A Hot Winter (New Adult Romance) (The Attraction Series Book 2) (8 page)

The next morning Emma’s door flew open.  “Matt--thank God you’re here!”

“Hey…” he said, wiping his boots on the mat.  “What’s up?”

Pushing the door shut, she handed him the newspaper, which was folded to the crossword puzzle.  “There are two I can’t get.”

With a laugh, he said, “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.  By the way, I brought you a bagel.”  He took a small bag out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. 

“Thanks…you didn’t have to--”

“I know, add it to my bill, I know.”

Emma ignored his sarcasm, not sure what to make of it.  When they stepped into the kitchen, she said, “Coffee?”

“No, thanks.  I had some earlier.”  As Matt shed his jacket and laid down a new drop-cloth, Emma climbed back on her chair and picked up the pen she’d left on the table.  Despite the light snow falling, the sun shone brightly, almost blindingly today.  There was a peaceful feeling that settled over her on days like this, especially in her cozy kitchen.  Though she willed herself not to think about it, she really would miss this house.

“So lay it on me,” Matt said.

“All right.  The first one I don’t even understand, so you probably won’t either.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, no, I mean…”  Humbly, she laughed.  “I just meant it makes no sense.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“‘A pass route fake-out?’” she read, confused.

“Buttonhook.”

Her head snapped up.  “You’re kidding me.”  Though, her incredulity faded as she counted the spaces and realized that Matt’s answer fit.  “What in the world is that?” she said.

“It’s a football play.”

“Ohh…” she murmured, writing it in, “that explains why it sounded so utterly foreign and confusing.”

“Not a football fan, huh?”

“I mean, I can definitely sit through it,” she said, remembering spending endless Sundays and Monday nights watching football with Connor.  Well, they’d only
seemed
endless, of course.  Pushing the maudlin thought aside, she grinned at Matt as she told him, “You’re really good at these.  I think we’ve found a hidden talent.”

“I have a few,” Matt said as his eyes locked with hers. 

Emma’s breath caught and she tried not to feel a spark between them.  Even contemplating Matt’s innuendo was a bad idea.  Way too tempting.  And too torturous.  The thought of kissing him really turned her on.  Feeling his hands on her, his tongue…rolling around in bed with him…  Emma sucked in a breath as tingling heat spread down her body.     

Suddenly the doorbell rang. 

Thank God.  

Their eye contact broke, as she murmured, “Who could that be?” and slid off her chair.  When she peeked out the side window, she saw only a large brown box leaning against the door.  It appeared to be nearly the same height as her, and when she opened the door and tried to lift it or even drag it, she gave up on self-reliance pretty quickly.  “Matt?” she called out.  “Will you help me?”

~

“What is it?” Matt asked as he carried the box on his shoulder, and set it down in Emma’s office, as she requested.

“A package from my dad in Switzerland,” she said, reading the packing label.  “Must be something for the boys for Christmas.”  Emma plopped down on the floor, sitting cross-legged as she tore at the box’s packing tape with a letter opener she grabbed from her desk.  As Matt turned to go, she stopped him.  “Want to see what it is?” 

“Sure.”  He crouched down so he was no longer towering over her and helped her rip the box open at the seam.  What revealed itself was the most elaborate model train station he’d ever seen.  “Wow, this is awesome,” Matt said excitedly and started pulling pieces out of the box.  “Damn,” he remarked, as the pieces kept coming…and coming.  “Not exactly Fisher Price is it?”

“My dad goes big,” Emma admitted.  “He’s really generous, especially when it comes to Jake and Ben.”

“They’re gonna love it.”

With a sigh, Emma smiled.  “Yeah,” she agreed.  Then she gazed at Matt.  Their faces were close, closer than they’d ever been.  Matt’s eyes dropped to Emma’s mouth.  And her eyes dropped to his.  There seemed to be an invisible pull between them, a force drawing them together.  God, he’d had enough.  He needed to kiss her, to take her mouth with his, to run his tongue on hers.  He didn’t know how much longer he could fight this attraction--or ignore the stirring in his cock now as she licked her lips and began to lean closer…

Abruptly, then, the spell broke. 

It was like something occurred to Emma that made her pull back. 

“Well,” she said suddenly, her voice nearly a yelp.  She darted her eyes around until they settled on the box in front of her.  “I, uh, should get started trying to put this together.  I’m used to putting toys together, so hopefully this one will be self-explanatory.  How hard could it be?” she prattled on, and Matt said nothing.  He just watched her nervously trying to talk over what had almost happened. 

Frustrated, he swallowed down his disappointment.  Whatever.  If she didn’t want to kiss him--and now she wanted to hide in her office all day--that was fine.  Just fucking fine.  He wasn’t going to try to convince her otherwise.

Besides, he had a lot of work to do.  “I’ll let you get to it then,” was all he said before he left the room.

When Matt went to Emma’s office door a couple hours later, his intention was to let her know he was leaving.  But then he saw her lying flat on her back with her arm thrown dramatically over her eyes.  “Emma?”

“Oh,” she said quickly, clearly startled.  “Hi…um…”  She scrambled up to a sitting position. 

Matt raised his brows.  “Everything okay?”

“Yes, I was just lying here feeling sorry for myself.  Thinking about how in the world I’m going to put this thing together,” she admitted with a defeated sigh. 

Concerned, Matt’s gaze followed hers across the scatter of toy trains and railway parts that, along with the miniature signs and pieces of finely crafted scenery, were broken up into minute detail.  From what he could see, she’d managed to put together about a tenth of what she needed to--and not very well.

Feeling sympathetic, he walked closer to her and took a seat beside her.  “Want my help?”

She hesitated for a moment and just as Matt was sure she was going to start with her whole “No, I couldn’t ask that of you” routine, she surprised him by saying, “Really?  Yes! 
Please! 
Thank you so much, Matt!”  And buried her face in her hands with relief as if she’d just been pulled from a tar pit. 

With a light chuckle, Matt put his arm around her shoulder.  “Hey, it’s okay,” he assured her, giving her a supportive pat.  “We’ll get this.”

As she slid her eyes to his, he dropped his arm away and picked up some train parts instead.

“It’s just…I know how much the boys will love it,” she explained, as Matt surveyed all the pieces and started making connections.  “I’m sure this will be their favorite gift this year.  And I really want them to have it before next week.  Oh, here are the instructions,” Emma added, handing Matt the fat book that was on the floor beside her.  “Be aware that they’re really confusing--and I say that in my professional opinion--but I’m sure you’ll understand them better than me.”   

Ignoring the book, Matt continued what he was doing--looking for parts that went together and figuring out exactly how they connected.  While he was working, he asked conversationally, “So how come before next week?  Isn’t it a Christmas gift?” 

“Yes.  But soon they’re going to their grandparents’ house for a week, and I just wanted them to have something really fun to play with before they go.  Also, I figured they could take a couple of these trains with them on the trip.”

“Their grandparents don’t have toys for them?”

“They do, but not many.  And their house is sort of…restrictive.  My mother-in-law--well, I guess she’s my former mother-in-law, I’m not sure what to call her, but--Dina loves Jake and Ben like crazy, don’t get me wrong.  But she can be kind of rigid about her furniture and her antiques.  I just want the boys to have as much fun as possible,” Emma finished.

“How long are they going for?”

“A week,” she said with an unmistakably sad sigh.  “Connor’s parents usually go to Florida for the holidays, so Jake and Ben visit with them in Ithaca either before or after.  Anyway… enough about that,” Emma said quickly, obviously wanting to change the subject.  “What about you?  What do you do for the holidays?”

Matt shrugged as he connected a meticulously sculpted overpass to a stretch of metal track.  “Spend it with my parents.  On Christmas Eve, Tragan’s mom usually puts out a big spread--tons of Portuguese food-- so I usually hit that up, too.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Emma asked.

Matt hesitated for a second before he said no.

“Are you sure you don’t want to read the instructions?”

“No, I think I can figure this out,” he said simply. 

Maybe Emma would think it was strange that he wasn’t bothering with the manual.  From experience, though, Matt knew that the font in the instruction book would probably be tiny and reading through it would take more time and concentration than he wanted to bother with, and possibly give him a headache.  Besides, he was usually good at mechanical stuff and was figuring he’d understand intuitively what to do once he got his hands on the parts.

As he worked quietly, Emma sat beside him watching.  There was something nice about it, an unspoken kind of intimacy between them.  Matt wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Emma said, “Oh, I need to go pick the boys up from school,” and rose to her feet.  “Are you okay here?”

“Sure,” Matt said then looked up at her.  “By the way, I don’t think your washing machine is level.  I could hear it vibrating and banging against the wall.”

“Right, it always does that,” she said.

With a boyish kind of grin, Matt said, “Yeah, it’s not supposed to.”

“Oh.”

“It’s really not good for your machine.  Do you mind if I take a look?  The front legs just need adjusting.” 

“Well, what would that entail?” Emma asked cautiously.

“A wrench,” Matt said.  “And if that doesn’t work, a hammer.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, thanks, Matt,” she said--then paused meaningfully and gave him the softest, sincerest smile he’d ever seen.  “And I mean…thanks for everything,” she added, as her pretty eyes cast down toward the train station.

~

“So Matt stayed for dinner?”

“Yes,” Emma said, nestling her cell phone between her ear and shoulder as she set a pan in the dishwasher.  “He didn’t have much choice.  Yesterday, he’d told Jake and Ben ‘next time,’ and apparently they took that literally.”

“Of course,” Andy said with a laugh.

“I explained to Matt that people under ten years old are very literal.”

“So was it fun?”

“Yes,” Emma admitted with a giddy sort of smile, thinking of how Matt had joked around with her sons and how much fun they’d had.  “They were really laughing hard when Matt told them a shrimp joke.”

“What’s that?” Andy asked curiously.

“A joke about a shrimp,” Emma said as though that should have been clear.

“Thank you, I understood that,” Andy said.  “I
meant
: what was the joke?”

“Oh.  Something about why a shrimp doesn’t like to share.  Because he’s a little shellfish,” she explained.  As silly as the joke was, Emma kind of giggled now anyway thinking of her sons’ reaction.  Like typical little kids, they were doubled over, cracking up hysterically.  “What I couldn’t believe was how Matt put together this whole complicated train station and didn’t even bother looking at the instructional manual--which was approximately a hundred pages long,” Emma remarked.

“Oh, that makes sense.  Matt’s dyslexic.  A long, tedious instruction manual is probably the last thing he’d want to bother with.”

“Dyslexic?  Really?” Emma said.  “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, Tragan told me once,” Andy replied.  “He said that Matt gets headaches sometimes if he reads for too long.”

“Huh,” Emma murmured.  Reflecting on it now, certain things made sense that she hadn’t paid attention to initially.  Like why Matt preferred a tablet with icons to a pen and paper when he was making notations and recording measurements for his job.  Although he could read and write, he probably figured: why tax his brain more than necessary?  And hadn’t he told her once that he could never do her job, because reading and writing all day would give him a headache? 

As she pushed the dishwasher door closed, Andy said, “So…what time did Matt leave?” 

Her sister seemed to be fishing in a subtle, non-threatening way.  Emma didn’t want Andy to get her hopes up, thinking that she and Matt had something going now--or worse, for Andy to dream up a scenario in which Emma didn’t move to New York, but stayed in Massachusetts for “love.”  (Her sister was sweet, but cluelessly romantic like that).  Nevertheless, Emma admitted the truth.  “Nine o’clock.”

“What!  Nine o’clock at night!” Andy exclaimed.

“Well, after dinner Jake put on a magic show,” Emma explained. 

“And then what?”

“Nothing.  He left after that.  Oh--but, conveniently, my next-door neighbor meandered up to our front porch just as Matt was on his way out.”

“Was it that nosy lady, Cheryl, you told me about once?”

“Yes.  She approached Matt and me outside, craning her neck all around, expressing concern about the ‘strange truck’ she’d seen in my driveway lately.”

“Hmm, subtle way to force an introduction,” Andy remarked.

“Exactly,” Emma laughed.  “It was really ridiculous and obvious.  But whatever--it’s not like I have anything to hide,” she added, hoping she didn’t sound defensive.  “Matt’s here, legitimately doing work, and he’s…a friend.  So…”

“Uh-huh,” Andy agreed, though her tone was noncommittal.

“Well, I should get going,” Emma hastened to add, suddenly self-conscious about all the gushing she’d been doing about Matt.  Anyway, she still needed to tuck Jake in and read Ben a story before bed.  As soon as they hung up, Emma realized that she hadn’t even mentioned how Matt had gotten Ben and Jake to say thank you to her for the meal.

Then again…it was probably just as well.