Page 5 of Learn Your Lesson

“No. Daddy says cats are assholes and dogs are too much work.”

I slapped a hand over my mouth to stifle my laugh. I was fairly certain herdaddywouldn’t approve of that language, but I was also pretty sure he didn’t know how to filter himself around her. She probably didn’t even know asshole was a “bad word.”

“He’s not wrong,” I told her. “You hungry?”

Ava nodded, standing from where she’d been scratching Nacho behind one ear. The fact that she wasn’t trying to pick him up by the neck told me she had more restraint than most of the children I taught.

“I’ll make us a snack,” I said, nodding toward my abandoned artwork on the coffee table. “Any chance you can help me with that? I started it the other night, but I’m not very good at painting.”

Just as she didn’t like baby talk, I learned early on with Ava that she also didn’t respond to what I referred to as my “teacher voice.” Where I was usually sing-song sweet and peppy with my kids, Ava responded better when I spoke to her like an adult. She liked an even, emotionless tone.

I couldn’t imagine why.

An image of her father crossed my mind as Ava sat on her knees, picking up the paintbrush and wetting it in the cloudy glass of water before she wiped it over one of the dry paints. We’d experimented with watercolor last semester, and I was impressed she remembered just what to do.

She then promptly started painting all over the place, no care for the numbers or lines on the butterfly image.

I just chuckled.

Better for her to make a mess of it than for it to sit unfinished on my table for months.

I turned on my Bluetooth speaker as I rounded into my kitchen, putting on a kid-friendly, but not annoying, playlist. That was literally the name of the playlist on Spotify — Kid Friendly, Not Annoying.

That last part was essential, since I spent most of my day listening to either kids or cartoons singing.

I could keep an eye on Ava through the window cut out in my kitchen, only a bar and a couple of stools between us. Not that I really felt like I needed to. Out of all my students, Ava was the easiest to handle.

So, with her occupied and my hands mindlessly working to make us a snack tray, I let my thoughts drift to Will Perry.

The man was a magnetic force.

Tall as a tree, muscles like a bull, and the saddest golden-brown eyes I’d ever seen.

The first time I’d met him, I’d had to actively work to keep myself from drooling. He was an exact replica of the cover model for one of the Harlequin romances I’d snuck into our house when I was fourteen — one I’d kept hidden from my mother and grandmother and re-read more times than I could count.

His chestnut hair was long and unruly, flowing to his shoulders and highlighted by the sun with strands of gold like he was Hercules. He had the kind of jaw that could cut glass, it was so sharp, and though his pouty lips never did curve into a smile, that didn’t make it any less difficult to not stare at his mouth.

He was just… beautiful. Achingly so. The way the last sunset on a beach vacation is.

I didn’t have to hear his life story to see that he’d been through pain. He wore it like armor, his lips in a thin line, brows furrowed, hand tight around his daughter’s like hedidn’t trust anyone to properly care for her.

Judging by how fast he’d gone through a half-dozen nannies since Ava started school, he had reason to feel that way.

Today, that severe gaze of his had been tinted with anxiety.

And so, without even thinking twice, I’d offered to help.

Not that Iwouldn’thave helped even if Ididstop to think before opening my mouth. I was so desperate for something to do with my spare time that I’d jump at practically any opportunity. There were only so many nights I could spend sewing a new outfit, knitting a scarf that I’d never wear because it’s too damn hot in Florida anyway, or bingeing the latest true crime podcast.

You could go on a date, a voice whispered in my brain, but it was snuffed out by the louder voice that reminded me all the reasons that wasn’t a good idea.

The most prevalent being that my matriarchy would likely disown me.

I grew up in a house ruled by scorned women. My mother was a single mom, raising me to be independent from the time I could walk in some sort of effort to spite my father and every other man on Earth.Shewas brought up by a single mom, too — my grandmother, who was not too shy to remind her daughter what a constant disappointment she was for following in her footsteps despite my grandmother’s warnings.

After my father left, Grandma moved in with us. And between the two of them, I was surrounded by an ever-present reminder that all men were trash.

And after the one experience of my own with the opposite sex in college? I had to agree.