Matt Sanders

And so Aubree found herself in the tiny, mostly empty school cafeteria drinking stale coffee and realizing she was alone across the table from Matt Sanders.

Without a studio as a distraction. Or Ace. Or even Old MacDonald.

They were not strangers. For heaven's sake, they had spent an entire day together! And yet Aubree felt awkwardly as if she didn't have one single thing to say to hi. She felt like a sixteen-year-old on her first date. Nervous. Self-concious. Worried about what to say. Or what not to say.

Be a teacher, she ordered herself. Talk about Emmaleigh.

But somehow she didn't want to. Not right this second. She didn't want to be a teacher or talk about Emmaleigh. There was something about the pure rush of feeling sixteen again, tongue-tied in the presence of a gorgeous guy, that she wanted to relish even as she was guiltily aware it was the antithesis of everything she had tried to absorb while reading Bliss.

"So," he said, eyeing her over the top of the cup, "You get the coat hangers put up?"

"Thanks for the other pair. Two was plenty, but thanks. No, I didn't put them up. Not yet."

"Really? You don't like them?"

Oh, she liked them. Way too much.

"It's not that. I mean I tried to put them up. They keep falling down again. First time it happened I thought I had a burglar. They're too heavy. I'm afraid they've made a mess of the wall."

He squinted at her. "You knew they had to be mounted on a stud, right?"

She willed herself not to blush, and not to choke on her coffee. He had not just said something dirty in the elementary-school cafeteria. She was pretty sure of it. Still, she couldn't trust herself to answer. She took a sudden interest in mopping a nonexistent dribble of coffee off the table.

"How long are the kids going to be singing?" he asked.

Thankfully, he'd left the topic of the stud behind him! "I was told the first rehearsal would be about an hour. I think that's a little long for six-year-olds, but--"

"The coffee's bad, anyway. You want to play hooky for a few minutes, Miss Schoolmarm?"

"Excuse me?"

He leaned across the table and looked at her so intently she thought she might faint.

"I'll show you what a stud is," he promised, his voice as sultry as a hot summer night.

"Pardon?" She gulped.

"You shouldn't go through life without knowing."

She felt as if she was strangling.

When she had nearly worn through the table scrubbing at the nonexistent spot, he said, "I'll hang up the coat hangers for you."

"You want to come to my house?"

He raised his eyebrows at her. "Unless you want the coat hangers hung somewhere else?"

His eyes had the most devilish little twinkle in them. "IT's not as if you're entertaining a gentleman caller, Miss Dawson."

It was true. He was offering to do a chore for her. That involved studs.

She was not going to let him see how rattled she was! Well, he already had, but she intended to curb his enjoyment.

"Yes," she said, "that would be fine. A very gentlemanly offer from someone who is not a gentleman caller. Though I'm sure you are. A gentleman. Most of the time. When you aren't talking about beaning the choir director. Or hunting down the parents of children who have teased your daughter."

She was babbling. She clamped her mouth shut.

"Nobody's ever called me a gentleman before," he told her with wicked enjoyment.

But underneath the banter she heard something else. And so she said primly, "Well, it's about time they did."

Ten minutes later, she was so aware of how life could take unexpected turns. Just this morning it would have never occurred to her that Matt Sanders would be in her house by this afternoon. In fact, Santa coming down the chimney would have seemed a more likely scenario.

And really, having Matt's handiwork in her house was a bad enough distraction. Now having him here, it seemed somehow her space was never going to be quite the same.

As if it would be missing something.

Stop it, Aubree ordered herself. She was devoted to independence. Matt showing her how to hang something without it falling back off the wall could only forward that cause!

That's why she had given in so easily to his suggestion to come over here.

Wasn't it?

No, said the little part of her that watched him filling her tiny space with his essence. There was an illusion of intimacy from having him in the space.

Now his presence was large as he loomed in her living room waiting for her to find a hammer.

When she came back from the basement with one, she found him eyeing her purple couch with a look that was a cross between amusement and bewilderment.

"Do you like it?" she asked, feeling ridiculously as if this was a test. Of course he wouldn't like it, proving to her the wisdom of living on her own, not having to consult with anyone else about her choices, proving the bliss of the single life.

"Yeah, I like it," he said slowly. "What I don't get is how a woman can make something like this work. If I bought a sofa this color it would look like I killed that purple dinosaur. You know the one? He dances. And sings. But it looks good in here. It suits you."

She tried not to show how pleased she was, his words so different from what she expected. "I call my decorating style Bohemian chic."

"You don't strike me as Bohemian," he said, looking at her thoughtfully. "I would think of that as kind of gypsylike. You seem, er, enormously conventional."

"Perhaps I have a hidden side," she said, a bit irked. Enormously conventional? That sounded boring!

"Perhaps you have. Perhaps you even have a hidden sheik," he said, "which, come to think of it, would be just as good as a hidden stud. Maybe better. What do I know?"

"C-h-i-c," she spelled out. "Not sheik!"

And then he laughed with such enjoyment at his own humor that she couldn't help but join in. It was a treat to hear him laugh. She suspected he had not for a long time.

She handed him her hammer.

He frowned, the laughter gone. "The couch is good. This? Are you kidding me? What is this? A toy?"

It occurred to her that a woman that linked her life with his would have to like a traditional setup. She would choose the furniture, he would choose the tools. She would cook the meals, and he would mow the lawn.

Considering she had left her fiance' because he had taken what she considered to be sexist view of her career aspirations, considering her devotion to the principles of Bliss: The Extraordinary Joy of Being a Single Woman, Aubree was amazed by how easily something in her capitulated to this new vision. How lovely would it be having someone to share responsibilities with?

Shared, maybe certain things would not feel like such onerous, unachievable chores. Could there be unexpected pleasure in little things like hanging a few coat hangers? Is that what a good marriage was about?

She didn't know. Her own parents had separated when she was young, her father had re-married and she always felt left outside the circle of his new family.

Her mother's assessment of the situation--that she was looking for her father--seemed way too harsh. But Aubree knew her childhood experiences had made her long for love.

Not just love, but for a traditional relationship, like the one her best friend's parents had enjoyed. How she had envied the stability of that home, the harmony there, the feeling of absolute security.

But after her relationship with Karl, it's better ending, Aubree had decided the love she longed for was unrealistic, belonged in the fairy tales she so enjoyed reading to the children.

Now, with Matt Sanders in her front entry, tapping on her wall with her toy hammer, the choice Aubree had made to go it alone didn't feel the least bit blissful. It felt achingly empty. Achingly.