragged Kyle through broken relationships and down-and-out neighborhoods. When Ben had been overseas and helpless to do a damn thing about it, she and Kyle had gone through a homeless phase. But even after he’d come back stateside, Ben’s efforts to try and help her and his nephew had been rebuffed. Carly saw her brother’s joining up as leaving her, and she never forgave him.
But now, only twenty-eight, Carly was dying of too much heartbreak and hard living.
And Ben found himself faced with a tough choice. Except for Carly, his life was in as close to perfect a place as it had ever been. Ben owned his own business, the Garden of Weedin’. He’d found a niche market, building outdoor rooms in the yards of the upscale satellite communities that circled the older, grittier city of Morehaven, New York.
