They were enjoying this a little too much, Whit thought glumly. And at his expense. He dragged a hand through his hair and appealed to what he hoped was Malloy’s reasonable side. “Can’t the guys in Public Relations handle this? What do I know about talking to a group of preschoolers, anyway…?”
Whit would rather teach gun safety to rival street gangs. Kids scared the hell out of him.
“No deal,” Malloy said from behind his cluttered desk. “The kid asked for you—personally. No one else. A cute-sounding little shaver. Talked like you were his new best friend.”
“Brody.”
The image of the small, red-haired boy flashed into Whit’s mind, followed almost immediately by the kid’s all-too-alluring mom. Jill Harper had a way of haunting a man’s dreams—and Whit was no exception. For the past three days, and nights, he’d tried to forget that sweet smile of hers, her soft, easy sensuality.
“Brody—yeah, that was the kid’s name.” Malloy’s gravel-edged voice brought Whit back. “I got the school address here somewhere,” he said, and dug through the debris on his desk. “Ah, yes—here it is. School’s over on…Meadow Lane.” He read his illegible scrawl through three overlapping coffee mug rings on the paper, then shoved the note at Whit.
Whit felt his chances of getting out of this begin to sink like a torpedoed sub. Besides, what kind of a guy would he be to say no to a small boy who thought he was his new best friend?
Whit liked to think he wasn’t that low-down.
“The chief likes this goodwill kind of stuff, so try to put a smile on it, Tanner.”
Whit’s grumbling reply wasn’t intelligible, but the glower he shot Malloy couldn’t have been clearer.
Whit barely had time to file his traffic reports, let alone think of something to say to a group of eager youngsters.
By the time he arrived at the school at three that afternoon he still hadn’t a clue what one did for showand-tell. At twenty-eight it had been a long time since he’d participated in any such learning experience—if he ever had. Whit couldn’t remember his preschool days all that clearly.
But he would survive this somehow, he told himself as he approached the classroom with mounting trepidation. He had a quick image of his brother, Steve, and the impression he’d once had on a young boy a little older than Brody but every bit as starry-eyed. Whit knew what it felt like to look up to a cop.
With that memory, he knew he couldn’t let Brody down.
One of the preschool teachers met him at the door, hardly more than a youngster herself. Either that or he was getting older, he wasn’t sure which.
“Officer Tanner, Brody’s been expecting you,” she said cheerily enough. She drew him inside and tried to put him at ease, but Whit wasn’t sure the effort was working.
Before he could respond to the teacher’s pleasantries, Brody rushed up, all smiles with a little shyness mixed in. Whit supposed that made two of them.
“Hi-ya, pardner,” he said, and Brody beamed.
It didn’t take long before the teachers had the group quieted down and announced him to the class. He felt outsize, awkwardly outsize, in the room of small, red chairs, low shelves of books, and projects in various stages of completion.
Finally Whit discovered what show-and-tell comprised. He was the show and Brody did the tell, explaining in far too many superlatives about how his friend had not only rescued him in the middle of the night, but found his dog, as well. To hear Brody tell it, Whit deserved a commendation at the very least.
Then it was his turn to offer a few words.
“Thank you, Brody,” he said, though the kid’s praise was far more than was warranted.
He wondered again how the hell he’d gotten himself into this. And how he’d ever get through it.gracefully.
He summoned a smile he hoped looked more confident than he felt on the inside and decided on a topic that might be helpful to four-year-olds—street safety.
But before he could open his mouth and utter a word, the door at the back of the room squeaked open, and Whit glanced up into the glorious green eyes of Jill Harper.
Terrific, he thought. Just what he needed—more audience.
“Pardon the interruption,” she said in her silky voice. “Please go on.”
Go on? There wasn’t a coherent thought in his head as she wriggled onto a too-small chair and crossed one slim leg over the other, creating a diversion a blind monk couldn’t endure.
She sat poised, waiting for him to say something, but for the life of Whit he couldn’t gather his thoughts. They’d gone woolly the moment she’d wandered in. She wore something peach colored, the skirt of which had slid a delectable inch or two up her leg, making Whit’s position center stage even more uncomfortable.
Concentrate on the kids, he told himself and forced his gaze back to his young listeners. Brody sat in the front row, anticipation written all over his face. Somehow that gave Whit focus, and he stumbled into a speech.
Jill watched Whit Tanner from her vantage point at the back of the room. If she thought he seemed a little nervous initially, he didn’t now as he spoke to the children in that low, rumbly voice of his. She leaned closer to catch its resonance, let it vibrate through her.
She’d never considered herself a sucker for a man in uniform before, but today had just made a liar out of her. Her gaze trailed down from the stiff, starched steel blue of his collar, across his shiny badge and crisp folds of his shirt to the straight-as-an-arrow stripe down the darker blue of his pant legs, then back up again.
Oh, yes…she had sucker written all over her.
And so did the admiring women next to her. She’d heard more than one feminine sigh from Brody’s teachers.
The man gave new meaning to the phrase, Kansas City’s finest.
Jill hadn’t been enthused about Brody inviting him to school for show-and-tell, but she’d given in to her son in the end. Now, she wasn’t so sure she should have. Whit Tanner made her feel all too much like a womana—a woman missing any semblance of good sense.
He turned the last of his talk into a question-andanswer time for the children. And Jill was sure every hand went up, each boy and girl wanting a part of him. Brody’s small hand was lost in the group, but still Whit gave him his chance at a query.
“Can you go get an ice cream with me and my mom after school?” he asked Whit.
Whit glanced to the back of the room just in time to see Brody’s embarrassed mother hide her face in her hands. When she drew her hands down to peer up at him over the tips of her fingers he gave her a small smile.
“He hasta go catch the bad guys—don’t you know anything?” the kid beside Brody said with a nudge to Brody’s rib cage.
“Yeah,” a few of the others said in a chorus.
Whit moved to save the situation. “In between catching bad guys I’ve been known to eat an ice cream or two,” he answered.
“Yeah!” Brody’s chest puffed up. “And lemonade, too.”
By now Jill had recovered her aplomb and was able to laugh at what the class had deteriorated into. The teachers were smiling, as well, but quickly moved to restore order and thank Officer Tanner for his time and his talk.
Jill wanted to thank him, too. And apologize for her son’s exuberant behavior. It seemed she was doing a lot of that lately.
She caught up with him outside the class. He looked