Matt Sanders

Matt hadn't really expected Aubree's house to have this effect on him. It was cozy and cute, like a little nest. The enjoyment he had taken in her discomfort over agreeing to invite him over to help her find a "stud" was dissipating rapidly.

And who had pushed the envelope, who had suggested this foolishness? He wished he could blame her, but oh, no, it had been all him, lured by her blushing at the word stud.

Feeling the need to be a man, to do for her what she didn't have the skill to do herself.

But now, in her house, with her purple sofa and her toy hammer in his hand? It was his lack he was aware of, not hers.

This house made him feel lonely for soft things. Feminine touches, Val's warmth, seemed to be fading from his own house. The couch throw pillows she had chosen were worn out, the rag rug at the front door a little more rag than rug these days, the plaid blanket she had bought when Ace was a baby and that Ace still pulled over herself to watch television, was pathetically threadbare.

It reminded Matt, unhappily, how desperately inadequate he was to be raising a girl on his own.

What was it about Aubree that made him look at life that he had felt made full and satisfying despite the loss of his wife, to thinking maybe he wasn't doing nearly as well as he'd imagined? Around Aubree, his life suddenly seemed to have glaring empty spaces in it.

"Wow," he said, forcing himself to focus on her wall, to not give her even an inkling of craving for softness that was going on inside him, "for a little big of a thing, you know how to destroy a wall."

"It wasn't intentional."

"Destruction rarely is."

He needed to remember that around Aubree Dawson. His life and Ace's had enough unintentional destruction wrought on it. They could not bear more loss, either of them. He needed to do what he had come here to do, and get out, plain and simple.

Not that anything seemed simple with Aubree sharing the same room with him as it did when he brooded on it alone over the studio.

Matt brought himself back, shook his head again at the large holes where she had tried to hang the coat hooks and the weight of them had pulled chunks of drywall off the walls.

He tapped lightly on her entrance wall with a hammer.

"See? There's a stud." He glanced at her. She was refusing to blush this time, probably because of his explanation, so he went on explaining, as if his voice going on and on was an amulet against the spell of her. "You can hear the solid sound behind the wall. They're placed every sixteen inches. So you could put a coat hanger here, and--" he tapped the wall gently "--here. Here. Here."

"But that's not where I want the coat hangers," she said mutinously. "It's not centered properly. I want them in a row like this."

She went and took a pair of hangers from where he had set them on the floor, inserted herself between him and the wall and showed him.

"Here and here. And the other two in a straight line down from them."

He went very still. She was so close to him. He had no protection against this kind of spell. His craving for all things soft intensified. Her scent, clean, soap, and shampoo, filled him. She was not quite touching him, but he could feel a delicate warmth radiating off her.

It seemed, dangerously, as if she could fill the something missing place in his life.

Matt knew he should back away from her a careful step but he didn't. He tried to hold up the amulet of words again. "Hmm. Guys don't think like that. For most men, it's all about function, not form."

But all the words did this time was make him more sharply aware of their differences, male and female, soft and hard, emotionally open and emotionally closed.

"Tell that to someone who hasn't seen your work," she said.

"I do try and marry form and function in my work."

Now is amulet, words, had come back to bite him. He contemplated his use of the word marry in such close proximity to her, and hoped it was completely coincidental and not a subliminal longing.

He could not help but feel he was being drugged by her closeness, the spell of her winding its way around him, stronger than all that physical toughness he possessed.

Because Matt still had not moved. He could smell that good, good smell that was all hers. Wholesome. Unpretentious. But alluringly soft, feminine, just like this space.

She seemed to realize suddenly that she had placed herself in very close proximity to him. She went as still as him, caught, too, in the unexpected bond of awareness that leaped sizzling in the air between them.

Then, stronger than him, after all, Aubree tried to slip away, back out under his arm, but he dropped it marginally, and they were locked together in the small space of the hallway.

He looked at her for a moment, the intensity between them as tangible as a static shock off a cat, or clothes out of the dryer. He was weakened enough. It was absolutely the wrong time to remember how soft her cheek had felt under his fingertips, and then his lips.

Matt was not seeing her as his daughter's teacher right now. unless he was mistaken, her eyes were smoky with a longing that mirrored his own.

But he had already buried a wife. And his best friend. To believe in good things again felt as if it would challenge his legendary strength.

Even this situation should be showing him something important. He had vowed he did not want to tangle any further with the young schoolteacher.

And yet, here he stood in her front hallway.

Matt knew, the hard way, that life would be wrested out of his control. His young wife had gone out the door, Christmas Eve, for one more thing.

One more thing for Ace's sock. He could even remember what it was, because she had told him as she went out the door laughing. Reindeer poop. Chocolate-covered raisins that one of the stores had bagged and labeled in tiny ziplock bags.

He'd been so glad to see her laughing, so happy to see her engrossed in getting ready for Christmas that he hadn't really paid any attention to the snow outside.

Why had he let her go? Why hadn't he offered to drive her?

And then, instead of Val coming back with reindeer poop, there had been that awful knock on the door, and a terrible descent into hell.

So, he knew, firsthand and the hard way, life could be snatched from your control.

And he could still exercise some control over this. And he was aware that he needed to do it. The last thing he needed was to give in to the insane desire to kiss Aubree again...And not on the cheek this time either.

Congratulating himself on the return of his strength, feeling as Sampson must have done when his hair grew back and he pulled that building down, Matt dropped his arm, and backed away. He needed to go now.

"Look, I'll make you a mounting board for the coat hangers. I've got some really nice wood at home that I'd been planning to reclaim. I'll fasted the board to the studs, so it's nice and solid, and then put the coat hangers on that." He looked at his watch. "Rehearsal is nearly over, Miss Dawson."

And he was aware as he said it that it could be taken a number of ways. That their rehearsal was nearly over. And what would that mean? The real thing to follow?

He hoped not, but now that he had promised her the barn board, he knew his escape was temporary. He was going to have to come back and put it up.

Hopefully he would have time to gird his loins against her before he did that!