The great pack animal lopes ahead, scenting out his kill. He’s all majesty in action, all steely muscle and quivering snout. And drool. Don’t forget all the goddamn drool. Bruno stops on the trail in front of us, his head perking up and his ears rising. My heart rate gets higher; that’s right, boy. Is she coming? Or are you going to—

“Ew, Bruno pees a lot,” Amelia says. It comes out as more of a yawn as she slumps against me. Sun’s barely crested over the canyon, and she’s already out of bed. Normally on Saturdays when we’re together, I make sure it’s a good day. Amelia gets a little extra shut-eye while I walk the beast, then wakes up to some pancakes and bacon. I make the manliest pancakes on the west side. Mickey Mouse shaped and everything. Chocolate chip eyes. The testosterone flows, my friends.

She was a little confused, in the sleepy child way, when I gently prodded her awake at five thirty in the morning. She’s a trooper, though. I think she had the idea when we got to the canyon that it was going to be a pancake scavenger hunt. They’d be hanging from the branches of trees, like the best Garden of Eden ever. Hell, if Eve and Adam had to avoid eating pancakes instead of apples, the snake would’ve never needed to get into the picture. Who can resist pancake fruit?

By now, it’s apparent to myself that I’m rambling on because I got my angel daughter out of bed at the crack of dawn to scour the canyon looking for a particular fiery redhead. Christ, but I couldn’t get her out of my head after yesterday. Rumpelstiltskin references are the way to a man’s erotic center.

Also, she doesn’t back down from an argument, no matter how inane it is. That’s a woman I can get behind. And yes, I meant it that way, and no, I do not apologize.

But I realize that I dragged Amelia into this, which makes me take a hard look at myself and not love what’s looking back. She stops, rubbing a fist into her eye while yawning so wide I can see her molars. Not winning Dad of the Year points at the moment.

“I think Bruno’s pretty well walked and peed-out,” I tell her, ruffling her hair. “What do you say we head down to Castro’s for some pancakes? Bruno can have some chicken sausage.”

“Can we get the kind of pancakes with the melted butter drizzled on top?” Amelia’s eyes widen at the possibility of drawn butter. This child is mine, I tell you.

“Extra butter.” I whistle for Bruno, and the three of us begin a walk back to our car.

Christ, I need to ease the fuck up about this. I’m going to be in a room with Chelle for weeks to come, arguing about tape measurements and shit like that. She’s going to be as irritating as any other teacher is during help on an after school project. I’ll stop noticing things like her bright green eyes, or the swell of her breasts, or the perfect span of her hips. Pretty soon, I’ll just see her as a floating mop of red hair. Sexy, curling red hair.

Fine, I won’t notice that either. It’ll be like talking to an invisible being wearing yoga pants. Nothing to take my mind off the task at hand.

Then, with a huge woof, Bruno takes off like a shot. Amelia starts calling for him, chasing after. There’s the sound of high-pitched, frantic yips. Christ, I’d know those yips anywhere. They come from that ball of hair and eyes that Chelle calls a dog.

So unless Arnold or whatever his name is drove himself out here, that means mistress is not too far behind. I run ahead to find Amelia giggling and pointing. Bruno’s standing there, tail wagging lazily as Archie the mutt humps his foreleg vigorously.

Apparently, Archie is into revenge sex.

There she is, jogging up alongside the two canines and giggling while running a hand through her hair. Chelle’s arrived to save the day. I come to a halt beside the humping dogs, pick Archie up, and hand the squirming animal back to his owner.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she says. Did she wink at me? Was that a blink? Damn, I need to loosen up about this.

“Introducing Amelia to the wonders of early morning exercise,” I say casually. My daughter is now curled up beside the dog, asleep on the ground. “We’re taking it one step at a time.”

“Well, I know how it feels to need your beauty sleep.” Chelle kneels and gently shakes my kid’s shoulder. When Amelia sees her new favorite teacher in all the world, she’s as awake as if I’d given her a shot of espresso in a stick of dynamite. She nearly bowls Chelle over, squealing with glee.

“Remember how you said we need to pretend we’re part of our environment?” Amelia’s panting with excitement. “Watch! I’m a boulder.” Then she rolls into a tight ball on the ground. Chelle about falls over laughing, and Amelia rolls around happily. Damn, she’s good with my kid.

I used to think a nicely rounded ass and a pair of knockout tits were two of a woman’s sexier attributes. That’s got nothing on this.

“You will be the finest rock of them all!” Chelle says, helping Amelia up. She’s looking good this morning, in a pink zip-up sweatshirt with a pair of clinging light gray yoga pants. Damn, she wears them well. “Well. You two are probably on your way home, so I’ll get out of your hair. Or fur,” she says, scratching Bruno’s head. He woofs, licking up at the little hairball in Chelle’s arms. Archie licks the air right back. I think it’s a mutual attraction.

“We were just on our way to breakfast,” I say as she comes alongside me. She stops, her arm brushing against mine. She raises those killer green eyes. Fuck, if she knows what I’m thinking, or how I’m responding to her, she’ll be horrified. Probably. Maybe turned on. I like that line of thought better. “Why don’t you join us? Amelia can’t talk about anything but you.” I smile. “Maybe if she tries talking to you, I’ll get a break.”

“Well, I’ve been singing Amelia’s praises, too.” She grins right back. “You’ve got a pretty perfect kid.”

“Will you come to breakfast? Omigod, will you?” Amelia leaps to her feet, Bruno leaps alongside in shared enthusiasm before knocking her down and kissing her. She giggles, so no harm done.

“What do you say? I need a chance to thank you for making this a good year for Amelia.” That is absolutely true. The fact that I climbed a freaking mountain to see her has nothing to do with my invitation.

Chelle looks down at Archie, who licks at her chin.

“Well. Do they have outdoor seating?” she asks.

“Unless they want a bullmastiff harassing the wait staff, they better.”

“Now that I want to see. I’m in.” She turns breezily and walks with Amelia down the canyon trail, the two of them chatting it up. Bruno walks alongside me, tail whacking me with his enthusiasm.

I know that feeling, brother.

I like a woman who can eat. More than that, I like a woman who can eat home-style fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, pancakes, and five strips of bacon in a single serving.

We’re at Castro’s, one of those brunch places that gets hipster-y as hell on Sundays, but come Saturday morning and it’s a bunch of dogs and the owners that love them.

Bruno and Archie are sniffing around a potted plant against which a dachshund is busy rubbing its ass. Amelia’s halfway through her giant stack of pancakes, and I’m on my second cup of coffee.

Chelle? She’s dug straight into her food.

“I don’t eat like this every day,” she says, the only moment she’s sheepish. She pokes at the eggs with her fork. “I mean, I’d love to but I’d have to be rolled out of Bay of Dreams. You gotta indulge now and again, you know?”

I know. Judging by the way I find it hard to look away from her, even with half a pound of potatoes on her fork, I understand the temptation to indulge all too well.

“So what is it? Kale smoothies and garlic pills in the morning most days?”

“Ew.” She wrinkles her nose. That’s another good thing. For a while toward the end of our marriage, Suzonne kept talking about how we needed an actual goat in the house so she could feed straight from its teat. After giving the goat nothing to eat but saltines, of course. “No, I’m a bowl of Raisin Bran kind of gal. But growing up on the road didn’t give a lot of time or money for splurging on breakfast. Mostly we’d be happy with a packet of Pop Tarts and some Diet Coke.”

“You got Pop Tarts and Diet Coke?” Amelia gapes like it’s the greatest thing she’s ever heard, revealing a heap of mashed-up pancake while she’s at it. With a throat clearing designed to get her to remember her table manners, I return to the conversation.

“On the road? Were your parents in the army?”

She blushes a shade of red that goes along well with her hair. “They, ah, had the same ridiculous face paint the army sometimes uses.”

“Excuse me?”

She looks at her lap and mutters something.

“Sorry, one more time?”

“My parents are clowns.” She looks up, still red from the tip of her chin to her hairline.

My first thought is that they’re a couple of losers who didn’t make the right kind of choices in life, but then I think about it. Grown woman who travels around putting on plays with kids? That kind of nomadic lifestyle would be right at home for the child of…

“Circus clowns, exactly. Your eyes are sort of lighting up with dreaded realization.” She starts digging into her plate; I think she’s trying to avoid my eyes.

Holy shit. A couple of days ago, this would’ve been comedy gold. The mouthy-yet-attractive woman telling me how to raise my own kid, the spawn of clowns? How many tasteful yet irritating clown jokes can you make? Family vacations in the clown car? Ronald McDonald as your first adolescent crush? The options are endless.

But this woman, unlike her stereotypical alpha hipster teacher counterpart, doesn’t deserve ridicule.

“It must have been…fun,” I say at last. She snorts. I think she’s waiting for the hammer to land. “Hell, I would’ve done about anything to have grown up like that.”

“I don’t know, trying to have friends over for a sleepover in the Airstream trailer was kind of a stretch. Actually, make that friend. One friend per town.” Sighing, she looks over at Amelia, who’s secretly feeding bacon to the dogs. “I would’ve done just about anything to grow up in a house with a yard.”

“I did that, but I think it’s overrated.”

She gives me the yeah, sure look.

“Seriously. Dad would come home from a day at the office, loosen his tie, take a scotch on the rocks and call his secretary. Mom would clean the kitchen in response. Third time that week.” God, it was like Mad Men but with worse retro shag carpeting.

“That’s awful.” She chews some pancake in solidarity. “My parents always loved each other. That was something to be grateful for.”

“Always grateful?”

She grins and then winces. “I mean, sometimes they’d send me to the store for ice cream. I always had to go, even if the store was a mile and a half away. It gave them some alone time.”

Okay, maybe growing up the child of circus clowns leaves a lot to be desired. “Tell me something honest here.” I steeple my fingers and give her the Calculating Stockbroker Look™. “Did you ever wear the red nose?”

“Oh, all the time. I was baptized in it.” She says it with a very serious face as well.

Amelia giggles. We have an audience.

“What happened when you hated home?”

“I told them I was going to run away to an accounting house.”

“Favorite sport?”

“Juggling.”

“Childhood pet?”

“Jumbo.”

“Elephant?”

“Anaconda.”

“That’s a weird name for an anaconda.”

“Well, we called him that after he ate the elephant.”

Now Amelia’s laughing so hard she’s practically falling out of her seat. While Chelle revives her with a sip of hot chocolate, I inwardly curse at not being able to deploy my size of your clown shoes routine. Chelle Richardson is funny, no question.

Only when she looks up at me with a friendly wink, it’s not funny at all. No, it’s serious business.