Almost Perfect (9 page)

"But what?" Bobbi asked. "I refuse to believe he's depressed at the thought of being the permanent director of Camp Enchantment. How on earth could anyone be depressed about that?" Her gaze took in the lodge-style dining hall with its high log ceiling. Indian designs had been carved into the columns and beams, and years' worth of wood smoke permeated the air. "Living here year-round has to be one of the best jobs ever!"

"To us, yes," Carol agreed with a nervous glance at Joe's mother. "But maybe not to him."

"Actually, Bobbi has a point." Sandy scooted forward, her blond hair in its usual perky ponytail. "It could be something else."

"Maybe it's personal, like trouble with his love life." Bobbi turned to Mama. "Is he dating anyone?"

"Get real." Sandy scoffed before Mama could answer. "Men who look like Joe don't have dating problems."

"You don't know that." Bobbi's face creased into a scowl. "Just because he looks like… you know—"

"A total babe?" Leah offered with a sigh.

"Guys, please." Carol blushed. "His mother is sitting right here."

"Don't let me stop you." Mama chuckled. "I'm rather proud that women think my son is sexy. Although Bobbi's right. Being a… what did you call him? A baby?"

"No." Leah laughed. "Not baby. A 'babe.' "

Maddy could have argued that after the way he'd acted toward her the last day and a half.

"Well," Mama said. "Being a 'babe' doesn't mean he's never had woman trouble."

"Are you saying that's it?" Sandy frowned. "Some woman messed him over?"

"Give us her name." Bobbi's face turned thunderous. "We'll take care of her."

"Now, girls." Mama held up a hand. "I simply said it was a possibility."

"In which case there's nothing we can do to cheer him up." Carol sighed in defeat.

"Wait. I know," Sandy piped up. "I could date him."

"In your dreams," Dana scoffed. "Face it, Sandy, he's known all of us since we were in training bras, which I think pretty much ruins our chances with him."

"Life is so unfair." Sandy pouted.

Carol looked at his mother. "I don't suppose you have any suggestions?"

"Oh, I never meddle in my son's affairs."

Maddy choked on her iced tea, then gasped for breath.

Dana pounded her between the shoulder blades. "You okay?"

"Fine," Maddy replied, wheezing. "I just… swallowed wrong."

"So, Madeline." Mama smiled sweetly. "I don't suppose you have an idea for how to cheer Joe up."

"Not a clue." Actually, she did. She could move back to Austin and get out of Joe's life. Unfortunately, quitting her job a week before camp started would leave him in the lurch—which was not a good way to make up for hurting him in the past.

As the others continued brainstorming about ways to make Joe happy, she took the opportunity to gather her dirty dishes. "If y'all will excuse me, I think I'll head back to the Craft Shack and do a little work."

"Okay." Carol gave her a distracted wave. "We'll see you in the morning."

What a mess
, she thought as she slid her tray through the opening to the kitchen. She could hear the kitchen staff, local women from one of the nearby pueblos, talking in their native tongue. It made her feel even more of an outsider. Everyone seemed to belong here but her.

When she left the dining hall, she glanced up to where the Craft Shack sat on the rise waiting for her, then in the direction Joe had gone. Sooner or later, they needed to clear the air between them or they'd both be in for a miserable summer. Unfortunately, she couldn't follow him right then, because everyone would see.

What would the others think if they knew she was the woman behind Joe's dark mood? Visions of them ganging up against her made her cringe. At the first opportunity, she definitely needed to have a very calm, very adult conversation with Joe. Together maybe they could find a mature way to deal with each other.

Rock music blared from the boom box in the corner, warring with the scream of the electric sander in Joe's hand. The sound of wild guitar licks suited him just fine as he sweated over prepping one of the canoes for a fiberglass patch. Finally satisfied that the area was smooth, he flipped off the sander, leaving only the angry beat of the music as he straightened. Removing his protective eye gear, he mopped his forehead with his arm. Fiber-glass dust gnawed at his skin, making him contemplate a dive into the river to rinse off. Maybe the exertion of a late-night swim would help him work off the temper simmering in his gut.

For now, he settled for pulling off his shirt and using the sink to wash up. He was drying his arms and chest with paper towels when his sixth sense raised the hair on the back of his neck. He whirled to find Maddy standing in the doorway against a backdrop of moon-washed night.

For an instant, neither of them moved. She stared at him with the wide-eyed shock of a virgin seeing a bare-chested man for the first time. Which might have made him laugh under different circumstances. Maddy was hardly a virgin, and he knew for a fact she'd seen a man's bare chest. His in particular.

Even so, her gaze traveled over his upper body, taking in the tattooed armbands circling both his biceps—which were new to her—then across his pecs and down his abs to the waistband of his shorts. His muscles bunched and fluttered as if she'd brushed him with her fingertips.

Swallowing a curse, he reached over and turned off the boom box, plunging the boathouse into silence. "You wanted something?"

Her gaze snapped back to his face and color flooded her cheeks. "I, um, I… saw the light on. From my balcony."

"And… ?"

"And, I thought maybe this would be a good time for us to…"

"What?"
Screw each other's brains out
? The idea of an angry fuck appealed to him even more than a swim as a way to work off his foul mood. Espe-cially since she had caused both his mental and his physical frustration. The thought made his traitorous groin stir even more. Dammit.

"To talk," she finally managed to get out.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea." He turned his back and tossed the paper towels in the trash. To save himself the embarrassment of standing before her with the beginnings of a hard-on, he reached for his shirt and shook it out with a snap. "In fact, I think you being here right now is a very bad idea."

"Joe."

He sensed her moving toward him and sent her a dark scowl over one shoulder.

She stopped. "We need to work this out."

"No. We don't." He jerked his shirt on, which made his skin itch all over again, but at least it hung down far enough to grant him some privacy. Reaching for a bottle of acetone and a cloth, he crossed back to the boat and started cleaning the area to be patched. "You're only going to be here twelve weeks. I've survived unpleasant situations longer than that."

"So that's it?" Her voice went up in pitch. "We're going to act like the past doesn't exist?"

"That's pretty much the plan, yeah." He concentrated on wiping dust away from the crack in the hull, forcing an outward show of calm when everything inside him wanted to lash out at her with all the things he wished he'd said fifteen years ago. Or pull her into his arms and beg her to take him back. His teeth clenched against the second impulse. He'd actually done that the last time, begged her and humiliated himself. With tears, damn it. He'd literally cried in front of her. The memory made him physically ill.

"Joe…" She took another step, sending his nerves on high alert. "I know I hurt you, and I'm sorry for that to the depth of my heart—"

"Stop!" He straightened, but refused to step back even as panic pounded in his chest. She seemed determined to rip open this old wound and watch him bleed all over again. If she stood there much longer, he feared she'd succeed. "Let's skip the big apology scene. What happened between us is ancient history. This may come as a shock to you, Maddy, but I got over you years ago. I've been a little too busy living my life since then for it to even be a factor. So, in case you're worried, let me assure you, I'm perfectly capable of working with you through the summer—at the end of which you'll do me the favor of leaving. Now if you don't mind, I have work to do."

Maddy watched as he bent over the canoe again. As uncomfortable as she felt with his anger pushing her toward the door like a physical force, she couldn't leave. Somehow she had to find a way to get through to him. Unfortunately, with Joe, sometimes prodding his temper was the only way to get him talking. She took a deep breath and braced herself. "Actually, I do mind. Because I don't think you are over it. Otherwise you wouldn't be this upset."

"But then whether I'm upset or not really isn't your business, is it? You made your choice years ago, and it wasn't me." The planes of his face hardened as he went back to work.

She thought for a moment that he'd leave it at that, that she'd never get him to open up, but then he surprised her by straightening.

"Although, for the record," he said, "I never asked you to choose. I never said you can marry me or you can be an artist but you can't do both."

"Joe…" She blinked, dumbfounded. "You asked me to marry you and move onto an Army base halfway across the country knowing I'd just won a full scholarship to UT."

"We could have worked around that, if I'd had some advance warning you even wanted to go to college. But no"—he tossed his rag onto the worktable—"I didn't have time to factor that in before I proposed, because you dropped that bombshell on me out of the blue."

Her own anger rose hot and fast. "Well, you didn't have to freak out about it."

A muscle in his jaw ticked as he spaced his words out. "I did not freak out."

"You panicked, then."

"I was angry." Echoes of the emotion flashed in his dark eyes. "Because you never shared any of that with me. I thought we were moving in one direction, only to learn you were making completely different plans
behind my back
."

"You make it sound like I was cheating on you."

"That's pretty much how it felt!" He took a deep, chest-expanding breath and let it out slowly in a visible effort to control his temper. "Maddy, we'd been dating seriously for nearly two years. Even when I went into the Army, we stayed together. We'd been talking about getting married and having kids for months."

"No,
you
talked about getting married and having kids. I just sat there trying not to freak."

"What are you saying?" Her words seemed to knock the wind out of him. "That the whole time we were together, you were never serious? Christ,

Maddy, what were you doing? Using me for sex?" He laughed harshly. "I can't believe I said that. But it's true, isn't it? Shit!"

"No—"

"You were getting off screwing the school troublemaker, running with the bad crowd, pretending to be one of us and all the while you were top of the class."

"I wasn't 'top of the class.' "

"Damn near." He shook his head in disgust. "Oh, the media had a field day with you. Daughter of an underpaid cop, with a stay-at-home mother and four siblings, has little chance of paying for college until lo and behold, she wins a full scholarship from the Lone Star Arts League, has her work displayed in the capitol, gets her picture taken with the flippin' governor. And if all that isn't enough, gee whiz, folks, she's not just pretty and talented, she's running neck and neck on her GPA with the saluta-fucking-torian!"

Maddy cringed, seeing in retrospect the shock he must have felt at Airhead Maddy making good grades.

"You never even told me you'd entered that competition."

"Because… what if I hadn't won?"

"Do you think I would have cared?" Hurt replaced the anger in his eyes. "I was in love with you. We were practically engaged. Don't you think I had a right to know you were working your ass off, trying to make something of your life? Don't you think I would have been proud of you? Do you know how insulting it was that you didn't share your dreams with me?"

"You're right." Guilt swamped her. "I should have told you. I was just… I was afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"That you'd make fun of me." Tears prickled her eyes. "That you'd think I was putting on airs. Shooting too high. Too full, of myself."

" 'Putting on airs'?" He frowned at her. "Jesus, that sounds like something your father would say."

"It is what he said. My whole life, every time I did something good; he… insulted me." She bit her lip as the memories swelled into her throat. "Do you know what he said when he found out I'd won a scholarship? I promise you it wasn't 'congratulations' or 'I'm proud' or even 'nice work.' He said, 'Well, la-di-da, look who thinks she's something special.'" The tears tumbled down her cheeks. She swiped at them angrily, hating that her father could still make her cry. "I wanted out of that house, and out of that crummy neighborhood so bad, I could feel it in my bones. And I was going to do it, no matter what it cost or what it took."

"Marrying me would have gotten you out of there pretty damn fast."

"That's not a good reason to make a lifetime commitment."

"You're right." He sighed. "You know, Maddy, a part of me understands. Your father was an insecure asshole who only felt good about himself when he was cutting other people down."