Susan Mallery Page 0,6
lucky, she might even run into a ghost monk or two.
Chapter Two
Sunshine Baxter was done with love at first sight. D. O. N. E. More times than she could count, she’d looked deeply into a pair of—insert any color here—eyes and immediately given her heart. The relationships had all ended in disaster and she’d hated herself for being so incredibly stupid over and over again, so she decided she was finished with the falling in love concept. Over it. Moving on.
Except...
“I’ve decided,” Connor said, pushing up his glasses, his dark brown eyes staring intently into hers.
Sunshine leaned close, knowing that once again she’d foolishly fallen for an inappropriate guy. “Tell me.”
“Ants.”
Sunshine smiled. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ve read three books on ants and they’re very smart and they work hard. I want to build the world’s biggest ant farm.”
“Okay, then. That’s what we’ll do. We should probably start small,” she told him. “Get a regular-size ant farm and see if we can make it work. Then we’ll add on.”
His mouth began to curve in the most delightful smile. “I thought girls didn’t like ants.”
“I don’t want them crawling in my bed, but I think an ant farm is super cool.”
The smile fully blossomed. Connor ran toward her. She pulled the eight-year-old close and hugged him, telling herself if adoring her new charge qualified as breaking her no-heart-giving rule, then she was willing to live with the disappointment. Connor was irresistible.
He released her and stepped back, nearly slipping off the path and into a tall, aggressive-looking succulent that no doubt had an impressively long Latin name. Sunshine shifted her weight, gently grabbed his arm and spun him out of the way of impalement. Connor barely noticed.
“You’re going to tell me that you have to ask my dad, huh?”
“I am. We’re talking about being responsible for several hundred life-forms. That’s a big deal.”
“You’re right.” He paused, then giggled. “Can I be their king?”
“Of course. Maybe we can teach them to chant ‘All hail Connor.’”
Connor laughed. The desert garden section at The Huntington’s acres of gardens was his favorite. Given that Connor’s father was a landscape architect, Connor and Sunshine both had memberships and in her three weeks of employment as Connor’s nanny, they’d been four times. So far all they’d visited was the desert garden, but she was okay with that. Eventually Connor’s interests would broaden.
He squatted in front of a reddish plant apparently called terrestrial bromeliad and studied it.
“You start school on Monday,” he said.
Something Sunshine didn’t want to think about. Part of her plan to avoid bad relationships and shift her life onto a happier and more positive course meant going to college. Not back so much, as that implied she’d been at one in the first place.
“I do.”
He glanced at her. “Are you scared?”
“I am. Well, maybe scared is strong. I’m nervous.”
“Do you think all the other kids will be smarter than you?”
She grinned. “I wouldn’t have put it like that, but yes, in part. And they’ll be younger.”
He stood up. “As young as me?”
“I think a little older, but certainly not my age.”
She was thirty-one and had absolutely nothing noteworthy to show for her years on the planet. How sad was that?
Connor took her hand. “You don’t have to be scared. You’re smart, too, and we can do homework together.”
She touched his nose. “You’re in third grade. You don’t have much homework.”
“I’ll sit with you and read about ants.”
And this, she thought with a sigh, was why he’d won her heart. Connor was a good kid. He was funny and kind and affectionate. He’d lost his mother to cancer a few months ago and while his father obviously cared about his son, he had a big, impressive job that took a lot of time. Declan had hired a series of nannies, all of whom Connor had rejected within a week. For some reason, the two of them had clicked.
“Come on,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “Let’s head home. I’m going to make lasagna roll-ups for dinner.”
“What’s a roll-up?”
“It’s all the lasagna goodness rolled up in a noodle.”
His gaze was skeptical. “You’re going to put vegetables in the recipe, aren’t you?”
She grinned. “Yes. Zucchini. Skinny little zucchini French fries.”
“How skinny?”
She thought for a second. “Ant size.”
He sighed. “Okay, but I won’t like it.”
“As long as you eat it.”
* * *
An hour and a half later, Sunshine put a completed salad into the refrigerator and glanced at the clock. According to a text from Declan, he was planning