Snow Days (The Hope Falls Series)

by Shawn, Melanie

  Hold on.

  “Matt.”

  He heard it again, and it took him a minute to realize it was coming from behind him. He turned and was face to face with Eric. He didn’t look happy.

  Great. This was just what he needed. He wasn’t looking forward to playing two-on-two with the guy and now it looked like they were going to have a one-on-one.

  Matt nodded his head in acknowledgement. “Hey.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry if I came off as a dick the other day.”

  Whoa, that was so not what he’d expected to hear.

  “Nah, man, it’s all right.” Matt waved his hand dismissively.

  “I didn’t know what was going on with you and my sister when I walked up and saw you guys laughing and seeming very friendly, and well… It’s just, I just thought… I thought…” Eric paused, seeming uncomfortable.

  Matt sure knew he was. He appreciated the fact that Eric had apologized, but at this point, he wished he would just drop it so they could go inside, shoot some hoops, and forget this whole awkward exchange.

  But Eric continued. “I thought you were married and messing around with my sister on the side.”

  If Matt hadn’t been expecting to hear an apology, he really hadn’t been expecting to hear that. It made sense though, and it definitely explained Eric’s behavior. Matt knew that he would not be happy if he thought some married asshole was fooling around with one of his sisters.

  Still, Matt wasn’t really sure what to say to Eric when the truth was that, although he wasn’t married, a strong argument could be made that that was exactly what Matt was planning on doing with Amy.

  But, the metaphorical devil sitting on his left shoulder piped up, if it wasn’t you, she’d be doing it with someone else.

  Yeah, the metaphorical angel sitting on his right shoulder chimed in, she might be doing it with someone she could have a future with.

  “I heard what happened to your wife and I just want you to know I’m really sorry for your loss,” Eric offered sincerely.

  “Thanks. I appreciate that,” Matt replied with his patented go-to response.

  He’d figured after what had happened in class the other day that his story was going to spread fast, but even he was surprised at just how many people now knew. He’d been asked about it at the grocery store and bank yesterday, and three people had stopped him on his run this morning. They’d all offered condolences, and some had told him stories of their own losses.

  “Hey, whenever you girls are done with your Lifetime Original Movie moment we’d like to play some ball,” Jake said loudly as he stuck his head around the corner from inside the gym.

  Matt turned to go inside and had to smile. He liked Jake. Jake had no filter. He kind of reminded him of his sister Shelby.

  “Don’t be an asshole.” Eric reached out to slap his brother upside the head as they made their way onto the courts.

  Jake anticipated Eric’s movement and ducked while laughing. “That’s police brutality. I have witnesses.”

  Eric shook his head and kept heading to the far side of the gym where Justin was shooting free throws.

  Jake slowed his pace and placed his hand on Matt’s shoulder. Matt looked over and was surprised to see that Jake wore a very serious and sincere expression. “Man, I like you, and I am really sorry about what happened to your wife. But don’t hurt Amy, okay? She’s one of the good ones.”

  Before Matt had a chance to respond, Justin threw the ball toward them. Jake caught it and was trash-talking about Justin’s weak arms.

  Matt didn’t need Jake to tell him that Amy was one of the good ones. She wasn’t just one of the good ones—she was one of the best ones. And he didn’t want to hurt Amy. That was the last thing he would ever want to do.

  Would he hurt her if they went through with this? Would he hurt her if they didn’t? Damn, when had life gotten this confusing? The answer instantly came to him: the second he’d laid eyes on Amy. Since the moment he’d seen her, he had felt drawn to her. Like some outside force was pulling them together.

  Matt wasn’t sure if what they were doing was right or wrong, but he knew for a fact that it was inevitable.

  “Game on, Kellan,” Jake called out.

  Yep. Game on.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Amy wanted to relax and enjoy this night. She had waited so long for phase two—and not just waited! No. She had dreamed, fantasized, hoped, wished—you name it. And now it was all coming true. It was all happening. Tonight.

  If only she could get over this, oh, you know…crushing anxiety…that would be nice.

  She took a deep breath and tried to picture how Nikki would handle this situation. Of course, to Nikki, something like this would be old-hat. There would be no reason for nerves in the first place. So right away, she would never be in the situation that Amy was in. But she tried to picture what her sister would do if she did find herself in these circumstances.

  Amy thought about this, considering the situation from multiple angles. There was no other way to look at it. If Nikki had a man coming over for some hot, no-strings-style sexiness, she would just sit back and enjoy the ride. She would certainly not let herself be overtaken with nerves.

  Amy took a sip of the sweet white wine she had poured for herself and concentrated on allowing the warmth that the beverage engendered to flow through her muscles like hot, supple oil. There. That was better. She actually felt herself relaxing under the weight of her meditation and the wine. Mostly the wine, but whatever.

  Maybe this would be okay after all. Maybe, in fact, it would actually be great.

  The doorbell rang then, startling Amy right out of her skin. She jumped two feet in the air, straight out of the chair she was sitting in, banging her thighs on the underside of the table and knocking her glass of wine over, causing it to spill all down the front of her blouse. The aromatic alcohol filled the air with its stringent odor, and Amy realized that she was going to look like some kind of alcoholic when she answered the door to Matt smelling like nothing so much as a brewery.

  Dang it!

  Torn between getting the door and running back to her room to change clothes, she actually found herself dashing back and forth across the living room a couple of times before she finally stopped and stood still for a second. Realizing that, no matter how much she wanted to get out of the wine-soaked clothes, she could not simply leave him standing on her doorstep indefinitely—where one of her neighbors could see and put it in the newspaper—she rushed to the door and threw it open.

  Because of her state of mind and her jangled nerves, she found that she was already rambling before she even had the door fully open. She could hear herself doing it, but what she seemed unable to do was to stop herself from doing it.

  "Hey, uh...hi...uh...so I spilled wine all over my outfit and, um, I have to go change and...I'm sorry, you know… I worked really hard picking out this outfit, and I, um...”

  She saw Matt looking at her with an amused smile and she took a deep breath, trying to staunch the flow of words that was flooding out of her seemingly of its own accord.

  "Come on in," she chuckled, stepping aside and gesturing him into her living room. "I suppose I should have led with that."

  As Matt stepped past her, she was overwhelmed by his smell—oh sweet mother, his smell. She closed her eyes as it washed over her. She didn't know how to pinpoint what it was about the smell. It was more than just his cologne. She could walk through the men's section of Sephora all afternoon long and never get a jolt like she got when she was in proximity to Matt. It was visceral, it was hormonal, it was pheromonal... It was hot, whatever it was!

  And it also had the power to sap her brain functioning right out of her head.

  As soon as Matt was seated on her couch, she quickly made her escape into the bedroom, frantically snatching off her alcohol-soaked blouse and tossing it into her clothes hamper. She ran her hands over her lacy black bra and the front of her dark skinny jeans. Okay. They w
ere both dry. She just needed a new blouse. She could do that, right? Just find one decently attractive blouse in an entire closet full of clothes?

  As she stood in front of her full-length mirror and grabbed top after top from her closet, holding them in front of her briefly before discarding them on the bed, she prattled on nervously and loudly to Matt in the other room.

  “So, um, yeah... I'm really excited to move my research to the next level tonight. I really think that phase two has a good chance of succeeding. So, I'm quite happy that you have agreed to assist me in the next phase of the research.”

  She could have sworn that she heard more than a little amusement tingeing Matt's voice as he called back, “Well, I hope that it's more than 'successful.' If we do it right, it should also be pretty damn fun.”

  Amy had to grab the edge of her dresser to keep herself upright. Her knees weakened and she wondered if, had there not been a convenient support available, she would have simply fallen to the ground.

  “Yes...right...fun...” she called back, and she heard the weakness that had overcome her knees also invading her voice. She shook her head to clear it. Head in the game, Maguire, she told herself harshly. Head. In. The. Game.

  She couldn't just stand here all night in her bra and pants, getting all woozy at the voice coming at her from the other room via the most sexy mouth she had ever seen! No! She needed to put on a shirt and get out there to get this party—or phase—started.

  She scrambled back to her task, grabbing a sheer black blouse from the closet and holding it up in front of her. It was the prettiest top she owned. But when she held it up in front of her, she found that she could see right through it, straight to her bra.

  “Dang it! That one needs a cami underneath,” she mumbled and began to toss it aside.

  “I disagree,” came a deep male voice from her doorway, and she spun around, eyes wide, to see Matt standing in the doorway with his sexy half smile and a gleam in his mesmerizing green eyes.

  --- ~ ---

  Matt couldn't believe how sexy Amy looked, standing there in her bra, cheeks flushed and eyes wide with shock. His eyes traced the graceful, swanlike curve of her neck and drifted down to the full and supple curves of her breasts above the lacy black bra cups.

  Her olive skin continued under the bra, sweeping down to the flat expanse of her torso, nipping in just the perfect amount at her waist and then flaring out at her hips. Unfortunately, there—low on her hips—was where the waistband of her jeans sat, blocking his view of anything lower down.

  Damn.

  Still, he feasted his eyes on what he could see, and it was good. It was damn good. He unconsciously licked his lips as he stepped towards her, his breath quickening as he saw hers do the same, causing her breasts to heave in a sensual pattern. Up and down, in and out. He felt his heart start to pound in time with her increasingly rapid breaths.

  He moved toward her as if he were being pulled to her magnetically. As he drew near, he extended his hand toward her waist. Even before he touched her, he could almost feel the dewy warmth of her skin below his fingertips. He could all but feel her hot breath on his neck, her tongue tracing its way around his lips, her...

  “Hahahaha...” Amy let out a high, hysterical-sounding peal of laughter as he was mere millimeters from touching her, and she stumbled backwards into the dresser, bouncing off and tripping over her feet, ending up flat on her butt in the pile of clothes on the floor.

  “Oh, God!” she cried, obviously embarrassed, her hands flying to her face. “I just... Sorry about that... You just surprised me! And I’m really ticklish.”

  She scrambled to her feet, and as Matt watched her jump up and then quickly and sloppily don the first sweater she laid her hands on, he realized something. She was terrified. She wasn't just 'a little nervous' in that fun, exciting way that people were the first time they were with each other—that little electrical spark of tension that adds another layer of crackling eroticism to the encounter. No, she was really and truly anxious about tonight.

  Matt couldn't help it—he thought even that was adorable. Damn. Was there anything about this woman he wouldn't find attractive?

  Nah. Probably not.

  Matt knew what he had to do, as the one who was in a calmer state of mind between the two of them. It was up to him to take the lead, to calm her nerves, to take charge of the encounter. After all, he was the only one of the two of them who knew how this was supposed to go, and he was supposed to be showing her.

  He reached out and took her hand—calming, friendly, strong, non-threatening. When that didn't cause her to flinch, he gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and then smiled, looking directly into her eyes.

  “I think this shirt is perfect,” he said reassuringly and was rewarded with a definite lessening of the tension around her eyes and a relaxation of her shoulders. She smiled, and it was one of those smiles she gave him sometimes that reached all the way to her eyes and crinkled her nose.

  Good. That was a good start.

  “Come on,” he teased. “Let's go get you some more wine—preferably in a glass that's a little easier to hold on to.”

  She swatted him playfully and shook her head as she laughed—not, he was relieved to hear, the high-pitched, verging-on-hysteria laugh she had exhibited before, but rather a warm giggle, full of fun and affection.

  Good. She definitely seemed a little more like Amy. His Amy.

  He led her by the hand back out to the couch and poured her a new glass of wine. He then poured one for himself and sat down next to her.

  “I like the fire,” he smiled, figuring that small talk was a good place to begin.

  Her eyes widened and she placed her hand over his. “You feel it too, then?” she breathed in awe.

  He grinned. “I do. I actually meant the one in the fireplace. But yes. That other one is pretty damn great as well.”

  She closed her eyes and hung her head, laughing. “Will I ever be able to stop putting my foot in my mouth around you?”

  Matt thought, now that she had openly addressed feeling the attraction sizzling between them, maybe it was time to move to a little double entendre.

  “Well,” he said lightly, “it's not my favorite thing to think about being in your mouth, but I certainly don't mind it. It's cute.”

  She looked up at him, flushed with desire, but with fear and trepidation sparking again in her eyes. Hmm... Too fast, there, Kellan, he chided himself.

  Maybe it was time to try a different tactic.

  “Amy,” he said conversationally, “I have a few questions I'd like to ask you. Some things I've been curious about.”

  She looked puzzled, “What? You mean, like, about my life? My background?”

  “Mmm...something like that.”

  She looked unsure but reluctantly agreed. “Okay. What do you want to know?”

  He let a slow, sensual smile spread lazily across his face and watched her breath quicken again in response. Then, he leaned back against the couch and in a low raspy tone asked, “Well, first of all...what do you find sexy?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Amy was going through the motions of teaching her class, but her heart wasn't really in it today. Her head certainly wasn't in it! No matter how many times she tried to force her thoughts back to class, to make herself live in the moment, she just could not seem to keep her mind from wandering back to thoughts of Matt. Of all the unexpected turns the events of last night had taken. Of her failed attempt at phase two. Well technically yes it was a failure—they hadn’t even kissed. They’d only talked. Amy had learned that just talking could be quite exciting.

  Oh, sweet mama, when he had started asking her those questions...whoa. Her nerves had been jangling like crazy, but that had only seemed to add to the arousal that coursed through her body. Now, the next day, she couldn't seem to rid her thoughts of the sound of his voice, the smell of his masculine musk, the curl of his lips as he smiled and interviewed her... Oh, God...

 
No. Snap out of it, she told herself. You're at work. You're being paid to do a job—do that job. It shouldn't be this hard.

  She continually tried to discipline her brain, to corral her thoughts and keep them in the classroom, but they stubbornly refused to obey. It was as if her mind had a mind of its own, so to speak.

  Luckily, the students were mainly working in groups today, and the only thing she had to focus on were the individual student conferences she was conducting. If she had had to lead the entire class in a discussion or—even worse—deliver some direct instruction, she did not know how she would've managed it. The way she was today, she would not have been surprised if she would've found herself standing in front of the class, speaking, only to hear her own voice trailing off mid-sentence as her mind was once again captured by thoughts of Matt.

  Well, thoughts of Matt...and what was going to happen next in phase two.

  “Don't you think?” asked Tiff passionately. The questioning tone in Tiff's voice yanked her back to the room. Amy pulled herself, once again, back into the present moment—and it hadn’t been easy.

  As she snapped back to an awareness of her surroundings, she realized that she had been actually in the middle of conducting a student conference when she had slipped into what basically amounted to a trance, mentally replaying the verbal back-and-forth between her and Matt last night and thinking about how sexy it—and he!—was. Truth be told, she hadn't heard a single thing her student had said in the last five minutes or so.

  Amy chided herself for her thoughtlessness. Tiff was one of her best students, and she deserved her full attention. Of course, all of her students deserved to have her at her best at all times. But for a student like Tiff, one who was always so well-prepared and one who always gave Amy her full attention and full effort, it seemed especially insulting that Amy should let her mind wander so egregiously during their conference.