Matt Sanders

"This is your hammer?" he asked. Matt tried not to laugh. Good grief. She was an all-or-nothing kind of girl. She had gone from the toy tapping tool that had looked more like an instrument her first graders would use in a percussion band, to this, a 23-ounce Blue Max framing hammer with a curved handle. It looked like a hatchet.

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing."

"It's very expensive."

"I'm sure it was. I'll be that tree stand was, too."

"Don't take that 'there's a sucker born every minute' tone with me."

"Yes, ma'am," he answered her schoolmarm tone of voice.

But she wasn't fooled. Not even a little bit. "You think my hammer is funny. I can tell."

It probably wasn't a good thing that she was getting so good at reading him.

"No, no, it's not funny." Despite saying that a snort of laughter escaped him. And then another. Then he couldn't resist. "When are you building a house?"

"A house?" she asked, flabbergasted.

And he dissolved into laughter. He had not laughed, it seemed, for a very long time. Oh, little chuckles had been taking him by surprise here and there. But it had not been like this. A from the belly, caught in the moment, delight-filled roar of genuine laughter.

If felt good to laugh again. Maybe too good. It almost made him forget he had other worries tonight, like Ace and her little pal, who could at this moment be gooping on makeup, or eating popcorn in front of an unblocked Playboy channel.

"A big hammer is called a framing hammer. It's used for framing a house."

"I'm sure it can be used for other things."

"Yeah. If you can lift it. And swing it. Have you seen house framers? They have wrists nearly as big as your thighs."

Shoot. Was she going to guess he'd been looking at her thighs? Maybe not, because she suddenly seemed distracted by her wrists. She licked her lips. He decided it might be best to avoid mentioning body parts from now o n.

Or looking at them. For a prim little schoolteacher, she had lips that practically begged to be kissed. Full and plump.

He wasn't going to be held responsible for what happened next if she licked them again.

"You don't buy a hammer you can hardly heft," he said, a little more sharply than he'd intended. His sharpness had nothing to do with hammer choice, not that she ever had to know.

She reacted to the tone, which was so much better than lip-licking. Rather than looked educated, she looked annoyed. Annoyance was good!

"I like that hammer," she said stubbornly.

"Really?" he challenged her. "What do you like about it?"

She hesitated. She looked at the hammer. She looked at him. She looked at her toes. And the fallen Christmas tree. It was written all over her that she wanted to lie, and that she was incapable of it.

"The color," she finally admitted, giving him a look that dared him to laugh. It was a look designed to intimidate six-year-old boys and it was effective, too.

Or would have been effective if she hadn't started laughing first. He liked it that she could laugh at herself, and then they were both laughing. Laughing with her, for a second time in just a few minutes, was worse temptation than sneaking peeks at how those prison-issue sweatpants hugged her thighs.

Because it invited him back toward the Light. Matt was aware he was walking too close to the fire.

He reined himself in. "I'll just put up the coat hangers now," he said. To himself he added that he would put up the coat hangers--that was what he had come here to do--and go. Immediately.

"Show me how to do it," she said, setting down the cocoa she had brought in. "Next time I need something done, you might not be here."

Not might not, he corrected her silently. Won't. A week ago, he would have said it out loud...Why not now? Because, despite his vow to stay away, he kept coming back to her, magnet to steel.

Because there was something about her that was funny and sweet and even a hard man such as himself could not bring himself to hurt her by tossing out carelessly cruel words.

"Come on then," he said gruffly. "I'll show you."

It was a surrender. Because putting up a few coat hangers should have been the simplest thing in the world. It should have taken five minutes.

Instead, because of his surrender, half an hour later the reclaimed barn board was finally up. His hand had brushed her hand half a dozen times. Their shoulders had touched. He was aware of her lips and her thighs and her shoulders and her scent.

He was amazing he'd managed to get that board level, and the coat hooks spaced out evenly.

Aubree was glowing as if she'd designed a rocket that could go to Mars as she surveyed their handiwork.

"It looks good."

"Except for the additional hole," he pointed out wryly. She had put the huge hammer through the drywall when she had missed the nail he was trying to teach her to drive.

He had supplies to fix it, since he'd come prepared to fix her previous holes in the wall. He taped the hole, stirred the drywall mud and began to patch.

"I want you to promise me you'll return the hammer." Then, he heard himself promising that if she did, he'd help her pick out one that was better for all-around household use and repairs.

Even though he knew darn well a worker could help her.

Whether she wanted it or not.

But she probably wouldn't, and for some reason he thought she might listen to him a little more than she would a worker.

Thought that meant something.

She was coming to trust him.

Oh, Matt, he told himself, cut this off, short and sweet. Wouldn't that be best for both of them?

"The cocoa's gone cold," she said, oblivious to his inner war. She took a little sip and wrinkled her nose in the cutest way. A little sliver of foam clung to the fullness of her lip. "I'll go make some more. Let's take a break."

Which meant she thought he was staying, and somehow, probably because of the damn foam on her lip, he could feel short-and-sweet going right out the window.

Well, Matt rationalized, he couldn't very well leave her with her Christmas tree sprawled across the floor, with a stand that was never going to stand up, could he?

Yes.

But he'd said he'd fix it.

He trailed her to the kitchen and watched her make cocoa. Since she was going to the effort, he'd drink that. Then he was leaving, tree or no tree. He had a kid he hired to help him sometimes, he'd send him over tomorrow. He could look after having it fixed without fixing himself. But then it would be done, right?

Her kitchen, like her living room, made him aware of some as yet unnamed lack in himself.

Everything was tidy, there was not a single crumb on the counter, no spills making smoke come off the burners as she heated the milk. She reached for a spice and the spices were in a stainless-steel container and turned, not lined up on top of the stove. The over mitts weren't stained and didn't have holes burned in them.

He could feel that horrible longing welling up in him.

Leave, he told himself. Instead of leaving as completely as he would have liked, he left the kitchen and went and worked on the stand. So it would be done right.

By the time she came back in, he had the tree stand modified to actually hold up a tree, and had the tree standing back up.

"This is a foolishly large tree," he told her.

She smiled, mistaking it for a compliment. "Isn't it?"

He sighed. "Where do you want it?"

"I should put the lights on while it's on the ground," she told him. "Come have your cocoa before it cools this time. I'll worry about the tree later."

But somehow, he knew he'd be putting the lights on it for her, too. It was too pathetic to think of her trying to put them on with the tree lying on the floor, creative as that solution might be to her vertical challenges.

It occurred to him, she was proving a hard woman to get away from. And that with every second he stayed it was going to get harder, not easier.

Okay. The lights. That was absolutely it. Then he was leaving.

He went and sat beside her on the couch as she handed him the cocoa. He took a sip. It was not powdered hot chocolate out of a tin, like he made for Ace on occasion. It was some kind of ambrosia. There was cinnamon mixed with chocolate.

Aubree Dawson had witch-green eyes. She was probably casting a spell on him.

"So, do you and Ace have family to spend the holidays with?" she asked.

He wished he would have stuck with the lights. That was definitely a "getting to know you" kind of question.

"We alternate years. Last year we were with my parents, so this year we're with Val's side of the family, Ace's aunt Michelle and uncle Brian. They have a little place outside of town. We'll go out there after the production on Christmas Eve and spend the night."

He didn't say his own house was too painful a place to be on Christmas Eve. He did not think he could be there without hearing the knock on the door, opening it expecting to see Val so loaded down she couldn't open the door.

By then, Val had been gone so long he suspected she was coming home with a little more than reindeer poop.

"How about you?" he asked, mostly to avoid the way his thoughts were going, to deflect anymore questions about his plans for Christmas.

Which was basically get through it.

She was the kind of woman you could just spill your guts to. If you were that kind of guy.

Which he wasn't.

"Oh." She suddenly looked uncomfortable. "I'm not sure yet."

"You won't go home?" he asked, suddenly aware it wasn't all about him, detecting something in her that was guarded. Or maybe even a little sad.

"No," she said bravely. "With The Christmas Angel on Christmas Eve I decided just to stay here."

Again, focused intently on her now, he heard something else. And for whatever reason, he probed it.

"Your family will be disappointed not to have you, won't they?"

She shrugged with elaborate casualness. "I think my mom is having a midlife crises. After twenty-three years of working in an insurance office, she chucked everything, packed a backpack and went to Thailand. She told me she'll be on the beach in Phuket on Christmas day."

"And what about your dad?"

"He and my mom split when I was eleven. He's remarried ad has a young family. I'm never quite sure where I fit into all that." And then she added ruefully, "Neither is he."

Matt didn't know what to say.

His family might have been rough around the edges, but not knowing where you fit into the arrangement? He had been alternating where he spent Christmas since he had married Val and his mother still cried when it wasn't her year to have him and Ace.

The idea of your own family not wanting you is foreign to him. He felt so shocked and saddened by it, he had to fight back an urge to scoop her up and take her on his lap and rock her, like the lonely child he heard in her voice.

"It's actually been good," she rushed on bravely. "I'm doing all these things for the first time by myself. Before my mom decided to be a world traveler, she always did Christmas. And she was elaborate about it. Theme trees. New recipes for stuffing. Winning the block decorating party. Christmas was always completely done for me. In fact, God forbid you should touch anything. then it might not look perfect. So, I don't know how to do anything, but I'm happy to learn. You don't want to go through life not knowing how to do things like that. For yourself."

She was not a very good liar. She was not happy to learn. But he went along with her.

"No," he said soothingly, without an ounce of conviction, "you don't."

"Of course, I probably won't cook a turkey," she said. "For myself. That would be silly."

"You aren't going to be alone on Christmas." He wasn't quite sure why he said it like that. As if he knew she wasn't going to be alone at Christmas. When he didn't. At all.

She was silent. Too silent.

He shot her a look. Her face was scrunched up, and not in the cute way it had been when the cocoa had gone cold.

"Are you going to cry?" he asked with soft desperation.

"I certainly hope not."

"Me, too."

He fought against that impulse, to pick her up and lift her onto his lap, to pull her head against his shoulder.

Instead, and it was bad enough, he reached out and took her hand in his, and held it. It was a small gesture. Tiny against the magnitude of her pain.

Nothing, really.

And yet something huge at the same time. She clung to his hand as if he had tossed her a life preserver.

That should have been enough to make him let go. But it wasn't. He was leaving his hand there as long as she needed to hold it.

Matt understood instantly that something had shifted in him. He had come out of the cave of his pain just enough to reach out to someone else.

A shaft of light pierced the darkness he had lived in.

And he saw the truth: all evening in the dark place had called him to come back. And he almost had obeyed that call.

There was something comforting and familiar about that place of pain where he had been. Save for Ace, it made few demands on him. He did not have to feel anything, he did not have to truly engage with life. It certainly id not ask him to grow or to give/.

But now, now that shaft of light had pierced him, he was not sure he could go back to living in the darkness. He was not sure at all.

Aubree took a deep shuddering breath.

"Let's put up the lights on the tree," he suggested. If there was one thing personal pain had taught him, it was that sitting around contemplating it was no way to make it go away. Action was the remedy.

"Okay," she said, her voice wobbly with the tears she had not shed. She let go of his hand abruptly and leaped to her feet. "I guess that means I have to find the star."

Matt noted that everything she owned was brand-new, and there was a sadness in that itself.

His childhood might have been poor, but both sides of his family had given him Christmas relics that went on his tree every year. He was pretty sure his lights, the color cracked off them min spots, predated his birth by several years. He had antique ornaments that his grandmother had carried across the ocean with her, acorn ornaments that Val had made when he was Ace's age.

Aubree's lack of anything old in her Christmas decoration boxes made him acutely aware of how bad her first Christmas alone could be.

And now it was that awareness--of her aloneness, of how close to tears she had been--that made him tease her.

About the size of her tree, and the rather large size of the striped stock she put on the mantel for herself, about her selection of treetop star, a gaudy creation of pink-and-green neon lights.

He teased her until she was breathless with laughter, until the last remnants of sadness had left her face, and the sparkle in her eyes was not from tears. He was heartened when she began teasing him back.

Together, they put up the lights, ornaments way too scanty for such a big tree, tons of tinsel that she demanded, in her schoolteacher voice, get added to the tree a single strand at a time.

By the time they were done, it was close to midnight.

She insisted on making more hot chocolate. She turned off all the other lights in her house, and they sat on her purple couch in the darkness made happy by the glow of the Christmas tree lights.

Matt had not realized how on guard he was against life, until now, when his guard came down.

He felt as relaxed as he felt in years. And exhausted. Keeping a guard up that high was hard work he realized, it required constant vigilance.

And that was the last thing he thought.