Ryan turned the handle on the shower and ramped up the heat, giving the shoulder even more attention. When he got to his locker, Scotty handed him a blue and white tube.
“Arnica. Salve of champions.”
Ryan squeezed some of the ointment onto his palm and spread it across his shoulder. “Did you ever hear about that pitcher—the starter for the Reds—that guy that said he had a phantom pain in his shoulder?”
“Henderly? I call him the Love Boat,” Scotty said with a grin. “Any guy who can solve his problems with a beautiful woman is pretty intelligent in my book.”
Henderly had been hot; he’d won the Cy Young the year the pain had tormented him. Ryan had heard that nothing had showed up on MRIs or X-rays. Henderly married the next summer and announced that the pain had gone away. Tales flew around the clubhouse that he’d said he’d been battling with a force in his soul and falling in love had changed everything for him. He’d taken a lot of razzing in the press, but his twenty-one and three record said it all. Ryan shrugged. He didn’t want to believe that pain in his body had anything to do with forces he couldn’t control.
Scotty tilted his head and surveyed Ryan. “If you think it’s a phantom pain, maybe you should see a psychic.”
Ryan was pretty sure he was kidding. As a pitcher, Scotty knew about shoulder pain. But Ryan wasn’t so sure his teammate knew much about psychics.
Ryan shook his head. “Not in the market.”
“Or try Love Boat’s solution. Find a wife.”
“Definitely not in the market.” At least he didn’t think he was. He wanted to get married, of course. But there was no rush.
Pain zinged along the back of Ryan’s shoulder as he turned out of the players’ parking lot at the stadium. He adjusted the seat in his Bugatti and tilted the steering wheel down. The pain eased.
He’d beat it—he had to. He didn’t believe in phantom pains, not unless there was an amputation involved. He already wished he hadn’t mentioned the whole phantom idea to Scotty.
He drove along the Embarcadero and glanced across at Alcatraz. It appeared to float in the tossing waves of the Bay, a reminder of how bad decisions could derail good ones. Had some of the inmates who’d done time there made split-second decisions that landed them in the infamous prison, or had their sentences been the result of repeated poor judgments over a long period of time? Sitting in the courtroom in Boston had made him think hard about the repercussions of bad decisions. And about people and their motivations.
There was a time that he’d thought the best of everyone, had learned from his mother to give others the benefit of the doubt. But the naive man who’d held those values in the past wasn’t driving a Bugatti and thinking about prison inmates. Or paternity suits. Or being dumped by the first and only woman he’d loved. He’d left that gullible man behind. But the wall he’d constructed to keep foolish decisions at bay sometimes closed in on him, closed in too tight.
Jeez.
And there he was, thinking about the downside again.
He had to stop.
He knew how to recognize a pattern and change it. He did it in baseball all the time. Just last year he’d adjusted his batting stance and adjusted his grip. The careful tweaks had changed everything—his approach and follow-through and his stats. And he’d trained himself to sink into a meditative state when he stood in the batter’s box, had learned to let everything but his body, his concentration and his awareness of the movements of the pitcher drop away.
Flow.
That was what the scientists called the zone he could drop into. With practice he’d found he could shut his eyes and focus, call up the flow and stay with it. Let his striving and worries drop away so he could sink in.
But since the night he’d met Cara, when he shut his eyes and went for ramping up his flow, her face would float in front of him. It spooked him because he didn’t even know her. And it didn’t help that the images of her quickly morphed into hot fantasies that had him wanting to do more than buy tacos.
Perhaps Scotty was right. Not that he should find a wife, but it couldn’t hurt to have a woman in his life. The right kind of woman. He didn’t need the surging images of Cara to remind him that it had been way too long since he’d held a woman in his arms.
Like oxygen blowing onto embers long covered by layers of cold, dark ash, meeting Cara had sparked life into a place inside him that he’d thought his caution and wariness might have snuffed.
Maybe he could date her, keep it light, keep it simple. Maybe they could enjoy each other and do things around town.
But as he merged onto the Golden Gate Bridge, his cynicism tightened its grip, locking him into a war that his brain fought against the urgings of his body and heart.
He’d have to be careful not to lead Cara into thinking he was her road out of Albion Bay.
A rescuing Prince Charming he wasn’t.
And he likely never would be. The experiences with Terese and Elaine had left long, dark skid marks. Nope, he wouldn’t be anyone’s road out.
Chapter Five
Ryan looked through the screen door and into Belva’s cavernous kitchen. Steam hung in the room, hovering among the women stirring pots on a commercial-style stove at the center island. Tables lined a far wall and held camp stoves, and those too sported massive, steaming pots. Four women tended those while others chopped vegetables on a wooden counter that reached across the back wall.
He didn’t bother knocking. No one would hear over the clattering utensils, the laughter and the sound of knives chopping against wood. He stepped through the door. It was twenty degrees hotter in the kitchen than the warm autumn day outside.
His eyes sought Cara. She was studiously stirring a pot that came nearly to her shoulders. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and for the first time he saw the beautiful, heart-shaped frame of her face. She swiped the back of her hand at the beads of perspiration on her brow and held her lips in a half-smile, half-frown.
She had beautiful lips. They were full, but not too full. And the rosy red color was like something out of the fairy tales his sister used to love. But fairy tales weren’t what he had in mind as he watched her purse her lips to sip from a spoon she’d dipped into the pot. She closed her eyes and savored whatever she was tasting. Then she cut her gaze to where he stood in the doorway, and her hand froze, midmotion. Molly Rivers stood beside her. She saw Cara freeze and turned toward the door. Like a herd of startled antelope, the rest of the women stopped what they were doing as a silence fell over the room. The only sounds were the boiling pots and the hiss of gas burners.
Flee.
Ryan swallowed down the impulse and shrugged.
“For God’s sake,” a heavyset woman called from the end of the kitchen island. “Get that boy an apron, Cara,” she ordered as she walked over to Ryan. “You’re just in time. My husband, Roy”—she crossed herself—“God rest his soul, always helped with the heavy lifting.” A smile crinkled in the lines around her eyes as she wiped her hands on her apron. “You’ll have to do. I’m Belva Rosario.”
She shook his hand with a firm grip. From the look of her and the grip of her handshake, he wasn’t sure she really needed him to lift anything. She had biceps nearly as big as his.
“Ryan Rea.”
“I know who you are,” she said. “I don’t let strangers wander into my kitchen.” She tilted her head toward Cara and Molly. “The girls here say you’ll be handy.”
He wouldn’t want to face the price she’d exact if he wasn’t.
Cara handed him a yellow apron.
“The only other one left is pink,” she said with a laughing light in her eyes. “Not your color, I imagine.”
He ignored the ruffle at the bottom and strapped it on.
“Looks like he has a strong hand,” Belva said.
Being sized up by an Italian grandmother was worse than facing the scouts in college. That she referred to him in the third person brought all those edgy days swooping back. Bu
t when she took him by the elbow and led him over to stand beside Cara, he forgave her for stirring anxious memories.
“Back to work, ladies,” Belva said with a loud clap of her hands. “Perk’s picking the canned food up at three.”
Belva handed him an eleven-inch cleaver.
“Our squash has tough skin this year. Usually we’d bake them in the oven, but we don’t have the time. See if you can carve through these babies, and we’ll have squash soup for canning.”
Without a backward glance she marched to the other end of the kitchen and began giving orders to two women peeling pears.
This was not his grandmother’s canning scene. Not even close.
The days when he’d helped put up watermelon-rind pickles and stolen cherries before they went into jam pots seemed very distant. These women were serious. Cain had told him at breakfast that morning that they put up nearly six thousand dollars’ worth of food for the food bank every year.
As he surveyed the crates of vegetables and fruits stacked around the kitchen, Ryan didn’t doubt Cain’s estimate. When he’d asked Cain why he didn’t pitch in and help, the other man looked at Ryan like he was nuts. He’d rather face a tsunami in the open ocean than make a wrong move around Belva, he’d said. Ryan was beginning to see why.
He squared off with the first of the two dozen or so squashes spread before him on the table. He tried using force to press the cleaver into the tough skin, but it glanced off. He tried turning the squash on its end and pushing the blade down with both hands. No go.
He heard a light giggle.
The last time he’d heard a giggle was from his sister Eve when her boyfriend had asked her out in tenth grade. He looked up from the cleaver. Cara smiled. He hadn’t imagined her giggling. Laughing, sighing, moaning when he... He stopped himself. Recalling some of the fantasies she’d starred in while he’d let hot water drill into his shoulder in the clubhouse wasn’t going to help in this situation. Nor likely in any other.
“Try this.” She put her hand over where his rested on the handle of the cleaver. “See the seam, the gap between the ridges? Just edge the blade in there. Give it a little wiggle.”
His pulse picked up at her touch. Giggles and wiggles were not what his body had in mind. He tried to squelch the new fantasies racing through his mind. Sometimes a good imagination was not a guy’s best asset.
She leaned closer to guide his hand, and he felt the curve of her breast barely touch his forearm. As if reading his mind, she backed away.
He put the cleaver exactly where she pointed and pressed. Again it glanced off.
“A pickaxe would be my tool of choice here,” Ryan said through clenched teeth. Though there was humor in his voice, he couldn’t believe he’d been bested by a squash.
“I heard that,” Belva said as she strode over to him. “Those are my prize Burgess Buttercups.”
She took the cleaver and lined up a squash in front of her on the cutting board and muscled the cleaver in between the ridges. To his delight, she had no more success opening the squash than he had.
“Okay, so maybe not a pickaxe,” Ryan said, keeping any gloating out of his voice. “But maybe you have an ax nearby? Or a different species of squash?”
Belva puffed up like a cornered adder. “These make the best soup.”
He trusted her on that. He’d had a bowl of her soup at the diner.
“I’ll set you up outside,” she said. “Cara, let Molly take over there. Help Mr. Rea with these darn squash.”
“Please, call me Ryan.”
Belva gave him an assessing look that could’ve halted a Cape buffalo stampede. He was used to being called Rea—some guys on the team did it and he’d asked the kids to call him Coach Rea—but Mr. Rea? It bugged him coming from an adult.
“Follow me,” Belva said.
As he watched the swing of Cara’s hips as he followed her and Belva out into the back garden, Ryan squelched a smile and thanked the heavens for his brusque, Italian, cleaver-wielding angel of mercy.
Belva set them up with some squares of cardboard and handed Ryan a battered but serviceable ax.
“I don’t suppose I have to show you how to use this,” she said, squinting into the sunlight. She reminded him of his grandmother. Only his grandmother didn’t put the fear of God into him like Belva did.
“No, ma’am, you don’t.”
“I’m too old to be running around doing away with volunteers, so don’t go letting any of those seeds scatter in my garden.”
He wasn’t sure if she meant doing away with him or the squash seeds that might escape and sprout unplanned. Whichever was true, he’d be careful not to rile Belva.
But as he knelt beside Cara and saw how the dampness from the steam had made her blouse cling to the curve of her breasts and felt the heat from her body, he didn’t much care what Belva or anybody else thought. For the next few hours, he’d be in heaven. As the breeze stirred and wafted the scent of honeysuckle and woman to him, he was sure of it.
Cara scooped seeds from the fifth squash Ryan had opened. The man wielded an ax as if he’d done it all his life. Maybe he had. She knew little about him. Sure, everybody in town talked about his All-Star status as the Giants’ hot, young center fielder, but that was about it. Except she’d seen the Bugatti. But the flashy car didn’t fit with the down-to-earth guy who helped out with the local team and came to lend a hand with community canning.
Maybe she should’ve warned him that the sessions were hard work. She still felt a little guilty about taking him up on his offer. But this was Belva’s first year without Roy around. Having Ryan there not only helped, it filled the gap Roy left. Sort of. That she’d converted Ryan’s obvious interest in her to lure him to participate wasn’t such an underhanded ploy. After all, helping out the ladies of Albion Bay wasn’t Gulag duty.
But she hadn’t counted on the visceral, physical presence of the man. Or on her reaction to him. She’d always thought ads and commercials with manly men doing manly activities were aimed at women other than herself.
She’d been wrong.
When he took off the apron and then removed his T-shirt, folded it and laid it on the ground, she felt her heart stutter. Never had she imagined that real men had six-pack abs. And the fine line of golden hair that dipped into the top of his jeans hadn’t been airbrushed on.
The man was lip-smacking hot.
And focusing on him took her mind off the looming deadline that rattled through her thoughts even when she was trying to forget about it.
Blushing, she turned back to scooping seeds from the squashes he’d expertly split open and tried to turn her mind to the task at hand. Ryan worked fast. Or maybe time had sped up. Within what seemed mere minutes he’d surrounded her with perfectly halved squashes. Cara’s arms were tiring as she scooped out the seeds and tried to keep up with him.
“Break time,” Belva said as she arranged a tray of lemonade on a table near the door. She surveyed the pile of cleaved, seeded and hollowed-out squashes. “Not bad for beginners.”
Ryan laughed.
Cara had seen him smile but hadn’t heard him laugh. Part of her wished she still hadn’t. Ryan Rea had one of those laughs that went beyond words to wrap into a woman’s heart and leave her wanting more. He could prove to be real trouble if she let him.
He rested the ax against an oak tree at the garden entrance and walked over to pour out two glasses of lemonade.
“You don’t say much,” Ryan said as he handed her a glass.
His fingertips brushed hers, and her pulse leaped. Maybe she’d gone too long without a man, but she couldn’t just import one into Albion Bay, even if she wanted to—it’d be the talk of the town. And since she’d left her life back East behind, there weren’t any prospects there. There were a couple of interesting men in the city, but getting close to any of them would just pose problems she wasn’t ready to face.
She sipped her lemonade and told herself it was just good manners to engage Ryan in
conversation. She swallowed the tart, cold liquid and dug around in her mind for a safe question.
He squatted down on his haunches near where she sat cross-legged surrounded by the scooped-out squashes. “Where’re you from?” he asked before she came up with a question of her own.
The advantage to being the one doing the asking was that she could move the flow of words toward or away from difficult subjects. But some topics were just so basic, they came up no matter how carefully she orchestrated the conversation.
“I grew up in a small town back East,” she said.
That much was true. That fact that her family basically owned the entire town of Hudson Manor and that most of the townspeople worked for her family’s estate was a detail no one needed to know. Nor was the fact that when she hadn’t been in Hudson Manor, she’d lived in her family’s sprawling three-floor apartment that soared high above Fifth Avenue in New York.
“My mom’s from Boston,” Ryan said, gulping down the last of his lemonade and wiping the sweat that had beaded on his face onto his forearm. “Is it always this warm out here in September?”
“It’s the most beautiful time of year.” She tried not to stare at the planed muscles of his chest. “I’ve tried to explain how lovely it is at this time of year to... to my friends. I’ve never succeeded.”
Thank God for conversations about the weather. Always a safe topic.
“It’d be hard to describe the light out here,” he said with a dreamy stare out across the hills behind Belva’s place. “Sometimes when I walk the beach and see the light dancing on the water, and the colors it fires on the hills, it takes my breath away. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Between the effort she was making not to stare at his body and the disarming way he had of describing exactly what she hadn’t been able to put to words, she was feeling more than a little unsettled. Maybe the weather wasn’t such a safe topic after all.
He unfolded from his crouch with astonishing ease and walked toward the table that held the lemonade. Cara tried even more unsuccessfully not to focus on the sweat glistening down his back and highlighting the stretch of muscles that rippled as he moved.
Love on the Line Page 4