Love on the Line

by Aares, Pamela

  He pulled away from her hands and turned to face her. A smile lit his eyes, but she was pretty sure he was fighting to bite it back.

  “You try it. Keep your hips in line with the pitcher. Well, in this case, with the machine.”

  She adjusted her grip, lining up the imaginary rings, and raised the bat over her head. If he knew the effect he had on her and how difficult her rushing pulse made concentrating, he was a hard-hearted man. A very hard-hearted man.

  She peeked back at him and saw the absorbed look on his face. He was focused on teaching her to swing a bat. Caught in the keen web of his attention, the tremor of want surged deeper into her. She bit at her bottom lip and called up what control she could muster.

  “Keep your knees bent, your feet flat, and then step into it. Just pick up your front leg and shift forward, making a slight inward coil as you do.”

  She picked up her leg and stepped forward, did everything she could remember.

  The swing she took felt fabulous.

  “Try it again.” He picked up a bat leaning against the net. “But this time let your elbow go up and back.”

  She made the motion he demonstrated.

  “No, not quite so far back; your thumb shouldn’t touch your shoulder.”

  She swung again.

  “Good.”

  She felt more than good. At that moment the energy zipping in her could’ve burned down the barn.

  “Now, this time as you swing, start driving your back shoulder and back elbow down toward your hip as you rotate.”

  He demonstrated. Her eyes followed the movement of his body, but her mind was taking a ride in another realm. No one man should be allowed to have all the sensual, sexy, powerful attributes that he did.

  But it was his earnestness that wiggled its way into her heart. He loved what he did, and seeing his sincere enthusiasm was like breathing mountain air on a spring day. She’d felt it that first evening as she’d watched him working with the boys, then again on their fishing adventure with Cain. And though he might have quirks and foibles—who didn’t?—he was a man with a good heart, the sort of man she’d never imagined meeting.

  “Your back hip should move toward the ball,” he continued in his level, coaching voice. “Move your hips at the same pace as your back shoulder.”

  “I’ll never remember all that.” And not just because it was an overwhelming sequence of details.

  “That’s why they call it practice.”

  He demonstrated again, and she managed to copy him.

  What she’d rather have done was sit at the side of the cage and watch him move. She was beginning to grasp the allure of professional sports. Where else could anyone see such power, such grace, such excellence—such downright world-rocking physicality?

  He walked over to and fiddled with the machine, and then returned to her. “Ready?”

  “Maybe.”

  He pressed the black button at the top of the emergency switch box. “Don’t think too much. Try to enjoy it. It’s a game, remember.”

  The ball fired past her before she could move the bat.

  “That’s the lowest speed?”

  “Yup. Take your stance.” He was ordering her now, the sterner voice of the coach. It’d been years since she’d heard that voice. She’d played intramural soccer at Harvard, had been a decent halfback. But her coach never fired up the sorts of images that she fought to keep at bay listening to Ryan.

  She connected with the next ball, but it rolled across the top of the bat and into the net behind her.

  “There’s no way—”

  “Don’t talk. Just focus and swing.”

  She hit the next ball halfway down the cage and leaped with joy.

  “This is great, this is—”

  The next ball nearly hit her in the stomach.

  She flipped back around to face Iron Mike. “Okay, I’m concentrating.”

  “Think of it as a dance,” he said.

  It was one hell of a dance.

  By the time he turned the machine off, her arms, back and legs ached.

  “Could I see what it’s like when it goes at the speed you hit? The ninety-mile-an-hour sort?”

  She wanted to enter his world, to know more of this man who had opened her to a realm within herself she’d never explored. Someday she might curse him for opening the door to that world, but not today. Today she felt strong. Today she felt whole. Today she could almost imagine facing down and casting away forever the demons that had claimed Laci and had threatened to claim her.

  She pulled off the batting helmet and shook out her hair. And caught him staring. He didn’t look away, just smiled that devastating smile that made her insides turn to molten gold and sent shocks of delicious desire through her. These were feelings she wanted to remember; feelings she wanted to soak in and call up to counter the darkness when it threatened.

  “Okay.” He picked up the bat. “But you stand to my right, just in case.” He pointed to a spot about three feet from him. “And put your helmet back on.”

  She saluted and then felt ridiculous for doing it. But he was so earnest, so focused, she couldn’t help it. She plopped the helmet back on her head.

  He fiddled with the machine again.

  “Ready?” He stepped into position beside the plate. “Do not move.”

  She saw the arm of the pitching machine go back and felt the ball more than saw it, as if it cleaved the molecules in the air. The crack of Ryan’s bat made her jump. The ball ricocheted off the machine and flew back at her, missing her by less than a foot.

  He dashed to the wall and pushed the red emergency switch.

  “You asked for it.”

  “I did.” Her blood pounded in her ears.

  “You’ll be sore tomorrow,” he said as he turned to her. “In places you didn’t even know you have.”

  The gentle smile creasing his eyes teased at her rational reasons for fighting her feelings and keeping her distance. He opened the gate and ushered her out, which was a good thing. If she’d spent a few more minutes inside the cage with him, she might’ve leaped into his arms.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. He couldn’t know it branded heat into her core.

  “Not bad for a first time out. You have a good sense of movement.”

  No other compliment would have meant as much.

  But now that she’d seen what it was like to stand in front of a speeding ball, she wondered why players didn’t suffer from nervous overload. She’d stood well away and still it had scared the hell out of her.

  “Don’t you ever feel fear?”

  He pulled his hand away. “Any guy who can’t transform fear into a functioning, healthy respect doesn’t last a week in the majors.” He shot her a too-quick smile, a smile that told her she’d touched a nerve.

  He turned away from her and secured the gate to the batting cage, every movement precise, measured, sure. Her own nerves hovered near overload, but not from standing in front of the speeding ball. She could still feel his hands on her—guiding her, coaching, coaxing. Arousing.

  “I’ll give you a quick tour of the animal barn,” he said, “but then let’s get outside. It’s too nice to spend a day like this surrounded by walls.”

  She followed him into the light, knowing that the walls blocking her were of her own making.

  Chapter Nine

  The animal barn had been meticulously renovated. Paved flooring sloped down to midfloor drains, and the stalls were spacious, with high arched windows. Each stall had a hand-built feed rack and plumbed-in water troughs. It reminded Cara of the stalls her brother had built for his prized polo horses. That Ryan had invested such money and care into housing homeless donkeys touched her, made her want to thank him on their behalf.

  She ran her hand along the curve of a carved stone water trough. “Lucky donkeys,” she said.

  “Not so far. Their lives have been pretty gruesome.”

  “They’re likely to perk up after a week or two here. I�
�ve seen spas that don’t look this good.”

  He turned and raised a brow. “Haven’t been to a spa myself, but I’ll take your word for it.”

  Spas. What a stupid thing to say. It was as though her secret pushed at her, determined to leak out in any way it could.

  “Are there spas around here?”

  Right—she’d opened the box and now had to close it.

  “A few. People go on special occasions. Girls’ nights, that sort of thing.”

  “Sounds like an invitation I’d like to wrangle.”

  Imagining Ryan with her in a hot tub under the stars was more than her self-restraint could bear. “Is there much left to do?” she asked, trying to turn the conversation.

  “It’s nearly ready. I have a man from a nearby town coming to interview for the job of daily maintenance while I’m on the road, but the guy I had finishing up the carpentry works for my contractor, and he got pulled to a bigger job in the city. Put a real kink in my timing.”

  She took a breath and again pushed back the image of Ryan in a hot tub, all muscles and heat and man. “Like I said, Adam Mitchell does good work.”

  Ryan shot her a look as if he were taking her measure. “If you’re recommending him, then I’d like to have his number.”

  He closed the barn door and headed her to a path that ran toward the back of his property.

  “C’mon,” he said with a grin bordering on boyish, “I’ll show you where I’m going to put in their outdoor spa.”

  After seeing the exquisite work he’d had done in the barn, she wasn’t sure he was kidding.

  “This water trough is self-cleaning,” he said with a touch of pride.

  Calling the structure a trough didn’t do it justice. The three-tiered water station had smiling gargoyles for spouts. The bottom tier was wide enough to swim in.

  “It’s nice enough to put beside the Trevi Fountain.”

  He looked at her, puzzled.

  “The Trevi is a lovely fountain in Rome. I meant it as a compliment.”

  He raked a hand through his hair, then fisted both hands to his hips and studied the fountain.

  “I know it’s a bit over the top. I bought it online. Some lady’s husband wanted to go with the southwest adobe look, and he gave me a good deal. The guy was so happy to get rid of it, he had it delivered himself.”

  The gleam had gone out of his eyes. She’d made him uncomfortable and was sorry. Justifying choices was no fun, she knew that too well.

  “Is that a stream?” She pointed to a winding swath of willows at the bottom of a swale in the distance.

  “Spring fed. Good thing since they’re predicting late and lower-than-average rainfall this year.”

  He followed her as she picked her way along a rutted path down to the trickling stream. Bay trees and a few oaks were dotted among the willows. The deep cut of the bank told her that water would rush furiously when the rains did come.

  “I love it here,” she said, turning to him. His pleased smile warmed her. “I can focus on the simple pleasures when I’m outdoors.”

  He knelt at the side of the stream and picked up a fist-sized rock, turned it in his hand, then tossed it upstream with the ease of a child throwing a hollow ball.

  “Even out here I sometimes can’t leave all my negative mind chatter behind,” he said.

  She wanted to wrap her arms around him, hold him. Like everyone, he had troubles, but she’d been far too focused on her own to consider what shape his might take. She bit back her urge to go to him and found herself chattering instead.

  “It’s not our fault that the negative has such power,” she said. “Human survival forced our brains to develop a negativity bias, a strong bias that makes the brain sort of like Velcro for bad experiences and Teflon, no stick, for good. If we don’t focus on and hold the good, it rolls right off.”

  “That would explain why at the end of the day I remember what didn’t go right better than what did.” He tossed another rock upstream.

  If anyone had told her that watching a man do something as simple as tossing a rock could send shots of unprecedented wanting through her, she’d have told them to get their realities checked.

  She knelt and fingered a fallen willow leaf that lay golden against the grass at the side of the stream. When she looked back up, the tender, thoughtful look in his eyes made her want to share more of what she’d learned, what had helped her find happiness.

  “Holding tight to the negative is our worst habit, but it’s understandable. After all, any of our ancestors who didn’t pay attention to warning signals—signals that said tigers lurked nearby—and instead went blithely along enjoying the bliss of their day were eaten.”

  He laughed. “Higher stakes than calling for Chinese takeout.”

  “So we’re their legacy.” Talking allowed her to keep the urge to fold into his arms at bay. “We learned to pay attention to danger, to the negative, learned to run around and around our tracks until the furrows cut deep and it became impossible to see out.”

  He sat back on his haunches and rested his elbows on his knees.

  “Reprogramming our b-brains is possible.” Her carefully formed conversation began to dissolve as his eyes lit with the same slow smile curving his lips.

  “Yours, maybe. Mine’s pretty entrenched.”

  “No, really.” She looked away, forced herself to concentrate. “You can lay down new patterns. I was shocked at how simple it is. You just have to savor good experiences and take them deep into your body—feel them, not just think them.”

  “I like anything I can practice,” he said as he threw another rock upstream.

  She watched the ripples spread out, lit by the rays of the sun. “The book I’m reading says there are three things—easy things—anyone can do.”

  He walked to her. His thighs bulged under the fabric of his jeans when he crouched beside her. It wasn’t the late morning sun blazing a path of heat through her body, it was Ryan. She looked into his eyes and saw something she couldn’t name, but it seared her to her core. Her heart thrummed in her chest, and she couldn’t remember even one of the three steps recommended by the author. How could she think when she was so caught up with feeling?

  She was pretty sure he was going to kiss her. If he kissed her, she knew she wouldn’t stop there. Not with just a kiss. She scooted back a few feet.

  He followed.

  “Don’t you ever feel like your brain is playing tricks on you?” She was ad-libbing, scrambling. “I mean, it’s important to focus on the future, to have goals, but sometimes I think my brain tricks me into thinking that the future is a real thing, something solid. But it’s not.” Her statement was strong, but she heard the tremor in her voice. “It’s not. The future never comes. There’s always only now.”

  “As in this now?” He wrapped his hands around her, the heat of his palms searing her shoulder blades as he drew her to him and pressed his lips to hers.

  His kiss reached her soul in such a flash that she had no time to put up a defense, its power almost laughing at the suggestion that she could’ve deflected it.

  Sounds dropped away. The gentle tease of his tongue against hers fired heat through her, and she fell into the spell cast by the meeting of her lips and his.

  He tasted like lust, like need and desire and rich passion. But he also tasted like joy, sweet and refreshing. And she wanted more, another taste of the heady combination.

  They separated but not far and not for long. Then they were tasting one another again and then again.

  How could a kiss make her feel as if he’d entered every part of her? As if she flowed into him and he into her and there was no boundary between them? His heart beat against hers, so fast, so strong. She had to stop him, stop herself, before she lost all control, before she—

  His fingers laced into her hair, and he tugged her closer, his mouth tasting, then plundering, banishing all thought from her mind.

  He pressed her back against the soft grass and
traced kisses along her neck. She twined her fingers in his hair and pulled his mouth back to hers. He skimmed his tongue over her lips. She opened her eyes and saw passion in his, passion and hunger that matched her own. But it was the tender look he gave her that made her pause. This was no game. Not for her. And now she knew, not for him.

  But the craving he’d awakened—the yearning for joining, for mating, for a man to share her life—was new to her. She’d heard, read, that bodies were wired for love. She’d read and believed, but never felt the truth of it. Desire opened a realm she couldn’t explain, but at that moment it didn’t matter.

  Ryan pulled back and searched her face. Then he brushed his fingertips against her cheek. His breaths came quickly, though she noted that he tried to control them.

  “You’re unlike any woman I’ve ever met.” His voice was velvet. She could slide along the nap of it and into bliss. “So straightforward. So happy in your life. So beautiful.”

  Straightforward.

  The word cut into her and, like a genie returning to its bottle, thought rushed back in. He was looking for someone to share his life, she could feel it. With all her heart she wished she could be that woman.

  He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingertips.

  She pushed up onto her elbows and wiggled back, away from him and sat up. He reached out and circled his fingers around both wrists.

  “I have to get back.” Those were certainly the hardest five words she’d ever uttered. But they were necessary words.

  He didn’t release her, but his grip softened.

  “Really. I have to... ”

  She couldn’t come up with an excuse and didn’t feel like lying. She moved to him. He wrapped his arms around her. She laid her head against his chest and felt the pounding of his heart under her cheek. And wished she could stay right there, held by him, and forget the world.

  He tracked his hand to the small of her back and then up to her shoulder blade, rested it there, held her.

  “Hey,” he said quietly, “I can’t say I want you to go, but I understand if that’s what you want to do.”