Just Joe (3 page)

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 blindly 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.