Your Baby or Mine?

He had a feeling that she didn’t just exclusively teach Baby and Me classes. “Then you’re a real teacher? I mean, you teach someplace else?”

“No, I learn someplace else.” She’d already told him that she was going to school, there was no harm in elaborating. “I’m going for my master’s degree. Child psychology,” she continued. Marissa looked toward her son. Having used him in her original demonstration, she had left Christopher in Cyndee’s care as she made her way around the room. “I want to know what makes them tick as well as how their bodies work.”

He didn’t begin to fool himself into believing that he would ever understand how his daughter’s mind worked. She was only a year old and he was already having trouble second-guessing her reactions. It would only get harder as time went on. “Sounds like a lifetime study.”

She laughed, thinking of the theory she was developing in her thesis. “Tell me about it.”

Impulse took over, putting words into his mouth before they were fully formed in his head. “I’d like to. Over coffee.” Alec looked at Marissa hopefully. “Maybe after class?”

She was tempted. But then she squelched the reaction. It wasn’t a good idea. The last thing she wanted was to see one of her male students socially. Her life was complicated enough as it was.

“I don’t think—”

“Strictly student and teacher.” He clarified his invitation so quickly that she was embarrassed for thinking that he’d meant socially. “I’ve got some questions I need to ask you and you’re a hard lady to corner for more than a couple of minutes at a time.”

“Marissa,” a woman called to her.

Alec grinned, his point validated. “See what I mean?”

Her mouth curved as she nodded. “Yes.”

“Is that yes, you see what I mean, or yes, you’ll go out with me for coffee?”

She answered before she let herself think about it. If she stopped to think, she would have been forced to refuse. She had too much else to do. Time was ticking away.

“Both.”

“Great.” A pleased feeling spread through Alec that seemed somewhat disproportionate to what had transpired. But then Andrea tried to make another break for it and Alec found his attention drawn elsewhere.

Alec would have never thought of Squirrely Joe’s as a, place to take a woman for a cup of coffee. For one thing, the cups were made out of cardboard. For another, so was their coffee. The Squirrely Joe’s located two miles from where the Baby and Me classes were held was part of a fast-food chain that served up remarkably appetizing junk food. Making a proper cup of coffee was very low on their priority list, right after degreasing the overhead oven fans.

But Squirrely Joe’s was where Marissa said she wanted to go when he asked her. So, Squirrely Joe’s it was.