Just Joe

MARLEY MORGAN'S

friends refer to her as a
"free spirit." Everyone else generally agrees on the word
"eccentric." Such is the lot of a misunderstood author, she
philosophizes. Mariey lives in Austin, Texas, surrounded by Hill Country and
bluebonnets, and dreams of becoming the world's best hermit. When she's not
writing romances, she's reading them, and devotes herself to making up endings
that suit her better than the original ones.

To the dilemma I love more
than all the world. . .

One

Mattie carefully adjusted
the lens on her camera as she knelt behind the end zone. The game had been a
wild and woolly one, and she had gotten some superb action shots as the players
thundered triumphantly on the field.

The first game of a new
football season, Mattie reflected wryly. And here she was, a roving
photographer, an independent woman, a sensible adult, wildly enjoying the
sights and sounds of a game she didn't even vaguely comprehend. As a free-lance
photographer, Mattie had accepted the assignment of covering the home team's
first game of the season for a state-wide sporting magazine. She had not
expected to enjoy it. She had never even seen a football game before. But the
crispness of the air, the smell of autumn, the roar of an appreciative and
enthusiastic crowd had all conspired against her.

It was fun.

There was a feeling of
companionship—safe companionship, Mattie reflected. She was with other people
but lost in the crowd. Maybe her solitary existence was beginning to wear
thin... Mattie shook off the uncomfortable introspection and turned her
attention to the last few minutes of the game.

It was cold out today—or
at least as cold as it got in an unseasonably chilly Texas autumn. The
temperature would probably shoot back up to one hundred within the week, but
for now Mattie watched her breath cloud in the air with a kind of childish glee
and stuffed her frozen fingers deeply into the pockets of her jacket. She could
not wear gloves and still retain the nimbleness necessary to capture the shots
her high standards—and her current employer—demanded.

A problem she shared with
the players, Mattie noted wryly, as a receiver dropped the ball. From what she
had been able to discern so far, they weren't supposed to do that. Mattie's
attention focused wholly on the field now. The game was winding down quickly,
and the home team needed to score a touchdown for the win.

Third down and twenty-five
yards to score, the quarterback, Joe What's-his-name, dropped back to throw and
could not find an open receiver. Mattie watched with a kind of sympathetic
horror as the defense stormed the line and came pounding toward the quarterback
like a herd of enraged water buffalo.

Joe felt the pressure and,
with typical determination, tucked the ball, put his head down and charged
downfield. At thirty-two, Joe Ryan was the top-ranked quarterback in the
league. Now Mattie and a crowd of seventy-five thousand saw why. He broke one
tackle, dodged another and began to streak toward the goal posts. The excited
explosion from the crowd as the quarterback stormed into the end zone tipped
Mattie to the fact that this might be worth capturing on film. She wouldn't
have known otherwise.

Mattie crouched in the
grass and raised her camera to capture the winning—and completely
unexpected—run. What Mattie didn't see, with the camera focused so intently on
the quarterback, was the shove he eceived from behind by a defensive player.

Mattie's camera flew to
the right. The football broke to the left.

The quarterback landed
full-length over Mattie's body, knocking the breath completely out of her.

For a moment Mattie could
not move, could not even draw a breath into her poor squished lungs. She simply
lay there, absorbing the shock to her system and feeling the deep gulps of air
that caused the massive chest against hers to rise and fall harshly.

Then the voice came,
rumbling deep and husky from his throat, and he levered his head Up to stare
into her stunned gray eyes.

"Hello," Joe
murmured, resting his head on his hand with his elbow planted in the grass.
"Come here often?" For the moment he was too winded by the hit he had
taken to think about getting up. Then again, maybe it was the soft, sweet feel
of her beneath him that made him so curiously vulnerable. Whichever, he really
didn't feel like moving at the moment.

In the stands the crowds
were going wild. On the sidelines his teammates were celebrating. On the field
the opposing players were shaking hands. In the broadcast booth the
commentators were rhapsodizing.

In the end zone Mattie
finally became conscious of the long, heated body trapping her to the grass,
and panic rose blindly.

"Get off of me,"
she ordered faintly, too frightened to move, her face stiff and white with
fear.

"Lady," Joe
said, grinning beguilingly, "this is the best field position I've had all
day. Don't ask me to give it up."

Up in the booth the
commentators began to speculate. "Ryan is slow in getting up, Herb,"
one noted.

"Maybe he was shaken
up on that last play. That was a pretty hard hit he took as he crossed into the
end zone," his cohort returned predictably.

Neither saw Mattie,
crushed under the sheer size of Joe's six-foot-three frame.

"That would be quite
a loss for the Conquerors so early in the season, Herb. Ryan is the backbone of
this team. They couldn't survive an injury that put him on the sidelines for a
month or two."

The commentators fell into
a lively discussion about Joe Ryan's career to date, the team's back-up
quarterback and the NFL at large. Joe's incapacitation was quickly forgotten in
the flurry of facts and figures.

Meanwhile Mattie began to
tremble under the weight of Joe's hard body. She didn't see the smile on his
face or the gentle, absorbed interest in his emerald green eyes. She only knew
that she was being pinned beneath a hard, strong,
male
body, and the
nightmare sprang to life.

"Get off of me,"
she begged sickly, with panic in her eyes. "Please get off of me."
Her face was ashen white, her hands shaking and cold.

Joe immediately rolled off
her.

"Oh, no," he
muttered distractedly, pulling his helmet from his head impatiently and
throwing it aside. "Did I hurt you? Are you hurt?"

His hands began to run
feverishly over her arms and legs, searching for broken bones or obvious
wounds.

It was the worst move he
could have made as far as Mat-tie was concerned. She began to struggle wildly,
viciously twisting and indiscriminately punching at any part of his body that
presented itself. "No! Let me go! Damn you, let me go!"

Joe backed off enough to
read the wild, uncontrolled panic in her glittering gaze, and immediately
ceased his efforts to hold her still.

"Okay,
sweetheart," he began in a consciously soothing tone, holding up his hands
to show her she was free. "Okay, you're okay. I'm not holding you anymore.
I won't touch you again, I promise. It's okay. I won't hurt you."

He might as well have been
talking to a skittish horse, but Mattie, slowly coming down from her
fear-induced adrenaline high, did not notice. She did not consciously hear his
words, only the soothing gentle tone he had affected registered.

Gradually the trembling
stopped, and color came burning into every inch of Mattie's skin as she read
the incredulous, uncomprehending expression in his eyes. Oh God, what had she
done? Falling apart... kicking and screaming like a demented banshee. He hadn't
meant to hurt her, she acknowledged sickly. She had fooled herself into
believing that she had gotten over the paralyzing fear, but she now realized
that it was only because she had not been physically touched in years. Glass
walls were always the most deceptive kind. This man had shattered hers
unknowingly and unintentionally. Mattie swallowed. He would escape from the
consequences, but she could not.

"I'm sorry," she
managed weakly.

Joe shook his head
dazedly. "No,
I'm
sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I wasn't trying
to—" cop a feel, he completed mentally, but flinched from voicing the
crude phrase aloud. Lord knew, he had frightened her enough already. Mattie
scrambled to her feet.

"I'm sorry I made you
drop the football," she told him with a desperate politeness.

Joe shook his head.
"It doesn't matter. I had control of it when I broke the plane of the end
zone. It's a good score."

Mattie nodded jerkily,
backing away from his towering height. Joe took a step toward her, and Mattie
tensed. But he was bending down, reaching for her camera, where it lay in the
grass.

"I hope it's
okay," he said gently, offering her the camera with an outstretched arm
that kept the distance between them.

Suddenly Mattie's
conscious mind began to function again, flooding with the details, textures and
colors of the man. He was big, but she had known that already, from the way his
body had covered hers.
 
Don't think about
that!

she ordered herself
frantically. Broad shoulders framed a massive chest that tapered to a tight
waist and narrow hips. The legs were long and hard and very well displayed in
the tight uniform pants he wore.
Everything
was well displayed, Mattie
thought dizzily, her eyes skittering away from that frightening aspect back to
the rugged face framed by thick, tousled black hair. He had the most beautiful,
questioning
green eyes.

"I have to go,"
she whispered, clutching the camera to her chest.

"Wait!"

Mattie took a huge sliding
step backward. "I can't," she told him shakily. "I really
can't." Regardless of the speculative glances cast her way, Mattie turned
and ran into the crowd of people flocking onto the field without looking back.