Twenty minutes later as he pulled into the parking lot at the Sunny Days Nursery School, he was no longer thinking about Valerie. Instead, he was frowning into his rear-view mirror. The gray van that had been following him looked like the same one he’d seen behind him a couple of times last week. It had a crumpled right fender. If he had a reporter on his tail, why the cloak-and-dagger stuff? He tried to see the driver as the van passed by the nursery school entrance, but the windows were tinted.

Shrugging off the incident, he parked his Ferrari and walked into the low brick building, smiling as he heard the various noises of the school: squeals of laughter, off-key singing, chairs scraping. He was due in Wheaton in half an hour to speak at a Rotary luncheon, but he couldn’t resist stopping off for a few minutes. Maybe it would clear out his confusion over what had happened with Phoebe last night.

The doorway to Sharon’s classroom was open, and as he looked inside, his chest swelled. They were baking cookies! Right then, he was ready to drop down on his knees and propose marriage. What he wouldn’t have given when he was a kid to have baked cookies with his mother. Unfortunately, she had been too busy getting drunk. Not that he blamed her. Living with a bastard like his father would have driven anyone to drink.

Sharon glanced up from the big mixing bowl and dropped the spoon she had been holding as she spotted him. Her face flooded with color. He smiled as he saw what a mess she was.

Her curly red hair had flour in it, and a streak of blue food coloring decorated her cheek. If he owned Cosmopolitan magazine, he’d have put her on the cover, just like that. In his mind, Sharon, with her pixie’s face and freckled nose, was a lot more alluring than those big-breasted blondes in sequins and Spandex.

An image of Phoebe Somerville flashed through his mind, but he pushed it away. He wasn’t going to let lust interfere with a search for his children’s mother.

Sharon fumbled for the wooden spoon she had dropped. “Oh, uh—Hi. Come in.”

Her nervousness appealed to him. It was nice being with a woman who wasn’t used to being with a man like him. “I just stopped by for a minute to see how my pal Robert was doing with his broken arm.”

“Robert, somebody’s here to see you.”

A cute little black kid in shorts and a T-shirt came rushing over to show off his cast. Dan admired the signatures on it, including his own, which was somewhat the worse for wear.

“Do you know Michael?” the child finally said.

In a town like Chicago, there was no doubt which Michael he meant, not even when the question came from a four-year-old.