My Heart Can't Tell You No (8 page)

‘God, she just turned around and walked away!’ Joe thought. ‘She just leaves me to stand here shaking like a Goddamn kid!’

Lew’s reaction to his niece was quick as he reached up to push his index finger in her ear, making her squeal with delight as she squirmed to the ground to avoid his hand. Through exasperated eyes, she stared up at him from where she had landed beneath the picnic table.

“Get up!” Lew said with mock annoyance that his eyes betrayed as he smiled down at her. “What the hell ya doing on the ground like that? You’re acting like some kind of a Goddamn animal!”

“Let her up, Lew,” Janet said with amused pity as she watched her husband’s horseplay, making Lew chuckle as he pulled the bench back and allowed his niece to get up.

Joe watched as she scrambled to her feet, still a bit awkward, but very enticing as the fray of her denims pulled up over her firm fleshy behind. Her hand absently pulled the material down before taking the seat next to Lew again.

“Hey, Maddie, let’s play catch,” called Lew’s oldest son.

“Nah, I wanna sit here a while.”

“Come on.”

Maddie sighed with disappointment then got up and walked to her cousin, taking the mitt he offered.

“Joe, come sit the hell down. Ya becoming a snob in your old age?” Lew called over his shoulder.

“My old age? I’m not the one with a bald spot on the back of my head the size of a plate.” He moved to where Maddie had been seated a moment ago.

“Hey, didn’t you hear that bald is sexy?” Lew told him.

“Who told you that?!” Maddie called to him as she threw the baseball with a strong arm.

“How do ya think I ended up with six kids? Ask Gert.” He nodded toward Janet, but she simply flustered and smirked.

“When I get married, my husband is gonna have a full head of hair.” Maddie caught the overthrown ball with ease.

“You better not break any windows or you’re getting kicked straight to the moon,” Lew yelled, much more to his son than to Maddie, then turned his attention back to her. “What do you want a husband with a lot of hair for?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly, jumping in the air to catch the next ball before throwing it back fiercely at the boy, making him yowl silently as the ball smacked into his mitt. “Dad isn’t bald.”

“You tell him, Maddie,” said Janet.

“Oh, you love it, you know you do. You should hear her at night, Joe, beggin’ to stroke my bald spot. Of course I just lay in the other bed and tell her to go the hell to sleep, but you know women. She’ll just lay there and beg, until I finally get up and let her pat it a few times, then I can go back to bed and get a good night’s sleep.”

“You rotten . . . ,” Janet laughed as she flustered again under her husband’s teasing.

Lew started laughing at her, then pretended to sober as he saw Sarah’s car pulling up next to them. “Shut up everybody. Can’t talk about sex now, my big sister’s here.”

“Did I hear you mention sex?” Sarah asked as she got out of the car on the driver’s side and John got out of the passenger’s side.

“Not me.” Lew raised his brows to her. “Where’s Ilene?” he asked John, referring to his wife.

“Work,” John said simply.

He sat next to Janet. John’s second wife wasn’t with them, not unusual as they were on shaky grounds after only two years of marriage. Ilene liked to wander and didn’t make any secret of it, but it went unmentioned—John was too good a young man to deserve such a wife.

“Maddie was just saying she doesn’t want to marry a guy that’s bald,” Lew told Sarah as she sat next to him.

“I don’t blame her, a woman likes to have something to hold onto.”

“That’s right,” Maddie said from the middle of the road.

“And what’s wrong with bald?” John asked over his shoulder. “You don’t even know what the hell you’d be hanging on for.”

Maddie just smiled over at her brother as she caught the next ball. “That’s enough, I’m done for now,” she told her cousin as she moved back to the table by her brother. “Sure I do. So you can kiss him and he can’t get away! Just like this!”

John’s face turned crimson as Maddie quickly grabbed him by the hair and pulled him back in a mock kiss before leaving him drop. She moved to sit on the bench again, this time across from Joe.

“Jesus,” Lew breathed. “Almost makes me glad I’m going bald.”

Joe’s eyes returned to Maddie. She really had changed. His eyes moved over her face before dropping to the front of her overalls again. She most certainly didn’t
look
fourteen—more like seventeen, eighteen, but not fourteen. Realizing his probing gaze was stirring the sensation in his loins again he guiltily looked back to her face, hoping for some signs that said she was still almost a baby. She looked at him at the same moment she was about to get another olive from a jar on the table. He saw an emotion of pain cross her face as she put the jar down, then turn to anger as she threw the olive on the ground.

“Go to hell, McNier! I know I’m fat!!” She turned and shoved her hands into her pockets as she started walking down the lane toward the bridge where Lew’s other sons were coming toward them.

“Hey Maddie’s here!” they called as they ran up to her then turned and headed back across the bridge to follow her.

John and Lew chuckled at the look of pure shock on Joe’s face, but Janet and Sarah both sighed, uneasiness filling them at Maddie’s discomfort.

“Puberty,” said John. “Nothing like it.”

“What the hell did I say?” Joe asked quietly in astonishment.

“I didn’t hear you say anything.”

“No, me either,” Lew agreed, both of them knowing more than they were letting on.

“Ya don’t have to these days,” John told him.

“Then what did I do? I was only looking at her. Jesus! Remind me not to look at her!”

“She’s sensitive about her weight. You were watching her eat,” Sarah explained with a tired voice.

“Her weight? What’s wrong with her weight? She looks fine!”

“She was starting to pick up a few pounds last winter and Jack wouldn’t let her live it down.”

“But she’s not fat!” Joe insisted.

“Well, she’s . . . changing. That’s all. She’ll be fine,” Sarah reassured him. “You just happened to look at her the wrong way, at the wrong time.”

“Where’d she go? I better go apologize.” Joe got up from the table and glanced across the creek at the crowd of boys swinging from a Tarzan rope.

“Over on the swing with the gang from Tenth Street,” Lew told him, still finding the situation amusing. “Maybe you better go over there and save those young guys before she takes out her wrath on them.”

Joe crossed the bridge, feeling a surge of anger burst within him when he saw four boys aged anywhere from fifteen to seventeen years, standing among the group of younger children. They were all waiting for their turn at the thirty-foot long rope that swung precariously from a half-dead tree over the creek.

“Here, I’ll get it for ya.” One of the older boys handed the rope to Maddie.

By the time Joe reached the small crowd, Maddie was on the full arc of the swing, the rush of air lifting the bib of her overalls away from her body and exposing breasts covered with the minimum of cloth. It was evident that she was unaware of it as she came back to land on the bank with an agility she hadn’t displayed with her uncle.

“Where’s your shirt?!” Joe growled as he grabbed her arm and pulled her up the bank.

“O-over there. Why?” Her eyes were huge as he picked up the discarded T-shirt, glanced across the creek to the party, then pulled her up the fifteen-foot-high dike and down the other side. “It was hot, so I took it off! I have a tube top on underneath!”

“Put it on!” He threw the shirt at her.

“No!” She turned and started running back up the dike, but he ran after her, the steep incline and the thick grass making their chase a slippery one. As he grabbed her ankle to stop her, his feet slipped out from beneath him and he landed on her legs, his face falling barely an inch from the partially exposed flesh of her small well-rounded bottom. The sight itself made his muscles tighten immediately. He had a sudden urge to bite that firm mound—instead, he turned her struggling body around and pulled her down next to him. “Leave me go! Lewis took his shirt off and you didn’t yell at him!”

“Lewis is a goddamned boy! Jesus, are you that stupid?” His insult hit its mark as fire flared in her eyes.

“You go straight to hell, ya big horse!” She started to rise but he pushed her back down and pressed his leg over her thighs as he held firmly onto her shoulders, refusing to let her go back to the older boys until she was dressed properly.

“Put your T-shirt on.”

“No! Ya can’t see anything! My bib’s covering me!” Her angry struggles brought her hip in contact with his groin, sending a jolt through him as he held her beneath him. Her continued struggling was confusing him mentally and physically. Each time her hip bumped him he could feel himself harden more and more, but he refused to let her up.

“You can see everything,” he said quietly through gritted teeth. “Why do you think those boys were watching you so closely? When you go on the rope, the air pushes everything open and you can see—everything.”

Her struggling stopped as her eyes widened in horror and her hands moved to cover the bib of her jeans. “Everything?” she asked in a small voice.

“Everything.”

“Let me up! My God! I’m gonna kill the bastards!” Anger flared in her eyes as she tried to get up and run over the dike and give her all to carry out her threat.

“Maddie. For God’s sake stay still!” he moaned as her continued movements against him were driving him nearly senseless, making her look at him strangely before he moved away. “Your shirt. Put on your shirt. Then go back to Lew’s house.”

She sat up and looked at him as he remained on his stomach next to her. Her curiosity at his behavior was quite clear. Taking the shirt, she put it on without having to take down the bib of her overalls, then as she stared at him, Lew’s voice boomed from the top of the dike, above them.

“Get the hell over there before I kick ya so hard you’ll be a permanent fixture on the end of my foot!” Lew yelled at his four sons.

If Joe hadn’t been in so much pain at the moment, he would have found the empty threat amusing. Not once had Lew actually hit, let alone kicked one of his children. His most vicious act was taking his cap from his head and swatting their rumps once before following up with another empty threat.

“C’mon, brat. You better go over too.” Lew’s voice was much softer as he looked down at his niece. “Your mom’s wondering where ya got off to.”

Maddie moved up the dike, leaving Joe lying on his stomach with his head across his folded arms. Joe was hoping Lew had gone with her. When he was finally able to get up without the possibility of someone seeing what had kept him hidden on his stomach in the first place, he saw Lew kneeling on the top of the dike, watching him with an amused eye.

“Think ya can make it yet?” Lew smiled at him.

“What are you talking about?” He slowly made his way up the dike to meet the man.

“I’m thirty-eight today, Joe. Ya don’t make it to thirty-eight without learning a little bit about life. You could have had a pogo stick in your pants for as high as you were propped off the ground over there.” Joe’s shocked expression brought another chuckle from the older man. “Don’t worry. Maddie didn’t see it. And if she did, I’m almost positive she wouldn’t have known what it meant. She might have developed early physically and have a mind as sharp as a tack, but emotionally, she’s still as green as the grass you hid yourself in. And don’t look so guilty. Christ, you’re a man, ya know.”

“But she’s just a baby.” They walked toward the bridge.

“No. She’s turning into a
young
lady,
I believe is the term. She’ll always be a baby to John, Tom and me, but you’re starting to see something else.”

“She’s like a sister,” Joe tried again.

“I didn’t see John looking at her the way you were looking over home. And I never seen Tom looking at her like that. Bob—that’s different. But then Bob isn’t her brother either.”

“What’s Bob been doing?!” Joe looked at Lew sharply.

“Nothing,” he assured him with a chuckle. “I told you. She’s still green. And it would be best if she was left that way for a few years yet. She’ll bloom some day—but not now.”

“I have no intentions of helping her
bloom
,” Joe said irritably.

“I can see that. And it’s pissing ya the hell off that your body’s trying to tell ya something different. Come on, there’s a cold beer over there waiting for ya. It’ll help calm ya down.”

“No. I think I better leave.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I have some things to do.”

“I can imagine,” Lew laughed. “Okay. We’ll see ya soon then.”

Joe did get a beer to calm himself, but it was from a bar across town. Two beers, three beers; still not calm. He tried another one, and another, but he knew it would take something other than alcohol to calm him. He often wondered if perhaps a little
less
alcohol that day would have prevented him from finding himself married four months later with a child on the way.