Just Joe (12 page)

"They died in a light
plane crash. They were flying back to the ranch when the plane went down."
There was a wealth of sad regret in his words.

"Ranch?" Mattie
picked up on that to distract him. "The ranch you told me you grew up on?
Where's it at?"

Joe smiled at her oddly.
"Where it's always been. Waiting for me to come back."

"You still own
it?" Mattie was surprised.

"All my life I've
intended to be a rancher, sweetheart. It's what I grew up with, it's what I
love. I even took my college degree in land management."

"But you're a
football player," Mattie pointed out irrefutably.

"Football has always
been just a game to me. I played in college for the fun of it. I never intended
to go pro."

"But after your
parents died..." Mattie filled in understandingly.

Joe shrugged a little
awkwardly. "I sort of lost direction after that," he admitted softly,
gripping her hand gently. "I couldn't go back there. The memories... all
of our plans were still so much a part of the place, of me. We had planned to
work the land together, to build together."

Mattie watched his sadness
and felt sad. "So you decided to play football instead."

Joe nodded. "I turned
pro right after graduation, but I never intended to abandon the ranch. I always
knew that someday, I'd go back to it."

"And it's
someday?"

Joe smiled at her
understanding. "I'm ready to go home. I need to go home. This will be my
last season. I'm retiring to raise cattle and wildflowers."

"Retiring?"
Mattie scoffed lightly. "You're only thirty-two."

"I'm an old man by
football standards, Mattie. I want to be young again. I want to start building
things."

Mattie raised her head
questioningly, and Joe carefully dammed the emotion in his eyes. "What
kind of things?"

He shifted uneasily. Love,
he answered silently. A family, a life. But he knew he could not say the words
aloud. Not now, not yet. "Come on, sweetheart," he said, changing the
subject. "It's getting late. Get ready for bed." He gave her a gentle
shove toward the cabin's one and only bedroom, with its narrow single bed.

Mattie resisted.
"Where will you sleep?"

"Right here in front
of the fire," Joe indicated the floor easily. "I'll be warm
enough."

Mattie nodded doubtfully
and turned back toward the bedroom. "Joe..."

He turned to meet her
eyes.

"I really like your
cabin. Thank you for bringing me."

"Thank you for
coming," he responded quietly.

"I—I'd like to see
your ranch sometime," she said tentatively.

Joe turned away carefully.
This was the opening he had been waiting for. "Christmas is coming
up," he told her with every bit of casualness he could muster. "We
could spend it there, together."

Mattie's heart leaped.
"Wouldn't you rather spend Christmas with somebody else?" she asked
awkwardly, shifting from one foot to the other on the cold wood floor.

Joe turned to face her,
his eyes solemn. "Mattie, you're my best friend. Who else would I spend
Christmas with?"

"But before we
met—"

"Before we met I
spent the holidays with my neighbor at the ranch, Cole Baron."

"Won't he miss you
this year?"

Joe shook his head, a
quiet smile deep in his eyes. "I doubt if Cole will even remember my name
this Christmas. This is going to be his first with his new wife."

"Oh."

"How about if we stop
at their house on the way to the ranch? That would give us a chance to exchange
presents without intruding."

Mattie stared at him
without answering, and Joe saw a kind of suppressed yearning in her eyes.

"Mattie—"

"It's just that I'm
not much good at Christmas stuff," she burst out in self-defense, wrapping
her arms around her body to ward off a sudden chill. "I haven't had much
practice at it, you see."

Joe narrowed his eyes on a
wave of pain. Sometimes she unconsciously let these clues about her childhood
drop, and Joe was forming a grim and empty picture of what it must have been
like for her. She never spoke of those years, never mentioned her parents or
any family. Joe thought that she must have never known love, or warmth, or
caring. Maybe that explained why she didn't recognize what lay in his eyes.

"I'll take my chances,"
he told her huskily. "Okay?"

Mattie met his eyes
helplessly, wanting so badly to accept that it was almost a physical pain
within her.' 'Okay."

"Good. Now go to
sleep, Mattie. You're going to need all of your strength to shovel us out of
here tomorrow."

"I'm
going to shovel us out of here
tomorrow?" she demanded incredulously. "And what, pray tell,
are
you
going to be doing?"

Joe grinned wickedly.
"Supervising."

Mattie threw a pillow at
him and ran for cover.

Joe caught the pillow in
one large hand and watched her run. Away. Again.

No more than three hours
later Mattie woke up shivering so hard that her bones ached. She was curled up
into a ball, with a down comforter swathing her from her neck to her toes, and
she was still so cold she couldn't even feel her face. With a muffled sigh, she
pulled herself from the bed, clutching the blanket around her slender form. She
crossed to the old-fashioned radiator in the corner and touched it. Cold, stone
cold. Sometime in the past three hours the heat had gone out. Mattie had a
feeling that a lot of power lines had snapped under the weight of ice coating
them, and that they weren't the only ones without power. On the other hand,
there was a roaring fire in the very next room. Joe would have to share.

Hiking the comforter up to
her calves, Mattie stumbled to the living room, her eyes only half-open.

Standing above Joe's
peacefully slumbering form, she sighed. "Joe."

No response. Not even a
twitch.

Shuddering as another
chill racked her body, Mattie prodded him with her freezing toes. A little more
forcefully than was strictly necessary. "Joe!"

"What!" Joe was
on his feet before Mattie could so much as blink. His eyes were wild and his
hair tousled.

"Mattie, what the...
?"

Mattie smiled sweetly.
"The heat's gone out. I'm freezing my little tootsies off." She
promptly plopped down on Joe's blanket and stuck her feet toward the warmth of
the fire.

Joe regarded her closely
through sleepy eyes. "Your tootsies really aren't that little," he
pointed out honestly. "In fact, for someone your size, they're absolutely
huge— Ouch—" He broke off with a screech as Mattie slapped her absolutely
huge, totally frozen feet against his hairy calf.

"You were
saying?" she demanded sweetly. "Absolutely—"

"Gorgeous," Joe
substituted hurriedly, moving out of range. "Absolutely gorgeous tootsies.
Tootsies men would die for, tootsies that could start a revolution, launch a
thousand ships."

"Oh, Joe, I'm too
tired to laugh. Don't make me."

Joe rubbed his hands
together bracingly, shivering in the cold air. "Look, I'll try to get the
heat going again."

"I think the lines
have snapped," Mattie told him disinterestedly, luxuriating in the heat of
the fire as it bathed her body. "Couldn't we both just sleep here?"

Joe regarded her with deep
consternation. "Mattie—"

"You take that side,
and I'll take this one," Mattie was being reasonable again, arranging
their blankets side by side on the floor with a respectable distance between
them.

Joe regarded her
helplessly, listening as every one of his good resolutions, so painfully made
in the woodshed earlier that day, began to crumble at his feet like a condemned
building.

"Look, you can sleep
here and I'll sleep in the bedroom—" he tried hopelessly.

"Don't be
silly," Mattie told him briskly, already settling in before the fire.
"We wouldn't be able to defrost you until August. Go to sleep."

And with that Mattie
snuggled deeper into her blanket, sighed once and blissfully drifted off to
dreamland.

Joe studied her
disbelievingly. Asleep. Here. Half on his blanket. Closing his eyes, he
repeated his good intentions to himself, his lips moving silently as he recited
them under his breath. After ten minutes he felt marginally stronger and opened
his eyes.

Mattie innocently wriggled
under the blanket, sighed, and Joe closed his eyes, repeating his silent
resolutions all over again.

Five

It was two-thirty in the
morning when Joe finally gave up the fight. And only then, he assured himself
virtuously, because, in her sleep, Mattie had pressed close to his hard body,
cuddling for warmth. Joe stifled a groan as her head made an inviting, nestling
motion at his throat and her hips brushed against his own in soft allure.

Dear Lord! How was he
supposed to calmly go to sleep when he ached for her from his teeth to his
toes? Just to touch her one time would be enough.

The nagging voice in his
mind, which had made him repeat his good intentions six times before lying down
beside her must have done the sensible thing and dozed off hours ago, for it
did not taunt his rationalizations again. He could touch her now, he thought,
unconsciously clenching his fists. The softness of her skin, the warmth of her
body. It would be enough just to touch; he wouldn't need more.

Even as he heard the words
in his head, he knew he was lying to himself. He would always need more. But he
also knew that he couldn't stop himself now.

As though watching from a
distance, a disinterested observer, he saw his hand lift slowly to brush a dark
sweep of curls from her forehead. A silent, graceful motion that spoke
evocatively of his need for her. The second his skin made contact with hers,
though, all illusion of distance was erased. It was as if a white-hot flame had
been turned on inside of him. His breath caught somewhere deep in his chest,
his heart raced and his eyes closed in an agony of pleasure.

Mattie, deeply asleep and
innocently unaware, snuggled closer.

Joe swallowed thickly and
allowed his fingers to drift down the sweet curve of her soft cheek to her
determined chin. Soft, so soft. He leaned down to test that softness with his
lips, brushing a butterfly kiss into the dimple he found there. The exploration
went on. From her delicate neck to her slender shoulders Joe drew a line with his
fingers. The hollow at the base of her throat beckoned his lips, and Joe could
not resist, beginning to lose himself in her.

Mattie slowly drifted
towards consciousness, vaguely aware of butterflies dancing over her skin.
Butterflies ... in December... Mattie yanked to complete wakefulness as a hard,
male hand moved caressingly over the swell of her breasts. Dear God, not again!
Not the nightmare again...

With a strangled little
moan, she tore herself away from those hands, blinded by fear and memories as
she dragged herself across the cold floor, searching for a place to hide. Tears
cascaded down her face silently, endlessly, but she did not sob because she had
learned her lesson well. Noise only brought the promise of more pain.

"Mattie!" Joe
cried out, feeling something rip inside of him as he watched her drag herself
across the floor away from his touch. "Oh God, Mattie..."

Mattie was trembling so
badly that she barely heard him. She felt lost in the past. She searched madly
for the walls within herself, the walls she could erect to hide behind and that
would keep her safe from those hands.

"Mattie, sweetheart,
it's Joe." The voice came from a long way away, urgent and tormented and
strained. "Do you hear me? It's Joe, just Joe. It was me touching you,
only me. Do you understand me, Mattie? It was me. I won't hurt you. I would
never hurt you..."

The soothing litany
continued until Mattie began to listen, and Joe's voice was hoarse and broken.