Matt Sanders

"Mrs. Dawson, this is Happy." Ace patted the shetland pony vigorously, kissed his nose. Ace's lips were stained an unnatural shade of red as if she had smeared them with raspberries.

"You were right about the lipstick," Matt has told Aubree, rolling his eyes when they had picked her up.

"And you were wrong about--"

"Everything," he admitted. "No hazards of any kind. Don't ask me to admit I was wrong every again. It unmans me."

He was teasing her, and Aubree was coming to enjoy the growing ease between them so much. But she liked the underlying message, too. That somehow their lives were linked, and ever again suggested it might be staying that way.

Even this outing suggested that. By inviting her to this Christmas-card pretty farm--red barn, snow covered fields, horses behind white fences--that belonged to Ace's aunt, weren't the links that connected them growing stronger?

Now Matt was trying to get a harness on the uncooperative, chunky brown-and-white pony. So far his hand had been stepped on twice. He had something--both times--quite a bit stronger than "damn," then shot Aubree looked that dared the comment.

But she did not want to be the schoolteacher today. Just a woman enjoying the extraordinary bliss of not being alone, of sharing a wonderful winter day with a glorious man and his adorable little girl.

"This is the meanest horse ever born," Matt grumbled. "Keep your face away from his teeth, for God's sake, Ace. He might mistake your lips for an apple."

"He loves me," Ace said with certainty. "He won't bite me."

"I don't know why he doesn't bite her," Matt told Aubree, apparently not convinced it was love. "He's bitten me at least six times since our unhappy first meeting. Mostly, now I can manage to outwit him."

"But not the time he bit you on the bum," Ace said. "Remember, Daddy?"

"Speaking of being unmanned," he muttered with a sigh. "That's kind of a hard one to forget. I couldn't sit down for a week."

She shouted with laughter.

The sleigh ride might not be turning out as she'd expected, but Aubree loved the feeling growing inside her. it was blissful. She didn't just feel as if she was being included in this little family outing. She felt as if she belonged.

If she contemplated it, she might find it just a little bit frightening that she was feeling something right now, in this very moment, that she had been waiting her whole life to feel.

But she was determined not to contemplate it, not to wreck these precious moments by trying to look into that foggy place that was the future. For once, she would just enjoy what she had given, no worrying, no analyzing, no planning, no plotting.

"He's going to be good today," Ace predicted. "Be good, Happy."

"Ace thinks he's going to pull the sleigh. I think he won't. Unless there's a cliff nearby that he can pull us off of."

"I don't think horses are that...devious, are they?" Aubree asked. The stocky miniature steed trying to sidestep the traces was so different from the stallion of her imagination she laughed out loud again.

Or maybe the laughter had nothing to do with the surprise of the pony. It was the day. And being with him. Them. The very air seemed to be tingling with merriment, with joy.

Snow was beginning to fall gently. The little horse stamped his feet and shook his mane, and a lovely smell drifted up from him. In the background was a red brick farmhouse, snow drifts in the front yard, a cheery wreath on the front door.

Ace had told her that was her aunt Michelle's house, and that she wasn't home right now. Happy had been her christmas gift from her aunt last year.

Aubree thought it took a pretty special aunt to know what a hard time Christmas would be for this child, and to come up with a gift good enough to make a dent in all that sadness.

In fact mischief and merriment seemed to dance in the air around the pony. Finally, Matt loaded her and Ace into a red sleigh. The pony did have bells on, and as it set off, their music filled the air.

And that was about the only part of Aubree's fantasy that had been realistic. Matt wasn't even cuddled under a blanket with her and Ace. He walked to one side of the pony trying to persuade him to keep up a forward motion.

An hour later, Aubree thought she had never laughed so hard in her entire life. She was doubled over she was laughing so hard.

"You have to stop," Aubree gasped. She was begging.

"We are stopped," Matt pointed out, not sharing her amusement. "That's the problem. Unhappy hasn't moved for ten minutes."

It was snowing, but it was no longer big, gentle flakes floating down around them. It was coming down hard now, the wind whipping it up in gusts around the sleigh. But even the freezing cold could not damped Aubree's enjoyment.

Matt stood in front of Happy, pulling on the pony's obstinate head, trying to get him to move.

The pony had pulled the little sleigh, with Ace and Aubree in it, only in stops and starts, mostly stops. Ace held the reins, and jiggled them and shouted encouragement, while her father walked slightly behind and to the right of the pony.

Forward movement was accomplished sporadically when Matt slapped the pony's ample brown-and-white rump with his gloves.

Now, a mile from the house, Happy was no longer startled by the rather frequent popping across his rump with the gloves. Apparently he had decided against the forward motion and was not going to be persuaded with glove smacks.

"I think he likes it," Aubree said, watching the pony sway his rump happily into the pressure of Matt's hand after every increasingly vigorous smack with the gloves. Happy turned his head just enough that she could see the pony's decidedly beady eyes half shut in the expression that Aubree had to assume was pure pleasure.

Matt has his hands firmly planted on either side of the pony's headstall and was leaning back hard on his heels, pulling with all his might.

"Come on, you dastardly little devil."

Considerable as Matt's might was, the pony outweighed him by several hundred pounds. Happy planted his own feet, and showed Matt he wasn't the only one who could lean back!

"There's a dog-food factory waiting for you!" Matt warned the pony darkly. "One phone call. The meat wagon comes by here on Monday."

"Please stop," Aubree begged again. All this cold, all this jolting and all this laughter was having the most unfortunate effect on her kidneys.

"He's just kidding," Ace whispered. "He says that every time."

The pony stepped back instead of forward, pulling Matt with him.

"On second thought, dog food is too good for you," Matt muttered. "Bear beat. The bear-beat wagon comes by on Wednesday."

The pony cocked his head as if he was actually considering this, then stepped back again, yanking Matt backward with him.

"Please," Aubree moaned.

"It's time for the apple," Ace yelled. If she was enjoying her sleigh ride any less for it's lack of forward movement it didn't show in her shining face.

"I am not bribing him to move. I'm just not. It's a matter of pride with me. Sanders are renowned for their price, Aubree."

But after another few minutes of unsuccessfully playing tug-of-war with the four-hundred-pound-pony, Matt sighed and produced an apple, apparently kept on hand for just this purpose.

With a sigh of resignation, he held it at arm's length. Happy opened one eye, caught one sight of the apple and lurched forward.

A terrible move for a suffering kidney.

"Greedy little pig," Matt muttered, keeping the apple carefully out of the snapping pony's reach and breaking into a jog.

Aubree howled with laughter as the fat pony stirred himself into a trot, stretching his neck hard to get the apple. The sleigh jolted along behind him, as Matt wisely looped back toward the barn while the pony was moving.

They finally got back to the barn, Happy's only true ambition demonstrated when that building came back into view and he broke into a clumsy gallop that had Matt running to keep up.

"Give him the apple, Daddy," Ace insisted when they arrived at the barn door.

Panting, Matt obliged, yanking back his fingers when Happy tried to devour them along with the apple.

Aubree decided then and there you could learn a lot about the true nature of a man from how he bargained with a pony--and from the lengths he was willing to go to make his daughter happy.

Matt helped Aubree out of the sled with a rueful grin. He gave a little bow. "I see I have entertained you." And the more solemnly revealed, looking at her so intently her face burned. "I like it when you laugh, Aubree Dawson."

"I like it, too."

"I'm sure this was not exactly what you pictured when I promised you a sleigh ride."

"The truth?" she said. "It's not. And it was so much better! Except for one thing." She leaned forward and whispered her urgent need to him.

"Ace? Take Miss Dawson up to the house."

The door of the farmhouse opened just as they arrived.