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She was no raving beauty—her own mother had told her that more than once—but she was presentable.
    “And you think you qualify as an expert when it comes to young boys?” Jake asked with a cynical smirk. “How many children do you have, Miss Merriweather?”
    She dropped her gaze to her lap, noting that her fingers were twisting together in an agony of embarrassment. She lifted her chin and met his eyes head-on. “None, of course. As you very well know. But I’ve worked with children for almost ten years, Mr. McPherson. I’d say I have a fair amount of experience.”
    “Enough to take on the raising of my son?” he asked.
    “I’m not asking for that position,” she told him forcefully. “I have no intention of interfering with the job you’re doing. I only thought to lend a hand.”
    “You don’t have enough to keep you busy at that schoolhouse?” he asked sharply. “You need to spend your leisure time offering to tend to your pupils in lieu of finding a husband and having your own crop of children to raise?”
    “The chances are very slight of my finding a husband and having a family of my own, sir,” she managed to say with a reasonable amount of clarity. “I’m sure you don’t mean to be insulting, but your remarks are venturing in that direction.”
    Jake tilted his head and looked at her as if she werea specimen under a microscope and he was trying to distinguish her species. “Do you always talk that way, Miss Merriweather, or is it just with me that you use such highfalutin language?”
    She bit at her lip. “I speak the way I was taught to speak,” she told him. “My parents were educators and raised me to be a schoolteacher. I had a good education in preparation for my life’s work.”
    “Didn’t your mother ever consider the idea of you getting married and having that family we spoke of?” He leaned back in his chair and watched her closely, deciding that the flush she wore made her look almost… pretty . He cleared his throat and looked down. Damn, sharp tongue and all, she was more appealing than he’d thought.
    Alicia felt heat climb her cheeks, knew she was blushing furiously and yet refused to look away from the man. “I think it’s an insult for you to even suggest such a thing,” she announced.
    His gaze found her again. “You’re a woman, aren’t you?” His eyebrow twitched, and his mouth followed suit, as if he mocked her. Not quite a smile, but almost.
    “A woman, yes. But perhaps not the sort of female who appeals to men who are looking for a girl to marry.”
    “What sort of female are you?”
    As if he cared, she thought. The man was beingdownright rude, perhaps wishing he could push her from this room, out the front door and away from his house merely by his behavior. She would not allow it. Not until she’d had her say. If he refused her help, so much the better, as far as she was concerned at this very moment.
    “What sort of female am I? I’m a schoolteacher-sort, Mr. McPherson. I’ve never planned on marriage. At my age, it’s out of the question, anyway.”
    “How old are you?”
    Rude. The man was rude beyond belief! “How old are you? ” she countered smugly.
    “Thirty-nine,” he said. “Not that that has any bearing on the subject.”
    He looked at her expectantly. “Your age, Miss Merriweather?”
    None of your business . The words were alive in her mind, but refused to make their way to her lips. Instead, she found herself obediently blurting out the truth. “Thirty. I’m thirty years old,” she said firmly. “ On the shelf , I suppose it’s called.”
    “Surely there’s been some farmer in need of a woman , or a parson looking for a helpmate ,” he said, emphasizing the words that he obviously thought described her best.
    “Apparently not,” she said, refusing to rise to his bait. “Had such a man offered for me, I doubt I’d haveaccepted. My future does not lie in raising a brood of children whose mother had the good sense