Matt Sanders

He never wanted to see her again.

Aubree Dawson was stirring things up in Matt Sanders that he did not need stirring.

That impulse to kiss her cheek was the last impulse he intended to follow. It had been like kissing the petals of a rose, so soft, so yielding. Touching the exquisite softness of her with his lips had made him acutely aware of a vast empty spot in his life.

As had spending a day with her, her laughing, her enthusiasm, contagious.

So, it was an easy decision. No more Aubree Dawson.

Matt, alone in his studio, vowed it out loud. "I won't see her again. Won't have anything to do with her."

There. His and Ace's lives felt complicated enough without adding the potential messiness of a relationship with the teacher.

Relationship? That was exactly why he wasn't seeing her again. A day--shopping--of all things--made him think of the sassy schoolteacher in terms of a relationship?

No. He was setting his mind against it, that was that.

One thing every single person in his town knew about Matt Sanders: his discipline was legendary. When he said something, it happened.

It was the kind of discipline that had allowed him to take a studio--relic from a past age that had not proven a descent living for the past two generations--and bend it into his vision for it's future.

His own father had been skeptical, but then he was a Sanders, and skepticism ran deep through the men in his family. So did hard work and hell-raising.

Matt's best friend had been raised in the same kind of families as his. Solidly blue-collar, poor, proud. The three of them had been the musketeers, their friendship shielding them from the scorn of their wealthier classmates.

While his solution to the grinding poverty of his childhood had been the studio, David's had been the army. he felt the military would be his ticket to an education, to be able to provide for Valery after he married her.

Instead, he'd come home in a flag-draped box.

you look after her if anything happens to me.

And so Matt had.

She'd never been quite the same, some laughter gone from her forever, but the baby had helped. Still, they had a good relationship, a strong partnership, loyalty to each other and commitment to family.

Her loss had plunged him into an abyss that he had been able to avoid when David had died. Now he walked with an ever present and terrifying awareness that all a man's strength could not protect those he loved entirely. A man's certainty in his ability to control his world was an illusion. A man could no more hold back tragedy than he could hold back waves crashing to a shore.

Matt felt Valery's loss sharply. But at the same time he felt some loss of himself.

Still, thinking of her now, Matt was aware Valery would have flinched from such a mild curse as damn.

And he was almost guiltily aware Valery's scent permeating the interior of a vehicle had never filled him with such an intense sense of longing. For things he couldn't have.

Someone like Aubree Dawson could never fit in his world. His world without delicacy, since Valery's death it had become even more a man's world.

"So, no more."

What about Ace in this world what was so without soft edges?

Well, he told himself, it had changed from the world of his childhood. It wasn't hard scrabble anymore. it wasn't the grinding poverty he had grown up with. The merciless teasing from his childhood--about his worn shoes, faded shirts, near-empty lunchbox--sat with him still. And made him proud.

And mean if need be.

Not that there had been even a hint of anyone looking down their noses at him for a long, long time.

Party in respect for his fists.

Mostly because within two years of Matt taking over the studio--pouring his blood and his grit and his pure will into it--it had turned around.

The success of the studio was beyond anything he could have imagined for himself. He did commissions. He had custom orders well into next year.

Matt's success had paid off the mortgages on this property, financed his parents' retirement to Florida, allowed him things that a few years ago he would have considered unattainable luxuries. He could have any one of those antique cars he liked when he decided which one he wanted. He even had a college fund for Ace.

Still, there was no room for a woman like Aubree Dawson in his world.

Because he had success. And stuff.

And those things could satisfy without threatening, without coming close to that place inside of him he did not want touched.

But she could touch it. Aubree Dawson could not only touch it, but fill it. Make him aware of empty spaces he had been just as happy not knowing about.

he was suddenly aware she was there, in the studio, as if thinking about her alone could conjure her.

How did he know it was her?

A scent on the air, a feeling on the back of his neck as the door had opened almost silently and then closed again?

No. She was the only one who had ever ignored that Go Away sign.

Now, based on the strength of their shared shopping trip--and probably on that kiss he so regretted--she came right up to the hearth, stood beside him, watching intently as he worked.

His perfume filled his space, filled him with that same intense longing he had become aware of in the truck. What was it, exactly? A promise of softness? He steeled himself against it, squinting into the fire, used the bellows to raise the heat and flames yet higher.

Only then did he steal a glance at her. Matt willed himself to tell her to go away, and was astonished that his legendary discipline failed him. Completely.

Aubree's luscious auburn hair was scooped back in a pony tail that was falling out. The light from the flame made some of the strands of red shine with a life of their own.

The schoolteacher had on no makeup, but even without it her eyes shimmered a shade of green so pure that it put emeralds to shame. She did have something on her lips that gave them the most enticing little shine. She watched what he was doing without interrupting, and somehow his space did not feel compromised at all by her being there.

"Hi," he heard himself saying. Not exactly friendly, but not go away, either.

"Hi. What are you making?"

"It's part of a snake I am making to rewire my SSL to the outboard gear in my control room."

"It's fantastic." She had moved over to parts he had laid out on his worktable, piecing it together like a puzzle before assembling it.

He glanced at her again, saw she must have walked here. She was bundled up against the cold in a pink jacked at mittens that one of her students could have worn. Her cheeks glowed from being outside.

Matt saw how deeply she meant it about his work.

It grated that her praise meant so much. No wonder she had all those first graders eating out of the palm of her hand.

"I just wanted to drop by and let you know what a good week it's been for Emmaleigh."

"Because of the clothes?" he asked, and then snorted with disdain. "We live in a superficial world when six-year-olds are being judged by their fashion statements, Miss Aubree."

He was aware, since he hadn't just told her out and out to go away, of wanting to bicker with her, to get her out that door one way or another.

Because despite his legendary discipline, being around her made that yearning nip at him, like a small aggravating dog that wouldn't be quiet.

But she didn't look any more perturbed by his deliberate cynicism that she had when she told him not to cuss. "It's not just because of the clothes, but because she feels different. Like she fits in. It's given her confidence."

"I have confidence. I never had nice clothes growing up."

Now why had he gone and said that? He glanced at her. Her eyes were on him, inviting him to say more.

Which he wasn't going to!

"Thanks for dropping by. And the Ace update. You could have sent a note."

She still looked unoffended. in fact, she smiled. He wish she wouldn't do that. Smile.

It made him want to lay every hurt he had ever felt at her feet.

"We both know you don't read my notes."

If he promised he would read them from now on would she go away? He doubted it.

"I actually needed to see you. I need you to sign this permission slip for Emmaleigh to participate in The Christmas Angel. Rehearsals will be starting next week."

"I'm sick of hearing about The Christmas Angel," he said gruffly. "The whole town has gone nuts. I don't like Christmas. I really don't like The Christmas Angel."

She was silent for a moment. A sane person would have backed out the door and away from his show of ire. She didn't.

"Perhaps you should post a Grinch Lives Here sign above your Go Away sign."

"My wife was in an accident on Christmas Eve. She died on Christmas Day. It will be two years this year. Somehow that takes the ho-ho-ho out of the season."

He said it flatly, but he knew, somehow, despite his resolve to be indifferent to Aubree, he wasn't.

He didn't want her sympathy. He hated sympathy.

It was something else he wanted from her. When he put his finger on it, it astonished him. To not be so alone with it anymore.

to be able to tell someone that he had not been able to stop Valery's excruciating pain. That he had been relieved when she died because she didn't have to be in pain anymore.

That though all the pain, she had looked pleased somehow, going to be with the one she truly loved. And through all that pain, she had looked at him and said finally, seconds before she died, with an absolute calm and absolute certainty, You've been my angel, Matt. Now I'll be yours.

And he hated that he wanted to tell Aubree Dawson that, as if it was any of her business. He hated that he wanted to tell her if Valery was his angel, he'd seen no evidence of it, as if she, the know-it-all teacher, should be able to explain that to him. Wanting to tell her felt like a terrible weakness in a world built on pure strength.

Aubree moved back over to him until she stood way too close, gazing up at him with solemn green eyes that looked as if she could explain the impossible to him.

"I'm so sorry about your wife."

If she added a but as in but it's time to get over it, or for Ace's sake he would have the excuse he needed to really, really dislike her. He waited, aware he was hoping.

She said nothing.

Instead, without taking her eyes from him, she laid her hang on his wrist, something in that touch so tender it felt as if it would melt him, as surely as fire did steel.

She seemed to realize she was touching him, and that it might not be appropriate at the same time he jerked his arm away from her.

Brusquely, Matt said, "We won't be here for Christmas, there's no sense Ace getting involved in the Christmas-production thing. I'm taking her to Disneyland."

He made it sound as if he had been planning it forever, not as if he had just pulled it from the air, right this very moment, a plot to thwart her.

She didn't seem fooled.

"You know," she said softly, after a long time, "this town is really suffering as a result of the downturn in this economy. Last year's concert, The Christmas Miracle,? The production alone pumped a lot of money into the town. But they couldn't have bought that kind of publicity. The filming of some of the winter scenery around that gorgeous little town sent people there in droves at a time at of a year when they don't usually get tourists.

"And what's that supposed to do with me? And Ace?"

"The same could happen for Huntington."

"So what?" he asked.

"It seems to me," she said softly, and if she was intimidated by his show of ill temper, she was not backing away from it, "that people need something to hope for. At Christmas, more than any other time. They need to believe everything is going to be all right."

"Do they now?" How could she be that earnest? How could she be so sure of what people needed? Why did he think, given a chance, she could show him what he needed, too?

The fire was fine. He picked up the bellows anyway, focused on it, made the bellows huff and the fire roar, but not enough to shut out her voice.

"Ace needs to believe," Aubree continued softly. "She needs to believe that everything is going to be alright. And somehow I don't think that belief will be nurtured by an escape to Disneyland, as pleasant a distraction as that may be."

He put down the bellows. This has gone far enough, really. He turned to her, head on, folded arms over his chest. "This is beginning to sound depressingly like one of your notes. How did you get to know what the whole world needs? How do you get to be so smart for someone so wet behind the ears, fresh out of college?"

She blushed, but it was an angry blush.

Finally, he'd accomplished what he wanted. He was pushing her away. Straight out the door. Never to return, with any luck. Matt was aware that accomplishing his goal didn't feel nearly as satisfying as he thought it would.

"Somehow," she said, surprising him by matting his battle stance, folding her arms over her chest and facing him instead of backing away, "even though you have suffered tragedy, Matt, I would have never pegged you as the kind of man who would be indifferent to the woe's of your neighbors. And their hopes."

His mouth opened.

And then closed.

How had a discussed about a damned permission slip turn into this? A soul search? A desire to be a better man.

And not just for his daughter.

Oh, no, it would be easy if it was just for his daughter. No, it was for her, too. Miss Snippy Know-It-All.

"I'll think about it," he said.

The famous line was always used, by everyone including him, as a convenient form of dismissal. What really meant was No, and I don't ever intend to think about this again/

This time he knew he wasn't going to be so lucky.

"It means a lot to Ace to be in that production," Aubree said. "I already told the kids in my class we were all doing it, or none of us were."

"Nothing like a little pressure," he replied turning away from her now. "Are you telling me the Christmas joy of a dozen and a half six-year-olds relies on me?"

He glanced at her, and she nodded solemnly, ignoring his deliberately skeptical tone.

"That's a scary thing," he told her quietly, his voice deliberately loaded with cynicism. "Nearly as scary as the hope of the whole town resting on my shoulders."

She didn't have the sense to flinch from his sarcasm. He was going to have to lay it out nice and plain for her. "I"m the wrong man to trust with such things, Miss Dawson."

She looked at him for a long time as he began to work again, then just as he glanced at her, eyebrows raised, looking askance as of Oh, are you still here? she nodded once, as if she knew something about him he did not know about himself.

"I don't think you are the wrong man to trust," she said softly. "I think you just wish you were."

And having looked right into his soul, Little Miss Snip removed the permission slip from her pink coat pocket, set it on the work table, smoothed it carefully with her hand, and then turned on her heel and left him there to brood over his fire.