LITMIR.BIZ

      Alex felt like a giant in a dollhouse as he walked through the halls of Grove Elementary School, passing low-set drinking fountains and artwork displayed far below his eye level. After a few wrong turns in the maze of hallways, he reached Room Twenty-three. A colorful display of artwork made from autumn leaves covered the partially closed door.

      Knocking, Alex popped his head inside, looking around for the teacher’s desk. Of course she wasn’t sitting at it. He was more than fifteen minutes late. He would probably have left, himself, if someone made him wait that long.

      But just as he started to back out of the room, the door to a storage closet behind the desk closed, revealing an auburn-haired beauty standing behind it. Her eyes were as blue as the buttoned sweater she wore with a simple black skirt.

      Alex knew he should look away—it was rude not to—but he just couldn’t pull his gaze away from the woman who stared back at him. She’d tried her best, but even in her prim schoolteacher outfit, she couldn’t hide her feminine curves.

      Okay, he’d had an unfair picture of what a third-grade teacher might look like. Pixie came to mind. Even matronly. He remembered plenty of teachers like that from his own school days. But captivating? He’d certainly never expected to find a woman who looked like that at Grove Elementary.

      A woman who just happened to be Chelsea’s teacher, he reminded himself when she cleared her throat and glanced down at the black toes of her shoes. Great, now Miss Fraser probably thought that he was some kind of creep.

      “Miss Fraser?” he asked in a voice that barely resembled his own.

      “Mr. Donovan?” But as if she’d answered her own question, she gestured toward her desk. “Come in. Have a seat. And please call me Dinah.”

      Funny, calling her by her first name sounded like a really bad idea when “Miss Fraser” or something even more distant like “Miss Chelsea’s Teacher” might be better.

      Still, he found himself nodding at her suggestion. “Call me Alex.”

      He gripped her hand—another mistake—and retreated to the other side of her desk, pulling up a too-short chair from one of the desks. The tingling in his fingers probably had nothing to do with the woman seated across from him and everything to do with the subject they were about to discuss. That she smiled then and left him distracted was beside the point. Dinah—make that Miss Fraser—was probably used to having that kind of effect on men.

      “Thank you for coming, especially on such short notice.”

      “It’s for Chelsea,” he said because it really was as simple as that.

      “Chelsea and Brandon are blessed to have you as their guardian.”

      Blessed was a strong word, but Alex thanked her, anyway.

      Settling back in her chair and crossing her arms, Dinah squinted her eyes as if deep in thought. “You’re Chelsea’s ‘Uncle Alex.’ Are you her mother’s brother or her father’s brother?”

      “Technically, Karla and I are cousins.” Not even that if they were talking about blood relatives, but he didn’t mention that. “But the two of us have always been more like brother and sister. Chelsea and Brandon are like my niece and nephew.”

      Dinah had a strange look on her face, as if what he’d said had surprised her. “As I said, Chelsea’s a blessed little girl.”

      Alex cleared his throat. What was he supposed to say to that?

      “But she’s also a very troubled girl,” she added.

      “Can you blame her?” He shrugged and lowered his gaze to the floor. “As if it wasn’t bad enough that her dad’s a Marine rooting out insurgents in Iraq, now her mom’s in a Philadelphia cancer-treatment center undergoing intense chemotherapy.”

      “She’s had an awful lot to deal with,” she agreed.

      Dinah was studying him when he looked up at her again, suggesting that she was including him in her compassionate comment. Alex stiffened. He didn’t want her pity. Opening his guest bedrooms, juggling a few schedules and learning to make something edible out of frozen chicken breasts couldn’t come close to comparing to what Brandon and Chelsea had been facing.

      “Everything’s going to be okay, though. Karla’s husband, Mike, is trying to get leave soon, and Karla will be just fine.” Even as he said it, Alex wondered which of them he was trying to convince.

      “You just keep reassuring Chelsea of that at home, and I’ll do the same here at school.”

      “How is she doing in school?” The question sounded strange in his ears. He’d always figured that one day he would attend parent-teacher conferences, but this wasn’t at all how he would have imagined it.

      “That’s just the thing. Her grades are as high as they were last year.”

      “Last year?”

      “Our principal likes to loop second-and third-grade classes, so the children benefit from the stability of spending two years with the same teacher and the same classmates. Next year, Chelsea will go on to a new

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