Just Joe (16 page)

"No Joe, I'm just not
used to it. I guess I don't know how..." Her words drifted off
despairingly.

"Let me teach you,
then." Joe pleaded intently. "Let me teach you how it feels."

Mattie searched his eyes
hesitantly. "No price to pay?"

"No price to
pay," Joe echoed muffledly, reminded of all the prices she had paid
already.

"And—and Dr.
Wright?" Mattie probed.

Joe held her eyes.
"Will you see him?"

Mattie flinched from the
question, from the fear of having to tell a stranger about her childhood, about
the ghosts she carried. "I can't," she whispered in defeat, closing
her eyes against the disappointment and reproach she feared would be in Joe's
face. "I'm sorry, I can't. Not... yet."

Amazingly, unbelievably,
she felt the gentle brush of Joe's lips against her forehead. "It's all
right," he whispered soothingly. "It's all right, Mattie. Just don't
close me out. Don't run away from me. Between us, we can find the answers.
Together we can do anything."

Mattie felt the tears that
slipped from beneath her closed lids. He was so gentle, and he cared for her.
For
her,
ghosts and all. "Joe, I can't keep
taking
from you.
You have to let me give, too."

"Oh, Mattie,"
Joe said, sighing. "Can't you see what you've given me?"

Mattie shook her head
soundlessly, her throat tight.

"You've given me your
friendship and something I value more than anything in the world, your
trust." His voice was intense. "Don't you see, you had to trust me to
tell me about him."

"I did?" Mattie's
voice was stunned. She hadn't thought about that before. "Yes, I did. I
do. Joe, I do trust you." Her voice was shaded with wonder. "I... it
feels good."

The simple statement shook
her. It did feel good. Just as it had felt good to tell him about her
childhood, as if just the telling would allow the pain to ease. Slowly she was
discovering that she could use the past, build on it to make her a stronger
person. The key was in dealing with it. Suddenly she knew that Joe could help
her to do so as no one else in the world could.

Seven

Tell me about Cole and
Jassy."

Mattie and Joe were on
their way to the Barons' ranch, where they would spend the night before going
on to Joe's home for the Christmas holidays.

Joe gave in to Mattie's
request easily. "Okay, what do you want to know?"

"Everything,"
Mattie answered expansively, her eyes dancing. "How did you meet and how
long have you been friends and how long has it been since you've seen them.
What are they like and what do they do and..."

Mattie stopped to draw a
breath into her empty lungs, and Joe jumped in.

"Okay, hold it. I'll
tell you everything from the moment I was conceived. Will that do?"

Mattie shot him a quelling
glare. "Talk fast, buster."

Joe laughed and began, his
eyes steady on the road ahead of them. "Cole and I grew up together. Born
just a couple of months apart—he's older by sixty-seven days. Our parents had
been friends and neighbors for years, and there's never been a time when Gole
and I didn't know each other or weren't friends. We were raised almost as
brothers. I was always at his house, or he was always at mine. We went to
school together, started to notice girls together." Here Joe stopped and
smiled in soft remembrance. "Got drunk together for the first time."

"When the time came for
us to go to college, it just seemed natural that we went to the same school. We
attended the University of Texas at Austin for five years, and we both played
on the football team. I was the quarterback and Cole was our star wide
receiver."

"That's the guy who
catches the ball," Mattie inserted blandly.

Joe turned to eye her in
amazement. "That's right."

Mattie studied her nails
in pretended boredom, then buffed them against her shirt. "Of course it
is."

Joe grinned appreciatively
and continued. "Cole and I roomed together all during college. I think I
knew more about him then his own parents did and sometimes used it to my
advantage."

Mattie picked up the past
tense of the verb. "Did?" she repeated quietly. "Are his parents
gone, too?"

Joe's face was somber.
"They were with my parents when the plane went down. They were all coming
back from a weekend in Dallas."

Mattie reached out to
touch his hand in silent commiseration. "It must have been a very hard
time for both of you."

"It was. We had been
friends before, very good friends, but after our parents died..." Joe
shook his head. "Well, suffice it to say that we have gone through a lot
together, and we are very close."

"I'm glad you had
someone," Mattie told him quietly, her eyes sad. "I'm glad that Cole was
there to help you through that."

Joe gripped her hand
gently. "After we graduated Cole couldn't wait to get back to his ranch.
He said he would feel closer to his parents there. But, Mattie, he had changed.
I could almost see it happening, but I couldn't do anything to stop it."

"Changed how?"
Mattie probed.

Joe shrugged uneasily.
"He began to draw away from people. It was as if he had decided it was
safer to keep his distance, not to care about anything or anyone so that he
wouldn't be hurt if it went away. I guess it really didn't help that I had
turned pro by then and didn't see as much of him as I used to."

"That's so sad,"
Mattie murmured. "It's so hard to open up aga,in after you've closed
yourself off. It takes something or someone very, very special to make you even
try."

Joe swallowed past a
suddenly tight throat, because he knew by the look in her eyes that she was
talking about him.

"Is this where Jassy
comes in?" Mattie prompted him.

Joe smiled. "Yeah,
this is where Jassy comes in. Cole had spent ten years—
ten years
—learning
how not to care, and then Jassy stormed his barricades, took him by the heart
and made him love her."

Mattie inwardly flinched
at the word "love" and asked hurriedly. "What's Jassy
like?"

Joe grinned fondly, and
Mattie felt something very new and totally unfamiliar in the pit of her
stomach... something very like jealousy.

"Jassy is one special
lady. The perfect woman for Cole. She has an IQ that goes right off the scale,
a certified genius, and a heart as soft as a marshmallow. They seem to give
each other balance. Apart they are both wonderful, warm people, but together...
together they're perfect."

Mattie mulled that over
for a long time in silence, trying to understand the concept of two people made
perfect as one. She had never seen that kind of union, never believed in that
kind of miracle. And Joe called it love.

Suddenly she began to
realize that she didn't know what love was. What Joe described as love between
his friends sounded nothing like the love that her foster father had forced on
her. Were there so many different kinds? And if so, how was one supposed to
tell the difference? Or had the word been misused somewhere down the line? Was
love not the horror, but the beauty? She just didn't know. Suddenly, because of
Joe, it was very important that she find out because what he described between
Cole and Jassy was so incredibly close to what Mattie felt for him.
 
And if what she felt for Joe was love—the
good love Joe had shown her between Marion and Jen Dumbronkowski, and told her
about between Cole and Jassy Baron—then what was she running from?

Cole and Jassy Baron
turned out to be warm, friendly and very easy to be with. Mattie silently
laughed at her own fears and saw the satisfaction glinting in Joe's eyes as she
relaxed with his friends.

Cole was tall, his body
lean and muscled, exactly as she had pictured a Texas rancher would be.
Ordinarily he was a man that Mattie would have been uncomfortable around, for he
exuded a kind of understated sexuality that should have been unnerving. It
would have been awkward... except that it was all directed at his beautiful,
vivacious wife, Jassy.

Joe had mentioned in the
Jeep that Jassy was a certified genius, but she looked like a fashion model.
She was, quite simply, stunning—a flaming redhead with the most unexpected
purple eyes. But Mattie saw beneath the beauty to the sharp, inquiring mind.
Jassy's life couldn't have been so easy, either, she thought perceptively. Such
an intimidating intelligence must have chased countless people away from her,
people she had wanted to stay.

She seemed happy with
Cole. More than happy—contented. Mattie, with her new insight on friendship,
realized that Cole and Jassy were friends as well as lovers. She hadn't
realized the two relationships could coexist. She watched the couple with a
kind of bewildered yearning, and Joe watched Mattie with a melting tenderness
and buried hope.

The Barons were obviously
delighted to see Joe again. It had apparently been quite a while since his last
visit. At least three months, Mattie knew for sure, because she and Joe hadn't
been apart for any length of time since the day they met.

Over dinner, they fell
into a lively discussion about Joe's ranch, which Cole apparently looked after
for Joe during the football season. Mattie listened with genuine interest as
they discussed herd movement, pastures and beef prices, Joe seemed like a
different man here, at home in the country. He appeared to have overcome his reluctance
to live on the ranch after his parents' death, and Mattie realized for the
first time that this was indeed where he belonged.

"I guess you'll be
happy to concentrate only on your own ranch once Joe retires, right,
Cole?" she asked, carried along by her train of thought. "You have
quite a bit of land yourself."

She was a little taken
aback by the way both Cole and Jassy swung around to study Joe incredulously.

"Retire?" Cole
repeated blankly. "Are you going to retire, Joe?"

Joe gave a little half smile.
"At the end of this season," he confirmed. "I'm coming
home."

"That's
wonderful!" Jassy broke in enthusiastically. "I remember once you
told us that you wouldn't quit football until you found—" She broke off
suddenly as Joe's eyes warned her into silence.

Mattie wondered at the
thoughtful gaze Jassy directed her way, but dismissed the thought as Cole
continued.

"I'm going to have
you for a full-time neighbor again! I can't wait. It's going to be just like
old times."

"Not quite old
times," Jassy inserted sweetly. "I'm here now, remember? No more
double dating in the hayloft."

Cole's eyes turned to Joe
accusingly. "Did you tell her about...?" .

"How about we
exchange presents now?" Joe suggested rising rather hastily from the
dinner table.

They moved into the living
room, where a huge Christmas tree reached toward the ceiling, and the banter
continued. Mattie and Joe had gone shopping the week before for the present
they intended to give the Barons, and Mattie had insisted on paying for half.
It was a Jacuzzi attachment for their bathtub, and Joe had insisted that they
would put it to good use. Mattie was beginning to suspect that he was right.

Jassy, in turn, handed Joe
a rather flat package, gaily wrapped. "I wanted to paint something you
valued most in the world. Maybe I should have waited awhile." Her eyes
moved to Mattie.

Joe met her gaze in level
understanding. "Maybe next year," he told her quietly.

"You paint?"
Mattie picked up on that part of the exchange eagerly. "How wonderful!
I've tried, you know, but I just can't seem to get the hang of it."

"On the other hand, I
couldn't create the magic you do with your camera, Mattie Grey," Jassy
returned admiringly. "So we're even."

"You've seen my
work?" Mattie was honestly surprised.

"It's hard
not
to
see your work," Jassy returned. "Your pictures are in practically
every magazine from
Arizona Highways
to
Sports Illustrated."

Mattie shifted awkwardly,
a little uneasy with the honest admiration, and her eyes fell on the painting
Joe had just unveiled. She gasped softly at the sheer beauty of what she
realized at once must be a part of his ranch. Joe was studying it reverently,
and Mattie somehow knew that the setting had a particular meaning to him. She
didn't even look at the artist's signature before her eyes flew to Jassy's.