MacAllister's Baby by Julie Cohen

her arms over her chest. ‘Wanting has nothing to do with it. I’m not going to. Thank you for inviting me.’
    His smile was slow and self-assured. ‘Wanting has everything to do with it, Elisabeth.’
    Cocky so-and-so. Elisabeth reached for another carrot. She lay it down carefully on the chopping board. Then she caught his gaze and held it.
    ‘No, Chef,’ she said. And brought her huge knife down onto the carrot, hard, thwacking it in half.
    Angus winced.
    ‘I get it,’ he said. ‘“There is no following her in this fierce vein.”’
    Shakespeare. He was quoting A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Elisabeth blinked.
    ‘You’ll say yes eventually,’ Angus said, and grinned at her, and went back to helping the kids.

CHAPTER FOUR
    ‘E SSENTIALLY A Midsummer Night’s Dream is about problems with love.’
    Elisabeth sat on top of her desk and surveyed her year seven class, most of whom were encountering untranslated Shakespeare for the first time in their lives.
    ‘The characters are in this magical forest where anything can happen. Helena was in love with Demetrius and he didn’t love her back. So now, when suddenly he’s acting as if he’s in love with her, because he’s had a spell cast on him by the fairies, she doesn’t trust him. She thinks he’s making fun of her.’
    Jimmy Peto raised his hand and, as usual, started speaking at the same time without waiting for Elisabeth to call on him. ‘If Candy Coleman suddenly fell in love with me I wouldn’t care, miss. I’d just get with her.’
    The class erupted into sniggers. Elisabeth smiled, and quieted the twelve-year-olds with a movement of her hand.
    ‘Well, that’s understandable, Jimmy, but think about what happens in the rest of the play, what happens when somebody falls in love with the wrong person. They either make fools of themselves, or they get hurt.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Jimmy. He furrowed his little forehead. ‘Love pretty much stinks. It’s better to stick with football.’
    This time, Elisabeth didn’t even try to silence the class. She let them chatter and laugh while they gave in their copies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and packed away their things. Best to let the class end on a positive note, and she could do with the two minutes of time before the bell rang for the end of the day. Today was Friday, the day of Angus’s sixth lesson with Jennifer and Danny.
    Lessons two through five had gone pretty much like lesson one. Angus had turned up, flirted, helped Jennifer and Danny with their cooking, and made Elisabeth cook too. She’d learned how to make Béarnaise, hollandaise, and mayonnaise. She could bake a cake; she could roll a spring roll. Not as well as the kids could; they had natural flair and instincts and seemed to know what flavours would go together without even tasting them first. But she could do it, more or less.
    And every lesson, Angus had asked her out.
    She’d thought that habit would make her less susceptible to Angus. Surely she couldn’t feel such a thrill every time she saw him. She’d get used to him.
    Not a chance.
    It was like an electric shock to see him, the air was charged and exciting when he was in the room. When she got home on Wednesday and Friday nights, her muscles were tense from controlling her actions and her head throbbed from controlling her thoughts. It was as if the past three weeks had been one long, torturous session of foreplay.
    Foreplay that would never be consummated, because Elisabeth did not intend to say yes to Angus.
    The bell rang, and the class filed out, eager to start their weekend. Elisabeth knew she should head straight down to the food technology room; Jennifer and Danny were always quick to get there, and now that Angus knew his way around the school he was often setting up the equipment and ingredients they needed before anyone else arrived.
    Elisabeth, on the other hand, lingered for as long as she could possibly do in good conscience. She was reluctant to be in the