“Big stretches!” I stand on my tiptoes, and the three little girls in front of me do the same. I forgot how adorable ten year olds can be, especially when you get them into competitive theater games. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get too competitive—Bay of Dreams has a problem with aggression, testosterone, and meat. I’m now really glad I didn’t decide to do Terminator 2: The Musical for the kids’ school play. Too bad, because that went down like gangbusters in Arkansas. The special effects were really killer. Who knew you could get cardboard to do so many incredible things?

Right, back to the here and now. The little girls bend over with me to touch their toes. After a few rounds of improv, where we all pretended to be our favorite movie characters, they’re ready for a cooling down stretch before heading home. The final bell is about to ring.

And by bell, I mean brass gong. Confused the hell out of me when that thing went off for lunch.

“Now, do we feel all spiritually cleansed?” I ask the girls when we roll ourselves back up. As I came to learn, things like spiritual cleansings are deeply appreciated over at Bay of Dreams. I tried to laugh off having a ham sandwich for lunch when all the other teachers were deeply shocked. Said I’d been a pig in a past life and was reconnecting with my old physical self.

Guess how well that went down.

“I guess,” one of the girls, Amanda, says. She’s got the face of an angel and the playful intensity of an overworked accountant in April. I’ve made it a priority to get her to crack a smile before my time here is done.

“I feel like a Martian,” Ivy says before kicking off into a handstand. That’s what she’s been telling me all class: she’s a Martian, she comes from Mars, that Matt Damon movie was wrong because there are a ton of unicorns and Pegasus roaming the planet, and the air is really purple.

What did we do to get lucky enough to deserve children?

The final bell, er, gong, rings out, and the girls skip off to collect their shoes and yoga mats before heading out to their parents’ Teslas for a swift and silent ride home. That’s another memo I missed: electric cars are the thing to have here. My gas-guzzling car is not making me any friends.

Still, as I walk back to the administration building to collect my bags, I have to admit what an idyllic place this is. The whole school is situated on a beautiful lot near the top of the canyon, complete with rustic hiking trail and waterfall. It’s the kind of place where animated birds and big-eyed baby deer should frolic. Given the drugs some of the people who’ve used this property must have done, I’m sure that’s more realistic than I think it is.

If only I could get that invitation to stay, become a full-fledged staff member. Because, I remind myself, this is it. The last gig. I promised myself that if I hadn’t found the right kind of job by the time I turned twenty-nine, I’d get back in my car and turn back to Mom and Dad’s trailer, probably trundling through the badlands of Montana by now.

That sounds pretty dire, and it gets even worse when you find out what my parents do for a living. No, it’s not illegal. Although sometimes I think it should be…

Still, no bad juju right now. I enter the office, where the staff is all laid out facedown on the floor. No, that’s nothing to do with the incense (though it’s pretty damn thick), it’s afternoon meditation time. Looks more like a dead man’s float in no water to me, but hey. I don’t have tenure. No room to judge.

“Chelle!” Willow appears before me, a benevolently smiling blonde woman with feathers twined in her pigtails. Apparently she was an owl in a previous life. She was the only one who took my ham sandwich joke seriously. “Can I borrow a moment of your time? I’ll return it, I swear.”

Given how metaphysical it is around here, she might even be able to do that.

“Oh! Is it super urgent? I need to get home and give Archie his walk.” That’s the big downside of being out in the canyon. It’ll take me an hour to get home, easy. Willow nods in sympathy.

“Of course. It’s just about the spiritual cleansing of Amelia Munroe.”

If that doesn’t sound like a cult, I don’t know what does. But I have an idea what this is about and frown.

“Oh, she doesn’t need that. Does she? I mean, it was such a funny thing this morning, right?” I laugh, but Willow’s not joining in. Her mouth pouts into a little O. If she starts hooting, I’m outta here. Owls, you know?

“Her father’s come all the way from his office in Santa Monica. I think it’s right that you speak to him personally.”

Crap. Well, gotta keep the parents happy. Happy parents mean recommendations for me to stay and keep working with their munchkins. I follow Willow back to the office, twining my way around and between my nearly comatose colleagues. What a day.

We enter the assistant principal’s office, which has huge murals of daisies on the walls and beanbag chairs on the floor. The man I find seated in one of those chairs looks like the beanbag touched him in a secret place, and now it’s awkward between them. He shoots to his feet, happy to have an excuse not to sit on a round sack of pink pleather any longer.

When I say shoots up, I mean right to the ceiling. He’s tall. Gorgeous. And if you swapped out the pristine suit and tie he’s wearing for a sweaty T-shirt and put an unneutered bullmastiff beside him, you’d have the very picture of the Bluetooth wearing douche I ran into this morning.

Cancel that. He’s more than a picture. He’s the original artifact. When our eyes meet, I can tell he recognizes me too, because his eyebrows shoot up. It’s hard to look sexy while you’re making Roger Rabbit surprised cartoon eyes, but he manages it. Like Jason Statham in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

That thought should not turn me on as much as it does.

And I need to slam the brakes on being turned on at all right now, because he is a dad. If he is a dad, then that means that he is married.

Because as logic will tell you, some men are dads, and some dads are Socrates, so all men are Socrates.

There’s a reason I went into theater science, in case you were wondering.

“Hi. Chelle Richardson,” I say, giving him my hand for a firm, very collegial handshake. He takes my hand, which sends an unintentional flush through my body. Then, slowly, his eyes travel over me from head to toe, sending a much baser, much more fun flash of heat through me. Even though we’re in a school office in the middle of the day, I can feel my body, er, responding to him.

Actually, it’s just like high school again, come to think of it. Ah, the days of crushing on Ricky Johnson when he had to go to the nurse’s office for his asthma…

Wait, stop it, Chelle. There’s nothing remotely sexy about a stockbroking asshole scoping out his kid’s teacher when he’s probably married. Not cool at all, but completely in line with the way he was acting out in the canyon this morning. Like the universe is a new model Lexus and all he needs to do is get comfortable behind the wheel, start her up, and drive. All while taking advantage of the self-warming seat, obviously.

“Will is Amelia’s dad,” Willow says, obviously missing the angry eye-fucking that’s going on between me and this guy. Probably for the best.

“And a proud dog owner as well,” I say. Will quirks half his mouth up in a smile, one he’s clearly fighting. Score one for the redhead.

“Oh. How can you tell?” Willow sounds amazed.

“It’s a vibe I get.”

“Vibes. Mmm. The air’s full of them up here.” Will releases me, then sinks into a beanbag chair with such alpha male confidence that it somehow does not look ridiculous. I sit across from him, trying not to disappear into my seat. “Now. What’s Amelia done wrong? Not finish her kale chips at lunch?”

From the slightly irritated tone, I can tell this guy thinks this place is all a little bit ridiculous, and I appreciate that. I also appreciate letting my gaze fall on his left hand to find that there’s no gold ring. Maybe he’s not married.

Except he probably is, and I shouldn’t be scoping out the marriage status of students’ parents. That’s how you end up either in the unemployment line or the subject of a Lifetime movie, and not one that ends with everyone happily singing around the piano on Christmas Eve in a charming manse located in coastal Georgia. Not like I’ve made a study of those.

Right. Amelia. Let’s talk about the kid, Chelle.

“Nothing. At least, I thought it was nothing.” I shrug. “We did a little introductory game in theater class today. Something to loosen up the shy kids. There’s an art to it.”

“Really? I thought it was a science,” he says in a low, delicious tone of voice. Oh ho, yeah, he remembers me. It takes all of my considerable Northwestern theatrical training not to start drooling in front of him like Pavlov’s dog. We’ve had enough canine happenings for one day, the two of us.

“The kids get to pick out music on my iPod and dance to it as a way of helping us remember their names. Amelia’s was…adorable,” I say at last. Willow tuts. She’s balancing a beam of balsa wood on her lap, which substitutes as a desk over here at Bay of Dreams. She’s making notes in finger paint. Yes, it’s really happening.

“She chose Beyoncé’s ‘Bootylicious’ and then started waggling her spiritual end zone in the children’s faces,” Willow says gently.

Spiritual end zone is a creative vocabulary choice for a child’s posterior, I gotta say. Will gets that steely, flinty, sparky, look in his gray eyes.

“Are you telling me,” he says slowly, enunciating every word, “that you have ‘Bootylicious’ on your iPod?” He quirks an eyebrow at me, and I try not to laugh. It comes out as a splutter. Damn, I’m cool.

“We all have past indiscretions we need to atone for,” I say simply. Will steeples his fingers, looking me up and down like I’m a portfolio he’d like to do particularly bad things to.

Mmm, that’s right, sir. My market’s all bottomed out, waiting for you to come in and fix the problem.

I have no idea what I’m saying, but it sure sounds like finance.

“We need children to remember that they’re still too young to understand the fragility of the gender binary,” Willow says. She sticks her thumb in a tub of yellow paint, marking her note as very urgent. “Also, how the gender binary does not really exist, but the anarcho-communist post-biology segment of education doesn’t start until seventh grade.”

“Mmm,” Will says, obviously not paying attention to Willow. Neither am I. It’s like a wrestling match between his gaze and mine, and I hope it ends up with my gaze naked and spread eagle in front of his gaze, while still taunting his gaze about how he’ll never defeat her, never.

What the hell am I talking about? That got strangely Ayn Rand all of a sudden.

“So my daughter should try to express herself in a binary-less way,” Will finally says, ending the heated gaze contest. He gives Willow a small nod. “From now on, it’s Cat Stevens and 70s pop all day, every day.”

“If you could have her listen to Breakfast with the Beatles on Sunday, I’m sure it would do wonders for opening her inner eye.” Willow beams, pleased that we’re finally on the same page. I still think this is crazy, but I didn’t birth the kid, so I have no say.

Wait. Actually, I’m still a little annoyed by this. Hold the line.

“Your daughter doesn’t need to change,” I tell Will, feeling a tiny bit fidgety that he’s so ready to just take the hippie musical prescription and move on with his day. Probably has a squash game in ten minutes, or whatever it is rich corporate types do for fun. Rich corporate types who are probably divorced…

Not now, libido.

“She also doesn’t need access to your outdated musical tastes, perhaps.” Oh, that got chilly. Will doesn’t like anyone muscling in on his parental territory, it seems. Well, that gets my stereotypically fiery redhead temper all enflamed. Pun not intended. Mostly.

“At least she has fun in my class. She felt like she was able to express herself fully today,” I tell him proudly.

Willow’s getting doe-eyed. Apparently she doesn’t know what to do when people get a bit caustic. Maybe it’s all the red meat that does it to me.

I get up out of my beanbag easily, like the meeting’s over. Which it is. And Will rises along with me, setting that chiseled jaw and throwing back his shoulders like he is here to alpha all over this place. Well, good. Two can play it this way.

“She can express herself at home. She can dance all she wants.”

“But does she?” I squint a little. Does Amelia really feel comfortable and free to be herself with the world’s hottest and surliest dad right here? Hot being my word, that is. Not Amelia’s.

Will thinks about this, and his (perfect) lips set into a firm line. Ha. He knows I’m right.

“I’ll talk to Amelia,” he tells Willow, though he never looks away from me. “There’ll be no problems from now on.”

Willow starts babbling about how they have some reiki Amelia can try if there are still issues, but Will dismisses her—and me—with a curt nod before starting to head out.

“Tell Amelia I have all of Destiny’s Child if she’s feeling more retro,” I call after him. He stops, and gives me a searing glance, one that suggests I wouldn’t dare.

Oh, but I would, hot, surly stockbroker. For Queen Bey, I would do anything.