“Why did you become a teacher?” he asked.

“Because I couldn’t be a nun.”

An answer he never would have expected. “Did you want to be a nun?”

Kayleen nodded slowly. “Very much. The orphanage my grandmother took me to was run by nuns. They were wonderful to me. I wanted to be just like them. But I don’t really have the right personality.”

“Too outspoken?”

“Too…everything. I’m opinionated, I have a temper, I have trouble with the rules sometimes.”

She seemed so quiet and mousy in her baggy brown dress, but there was something in her eyes, a spark that told him she was telling the truth. After all, she had attacked Tahir.

He’d never met an almost-nun before. Why would a pretty woman want to lock herself away from the world?

“Our Mother Superior suggested I go into teaching,” Kayleen continued. “It was a great idea. I love it. I love the children. I wanted to take a permanent position there, but she insisted I first see the world. That’s how I ended up here. Eventually, I’ll go back.”

“To the convent school?”

She nodded.

“What about a husband and a family?”

Kayleen ducked her head, but not before he saw her blush. “I don’t really expect that to happen to me. I don’t date. Men are…They don’t think of me that way.”

He recalled his earlier fantasy about seeing her naked. “You would be surprised,” he murmured.

She looked up. “I don’t think so.”

“So there has never been anyone special?”

“A boyfriend?” She shook her head. “No.”

She was in her midtwenties. How was that possible? Did such innocence truly exist? Yet why would she lie about such a thing?

He found himself wanting to show her the world she’d been avoiding. To take her places.

Ridiculous, he told himself. She was nothing to him. Only the children’s nanny.