Just Joe (6 page)

"Okay, what?"
Joe demanded suspiciously, his face bright red.

"Okay, there aren't
any flat-billed platypuses in my backyard," Mattie clarified.

Joe's suspicion deepened.
"Which you knew all along."

"Let's go get some
coffee," Mattie suggested blandly.

Joe had no choice but to
swing down from the limb and follow her departing form, berating her the entire
way to the cottage.

"What possible reason
could you have for making me hang upside down from a tree in your backyard for
half an hour? Are you a closet sadist, or do you have a fetish for bulging
eyes, or—"

"Happy birthday,
Joe!"

Joe's mouth dropped open
in astonishment. The entire offensive line of the Conquerors—every last single
one of them—was standing in Mattie's kitchen wearing pointed party hats and
standing under a banner that read Happy birthday, Sydney!

"Sydney?" Joe
muttered disbelievingly. "Who the hell is Sydney?"

"That's you,"
Mattie answered in a hushed tone. "There was kind of a mix-up at the
store, so I told the guys that Sydney was your real first name."

"You told them
what?"
Joe exploded in a muffled roar.

"Sydney Joseph
Ryan," Mattie murmured distractedly, positioning a party hat on his head.
"It has a nice ring to it."

Joe's eyes focused
helplessly on the behemoths that were his teammates as they celebrated his
birthday. Porter and Johnson were tossing an open bottle of champagne between
them like a football, Kelly was kneeling at the spigot on the keg of beer in
the corner and guzzling from the endless stream spewing forth, and Riley was
making out with a blonde at the sink. Most of the rest were surrounding the
spread of food on the table. It was chaos.

"Are you
surprised?" Mattie asked anxiously, carefully keeping her distance from
the rowdy men overrunning her kitchen.

Joe nodded wordlessly,
wondering how to burst her bubble. "But Mattie," he finally broke out
woefully, "my birthday isn't until April!"

"I know that,"
Mattie told him cheerfully. "But if we had the party then, it wouldn't be
a surprise."

Joe swallowed in sudden
fear... because he understood the logic behind her reasoning.

Three

If Joe was learning a lot
about Mattie, she was learning an equal amount about him. With the appearance
of Joe in her life, Mattie's very existence changed. Yet the change was so
gradual, so natural, it snuck beneath her carefully built and maintained
defenses, much as Joe himself had, without her notice. He had simply become a
part of her life.

They, spent a lot of time
together—either at Mattie's small cottage outside the Dallas city limits or at
Joe's large turn-of-the-century house in an older section of the city. Somehow,
Mattie discovered wryly, they had ended up together part or all of every day.
Joe liked to jog in the mornings, and sometimes Mattie—"the quintessential
lazybones," she called herself—would keep him company on her bicycle. More
often than not, Mattie accompanied Joe to practice and gradually accustomed
herself to the sight of huge lumps of humanity hurling themselves at him. She
even managed hesitant smiles—from a safe distance—to his teammates.
Occasionally she would meet the wife or girl friend of a player in the stands.
They all seemed genuinely happy and not a little surprised to meet her.
"Joe's never brought anyone to the stadium before," one of the more
forthright of them had told her. The unmasked curiosity in their eyes made
Mattie nervous. What did they think her relationship to Joe was? They were all
very nice and very friendly, but Mattie, who had spent most of her life
building and enforcing walls, had a hard time scaling them. Only with Joe did
her guard drop, and even then she knew that a part of her was still in hiding.

Joe continually amazed
her. Every day of his life he was surrounded by people. Teammates, coaches,
fans, reporters... and yet, as she had seen in his eyes that first day, he was
lonely. Unlike Mattie, who had carefully chosen photography as her profession
because it meant she didn't have to work closely with others, Joe's livelihood
incorporated a host of people. He responded to all of them, worked with many of
them, liked and respected quite a few of them.. .and Mattie realized that none
of them knew the Joe Ryan who was her friend. It was as if he saved that part
of himself for her.

He filled needs of
Mattie's that she hadn't even known existed, and yet she wondered if she was as
good a friend to him. He was so open with her, and she stayed so closed with
him. He respected the boundaries she had set, yet he invited her into every
area of his life. Sometimes, if she watched him when he wasn't aware of it,
Mattie saw something she didn't want to see... a kind of sadness, a yearning
that she was afraid to examine too closely.

As she had told him,
Mattie had never had a friend like Joe, and every time she witnessed that
sadness in him, a niggling fear sprang to life within her. A fear that she
would lose him, his friendship and the person she was becoming.

She wasn't lonely anymore,
she discovered one day, because she had Joe. And sometimes, when the past
overwhelmed her, and she tried to push him away.. .Mattie shook her head. Joe
never left her. They might be separated physically, but there was always a part
of him, a warmth, a caring that Mattie carried within her. Lesson two, Joe
had.told her. Friends are forever.

The game on the fourth
Sunday of the season did not go well. Guiltily Mattie played hooky from her
darkroom and watched the televised show. The Conquerors were trounced 35 to 7.

She was expecting the knock
on her door later that evening but not the drained expression on Joe's face
when she answered it.

"Joe!" she
exclaimed in concern, grasping his hand and leading him into her living room.
"You look awful!"

Joe managed a wry grin.
"Gee, thanks."

"I'm sorry you
lost."

"Are you psychic, or
am I wearing a sign?"

"I watched the game
on TV," Mattie told him, seating herself next to him on the sofa.

Joe winced. "That
wasn't a game," he corrected her. "That was a massacre. Why did you
bother? You don't even understand the game."

Mattie's eyes shied away
from his. "I watched it because I'm your friend."

Joe blinked. "Excuse
me?"

Mattie shifted restlessly.
"Well, I don't know anything about football, and it's what you
do.
I
thought I should at least try to understand."

"I see." Joe
shut his eyes and turned his face away so that Mattie wouldn't see his emotion.
It was times like this, when she touched him unbearably with some innocent comment,
that Joe had to force himself to put some kind of distance between them.

Mattie, uncomfortable with
the long silence, continued defensively. "I didn't want you to get bored
with me and trade me in for a new friend."

"Oh, Mattie,"
Joe said, shaking his head. "You don't trade friends in like—like used
cars! Friends are forever."

Mattie swallowed. Forever
sounded like a long time, and she had never thought of anything in those terms
in her entire life. Trying to ease the sudden ache in her throat, Mattie
brought the conversation back to its starting point.

"I bet you got yelled
at by the coach," she said, grinning, and poked him in the ribs teasingly
but drew back abruptly when Joe bit off an agonized moan.

Her eyes met his in deep
concern before his skittered away.

"Joe? What's wrong?
Are you hurt... ?"

"I'm
indestructible," he managed breezily, unconsciously placing a protective
hand at his side. "I just got banged up a little in that second
quarter."

Mattie pulled his hand
away determinedly. "Let me see."

Joe backed away
instinctively. "No, I'm all right. I promise. It's just a little
bruised."

But Mattie was not about
to let him get off that easily. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she grasped
the hem of his sweater and pushed it up beneath his arms. She gasped as she
witnessed the horrible discoloration over his rib cage.

Her eyes met his fiercely.
"Has the doctor seen this?"

"Sure," Joe
bluffed. "He said the color suited me."

"Dammit, it's not
funny, Mr. Macho," Mattie choked out painfully. "This looks
awful."

Joe swallowed as her
fingers brushed gently against his skin, too conscious of her soft and feminine
warmth for comfort.

"You're right,"
he told her abruptly, barely aware of what he was saying, with his whole being
focused on the touch of her fingers. ' 'It hurts like hell. Doc told me to rest
up for a couple of days."

"Well, that's the
most sensible advice I've heard in a long time," she breathed thankfully,
pulling his sweater back into place. "You go home and go to bed, and I'll
bring you chicken soup and tea with honey and..."

Joe shut his eyes and drew
her convulsively into his arms. "You're sweet," he muttered thickly.
"So sweet."

Mattie shifted
uncomfortably, painfully aware of the feel of his hard chest against her
breasts. Just Joe, she told herself sternly. It's just Joe. Her mind accepted.
Her body rebelled.

She jumped to her feet so
quickly that Joe drew a sharp breath as his ribs were jarred. "I—I'll go
make you some chicken soup right now," she told him somewhat wildly, and
rushed toward the kitchen.

Joe watched her go with
shadowed eyes. Chicken soup, he thought grimly. Chicken soup, when what he
really needed was... something he couldn't have. Settling deeper into the
cushion, Joe cradled a pillow against his ribs, thinking of things he couldn't
have.

He didn't even bother to
lie to himself anymore. It wasn't just the curve of her chin, or the sound of
her laughter, or the fear in her eyes that held him to Mattie. It was what she
brought out in him, what she filled up in him. All those years, he thought a
little sadly. All those years of wondering if this was all there was, of
hoarding his emotions because there was no one he wanted to share them—and
himself—with.

Then there was Mattie,
with walls higher than the sky, but not stronger than his need. She didn't want
him because he was Joe Ryan, star quarterback for the Dallas Conquerors.
Despite everything, he still wasn't too sure she knew what a quarterback was!
Mattie looked at him and saw Joe Ryan. She was the first woman to see behind
the image to the man. Joe didn't know if he had let her into his mind or if she
had simply discarded the image as a matter of course and burrowed deeper on her
own. It didn't matter anyway, Joe accepted calmly. He was vulnerable to her
now. He felt her hurts as surely as she had felt his a few minutes before.

He was an intensely
private man, and yet it felt good to be known so completely by that one special
woman, by Mattie. It felt good to know her that way. Joe wondered if Mattie
knew that when she had crawled into his soul, he had crawled into hers. He
didn't think so. He felt Mattie in him because sometimes he felt her fighting
to break free. He wasn't fighting to be free of Mattie. He was fighting to be a
part of her.

Mattie stood in the middle
of the kitchen, trembling with reaction. She could still feel the hard outline of
Joe's body against her own. At first it had been bearable, because it was Joe,
and he was hurt and vulnerable. Then it had changed. Some emotion buried deep
inside her had trembled and glowed to life, and a different emotion had taken
her in its grip. It was the old fear. Yet in a way, it was worse because it had
come from inside of her, and Mattie could have sworn that she heard a wall
crumbling to the ground in its wake. So as she had always done, she had run
away.

Don't run away from Joe, a
silent, shaky voice called to her. Don't run away from...

Sweet. He had said she was
sweet, but he had said it as if he meant she was everything.

Holding that memory close,
and shutting the door against that unfamiliar feeling that had swelled within
her, Mattie squared her shoulders and returned to the living-room.

"Joe, I'm sorry
I—"

Mattie broke off as her
eyes lighted on Joe. He had not heard a word she said. Sometime while she was
fighting with her feelings in the kitchen, Joe had given up to sleep.