Matt Sanders

The door of the farmhouse opened just as they arrived. An attractive wholesome-looking woman with light hair and a Christmas sweater smiled her welcome at them.

"Aunt Michelle!" Ace cried.

"You must be frozen," Michelle said, as she gave Ace a huge hug.

"Actually," Aubree said awkwardly, "if you could point me to the direction of--"

Thankfully she didn't even have to finish the sentence, because Michelle laughed. "Right there. I've jounced around in that sled, too."

When Aubree joined them again, Michelle explained she had been out Christmas shopping when they arrived.

"How was Happy today?" she asked her niece.

"Happy was extra bad for Daddy today," Ace declared gleefully.

"Oh, good," Michelle said, and they all shared a laugh that made Aubree feel, again, that deepening sense of family, of being part of a sacred circle. She had a sense of ease with Michelle that usually she would not have with a person quite so quickly.

"I'm Aubree Dawson, Ace's teacher," Aubree said, extending her hand.

"Oh, the famous Mrs. Dawson."

"It's Miss. I can't get that through to the kids. I've stopped trying."

"Miss. Oh," Michelle said as she turned and looked to where Matt was taking the harness off the pony. Her eyes went back to Aubree full of soft question.

Questions that Aubree was thankful that had not been spoken out loud, because she would have no idea how to answer them.

There was something happening between her and Matt, there was no question about that. But it was ill-defined and nebulous. Were they becoming friends? Aubree thought it was something more. Possibly a lot more. But did he?

"Ace's mom, Matt's wife, Val, was my sister," Michelle said, leading Aubree through to the kitchen.

It could have been an awkward moment, but it wasn't.

Michelle laid her hand on Aubree's. "We love him very much. We just want him back. Sometimes," she mused, sighing, "I feel as if I lost all three of them."

"Three?" Aubree said.

"Never mind. It's a long story. And maybe it will have a happy ending someday. I could have sworn when I looked out the kitchen window a few minutes ago, I saw Matt smiling. A rare enough occurrence in the last two years, and even rarer after he's had to deal with the pony!

"Oh. Here's Brian, my husband. Brian, this is Aubree. Matt brought her out to have a sleigh ride with Ace."

No mention of her true role in their lives, as Ace's teacher.

"And how was that?" Brian asked her.

"One of the most deliriously delightful experiences of my life."

He watched her for a moment, and like his wife, seemed satisfied.

Silly, to be so pleased that Matt's family by marriage liked her. They hardly knew her.

Though that seemed to be a circumstance they were determined to change, because after Matt came in, stomping snow off his boots, they were all invited to share the pot of chili that had been heating on the stove.

"Aubree?" Matt asked. "Does that fit in your schedule?"

Schedule? Oh, a woman more clever than her would probably at least pretend to be busy on a Saturday night. But somehow, there was no way you could play games with a man as real as Matt.

Or not mind games. Not flirting games. Other games? He proved to be enormously good at them.

Because after the feed of chili in the warmth of the kitchen, with banter going back and forth between the two men, there was just an expectation they would stay. The kitchen table was cleared of dishes and a worn deck of cards came out.

They taught her how to play a game called 99 that she was hopeless at. But two late night's in a row soon proved too much for Ace, and despite her winning streak at 99 she finally went and laid down on the couch and fell asleep.

And then the adults gathered around the fireplace, and Michelle made hot rum toddies though Matt refused and had hot chocolate instead.

Aubree wished she had refused, too. The drink filled her with a sense of warmed and well-being as the talk flowed around her. About the farm, and the studio, and the coming production of The Christmas Angel.

"Did you hear they were deciding who gets to go by a lottery system?" Michelle asked.

Aubree confirmed that. There were only three hundred seats available in the auditorium, so the seats would be given away by a lottery system. But she told them there would be a live feed to the community center and one of the local churches so that everyone who wanted could see it.

"And have they chosen the Christmas Angel yet?" Michelle asked, casting a worried look at her sleeping niece. "She's called me several times about it. Tonight's the first night I haven't heard her mention it."

"I understand it will be announced the choice at the welcome party. It's a skating party at the pond, a week from tonight. A video has been sent of some of the rehearsals."

"I'd like it to be over with," Michelle said.

"Me, too," Matt said. "I hate to think how disappointed she's going to be."

"Who knows?" Aubree said. "Maybe she won't be disappointed. maybe it will be her."

Michelle and Matt's mouths fell open in equal expression of shocked disbelief.

"Ace?" they said together.

"I've told all they girls they have an equal chance at being chosen."

"But that's not true," Matt said grimly. "Ace can't sing a note, and she doesn't look like anyone's idea of an angel."

"Her singing has actually improved quite a lot under Mrs. Wellhaven's tutelage."

"She sings all those songs around the house all the time. I haven't noticed any improvement."

"Well," Aubree said firmly, "there has been. And I think anyone with a little imagination could see she would make a perfectly adorable Christmas Angel."

"I don't want her getting her hopes up for something that doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of happening."

It was the first grim note in a perfect day, so Michelle changed the subject, but the mood had shifted.

A few minutes later, saying goodbye on the doorstep, Matt cradling the sleeping child against his chest, it seemed to Aubree as if she had never had a more perfect day. She realized it was not the toddy alone that allowed her to feel this sense of warmth and well-being. It had only allowed her to relax into that feeling instead of analyzing it.

"Matt," she said, as they drove through the snow, "it's so nice that you still are so connected with them, with Val's family."

He shot her a surprised look. "Family is family. They became my family the day I marred Valery."

Aubree shivered. She had always known he was a forever kind of man. Not like in her own family, where loyalties shifted with each new liaison. She could feel herself longing for what he represented.

A simple night of family. And connection. A feeling of some things not being temporary.

"I still think it's nice," she said.

"We had already lost Val. It would have just made everything so much worse if we lost each other. Ace is what remains, she's was Val is sending forward into the future. I could never keep her from her aunt, from her mom's sister."

But Aubree thought of all the people--including her own family--that when something happened, like a divorce, that's exactly what they did.

"When my mom and dad divorced," she told him, "it was like my dad's whole side of the family, including him, just faced away."

"You didn't have any contact with your dad?"

"A bit, at first. Then he moved for a job, and then he remarried. So, it was a card and some money on my birthday. He always paid my mother support, though."

"Yippee for him," Matt said darkly. "There's a lot more to being a dad than paying the bills."

"Yes," she said. "I can see that in the way you parent."

"Now you like my parenting?" he teased her. "What about the notes?"

"You haven't gotten one for a while!"

"I kind of miss them."

"You do not."

"What you dad did? That was wrong," he said after a long time. "And sad."

She liked that about Matt Sanders. He had a strong value system. He knew what was right and what was wrong, and he would never compromise that.

"Matt, tell me if it's none of my business, but did someone else die, besides your wife? Michelle said something."

For a long moment he didn't answer. Then he said gruffly, "There were three of us who grew up together. Me, Val and David. Val and David had been in love since they were about twelve. I mean really in love. The head-over-heels kind. Some people outgrow things like that, other people don't. They didn't."

He was silent for a long time. "David joined the Marines. Before he left he made me a promise I'd look after her. If anything happened."

"Something happened," Aubree guessed when he was silent for a long time again.

He cast her a look that said it all, that confirmed that strong value system.

"David was killed in Afghanistan," he said roughly. "And I looked after Val, just like I promised."

She wanted to ask if he loved her, but it was so evident from the agony on his face that he had love her. Loved both his friends.

"You are a good man," she whispered. She wanted to ask, Did she love you? The really-in-love kind? the head-over-heels kind? But she could tell by the set of his face he already felt he might have said too much.

He shrugged it off uncomfortably, and they pulled up to her house. He shut off the truck, and leaped out, not wanting to discuss it anymore. Still, he walked her up to her front door, helped her with her key.

"Thank you, Matt," she said softly. "It was such a perfect day."

"You're welcome." He turned to go down off her stoop.

Maybe it was the hot rum toddy.

Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was that he was a good, good man, who had made a vow to his best friend and kept it. maybe it was because she thought he deserved to be really in love and suspect that he had sacrificed that feeling in the name of honor.

"Matt?"

He turned back to her.

Something else had been between them all day, too.

Awareness.

She crossed the small distance between them, stood on tiptoes and did what he wanted to do from the moment she had met him.

She tasted him. She touched her lips to his own.

He tasted exactly as she had known he would.

Of mysterious things that made a woman's heart race, but underneath that, of strength and solidness. Of a man who would do the right thing.

Of things made to last forever.

She stumbled back from him, both frightened and intrigued by the strength of her longing. He was a man, she knew, who had been tremendously hurt.

She held her breath knowing that everything between them had just shifted with the invitation of her lips.

So far everything had been casual and spontaneous.

Now their kiss changed that.

It asked for more. It demanded some definition, it asked where things were going. it asked if he was ready to really fall in love.

The head-over-heels kind.

Because despite it all, despite her determination to be independent, to not give her life away, she felt ready to surrender to that tug inside her.

To love him.

Aubree held her breath, thinking he would walk away, perhaps never to look back.

But he didn't. He regarded her solemnly, and then said, softly, "Wow."

Then he walked away, leaving her feeling as if things were even more up in the air and ill-defined than they had been before.