I don’t do kids. I know I was one myself once. Technically, that is. But my mom had always said I had an “old soul.” I’d preferred sitting with my grandmother and talking with her friends rather than playing Barbies with the pig-tail crowd. I’d choose a day strolling through antique shops over roller blading every time. My thirteenth birthday party had been to see An English Patient. All my friends snuck over to watch 101 Dalmatians showing in the next theater over.
So if I don’t do kids, why was I chaperoning twenty-six hot, tired, and grumpy fourth graders at the San Diego Zoo? Because my sister’s interview with a new software development firm had been postponed from yesterday to today, and she’d begged me to fill in for her with her daughter Jocelyn’s class. It had seemed like a perfect excuse to delay my root canal. “Miss Nichols, Brandon pinched me,” Kara whined for the seventy-ninth time.
I should have stuck with the root canal.
“I’m hungry,” Annarosa whimpered. “When do we get to eat?”
“I don’t know. Ask Mr. Hannigan.”
But Mr. Hannigan was busy. On his hands and knees, he was tying Jocelyn’s shoe while serving as a resting place for three weary students and explaining the difference between African and Asian elephants. “Asian elephants have smaller ears. An easy way to remember is that when an elephant waves his ears back and forth, it cools his blood and acts like air conditioning for his body. It’s hotter in Africa, so they need bigger ears.” I’d been watching him all day and had concluded he was a saint. He had the patience of Job. And the looks of Paul Newman. Well, a forty-years-younger Paul Newman.
“Who wants to go into the reptile house?” Mr. Hannigan asked. It was unanimous among the boys. The girls split fifty-fifty. “If you’d rather go with Miss Nichols to watch the meerkats, I hear Shakespeare will be there.”
Six students defected from the reptile line to my meerkat line. Mr. Hannigan was going to pay for this.
“Who’s Shakespeare?” I asked as he pointed on the map to me where we needed to go.
“Don’t tell me you don’t watch Meerkat Manor on Animal Planet”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s the Big Brother of the animal world.”
Mr. Hannigan smiled at me and I didn’t hear any more. If I weren’t careful, I could fall for a guy like him. Except he loved kids and I didn’t. That was a deal breaker in any forever-and-ever-amen relationship.
* * *
At two o’clock we headed for the school bus, taking the long way through Bear Canyon so the see them one more time. I lagged behind, captivated by the two grizzly cubs playing an innate game of tackle-me tag. “Cute, huh?”
I turned and found Mr. Hannigan’s face just inches from mine. Cute didn’t do him justice. “Oh, you mean the bears,” I said, then giggled like the school girls I’d been hanging around with all day. “Yeah, can I take them home with me?”
“They’d be fun for a while, until they grew to thousand pounds and decided they wanted to eat you for dinner.”
I giggled again. “I guess I’ll settle for a cuddly koala bear.”
“You weren’t paying attention today, were you?”
Busted. During our stop at the Koala Encounter I’d been watching the way his dark hair curled against the collar of his golf shirt, which led me to study the way his shoulders stretched against the confines of the knit fabric, which led to thoughts of being wrapped in those strong, tan arms.
“Koala’s aren’t bears, they’re marsupials. Maybe I should make you stay after school and write that on the blackboard a hundred times?” His voice and smile were teasing. My heart went all gooey, like a fresh-from-the-oven chocolate-chip cookie.
“In all seriousness, thanks for your help today. You’re a natural. Are you a teacher?”
“No way. It’s a calling, and I have an unlisted number.”
He smiled again. My insides gooeyed, again. “What do you do?” he asked.
“Would you believe rocket scientist?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You’re too pretty to be a scientist.”
First giggling, now blushing. What would I do next, swoon?
“You have the aura of an artist,” he said with a smile that reached up to his sea-green eyes.
“But the brain of a rocket scientist. Really.”
Most men run screaming for the hills when they hear what I do for a living. Not Mr. Hannigan. Without missing a beat, he booked me for career day in April.
Once all twenty-six kids were seated on the bus, he slipped into the seat next to me. School buses were made for little people. When two adults--especially one of Mr. Hannigan’s impressive size--squeezed in together, their arms and legs couldn’t help but touch. Cozily. Intimately.
“Can I buy you a drink when we get back? It’s the least I can do since you didn’t strangle Nicky when he dropped a worm on your head. I’ve had chaperones bail on me for less than that.”
