Just Joe Read online

  Now, Mattie carefully lowered her camera and tried to blink away this latest ghost.

  "I never could resist acorns." The voice was deep and drawling, and Mattie assured herself that the shiver running down ner spine ana curling arouna ner toes had noth-ing to do with the masculine promise contained therein and everything to do with the fact that Wendall's voice couldn't possibly be that deep.

  She swallowed dutifully and opened her eyes. He was still there. "Uh... hello."

  "Hello," Joe returned gravely, his laughing eyes cataloging each feature and movement.

  Mattie decided suddenly, and with great lunacy, that now was the perfect time to pretend that she had never seen this man before, that he was a total stranger who had stumbled into her view. Dismissing Wendall from her mind entirely, she screwed the cap back on her lens and took an awkward, sliding step to her right.

  Joe echoed the move faithfully, and Mattie stopped, glancing quickly around her immediate vicinity of the park. She relaxed somewhat as she noted the activity around her, and the several people within calling distance. Actually, a couple of women were staring at him intently. Mattie thought it was probably because he was so huge, standing there in tight faded jeans and a white sweatshirt. The women staring knew it was because he was absolutely gorgeous.

  Unaware of all this, Mattie resolutely raised her eyes to meet his.

  "So," she tried carefully.

  Joe smiled. "Remember me? The one who landed on top of you yesterday?"

  "Oh.. .yes," Mattie murmured faintly, sounding as if she were recalling some vague distant memory of such an incident.

  "At the football game?" Joe prompted helpfully.

  "Yes, I remember," Mattie told him more firmly. "Are you all right? Did I hurt you?" She had a sudden, vivid mental image of being dragged into court by the scruff of neck and slapped into prison for her crimes.

  Joe grinned beguilingly. "Do you think you could? Hurt me, I mean?"

  No, Mattie realized grimly. She couldn't hurt him. He was so much bigger than she was, and, besides, women didn't hurt men. Men were the master inflicters of pain.

  Joe witnessed the bitter wariness cloud her eyes and wondered about it. "I came by to see if I had hurt you."

  Mattie regarded him doubtfully. "How did you know where to find me?"

  Joe smiled slightly. "I asked one of the other photographers on the field who you were." But that wasn't all he had asked, Joe acknowledged to himself silently. And the answers—or more accurately, the lack of answers—he had received had shaken him. He had talked to countless people before he had found one who knew Matilda Grey. Even then, the man could relay only the barest of information. She was a free-lance photographer who had suddenly ap-peared in Dallas six months ago—from Denver, he thought. No past, no family, no history. She worked for no one but herself, had refused offers of permanent employment in favor of her freedom. Her work was good—very good— and had graced magazines all over the country, yet she was an elusive woman. No one knew anything of her private life. No one but himself, Joe thought sadly, because he had seen into her eyes.

  "So, did I?" Joe forced himself away from his silent musings to ask.

  Mattie blinked. "Did you what?"

  "Did I hurt you yesterday?"

  Get a grip, Mattie derided herself silently. "No. No, of course not, Mr. Um... I'm fine."

  "My name is Joe," he offered sweetly. "Mr. Um is a lit tie formal."

  Mattie felt the blush that climbed her cheeks. She wa supposed to know this man's name, she was sure. Wasn' he the home team quarterfront or something?

  "Well, uh, it was nice of you to check on me, Mr. Joe—" Mattie tried for a tactful exit, but was interrupted.

  "Not Mr. Joe. That makes me sound like a talking horse Joe, just Joe."

  Mattie smiled unwillingly. A talking horse, indeed.

  Joe witnessed the smile and relaxed. Maybe it would b all right after all. "Will you have dinner with me to night?"

  Joe saw Mattie's instinctive step backward and cursed himself silently. Smooth, really smooth. And all the sub tlety of a salivating dog.

  "It's only just lunchtime," Mattie stammered ner vously, wringing her hands unconsciously.

  "Well, of course we'll have lunch first," Joe conceded cheerfully, trying to save the situation... and the invita tion. "Do you like hot dogs?" He cocked his head hope fully toward a vendor across the park.

  Mattie took yet another step backward, trying to pu some kind of distance between them, both physically am mentally. "No. I'm sorry, I—"

  "No?" Joe nodded agreeably. "How about pizza, then I know this great place where the pizza is so—"

  "No! Look.. Joe. I really can't—I have a lot to do here and—" There had to be some graceful way out of this Mattie thought vexedly, but her vocabulary seemed to hav gone for a hike and left her stranded with this—man.

  Joe's smile faded as he read the near panic in Mattie' eyes. What was she afraid of? he wondered tautly. She heli herself as if her world were breaking apart.

  "Matilda—" Joe began, but was cut off instantly.

  "Mattie!" She all but shouted at him. "My name is Mattie. No—no one calls me Matilda anymore." Her voice was trembling, and her eyes were suddenly shadowed.

  "Mattie is a pretty name," Joe said carefully, his own eyes watchful.

  Mattie nodded jerkily in acknowledgment but said nothing.

  Maybe it was time for honesty, Joe thought somewhat grimly, horribly unsure about the care and feeding of a frightened Mattie.

  "Why do you think I came looking for you?"

  Mattie gnawed nervously at the inside of her lip. "To— to see if I was hurt?"

  "No."

  She risked a peek at his face. It was calm and deadly solemn. "No?"

  Joe shook his head. "Yesterday... when I looked into your eyes..." Joe sighed quietly. "Mattie, it was as if I were looking into a mirror. As if I were looking at you and seeing a part of myself." He shrugged awkwardly, uncomfortable with the baring of his soul.

  "That—that's silly," Mattie derided weakly, her voice faint and shaky. "Your eyes are green and mine are gray."

  "I thought we could be friends," Joe told her carefully, and saw the wall go up behind her eyes.

  "No," Mattie denied in automatic self-defense. "No we can't be friends. I don't know you. You don't know m—"

  Her denial broke off abruptly as she met his eyes. My God, she thought blankly. He's lonely. She could see it in his eyes, as if she were... looking into a mirror. His words came back to haunt her. He has said that when he looked into her eyes it was as if he were looking into a mirror and seeing a part of himself in her.

  All her life Mattie had felt a step out of time. There were parts of herself that she knew she could never run away from, never share with another person. And because of that, because of the inherent dishonesty in giving only pieces of herself, she had refused to share anything at all. All or nothing, she thought sadly. Did it really have to be that way? Why couldn't she give just a little? Take just a little? With Joe, she thought desperately, wouldn't it be a fair exchange? They could both keep their secrets and share what they could. They would be equals, never one taking more than he gave, or giving more than he took.

  "Can we be friends, Joe?" she asked in a rusty little voice. And it was all there.. .the fear and the hope, the desperation and the wariness, the doubt and the need.

  Now was the time for restraint, every instinct he possessed screamed that at Joe. He would reach his Mattie-not-Matilda. He would know her, know the reason for the shadows in her eyes and why it felt as if she were a part of him already, but he would not hurt her in the process. He would gain a friend, he thought. He would gain a friend and lose a little of the distance he surrounded himself with. It was a more than even exchange.

  "Can we not be friends, Mattie?"

  It was a question that haunted Joe long after he snapped off his bedside lamp.

  Why now? he wondered uneasily, staring blindl
y at the ceiling through the dark. Why her? Why after so long of feeling nothing?

  He crossed his arms restlessly behind his head.

  How many years of going through the motions, trying to ignore that nagging little ache that taunted him with the fear that he had nothing more to give?

  Suddenly there was Mattie Grey, waiting for him at the end of that football field as if she had been waiting there all of his life. Mattie Grey, with her impossibly sweet skin and frightened eyes.

  Why her? he asked himself again.

  There had been women in his life. Not too many, since the only "score" Joe kept or cared about was that at the end of a football game. And never for long, because the need was surface at best on both sides. There were women who wanted the glamour associated with being seen in the company of a professional athlete and paid for it with sex and women attracted to the money he made and paid for it with insincere affection.

  Had he purposefully chosen those types so that he wouldn't have to give up that intensely private part of himself to another?

  He wasn't blameless, God knew. He had taken what those plastic women offered him—sex, companionship— however transient. And he had paid for it himself in the coin they sought... glamour, money, recognition.

  And now he had found Mattie, and... friendship?

  He honestly didn't know. What he had felt as he met her eyes that first time defied easy description. It had all the breathless shock of a helmet in the ribs, but a hell of a lot more subtlety. It was like the feel of a swim in a cold spring on a hot August day... and as gentle as the silken scent of gardenias on still summer nights.

  Gardenias... yes. Mattie's scent evoked a gentle hint of gardenias and still summer nights. Somehow he knew that it wasn't the perfume she wore or the shampoo she used. It was just... Mattie. The scent was all her own, from those secret hollows and delicate curves he had all too briefly felt pressed against his own unyielding body.

  Was he supposed to know this, feel this, wonder this about a friend? Somehow Joe didn't think so. He never thought about what their nose guard, Marion Dumbron-kowski, smelled like. At least, at no time other than after the game and before the showers. He never wondered about the hollows and curves of his best friend's wife, Jassy Baron. Which was good, Joe allowed with a wry quirk to his lips. If he had contemplated such things, Jassy's husband, Cole, would have doubtlessly felt obligated to take him apart one piece at a time.

  So it wasn't friendship he felt. Maybe, more accurately, it wasn't only friendship. Well, he would damn well haunt her until he figured out the whole of it.

  Nothing in the world was going to take him away from those wary grey eyes and the sweetest pair of lips he had ever seen.

  He couldn't walk away from Mattie Grey until he understood what it was about her that made him want to stay.

  Two

  And so began a wary, sometimes stumbling effort toward friendship. One thing Joe learned very quickly was that Mattie could not bear to be touched. Physical contact was threatening and frightening to her. The casual touches and automatic courtesies that were so much a part of Joe were subtly avoided with a quickened stride, a deliberate side step. At first, Joe did not consciously register her fear. Then, one day about two weeks after their truce in the park, their tentative friendship was severely tested.

  They were in Joe's yard, behind the spacious home he owned in an older suburb of Dallas. Joe was raking leaves with boyish enthusiasm. Mattie was ostensibly helping, gathering up huge armfuls from the pile Joe made and transferring them to a trash bag, leaving behind a wide trail of renegade leaves on her trek from the pile to the bag.

  Joe was studying her indulgently as he leaned on the rake, taking in the sparkling silver-gray eyes framed by ridiculously long lashes and the glowing sweetness of her skin, highlighted by her leaf-strewed hair. She looked like a happy wood nymph, he thought gently.

  Lord, she was pretty, and so much a part of him now, after only two weeks. He felt her taking root in his life, and the sensation was wonderful. Sometimes, he felt as if they had been together forever, that he had been waiting all his life for Mattie to appear at the end of that football field.

  She didn't feel that way about him, Joe knew. Sometimes the shadows in her eyes faded, but only at times like this when she could feel the space around her and the distance between them. But if she would give him time, he thought in an endless refrain that was fast becoming familiar, to show her what his friendship could mean to her, to give her the things he had been hoarding for so long.

  Suddenly Mattie spoke and broke into his reverie.

  "I've been reading about football." She stopped to study him solemnly over a huge armful of leaves.

  Joe leaned on the rake and regarded her indulgently. "What have you learned?"

  Mattie responded eagerly. "You're supposed to be arrogant."

  Joe regarded her blankly for a moment, then burst out laughing. "It's not mandatory," he assured her blandly.

  "And cocky," Mattie added consideringly.

  "Never learned how," Joe returned regretfully.

  "You're supposed to play as hard as you work and chase women—" Mattie broke off as she met Joe's suddenly penetrating gaze.

  "What in the world were you reading, sweetheart? The unauthorized biography of Joe Namath?"

  Mattie wrinkled her nose enchantingly, vastly relieved that he had let her earlier remark pass. "Well, all those rules and regulations and positions confused me."

  "There is nothing confusing about football!" Joe defended loyally. "It is a very simple, straightforward game."

  "I know, I know. You're supposed to catch the funny-shaped ball and get it into the thingamijigy."

  "Thingamijigy?" Joe said, choking.

  "And then the guy in the prison uniform throws up his arms," Mattie demonstrated the universal touchdown gesture enthusiastically, dumping her armful of leaves in the process and scattering them to the winds, "and that means you made a home run."

  Joe buried his face in his crossed arms. "Home run?"

  "Touch-up?" Mattie tried hopefully, eyeing the drifting leaves regretfully.

  Joe just shook his head, and Mattie continued blithely. "But you hardly ever get into the thingamijigy. Only once since that first game," she pointed out sympathetically. "Are you not that good, Joe?"

  Joe's face remained buried in his arms, but his shoulders were shaking suspiciously.

  "Oh, Joe," Mattie hastened consolingly. "I'm sure you'll get better. Don't worry about it."

  Joe's head came up so quickly that Mattie jumped in fear. "You stay right here," he ordered, laughing. "I'll be back in a second."

  He turned to lope off into the house, and Mattie's eyes followed him all the way. More and more lately, Mattie was becoming aware of just how handsome Joe was. The envious looks she received from other women seemed to go unnoticed by Joe, but they caused Mattie to regard him with new eyes. Joe was a very masculine man, but for some reason, Mattie was not frightened of him—much. He never turned that masculinity toward her, never used his considerable strength against her in any way. Sometimes she forgot that Joe was a man at all—a happy circumstance, inher opinion. He was just her friend Joe, very comfortable with his own body and maleness. Sometimes, when she wasn't with him, she could think of him as the brother she had never had. That was the kind of relationship they were building—that close and that distant. It suited her perfectly, Mattie concluded happily. As for those women who watched Joe so hungrily... she didn't even want to know what they wanted of him because that caused a nagging little pain deep inside her that she didn't understand.

  The slamming of the back door drew Mattie from her introspection to find Joe jogging toward her with a football in one large, capable hand.

  Mattie tilted her head curiously to meet his determined gaze.

  "I am going to teach you a little bit about football," Joe decreed.

  Mattie jumped to her feet excitedly, eyes gleaming. "We're going to play a game?"
>
  Joe regarded her sternly. "Football," he intoned with some degree of pomposity, "is not like Chinese Checkers. There are some rules to learn first." He trotted to the center of the yard and motioned her to follow.

  "Now I'm a quarterback. Quarterbacks throw the ball." He raised his eyebrows admonishingly. "I do it very well."

  Mattie muffled a giggle. She'd thought she had gotten to him with that one.

  "You, on the other hand," Joe continued repressively, "are going to play wide receiver. You'll catch the ball."

  Mattie studied her own slender form doubtfully. "I don't know, Joe. I'm not all that wide."

  "I suppose I should be thankful I didn't assign you to play tight end," Joe muttered beneath his breath so that Mattie couldn't hear. "Okay, when I throw the ball to you, you try to catch it, and then reach that tree-“ he pointed to a giant pine behind him "—for the score."

  "What are you going to be doing?" Mattie demanded suspiciously.

  "I'm going to be trying to stop you from reaching that tree," Joe explained patiently.

  "Then why throw me the ball in the first place?" Mattie demanded with what she considered to be perfect logic.

  Joe regarded her blankly for a moment, then spent the next five minutes explaining to her about offenses and defenses and opposing teams and their lack of players at the moment.

  "So we have to double up, you understand?" he finished hopefully.

  Mattie told him solemnly that she did, indeed, understand. It seemed so important to him.

  "Okay," Joe exclaimed with boyish excitement, "let's play ball. Go out for the pass, Mattie."

  Mattie turned and ran downfield for the pass as she had seen the Conquerors do during the game she had photographed. She turned just in time to see Joe release the ball— with considerable less force than he normally did—and screeched to a halt. Closing her eyes tightly, Mattie opened her arms and waited for the ball. It was hard to tell who was more surprised when it landed neatly in her arms. Mattie opened one eye incredulously to study it there. Then, with a fatalistic shrug, she closed her arms around it and began to streak toward the pine tree and Joe.