Matt Sanders

Aubree glanced across the restaurant table at Matt Sanders. Nothing in the time they had spent in the truck lessened her first impression of him standing alone in the studio.

He was a warrior. Battle-scarred, self-reliant, his emotions contained behind walls so high it would be nearly impossible to scale them.

So, being Aubree, naturally she tried to scale them away.

She had been aware that she was trying to make him smile as they had traveled, deliberately using her worst singing voice, trying to get him to participate. She told herself it was so Ace could see a softer side of her father, but she knew that wasn't the entire truth.

She had seen a tickle of a smile at his studio on their first meeting. She wanted to see if she could tempt it out again.

but she had failed. The more she tried, the more he had tightened his cloak of remoteness around himself.

Though Aubree had not missed how his eye found Ace in the rearview mirror, had not missed he was indulging her antics because his daughter was enjoying them.

Really, Matt Sanders was the man least likely to ever be seen at a Chucky Cheese franchise, but here he was, tolerating a noise level that was nothing less than astonishing, his eye unreadable when the menus were elivered buy a guy in somewhat the worse-for-wear chicken suit.

he ate the atrocious food without comment, slipped the waiter-chicken a tip when he came to their table and serenaded them with a song with Ace's name literally sprinkled throughout it.

"Well, wasn't that fun?" Aubree asked as they left Chucky Cheese.

"Yes!" Ace crowed. Even she seemed to notice that nothing was penetrating the hard armor around her father. "Daddy," she demanded, "didn't you think that was fun?"

"Fun as pounding nails with my forehead," he muttered.

"That doesn't sound fun," Ace pointed out.

"You're right," he said, and then sternly warned, "don't try it at home."

Aubree sighed as Ace skipped ahead to where they had parked. "How did you allow yourself to get talked into coming? I'm beginning to see you did not volunteer for this excursion."

He hesitated, and then nodded at Emmaleigh. "We always spend Saturday together. it's our tradition. Since her mom passed. I was willing to forgo it, just this once. She wasn't."

"Somewhere under that hard exterior is there a heart of pure gold, Matt Sanders?"

She finally got the smile, only it wasn't the one she'd been trying for. Cynical. Something tight around the edges of it. his eye shielded.

"Don't kid yourself."

Instead of scaling his wall, she's managed to get him to put it up higher! And for some reason it made her mad. If she couldn't make him laugh, then she might as well torment him.

"If you thought Chucky Cheese was fun, you're going to love The Snow Cave," Aubree promised him.

he gave her a dark, lingering look that sent shivers from her ears to her toes.

The Snow Cave proudly proclaimed itself as haut tot.

If he had looked out of place at Chucky Cheese, Matt Sanders now looked acutely out of of place in the exclusive girls' store. He was big and rugged amongst the racks and displays of pint-size frilly clothing in more shades of pink than Aubree was certain the male mind could imagine.

Ignoring his discomfort , at the same time as enjoying it immensely, Aubree sorted through the racks until she had both her and Emmaleigh's arms heaped up with selections: blouses and t-shirts, socks, slacks, dresses, skirts.

"Great," he said when it was obvious they could not carry one more thing. "Are you done? Can we go?"

"She has to try everything on."

"What?" He looked like a wolf caught in a trap. "What for? Just buy it all so we can leave."

Not even a little ashamed for enjoying his misery so thoroughly, Aubree leaned close to him and whispered, "This store is very expensive. You should allow her to pick one or two items from here and we'll get the rest elsewhere."

"Elsewhere?" He closed his eyes and bit back a groan. "Just buy the damn stuff. I don't care what it costs. I don't want to go elsewhere"

She waited to feel guilty, but given how easily he had resisted her efforts to charm, she didn't.

Not in the least. this was a show of spunky liberation from needing his approval.

"That's not how it works," Aubree said firmly. "We've been shopping for all of ten minutes. Don't be such a baby."

His mouth dropped open in shock, closed again. Aubree was sure she could him him grinding his teeth before he finally said, "A baby? Me?"

"And could you try not to curse? Emmaleigh tends to bring some of your words to school."

"You consider damn a curse?" he said, clearly as astonished by that as by the fact that she had the audacity to call him a baby.

"I do," she said bravely.

He stared at her as if she was freshly minted from a far-off planet. He scowled. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He looked longingly at the door. and then Ace danced up, with one more find.

"Look! Sparkle skinny jeans that will fit me!"

He sighed with long suffering, shot Aubree a dark look that she answered with a bland, uncaring smile, and then allowed Ace to take his hand and tug him towards the change area.

Which, like everything at The Snow Cave, was designed to delight little girls. the waiting area, newly decorated for Christmas, was like the throne room in a winter palace fantasy.

And so there sat Matt Sanders front row and center, in a pink satin chair which looked as if it could snap into kindling under his weight. But as Emmaleigh danced out in each of her new outfits, the scowl dissolved from his face, and even if he din't smile, his expression was at least less menacing.

It was hours later that they finally drove through the darkness toward Huntington and home. Ace fell asleep in her booster seat in the back instantly, nearly long amongst the clothing bags and shoe boxes that surrounded her. They could have gone in the back of Matt's huge SUV, but she had insisted she had to have each of her purchases close to her.

Ace wore her new coat: an impractical pure-white curly fur creation that was going to make her the absolute envy of the grade-one girls. She had on a hair band with a somewhat wilted bow, and a little red patent-leather shoes on her leotarded feet.

"She's worn right out," Matt said with a glance in the review mirror. "And no wonder. Is the female of the species born with an ability to power shop?"

"I think so."

"So how come you didn't get anything for yourself?"

"Because today wasn't about me."

He glanced at her, and she saw a warmth that had crept past his guard and into his eyes. But he looked quickly away before she could bask in it for too long.

Looking straight ahead, Matt turned on the radio. It was apparently preset to a rock station, but he glanced at the sleeping girl, and then at Aubree, and fiddled with the dial until he found a soft folk ballad.

"Why do you call Emmaleigh 'Ace'?" Aubree asked.

He hesitated, as if he did not want to reveal one single thing about himself or his family to her.

But then he said, "Her mom had started calling her Sissy, short for Sister, I guess, we wanted to have another child someday. But there are no sissies in the Sanders family. Nobody was calling my kid Sissy."

And then he sighed. "I regret making an issue over it, now."

Aubree heard lots of regret in his voice. She had heard about the accident, and knew one minutes he'd had a wife, and a life, and then next that everything had changed forever. What were his regrets? Had he called, I love you, as his wife was headed out the door for the last time?

His face was closed now, as if he already had said way more than he wanted to. Which meant he was the strong one who talked to no one about his pain.

She wanted to reach across the darkness of the cab, and invite him to tell her things he had told no one else, but she knew he would not appreciate the gesture.

Silence fell over them. Despite the quiet, there was something good about driving through the night with him, the soft music, the soft rain falling outside, his scent tickling at her nose.

Normally, particularly if she was driving by herself, the rain would have made Aubree nervous, but tonight she had a feeling of being with a man who would keep those he had been charged with guarding safe no matter what it took, no matter what it cost him.

But he hadn't, and he wore that failure to protect his wife around him like a cloak of pure pain.

Even though Aubree knew he had not been there at the accident that killed his wife, she was certain he would in some way hold himself responsible. Did he think he should have driven her that night? Not let her go in the storm?

She could not ask him that. Not yet. Which meant she thought someday maybe she could. Why was she hoping this shopping trip was not the end of it?

Because she felt so safe driving with him through the rain-filled night?

It was nice to rely on someone else's competence. Even though it might be weak, Aubree felt herself savoring feelings of being looked after.

She glanced at his strong features, illuminated by the dash lights. He looked calm, despite the rainfall growing heavier outside, the windshield wipers slapping along trying to keep up.

Matt Sanders might not smile much, but Aubree suddenly knew if your back was against the wall and barbarians were coming at you with knives in their teeth, he was the one you would want standing right beside you.

It was weariness that had allowed an independent woman such as herself to entertain such a traitorous thought, Aubree defended herself. And then, as if to prove it, the warmth inside the vehicle, the radio, the mesmerizing fall of rain--and the sense of being safe and taken care of--made it impossible for her to think of clever things to say. Or even to keep her eyes open.

When she woke up, it was absolute stillness. The sound of the radio was gone, and the vehicle had stopped moving, the dashboard lights were off, and the vehicle was empty.

She realized there was a weight on her shoulder, and that it was his hand, not shaking her, just touching her.

Even through the puffiness of her parka, she could feel his warmth, and his strength. It made her not want to go back to sleep.

"Aubree, we're home."

For home to be a place shared, instead of a place of aloneness, felt like the most alluring dream of all.

Recognizing her groggy vulnerability, Aubree shook herself awake. he was standing at her side of the SUV, the door wide open.

A quick glance showed the back was empty of every parcel and package. Ace was gone.

"Put her in bed," he said before Aubree asked. "Thought you might wake up as I moved stuff and the vehicle cooled off, but you were sleeping hard."

Aubree felt herself blushing. She'd obviously slept like a rock. She hoped she hadn't drooled and muttered his name in her sleep. Had she dreamed of the smile she had tried so hard--and failed--to produce?

And then suddenly, when she least expected it, it was there.

He was actually smiling at her. A small smile, but so genuine and it was like the sun coming out on a dreary day. He reached out and touched her cheek.

"You've got the print of the seat cover across your cheek."

And then his had dropped away, and he looked away.

"Miss Dawson?"

"Aubree."

He looked right at her. The smile was gone. "You gave my daughter a gift today. I haven't seen her so happy for a long, long time. I thank you for that."

And then, he bent toward her, brushed the print on her cheek again, and kissed the place on her cheek where his fingers had been. His lips were gloriously soft, a tenderness in them that belied every single thing she thought she had ever seen in his eyes.

And then Matt turned away from her, went up the walk to his house and into it, shut the door without once looking back.

She sat in his truck stunned, wondering if she had dreamed that moment, but finally manage to stir herself, shut the door of his vehicle and get into her own.

The night was so bright and cold and star-filled. was she shivering from the cold, or from the absence of the warmth she had felt when he had touched his lips to her cheek?

It wasn't until she realized she was nearly home that she realized while she slept he had dome more than empty his vehicle of parcels, and carry a sleeping Ace to her bedroom. Morgan saw he had put two more coat hangers on her front seat.

And she remembered she still had not gotten the permission slip for The Christmas Angel signed.

And she knew it was weak, and possibly stupid, and she knew it went against every single thing she had decided for herself when she moved to Huntington. It challenged every vow she had made as she devoured chapter after chapter of Bliss: The Extraordinary Joy of Being a Single Woman.

But Aubree still knew that she would use that unsigned permission slip as an excuse to see him again.