Matt Sanders

Aubree marched her twenty-two charges into the gymnasium. The truth was, after being so stern with Matt about the benefits of The Christmas Angel coming to Huntington, she was beginning to feel a little sick about the whole thing herself.

The children talked of nothing else. They all thought their few minutes on television, singing back up, meant they were going to be famous. They all tried to sing louder than the person next to them. Some of them were getting quite theatrical in their delivery of the songs.

The rehearsal time for the three original songs her class would sing was eating into valuable class time that Aubree felt would be better used for teaching fundamental skills, reading, writing, arithmetic.

Today was the first day her kids would be showing The Christmas Angel production team what they had learned. Much of the team had arrived last week, filling up the local hotel. Now The Christmas Angel's own choir director had arrived in town last night and would be taking over rehearsing the children.

As soon as Aubree entered the auditorium--which was also the school gymnasium, not that it could be used of that because of all the work going on getting the stage ready--Aubree knew he was here.

Something happened to her neck. It wasn't so sinister as the hackles rising, it was more as if someone sexy had breathed on her.

She looked around, and sure enough, there Matt was, helping another man lift plywood cutout of a Christmas cottage up on stage.

At the same time as herding her small charges forward Aubree unabashedly took advantage of the fact that Matt had no idea she was watching him, to study him, which was no mean feat given that Freddy Campbell kept poking at Suzzie in the back, and Damien Frank was deliberately treading on Ben Chin's heels.

"Freddy, Damien, stop it." The correction was absent at beat.

Because it seemed as if everything but him had faded as Aubree looked to the stage. Matt had looked sexy at his studio, and he looked just as sexy here, with his tool belt slug low on the hips his jeans rode over, a plain T-shirt showing off the ripple of unconscious muscle as he lifted.

Let's face it, Aubree told herself, he'd look sexy no matter where he was, no matter what he was doing.

He was just a blastedly sexy man.

And yet there was more than sexiness to him.

No, there was quiet and deep strength evident in Matt Sanders. It had been there at Chucky Cheese's, it had been there when he sat in the pink satin chair at The Snow Cave. And it was there now as he worked, a self-certainty that really was more sexy than his startling good looks.

Mrs. Wellhaven, a pinch-faced woman of an indeterminate age well above sixty, called the children up onto the stage, and the workers had to stop to let the kids file onto the triple-decker stand that had been built for them.

"Hi, Daddy!" Ace called.

"Yes," Mrs. Wellhaven said, lips pursed, "let's deal with that first off, shall we? Please do not call out the names of people you know as you come on the stage. Not during the live production."

Ace scowled. Aubree glanced at Matt. Father's and Child's expression were identically mutinous.

Aubree shivered. In the final analysis could there be anything more sexy than a man who would protect his own no matter what?

Still, the choir director had her job to do, and since Matt looked as if maybe he was going to have a word with her, Aubree intercepted him.

"Hi. How are you?"

Though maybe it was just an excuse.

In all likelihood, Matt was not going to berate the choir director.

"Who does she think she is telling my kid she can't say hi to me?" he muttered, mutiny still written all over his handsome face.

Or maybe he had been.

"You have to admit it might be a little chaotic of all the kids started calling greetings to their parents, grandparents and younger siblings on national live television," Aubree pointed out diplomatically.

He looked at her as if he had just noticed her. When Matt gave a woman his full attention, she didn't have a chance. That probably included the crotchety choir director.

"Ah, Miss Dawson, don't you ever get tired of being right all the time?" he asked her, folding his arms over the massiveness of his chest.

She had rather hoped they were past the Miss Dawson stage. "Aubree," she corrected him.

Mrs. Wellhaven cleared her throat, tipped her glasses and leveled a look at them. "Excuse me. We are trying to concentrate here." She turned back to the children. "I am Mrs. Wellhaven." then she muttered, tapping her baton sternly. "The brains of the outfit."

Matt guffawed. Aubree giggled, at least in part because she had enjoyed his genuine snort of laughter so much.

Mrs. Wellhaven sent them a look, raising her baton and swung it down. the children watched her in a silent awe. "That means begin!"

"She's a dragon," Matt whispered.

the children launched, a little unsteadily, into the opening number, "Angel Lost."

"What are you doing here?" Aubree whispered to Matt. "I thought you made it clear you weren't in favor of The Christmas Angel."

"Or shopping." he reminded her sourly. "I keep finding myself in these situations that I really don't want to be in."

"Don't say that like it's my fault!"

"Isn't it?"

She felt ruffled by the accusation, until she looked at him more closely and realized he was teasing her.

Something warm unfolded in her.

"I didn't know you were a carpenter, too" she said, trying to fight the desire to know everything about him. And losing.

He snorted. "I'm no carpenter, but I know my way around tools. I was raised with self-suffiecency. We never bought anything we could make ourselves when I was a kid. And we never hired anybody to do anything, either. What we needed we figured out how to make or we did without."

Though Aubree thought he had been talking very quietly, and she loved how much he had revealed about himself, Mrs. Wellhaven turned and gave them a quelling look.

Ace's voice rose, more croaky than usual, loudly, enthusiastic, above her peers. "Lost annngelll, who will find you? Where arrrre you--"

Mrs. Willhaven's head swing back around. "You! Little redheaded girl! Could you sing just a little more quietly?"

"Is she insinuating Ace sounds bad?"

"I think she just wants all the kids to sing at approximately the same volume," Aubree offered.

"You're just being diplomatic," Matt whispered, listening. "Ace's singing is awful. Almost as bad as yours."

"Hers is not that bad, and neither is mine." Aubree protested.

"Hey, take it from a guy who spent a half an hour with you oinking and braying, it is."

He was teasing her again. The warmth flooding her grew. "At least I gave you a break by sleeping all the way home."

"You snore, too."

Aubree's mouth fell open. "I don't!"

"How would you know?" he asked reasonably. "Snoring is one of those things you don't know about yourself. Other people have to tell you."

That seemed way too intimate--and embarrassing--a detail from him to know about her.

But when he grinned at her expression, she knew he was probably pulling her leg, and that he was enjoying teasing her as much as she was reluctantly enjoying being teased.

"Little redheaded girl--"

"Still, I'm going to have to go bean that shrew if she yells at Ace again."

"You." Mrs. Wellhaven rounded on him, and pointed her baton. "Who are you?"

"Little redheaded girl's father," he said evenly, dangerously, having gone from teasing Aubree to a warrior ready to defend his family in a blink of an eye.

Amazingly Mrs. Wellhaven was not intimidated. "No parents. Out. You, too, little redheaded girl's mother."

Aubree should point out she was the teacher, not a parent, certainly not a parent who had slept with this parent and produced a child, though the very thought made her go so weak in the knees, she had to reach out and balance herself by taking his arm.

Luckily thanks to the darkening expression on Matt's face, she made it look as if she had just taken hold of him to lead him firmly out the door.

Touching him--her fingertips practically vibrating with awareness of how his skin felt--was probably not the best way to banish thoughts of how people produced children together.

Aubree let go as soon as they were safely out the auditorium door.

"She's a dragon," Matt proclaimed when the door slapped shut behind him. "I'm not sure I should leave Ace in there. Did you actually talk me out of taking my daughter to disneyland to expose her to that?"

Aubree knew it would be a mistake to preen under his unconscious admission that she had somehow influenced him. Then again, she probably hadn't. He hadn't even noticed her hand on his arm, and her fingertips were still tingling! With the look on his face right now, he looked like the man least likely to be talked into anything.

Besides, between the look on his face--knight about to do battle with the dragon--and the attitude of Mrs. Wellhaven, she was getting a case of the giggles.

Matt eyed her narrowly.

"I don't get what's funny."

"If Mrs. Wellhaven is the brains of that outfit--and she couldn't even see that Matt was not a man to be messed with--"the whole town is in big trouble."

Matt regarded her silently for a moment, then actually laughed.

it was the second time in a few short minutes that Aubree had heard him laugh. This time he made no attempt to stifle it, and it was a good sound, rich, deep and true. It was a sound that made her redefine, instantly, what sexy really was.

"It's not too late for me to go and bean her," he said finally.

"I'm afraid I don't even know what it means to 'bean' somebody."

He laughed again. "Aubree Dawson, I think you've led a sheltered life. Let's go grab a coffee. I can't listen to that." He cocked his head at the cacophony of sound coming out the door and shook his head. Ace's voice rose louder than ever above all others. "Maybe I can still talk Ace into going to Disneyland."

"Maybe Mrs. Wellhaven will pay for you to go."

And then he laughed again, and so did she. And she could feel that shared laughter building a tenuous bridge between them.