Page 6 of Unbreakable Love

Although if she kept talking about all the wonderful things about Miss Pesco and how she saved Grayson from being embarrassed after slipping on water and tripping and falling in the hallway, and saved the day like some sort of superhero, that could change.

My daughter made it virtually impossible for me to say no to her, which not only meant I’d buy her however many flowery skirts she wanted even if she didn’t wear them, I’d probably fall in love with the teacher, too.

Damn it all to hell. Maybe I could have her switch classrooms and save us all.

There were well over a dozen parents in the classroom when we entered, and while Josie tried to push us toward the front so I could see the beautiful Miss Pesco, Josie found herself blockaded by bodies. A small mercy, given the fact I now needed to take a minute to calm myself down.

I would not hate this woman because my daughter liked her. Her being pretty or not had absolutely no relevance in my life. My job was to be Josie’s father, not to start a relationship with her teacher, or hell, any woman at this stage in my life.

Truth be told, I was a monk, reformed the day Monica packed her bags, boarded a bus and fled to California to live with family to become some superstar celebrity. I’d only been attracted and mildly excited about one woman since Monica and that ended almost as soon as it started. There was no way I was ready to go through that all over again.

“Hello. Nice to meet you.”

Her voice filtered through the mass of bodies between us, followed by a laugh that had me grinding my teeth together. Damn it. Josie was right. Her laugh was pretty.

Josie tugged on my hand as the sea in front of us parted and she swerved her little body in between two mothers.

“Manners,” I mumbled to her.

“’Xcuse me, ’xcuse us,” she happily chirped and shot me a look of pride over her shoulder. “Hi, Miss Pesco! This is my dad! His name’s Gavin. I don’t have a mom, but he’s fantastic!”

Oh dear God. Kill me now. Open a hole in the floor and shoot me straight to the basement.

Chatter stopped. A nail falling out of my toolbelt would have sounded like a bomb, and Miss Pesco’s smile wiped away as her brows shot up high on her forehead.

“Oh… well, hi, Josie.”

Josie’s smile went bright enough to power the entire town for a month, and she glanced back at me. “She remembers my name! Isn’t she so smart, Dad?”

“She is,” I gritted, all too aware of the chuckles behind me. The softly muttered oh, that’s so sweet and the hidden laughs covered behind hands. “Thank you, Josie.”

I’d attempted to keep my eyes on Josie, to ignore the beautiful skirt and the blue eyes and the pretty teacher, but doing so any longer would make this entire thing more awkward. I forced my eyes off Josie and immediately cursed the heavens.

The teacher wasn’t beautiful. She was drop dead gorgeous. With thick, curled hair that bounced and fell past her shoulders and eyes so round and large. Josie was right, they were so bright and blue you could get lost in them.

My throat went dry. My mouth suddenly parched. I cleared my throat to say hello and nothing came out except a croaked, “Hi.”

Hi. Yep. Awesome. I pulled my hand out of Josie’s and wiped my suddenly sweat-lined palm on my jeans before offering it to Miss Pesco.

“Gavin Kelley,” I told her and was pretty certain there was a sneer on my face. “Josie’s father.”

“Oh,” she replied and rolled her lips together. “Miss Pesco, Josie’s new teacher. Thanks so much for coming tonight.”

Young. She was young. Maybe even younger than me and I now had to entrust my daughter with her for seven hours a day? At least Mrs. Bonners knew what she was doing. But damn, she was definitely pretty.

Making everything worse, she smelled like springtime, not mothballs.

I stepped back. “Nice to meet you. Come on, Josephine. Let’s let others say hello.”

I didn’t glance back at Miss Pesco before I took Josie’s hand and moved us through the crowd. They were still silent, annoyingly so, and I hadn’t been polite in the least, but what the heck?

My chest was hot, my palms were still sweaty, and I tugged at the collar of my T-shirt to get air flowing to my body to cool me down.

“That wasn’t very friendly,” Josie scolded me when we were near a window. Too bad it was sealed shut. Fresh air would have helped. But this… I couldn’t do this.

I couldn’t be attracted to my daughter’s teacher, who so clearly already loved her.

“Stay here,” I told Josie. “Find your desk and I’ll be right back, okay?”

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