Just Joe

by Marley Morgan

  Copyright © 1987 by Mariey Morgan

  Australian copyright 1987

  New Zealand copyright 1987

  Philippine copyright 1987

  First printing 1987

  First Australian paperback edition November 1987

  ISBN 0 373 05340 1

  Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher, Silhouette Books, P.O. Box 810, Chatswood, Australia 2067.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  Printed in Australia by

  The Book Printer, North Blackburn 3130

  MARLEY MORGAN'S

  friends refer to her as a "free spirit." Everyone else generally agrees on the word "eccentric." Such is the lot of a misunderstood author, she philosophizes. Mariey lives in Austin, Texas, surrounded by Hill Country and bluebonnets, and dreams of becoming the world's best hermit. When she's not writing romances, she's reading them, and devotes herself to making up endings that suit her better than the original ones.

  To the dilemma I love more than all the world. . .

  One

  Mattie carefully adjusted the lens on her camera as she knelt behind the end zone. The game had been a wild and woolly one, and she had gotten some superb action shots as the players thundered triumphantly on the field.

  The first game of a new football season, Mattie reflected wryly. And here she was, a roving photographer, an independent woman, a sensible adult, wildly enjoying the sights and sounds of a game she didn't even vaguely comprehend. As a free-lance photographer, Mattie had accepted the assignment of covering the home team's first game of the season for a state-wide sporting magazine. She had not expected to enjoy it. She had never even seen a football game before. But the crispness of the air, the smell of autumn, the roar of an appreciative and enthusiastic crowd had all conspired against her.

  It was fun.

  There was a feeling of companionship—safe companionship, Mattie reflected. She was with other people but lost in the crowd. Maybe her solitary existence was beginning to wear thin... Mattie shook off the uncomfortable introspection and turned her attention to the last few minutes of the game.

  It was cold out today—or at least as cold as it got in an unseasonably chilly Texas autumn. The temperature would probably shoot back up to one hundred within the week, but for now Mattie watched her breath cloud in the air with a kind of childish glee and stuffed her frozen fingers deeply into the pockets of her jacket. She could not wear gloves and still retain the nimbleness necessary to capture the shots her high standards—and her current employer—demanded.

  A problem she shared with the players, Mattie noted wryly, as a receiver dropped the ball. From what she had been able to discern so far, they weren't supposed to do that. Mattie's attention focused wholly on the field now. The game was winding down quickly, and the home team needed to score a touchdown for the win.

  Third down and twenty-five yards to score, the quarterback, Joe What's-his-name, dropped back to throw and could not find an open receiver. Mattie watched with a kind of sympathetic horror as the defense stormed the line and came pounding toward the quarterback like a herd of enraged water buffalo.

  Joe felt the pressure and, with typical determination, tucked the ball, put his head down and charged downfield. At thirty-two, Joe Ryan was the top-ranked quarterback in the league. Now Mattie and a crowd of seventy-five thousand saw why. He broke one tackle, dodged another and began to streak toward the goal posts. The excited explosion from the crowd as the quarterback stormed into the end zone tipped Mattie to the fact that this might be worth capturing on film. She wouldn't have known otherwise.

  Mattie crouched in the grass and raised her camera to capture the winning—and completely unexpected—run. What Mattie didn't see, with the camera focused so intently on the quarterback, was the shove he eceived from behind by a defensive player.

  Mattie's camera flew to the right. The football broke to the left.

  The quarterback landed full-length over Mattie's body, knocking the breath completely out of her.

  For a moment Mattie could not move, could not even draw a breath into her poor squished lungs. She simply lay there, absorbing the shock to her system and feeling the deep gulps of air that caused the massive chest against hers to rise and fall harshly.

  Then the voice came, rumbling deep and husky from his throat, and he levered his head Up to stare into her stunned gray eyes.

  "Hello," Joe murmured, resting his head on his hand with his elbow planted in the grass. "Come here often?" For the moment he was too winded by the hit he had taken to think about getting up. Then again, maybe it was the soft, sweet feel of her beneath him that made him so curiously vulnerable. Whichever, he really didn't feel like moving at the moment.

  In the stands the crowds were going wild. On the sidelines his teammates were celebrating. On the field the opposing players were shaking hands. In the broadcast booth the commentators were rhapsodizing.

  In the end zone Mattie finally became conscious of the long, heated body trapping her to the grass, and panic rose blindly.

  "Get off of me," she ordered faintly, too frightened to move, her face stiff and white with fear.

  "Lady," Joe said, grinning beguilingly, "this is the best field position I've had all day. Don't ask me to give it up."

  Up in the booth the commentators began to speculate. "Ryan is slow in getting up, Herb," one noted.

  "Maybe he was shaken up on that last play. That was a pretty hard hit he took as he crossed into the end zone," his cohort returned predictably.

  Neither saw Mattie, crushed under the sheer size of Joe's six-foot-three frame.

  "That would be quite a loss for the Conquerors so early in the season, Herb. Ryan is the backbone of this team. They couldn't survive an injury that put him on the sidelines for a month or two."

  The commentators fell into a lively discussion about Joe Ryan's career to date, the team's back-up quarterback and the NFL at large. Joe's incapacitation was quickly forgotten in the flurry of facts and figures.

  Meanwhile Mattie began to tremble under the weight of Joe's hard body. She didn't see the smile on his face or the gentle, absorbed interest in his emerald green eyes. She only knew that she was being pinned beneath a hard, strong, male body, and the nightmare sprang to life.

  "Get off of me," she begged sickly, with panic in her eyes. "Please get off of me." Her face was ashen white, her hands shaking and cold.

  Joe immediately rolled off her.

  "Oh, no," he muttered distractedly, pulling his helmet from his head impatiently and throwing it aside. "Did I hurt you? Are you hurt?"

  His hands began to run feverishly over her arms and legs, searching for broken bones or obvious wounds.

  It was the worst move he could have made as far as Mat-tie was concerned. She began to struggle wildly, viciously twisting and indiscriminately punching at any part of his body that presented itself. "No! Let me go! Damn you, let me go!"

  Joe backed off enough to read the wild, uncontrolled panic in her glittering gaze, and immediately ceased his efforts to hold her still.

  "Okay, sweetheart," he began in a consciously soothing tone, holding up his hands to show her she was free. "Okay, you're okay. I'm not holding you anymore. I won't touch you again, I promise. It's okay. I won't hurt you."


  He might as well have been talking to a skittish horse, but Mattie, slowly coming down from her fear-induced adrenaline high, did not notice. She did not consciously hear his words, only the soothing gentle tone he had affected registered.

  Gradually the trembling stopped, and color came burning into every inch of Mattie's skin as she read the incredulous, uncomprehending expression in his eyes. Oh God, what had she done? Falling apart... kicking and screaming like a demented banshee. He hadn't meant to hurt her, she acknowledged sickly. She had fooled herself into believing that she had gotten over the paralyzing fear, but she now realized that it was only because she had not been physically touched in years. Glass walls were always the most deceptive kind. This man had shattered hers unknowingly and unintentionally. Mattie swallowed. He would escape from the consequences, but she could not.

  "I'm sorry," she managed weakly.

  Joe shook his head dazedly. "No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I wasn't trying to—" cop a feel, he completed mentally, but flinched from voicing the crude phrase aloud. Lord knew, he had frightened her enough already. Mattie scrambled to her feet.

  "I'm sorry I made you drop the football," she told him with a desperate politeness.

  Joe shook his head. "It doesn't matter. I had control of it when I broke the plane of the end zone. It's a good score."

  Mattie nodded jerkily, backing away from his towering height. Joe took a step toward her, and Mattie tensed. But he was bending down, reaching for her camera, where it lay in the grass.

  "I hope it's okay," he said gently, offering her the camera with an outstretched arm that kept the distance between them.

  Suddenly Mattie's conscious mind began to function again, flooding with the details, textures and colors of the man. He was big, but she had known that already, from the way his body had covered hers. Don't think about that!

  she ordered herself frantically. Broad shoulders framed a massive chest that tapered to a tight waist and narrow hips. The legs were long and hard and very well displayed in the tight uniform pants he wore. Everything was well displayed, Mattie thought dizzily, her eyes skittering away from that frightening aspect back to the rugged face framed by thick, tousled black hair. He had the most beautiful, questioning green eyes.

  "I have to go," she whispered, clutching the camera to her chest.

  "Wait!"

  Mattie took a huge sliding step backward. "I can't," she told him shakily. "I really can't." Regardless of the speculative glances cast her way, Mattie turned and ran into the crowd of people flocking onto the field without looking back.

  Only when she reached the safety of her car, her trembling fingers gripping the steering wheel, did the tears begin to fall.

  And they came from a dark locked room inside her mind from which Mattie couldn't escape.

  Joe stood statue still in the end zone, oblivious to the backslapping congratulations of his teammates and fans.

  She was gone.

  Why did he feel as if she had taken a part of him with her? He didn't even know her name! All he knew of her was what he had seen in her eyes, what he had felt in her body.

  He would find her. Yes, he would find his mystery lady with the frightened eyes. She wouldn't escape him that easily. And when he found her, he would find the reason for this sudden, slashing need to see beyond her shadows and to the substance.

  Joe rushed through his shower, barely aware of the postgame exuberance of his teammates. He was out of the locker room and hurtling up the steps to the network broadcast booth before any of the swarming reporters could capture him. Useless things, reporters, he thought dismissingly. Always wanting to make something out of nothing, to fashion little tin gods out of normal men. Joe couldn't think of anything more abhorrent than having his face recognized wherever he went, although some of the players in the league enjoyed it. It would offend his own deep sense of privacy to be accosted as he did his grocery shopping or jogged around the block. That was precisely why he never granted interviews. His only concession to the fame his job had brought him was the local charities to which he committed his time and money, and sometimes—unavoidably—personal appearances.

  Taking a deep breath, he pulled open the door to the booth and stepped inside. Andy Butler, the anemic-looking sportscaster, was just breaking for a commercial when he spotted Joe. The red light on the camera faded, indicating the break, and Butler turned off his phony smile.

  "Well, well, if it isn't the man of the hour!" Butler marveled mockingly. "What are you doing up here, Ryan? Slumming?"

  Joe shifted restlessly but held his temper. "Andy," he acknowledged with a stiff nod, moving forward. "I need a favor."

  Butler's eyebrows rose in astonishment. "A favor? From li'lol'me?"

  "I'd like a copy of the tape on that last play," Joe gritted determinedly.

  "Collecting souvenirs?" Andy sneered. "I thought you noble quarterback types were above all that."

  Joe refused to be drawn.

  "Anyway," Butler continued, "you can get a copy from your coaches."

  "I can't wait for the rehash of the game," Joe told him. "I need it now."

  A small, manipulative smile played on Butler's thin lips. "What's it worth to you, Joe?"

  Joe shrugged, resigned. "What do you want, Andy?" Joe already knew the answer.

  "An interview," Butler told him with relish. "On camera. Exclusive. Now."

  Joe's mind rebelled, but the image of his black-haired lady pushed him on. "All right," he growled reluctantly. "Two minutes."

  "Five."

  "Don't push it, Andy." Joe snared a chair and faced the camera.

  Butler grinned triumphantly and signaled to the video technician to make a copy of the play Joe had requested.

  The red light blinked on, and Andy began. "We have with us now Joe Ryan, the somewhat reclusive quarterback for the Dallas Conquerors and the man responsible for that last winning play." Butler turned to Joe with a congenial smile pasted on his face. "That was quite a play, buddy," he remarked, opening the air for Joe's commentary.

  Joe smiled blandly into the camera. "Thank you."

  There was an awkward moment of silence as Butler leaned forward, an expectant look on his face, waiting for Joe to continue. Nothing more was forthcoming, however, and Joe simply sat there, smiling benignly into the camera.

  Butler's own smile slipped a little.

  "'You're the top ranked quarterback in the NFL, Joe," Butler continued forcedly. "How do you account for that?"

  "Well, Andy," Joe leaned forward, his tone lowering confidingly, and Butler suddenly knew that something totally outrageous was about to be said. "I like to think my game is effective because I play with my brain instead of my b—"

  Butler gobbled panickedly, his face pale, and Joe broke off with a roguish gleam in his eyes before finishing sedately, "Instead of with another portion of my anatomy."

  "Well, Joe," Butler rushed in heartily, quickly wiping a film of perspiration from his forehead, "it's been nice talking to you. Continued success in the rest of the season. Now we're going to break for this message from everyone's favorite beer."

  The red light clicked off and so did Butler's sickly smile. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded furiously, practically foaming at the mouth.

  "Did I say something wrong?" Joe queried innocently, smiling beatifically. "I don't do many interviews, you know. And I am just a dumb jock—"

  "Cut the stupid country boy act, Ryan," Butler snapped. "We both know that you were a Rhodes scholar. Take the damn tape and go."

  Joe lazily got to his feet and pocketed the tape that the video technician was holding, noting absently the barely suppressed grin on the man's face. Andy Butler was universally disliked.

  "Thanks for the help, Andy," he murmured laconically, and strolled from the booth.

  Only when the door closed behind him did he allow a pleased, anticipatory smile to cross his hard face. His lady was captured on this tape somewhere. And someo
ne in this stadium—another photographer, a reporter, someone— would recognize her.

  Oh yes, he would find his lady.

  "Wendall, please do something—animalistic! Mattie lowered her camera to regard her model critically. "I know it's your first time, but for heaven's sake, it's not as if I'm asking you to do a centerfold!"

  Wendall rolled over to bury his face in a pile of leaves. Mattie sighed and decided to try another tack.

  "I could make you famous, you know," she offered idly, inspecting her nails. "Why, you could be recognized all over the world. You could be asked to do an American Express commercial." Mattie took a quick peek at her model to see how that grabbed him.

  Apparently, it didn't. Wendall wrinkled his nose and blinked lazily at the camera.

  "You," Mattie told him direly, "are an uncooperative rodent."

  Wendall the chipmunk scurried a few feet away to corner a downed acorn, and Mattie sighed. It was better than nothing, she decided philosophically, and he did look kind of cute batting the acorn around between his paws. She lifted her camera carefully and focused. "Now, if you'll just smile into the camera for two seconds, I'll buy you a bushel bag of acorns."

  Suddenly there was a smiling face in her sight. But not a smiling chipmunk face. This face was all hard masculine angles and glittering green eyes and impossibly sensuous mouth.

  She was doing it again! She thought she had finally managed to banish that face from her memory, thought she had finally left it in the end zone at the Conquerors' stadium. God knew, she had tried.

  After coming home from the game yesterday, she had spent a long time thinking about what had happened, somehow unable to escape the memory of the feel of that hard masculine body against her own small frame. She had looked, really looked, at herself in the mirror for the first . in ages, and she had easily read the shadowed ghosts in her own smoky eyes. Every inch of her delicate five-foot-two frame was trembling with the unexpected confrontation with those ghosts. Would she ever really be free of them? Would she ever be able to stop running? From Port Arthur to Austin to Houston to Denver to Dallas...to hell and back. She was twenty-three years old, Mattie thought with a sudden fierce impatience. And still she was afraid of the dark... because it was the dark that hid her ghosts, her past and her future.