Just Joe (14 page)

Joe snorted and shoved the
cup into her hand. "Drink it. You look tired."

The cup halted midway to
her lips at his abrupt comment.

"I slept in a chair
all night," she reminded him gently.

With me, Joe added
silently. "How do you feel?"

Mattie did not pretend to
misunderstand. "Funny. A little.. .scared."

"Scared?" Joe
picked up on that immediately. "Why scared?"

Mattie shrugged uneasily.
"You, you know things about me no one else does. It might..."

"It might what?"
Joe prompted, setting his cup on the counter to cross to her side. He cupped
her face and forced her to meet his eyes, forced her to remember the hours
spent talking in his arms. "It might what, Mattie?"

"Change the way you
feel about me." Mattie told him in a rush, her gaze sliding from his gaze.

"Why?"

"You know why,"
she insisted harshly. "Because I've been—
used."

"Used?"
Joe repeated tightly, eyes flaming.
"What, like a car?"

"No!" Mattie
tried to draw away from the fire in his eyes, but Joe's thumbs forced her chin
up.

"Mattie, you're a
person. A beautiful lady who has been hurt in a way you should never have had
to bear.
It wasn't your fault.
You told me that, and it's the truth. You
are not any less a person because of what he did to you. Not to me."

"Do you really
believe that?" There was something so hurt and desperate in her shadowed
eyes that Joe couldn't answer for a moment.

"I really believe
that," he confirmed gently. "What's important is that you believe
it."

Mattie searched his eyes.
"He never...he only...touched me. He never raped me," she finally
managed to say in an embarrassed rush.

Joe wrapped her carefully
in his arms, barely breathing until he felt her relax against him. More than
anything else he wanted to hold her and show her gentleness, show her what a
man could give a woman.

There were all kinds of
violation, Joe thought grimly. And Mattie's heart had been violated. That
bastard had not raped her body, but he had raped her mind. The scar was just as
deep and just as painful.

"I'm glad,
sweetheart," he whispered into her tumbled hair. "I'm glad. But it
really would not change what I feel for you. Believe that."

Mattie pulled away,
surreptitiously brushing a lone tear from her cheek. "Why do you put up
with me?" she asked, trying to lighten the mood.

"I've told you once.
You're a part of me."

Mattie reached up a
trembling hand to touch his hard jaw. "You are so special."

Joe fought not to press
his lips to her palm, his eyes closed on a wave of intense emotion. "This
is getting disgustingly sentimental," he muttered thickly, drawing
carefully away. "Don't think all this sweet talk is going to get you out
of shoveling us out of here."

Mattie noticed Joe drawing
away from her for the first time and felt something knot inside her. He had
said it didn't matter, but...

Afraid to continue that
train of thought any further, Mattie followed his lead.

"I think there must
be a more democratic way to decide who should shovel us out of here," she
protested mildly.

Joe raised one brow
interestedly. "Oh?"

Mattie nodded solemnly.
"I propose a snowball fight. Fast, dirty and decisive."

Joe raised the other brow.
"A snowball fight? I'm going to cream you!"

Mattie regarded him
haughtily. "Grab your coat, Ryan. And prepare to meet your master."

Joe laughed and loped into
the living room to get their coats. Mattie watched him go with a melting
tenderness in her eyes. She had to learn to trust again, she thought sternly.
Joe meant so much to her. She could not, would not drive him away with her
doubts and fears. He had said it didn't matter what her foster father had done
to her.

she corrected herself
thoughtfully. He hadn't said it didn't matter. He had said it didn't change the
way he felt about her.

Mattie was mulling over
the implications of this when Joe came back into the kitchen, interrupting her
thoughts. He was frowning while dangling her rather thin coat from one strong
hand.

''Mattie," he began
doubtfully.

"Yes, Joe?"

"This coat is much
too thin. I don't want you to catch cold," he told her solemnly.

"No, Joe,"
Mattie agreed with suspicious submissiveness.

"You can wear
mine," he determined cheerfully, bundling her ruthlessly into his huge
wool coat.

Mattie, feeling very much
like a little girl playing dress-up, studied the hem of the coat, where it lay
on the floor. "Isn't it a little—" she waved her arms expressively,
six inches of material dangling past her fingertips "—big?"

Another time, Joe would
have laughed. She looked ridiculous in his coat, lost in the sheer bulk of the
garment. But right now he was overwhelmed with a wave of emotion and a fierce
desire to protect her from harm. His Mat-tie would never know a moment's pain
again, he determined grimly. Not as long as he had breath in his body would she
be hurt again.

Swallowing past a suddenly
tight throat, Joe strived for some semblance of normality. "I've got a
better idea. Give me the coat."

Mattie gladly divested
herself of the cumbersome garment and followed Joe at a trot as he grabbed her
hand and pulled her into the bedroom. Stopping before a beautiful pine chest of
drawers, Joe released her hand to search

through its contents.
Throwing clothing around with blatant disregard, he asked idly, "Why are
you panting?"

Mattie regarded him
incredulously, thinking of the forced march from the kitchen.
"Excitement," she answered dryly.

When Joe just looked
blank, she burst out laughing. "Well, honestly, Joe! Look at your
legs."

Joe studied his legs
obediently.

"Now look at
mine."

He studied her legs with
considerably more interest.

"Notice any
difference?" Mattie prompted.

Joe nodded vigorously, his
eyes still on her limbs. "Yours are prettier."

Mattie was nonplussed. She
had never allowed any man close enough to make a comment on her legs, and she
certainly wasn't in the habit of studying them herself. Did she really have
pretty legs?

"What else?" she
demanded hurriedly, strangely frightened by the feeling Joe's admiration
evoked.

"Softer."

Mattie swallowed.
"The point I'm trying to make is that your legs are longer than mine. You
have legs all the way up to your ears! That means that you walk faster than I
do."

"All the way up to my
ears?" Joe repeated incredulously.

"Close enough,"
Mattie insisted vaguely. "So
naturally
when you drag me along
behind you I'm bound to get out of breath."

Joe studied her for one
more minute, shrugged resignedly and turned back to the chest of drawers.

"Aha!" he
muttered, triumphantly pulling a sweatshirt from the depths of a drawer.

At least, Mattie
thought
it was a sweatshirt. It looked big enough to comfortably house a family of
six and their pet walrus. It was a funny green color. A funny
putrid
green
color, with white lettering across the front.

"This will keep you
warm," Joe told her cheerfully, pulling it over her head and forcing her
arms into the sleeves. "This is my sweatshirt from my college football
team."

"You want me to wear
this?" Mattie questioned warily, holding the shirt away from her body as
if it carried some horrible disease.

Joe didn't seem to notice,
however, rummaging through the same drawer for a pair of white cotton socks,
which he just as efficiently placed onto her small hands.

"Uh, Joe..."

"And the piece de
resistance—" Joe intoned enthusiastically, pulling a purple baseball cap
over her ears "—a hat to keep you warm."

Mattie peeked out from
underneath the bill that rested on her nose, looking for all the world like a
Salvation Army reject.

Joe hustled her into her
own jacket, put on his coat and led her from the cabin. "Now, aren't you
toasty warm?" he demanded happily.

Mattie ran into the
doorframe she was unable to see because of the hat and said nothing.

"You're also,"
Joe announced grandly, "a perfect target." He swept up a handful of
snow, packed it into a loose ball and threw it at the only visible part of
Mattie... her chin.

From beneath the oversize
hat, Mattie didn't even see it coming, but she felt it as it oozed with frozen
slowness past the neck of the sweatshirt. She shot Joe a killing glare from
beneath the hat.

"It was nice knowing
you, Joe," she told him glibly, scooping up a handful of snow and throwing
it in his face.

Joe let out a roaring
protest and the fight was on. Mat-tie never bothered to run for cover. She
stood her ground, scooping up handfuls of snow like a windmill gone out of
control and being pelted by Joe's unrelenting attack. Breathless and laughing,
she finally decided that some subterfuge was called for if she was to win this
particular battle.

Spinning around, Mattie
dashed toward a copse of trees, feeling Joe's continued attack as snowballs
pelting her back.

"I love it," Joe
gloated over her retreating form. "The enemy runs, the victor—"

His words halted abruptly
as Mattie executed an unbelievably realistic skid in the snow and dropped to
the ground to lie still and silent.

"Mattie?" Joe
raced toward her, his face taut with concern. Reaching her side, he dropped to
his knees in the snow, his hand touching her face gently.

"Mattie?
Sweetheart?"

Mattie kept her eyes shut
as her hands stretched surreptitiously at her sides, gathering fistfuls of
snow.

Joe was really concerned
now, whipping the horrid purple hat from her head to check for what he was sure
must be an awful, gaping wound.

"Sweetheart, please
wake up. Please be okay."

The whispered litany
reached Mattie and she melted inside. He sounded so worried, and his hands were
moving over her so gently. Suddenly time reversed, and Mattie was back in the
end zone of the Conquerors' stadium on the day that she had met Joe.
Remembering her reaction then, Mattie almost smiled. Her hands loosened on the
snowballs she had fashioned, and her eyes opened.

Joe breathed a sigh of
relief as his eyes met hers. ' 'Thank God! Tell me where it hurts,
Mattie?"

Mattie smiled quietly into
his eyes, and one cold hand rose to caress his cheek. "Nowhere, Joe. The
hurt's almost gone now."

Six

Hey, Ryan, where were you
yesterday?"

Through the usual roar in
the locker room, Joe barely heard the question Coach Rusky directed at him.
Certainly he had no intention of answering it. He concentrated on lacing his
shoes and pretended that he hadn't heard.

Unfortunately Bill Jackson
had. "Oh, Joe was probably with his lady friend," he began
tauntingly.

"Lady friend?"
K.C., a wide receiver, picked up the thread of the conversation. "Why, Joe
ol' buddy, you have a lady friend you're not telling us about?"

The guys on the team loved
nothing better than to tease. Knowing this, and realizing they meant no harm,
Joe could ignore them. He had more important things on his mind, anyway. Like where
he had been yesterday and what Mat-tie had told him at the cabin a week ago.

Bill Jackson stepped back
into the conversation, not ready to give up on the chance to get some friendly
revenge for what had happened in the locker room. "Does Ryan have a lady
friend?" He repeated loudly, joking. "My goodness, does he have a
lady friend! I met her myself, right here. 'Course, old Joe never did explain
why he had her in the locker room after hours—" several loud guffaws
greeted this comment "—but let me tell you, she was one sweet little
thing. Why I could start at her toes and work myself all the way up to
her—"