Straddling the Line - By Sarah M. Anderson Page 0,25

with terror at this exceptionally public display of—well, maybe not affection, but familiarity.

No matter how good Ben’s body felt against hers, this kind of touching was off-limits. Or it should be, anyway. What if people saw and, worse, what if they started making assumptions? What if this simple touch—okay, this not-so-simple touch—undid everything she’d worked so hard for?

Finally, her mouth opened. “Razor-thin? Margins?”

Lord.

Ben’s chest—strong and hard against her back—shook for the briefest of moments. He was laughing at her. “Yeah, well, the business operates on razor-thin margins. My personal margins are not nearly as sharp—or as skinny.”

His own money. He’d paid for all of this out of his own pocket. Her mouth went dry. Of course she’d had a couple of people cut her a check before—usually out of a combination of pity and leave-me-alone contempt. This was different. She knew good and well that time was money to a man like Ben Bolton—and he’d spent both on her school. On her.

His hand left her waist and trailed across her back before finding her other hand. He stepped away. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he laced his fingers with hers. “Come. See.”

Beaming from ear to ear, Mom had kids emptying the van like it was a bucket brigade and the school was on fire. Clarinets, trumpets, amps, guitars, a complete drum kit—one piece at a time, a music teacher’s dream come true—made its way into the school.

Ben let go of her hand mere seconds before Mom saw them and hurried over. “Isn’t it wonderful, sweetie? Mr. Bolton—”

“Sandra, I told you to call me Ben.”

The two of them grinned like they were on a second date, and Josey decided that she’d entered an alternate universe. There was just no other rational explanation for her mother to be smiling warmly at a white man, or Don to be following the same white man’s directions, or a hard-rock guitarist to be handing out drumsticks like it was Halloween, for God’s sake. None.

“Of course. Ben is just an answer to our prayers.” Her mom turned shining eyes to him. “We cannot thank you enough for this.”

“Sandra?” Stick called to her from the front steps of the school, and Mom excused herself. What next? Hell’s Angels would swoop out of nowhere and finish the shop this afternoon, like an Amish motorcycle gang at a barn raising?

She grabbed him by the arm and hauled him out of earshot of the buzzing school. “What—?” At least that was a word, right? She cleared her throat and tried again. “What did you do?”

The corner of his mouth hitched up. The real smile. Boy, she was in serious trouble—but then, she already knew that.

“It turns out that Munzinga would rather not lose a valued customer such as myself, and he would prefer that word not get around that he’s ripping off children. And he’d really prefer to keep all his teeth, so in order to make amends, he volunteered to provide a range of instruments for half off.”

Ben had threatened Munzinga on her behalf? And then paid for the difference?

“Now,” Ben went on, as if this were just another day on the rez instead of Christmas four months early, “some of those tools are secondhand from my brother Billy, but they’re still all good. Billy sees the words new and improved and he thinks he’s died and gone to heaven. The rest is small stuff—”

“Small?” A trailer full was small?

Something about his eyes changed, and he leaned down until he was less than a foot from her face, like he was daring her to interrupt him again. “Yes. Small. Things like band saws and planers take a little more work, and Don agreed that the shop building needs to be finished before those get delivered.”

“Don agreed? With you?”

Just once, she wanted to be ready for this man, but nothing in her lifetime had prepared her for Ben Bolton on a mission.

*

Ben couldn’t remember having more fun. Josey had no idea how delicious she looked right now. Her eyes were wild with shock, the breeze had tugged a few strands of that reddish hair loose and her mouth hung open. The only thing that kept him from closing those pretty lips himself was the audience of about fifty people—including relatives—all watching the two of them out of the corners of their eyes.

Hey, at least people were looking at him. More than five thousand dollars’ worth of school supplies made a guy an instant insider.

He