In half a dozen long strides he was across the floor of his workshop, and staring down at her with those mesmerizing, devil-dark eyes.
She could smell him, and the smell was as potent as a potion: the tangy smell of heat and hard work, molten iron, soft leather. Man.
“What kids?” he asked dangerously.
Morgan had to tilt her chin to look at him. She did not like it that his eyes had narrowed to menacing slits, that the muscle was jerking in the line of his jaw, or that his fist was unconsciously clenching and unclenching at his side.
This close to Nate Hathoway, she could see the beginning of dark whiskers shadowing the hollows of impossibly high cheekbones, hugging the cleft of his chin. It made him look even more roguish and untamable than he had looked from across the room.
His lips were so full and finely shaped that just looking at them could steal a woman’s voice, her tongue could freeze to the roof of her mouth.
“It’s not about the kids,” she managed to stammer, ordering her eyes to move away from the pure sensual art of his mouth.
“The hell it isn’t.”
“You can’t seriously expect me to name names.”
“You tell me who is making fun of Ace, and I’ll look after it. Since you haven’t.”
Morgan shivered at his accusing tone, but felt her own strength shimmer back to life, her backbone straightening. She was as protective as a mother bear with cubs. All of those children were her cubs. Sometimes, looking out at the tiny sea of eager faces in the morning, it still stunned her how tiny and vulnerable six-year-olds could be.
And, after a day like today, it stunned her how quickly all that innocence could turn to terror on wheels. Still, she was not going to sic him on her kids!
She took a deep breath, tried not to let her inner quiver at the expression on his face show. “We are talking about six-year-olds. How would you propose to look after that, Mr. Hathoway?”
“I wasn’t going to hunt them down,” he said, reading her trepidation, disdain that she would conclude such a thing in the husky, controlled tone of his voice. Still, he flexed one of the naked muscles of his biceps with leashed anger.
Morgan’s eyes caught there. A bead of sweat was slipping down the ridge of a perfectly cut muscle. She had that tongue-frozen-against-the-roof-of-her-mouth feeling again. Thank goodness. Otherwise she might have involuntarily licked her lips at how damnably tantalizing every single thing about him was.
“I wouldn’t deal with the children,” he continued softly, “but I grew up with their parents. I could go have a little talking-to with certain people.”
The threat was unmistakable. But so was the love and pure need to protect his daughter. It felt as if that love Nate Hathoway had for his daughter could melt Morgan as surely as that fire blazing in the background melted iron.
“Mr. Hathoway, you just need to take a few small steps at home to help her.”
“Since you are unable to help her at school?”
The sensation of melting disappeared! So did the tongue-stuck-to-the-roof-of-her-mouth feeling. She was not going to be attacked!
“That’s unfair!” She was pleased with how calm she sounded, so she continued. “I have twenty-two children in my class. I can’t be with every single one of them every single second, monitoring what they are saying among themselves, or to Cecilia.”
“What are they saying?”
There were old incidents she could bring up: the fun they had made of Cecilia’s hair before he had cut it, how someone had cruelly noticed how attached she was to a certain dress. Though it was always clean it was faded from her wearing it again and again. With boys’ hiking boots, instead of shoes. They were situations that had caused teasing. Cecilia was no doormat. She came out fighting, and looking at the man before her, Morgan was pretty sure where she’d learned that!
Still, Morgan had prided herself on creatively finding a remedy for each situation. Only it was becoming disheartening how quickly it was replaced with a new situation.
Morgan had to get to the heart of the problem.
“Just for an example, this morning Cecilia arrived with a very, er, odd, hairstyle. I’m afraid it left her open to some teasing even before she revealed her secret holding ingredient.”
“She told me it was hair gel.”
“It was gel, but not hair gel.”
He looked askance at her.
“She didn’t know gel wasn’t gel. She used gel toothpaste.”
He said a word people generally avoided using in front of the first-grade teacher. And then he ran a hand through the thick darkness of his own hair. Her eyes followed that motion helplessly.
“Didn’t you say anything to her about her hair before she left for school?” she managed to choke out.
“Yeah,” he said ruefully, the faintest chink appearing in that armor. “I told her it looked sharp.”
It had looked sharp. Literally. But if she planned to be taken seriously, Morgan knew now was not the time to smile.
“Mr. Hathoway, you cannot send your daughter to school with a shark fin on top of her head and expect she will not be teased!”
“How do I know what’s fashionable in the six-year-old set?” he asked, and a second chink appeared in the armor. A truly bewildered look slipped by the remoteness in his dark eyes. “To be honest, her hair this morning seemed like an improvement on the raised-by-wolves look she was sporting before she finally let me talk her into cutting her hair.”
Remembered hair battles flashed through his eyes, and Morgan found her gaze on those hands. It was too easy to imagine him trying to gentle his strength to deal with his daughter’s unruly hair.
But the last thing Morgan needed to do was couple a feeling of tenderness with the animal pull of his male magnetism!
“It was not an improvement,” she said firmly, snippily, trying desperately to stay on track. “The children were merciless, even after I made it clear I wanted no comments made. The recess monitor told me Cecilia got called Captain Colgate, Toothpaste Princess and Miss Froggy Fluoride.”
“I’ll bet the froggy one was Bradley Campbell’s boy,” he said darkly. “Ace told me he’s called her Miss Froggy before, because of her voice.”
“Her voice is adorable. She’ll outgrow that little croakiness,” Morgan said firmly. “I’ve already spoken to Freddy about teasing her about it.”
Nate glowered, unconvinced.
Morgan pressed on. “To make matters worse, today at lunch break someone noticed her overalls. They said she had stolen them, that they belonged to an older sister and they were missing.”
“Somebody accused Ace of stealing?”
Morgan thought he was going to have problems with the joint in his jaw if he didn’t find a different way to deal with tension.
“Cecilia said she had taken the overalls from the lost-and-found box.”
“But why?” he asked, genuinely baffled.
“When’s the last time you bought her clothes?” Morgan was aware of something gentling in her voice. “Mr. Hathoway, I sent you a note suggesting a shopping trip might be in order.”
“I don’t read your notes.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t need a little fresh-out-of-college snip like you telling me how to raise my daughter. Oh, and I also don’t do shopping.”
“Obviously!