Teacher's Pet

Nora Quinn has taught in seven towns, and she's good at arriving - it's staying she never learned. Then she witnesses something she shouldn't have, and the only safe address in the county is the cottage next to Grady Mercer: widowed father, professional planner, a man whose five-year-old daughter runs the household off a laminated folder.

Nora's classroom voice works on puppies, kindergartners, and - to everyone's alarm - Grady.

Between a junior-handler program the whole county adopts, a little girl who documents everything in crayon, and a threat that gets too close to a school, Nora discovers the lesson she never got: home isn't the place that lets you in. It's the place that saves your chair.

Single dad meets sunshine-with-a-spine, a five-year-old scene-stealer, an old dog who assigns himself to her porch, and a grovel with a drawing in it that will END you. Complete HEA, tissues mandatory, no cliffhanger.