Just Joe by Marley Morgan Read Free Book Online

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.
    A little over a week
later, ribs healed and the past Sunday's game won, Mattie and Joe were together
again, this time in his car.
    "Where are you taking
me today, Joe?"
    "Someplace we haven't
been before," Joe answered absently.
    "Well," Mattie
began to count on her fingers, "That cuts out the zoo, the art museum,
every park in this city, the ice skating rink—" here she stopped to rub
her hip in wry remembrance "—the stadium, the reservoir, the rodeo, the
sewage plant—"
    "All very educational ventures," Joe interrupted righteously.
    "Especially the
sewage plant," Mattie agreed,