“Why don’t you try to put some of your English lessons to use?” she suggested gently. “Ask the guys what they did last night, and you can tell them about the movie you watched, the one you mentioned this morning.”
He wrinkled his nose, not looking up from the ball in his lap. “Maybe another time.”
She linked her hands in front of her shins and leaned back, studying him as he took a ball from the pile to his left, scrawled three letters on it, and placed it in the pile on his right.
What was it about him that pulled and pushed her simultaneously, that made her lose her mind and become one of those mixed-signal-senders she swore she’d never be?
Yes, he was super hot and exactly her type, aesthetically. He was also kind and funny. But so were a lot of men.
He was rich? No, that didn’t interest her.
He stretched his legs in front of him. She looked at the black Converse on his million-dollar feet and sighed.
The truth was all these whys didn’t matter. Maybe her rebuff had wounded him this week, but soon he’d be fine. He was twenty-six, freshly signed to an international contract, excelling on the pitch, and sexy as hell. His English would improve, he’d get to know the Atlanta nightlife, and within a couple of months he’d forget all about his brief, misguided interest in his interpreter.
But her? She wouldn’t recover so quickly or completely. At thirty her priorities were different. After so many years running from permanency and commitment, she was ready to embrace them. She still wanted stability. She wanted marriage and family. There’d been a time when she would’ve happily slept with him and not expected anything more, but those days were gone. Even more attractive to her than an expensive car and aged tequila were predictability, reliability, the freedom to be fully herself without worrying he would leave once he saw her ugly qualities as clearly as her good ones.
In a way she guessed she owed Rio her thanks. She hadn’t been sure she could stick to her love-life resolution until he came along. The odd one-night stand or friends-with-benefits scenario might’ve been tempting enough to test her willpower with anyone else, but the intensity of her attraction to him had prompted her to examine what she really needed, and commit to holding out for the long-term relationship she wanted.
Too bad he wasn’t the right one to seek that with, but at least she had clarity.
Anyway, she decided as he added another signed ball to the pile, even if she only wanted sex, it wouldn’t be right to take advantage of his loneliness and inability to communicate. On the contrary, she should be helping him integrate. She’d definitely been letting him down on that front, and that was an issue she had to rectify sooner rather than later.
He glanced at her over his shoulder, giving her the barest glimpse of a smile before plucking another ball from the laundry basket.
Pushing him to speak English would definitely help, she concluded. The less he depended on her, the greater the distance between them would get. And then it wouldn’t hurt so much when they inevitably split apart.
“Game, set, match, Laurent Perrin!”
Laurent raised his ping-pong paddle in triumph while Rio spread his palms in defeat. Eva joined the applause of a hundred and fifty children as Laurent and Rio returned to their seats on the stage.
Although all of the players had grumbled as they’d finally finished signing balls at nine o’clock the previous evening, they were on good form at that morning’s Junior Skyline event. The children had been bused to the indoor arena where Skyline trained from all over the state, and the faces filling the stands were rapt with delight. A small platform had been set up in the center of the pitch, facing the kids. Rio’s seat was on one end and Eva smiled at him from her chair beside the platform as he returned to take his place.
“There goes your second career as a ping-pong pro,” she joked. He showed her the same subdued smile he’d shown her all week.
She brushed off the pang of disappointment his politeness inspired and refocused her attention on the proceedings. They’d had a kicking demonstration, a keep-up competition, and a silly ping-pong tournament. Now they’d have a question and answer session, and then the players would be dismissed while the kids had lunch and collected their merchandise.
One of the assistant publicists was emceeing the event, and he stepped out into the center of the platform to take questions.
Inevitably the first few were for Deon, and every few minutes Rio glanced over at her for a translation. She gave him quick summaries of the discussion, just enough to keep him in the flow without relaying every sentence.
After Deon finished there were some questions for the goalkeeper, whose role on the pitch was evidently very interesting to eight- and nine-year-olds, and then a few questions for Kojo Agassa, the Togolese right-back.
“And how about you in the third row, boy in the green shirt.” The emcee gestured for the kid to stand up.
Someone passed him the microphone and the boy said, “This question is for Rio Vidal. Rio, was it exciting to win the South American Cup?”
Recognizing his name, Rio looked to her for help. She explained the question, Rio gave her an answer, and she turned to the young fan.
“He says it was one of the best moments of his life. He loves playing for Chile and was proud to win for his country.”
The kid sat down, satisfied, and the emcee indicated a girl two rows behind him.
She stood up. “What do you miss most about living in Chile?”
Again Eva translated, and again he gave her the reply. “He most misses the ocean, because he grew up right on the coast. But he’s heard there are a few beaches not too far from here, which he intends to check out when the weather gets warmer.”
“Thank you,” the girl whispered into the microphone, eyes like dinner plates.
“Okay, who’s next? How about you, blue shirt in the sixth row.”
A boy, younger than most of the other children, stood as the emcee identified him and gingerly accepted the microphone.
“Hi, Rio,” he began, voice trembling. “I just have one question. What do you like about America so far?”
Rio turned to her, and she decided she wasn’t going to speak for him on this question. He’d been at Skyline going on six weeks—it was time he found his voice.
“He wants to know what you like about America thus far.”
“Lots of things. I’ve always wanted to live—”
She shook her head. “You tell him.”
He frowned, incredulous. “I can’t.”
“You can. We practiced exactly this kind of conversation on Tuesday. Answer him in English.”
He glanced at the audience, then back at her. “Next time. I haven’t prepared what I want to say, and I—”
“Answer him in English,” she repeated more firmly. “I know you can do it.”
The kids were watching them intently, perhaps wondering why it was taking so long for Rio to answer the question. He straightened on his chair, visibly gathering himself as he considered his reply.
“America is… very good. I like, uh, these movies…and…the Bon Jovi.”
For several seconds the entire arena was silent, processing that Rio had just spoken in reasonably coherent—if heavily accented—English.
Then the kids burst into unanimous applause, shouting “Go, Rio!” in encouragement.
Rio ducked his head and smiled, but Eva could see he was more embarrassed than triumphant. Instantly she regretted putting him on the spot, and as the emcee moved on to a series of questions for Nico her stomach churned with regret.
What on earth was she thinking? She hated that she’d pushed him, hated that he’d let her, hated that all anyone heard was his thick accent and comical pronunciation and none of them had any idea how charming and clever he truly was.
She reached across the short space between them and brushed her fingers over his hand where it rested on his thigh.
He glan
ced at her, his fleeting smile barely a shadow of that back-teeth grin she’d grown used to.
She pulled in her hand and stared unseeingly at the audience.
What had she done?
Within half an hour the question-and-answer session was over. The kids filed out of the stadium after a dutiful chorus of thank-you and the players wasted no time crossing the indoor pitch to the exit, each one of them eager to take advantage of their free afternoon before tomorrow’s home game.
She walked alongside Rio, who said nothing as they made their way down the hallway.
“What are your plans for the afternoon?” she asked finally, slowing as they reached the lobby.
“I’ll head home for lunch, then maybe come back here this afternoon and run some drills.” He shrugged.
“You know you’re not supposed to—” She stopped herself mid-sentence. Rio was an adult. He knew what he was and wasn’t supposed to do. She would do well to remember that.
The rest of the players had filed out the door, but she lowered her voice as she spoke. “Look, I want to apologize for putting you on the spot to speak English in front of all those kids today. It wasn’t fair.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand. You’re right, I need to get more comfortable speaking English and practice is the best way to do that. What’s the problem?”
“Nothing,” she assured him, not wanting to knock his confidence. “You did really well. I just meant that next time we’ll prepare something together, so you know what you’re saying ahead of time.”
“That’d be good. Then I can think of something more interesting to talk about than Bon Jovi.”
His grin hinted at his cheeky self, and she returned it as broadly as she could. He held open the door for her to walk through, and as she stepped out into the spring sunshine she wondered whether she should suggest an extra English lesson that afternoon. If she could convince him they needed to prepare a statement for his post-match interview tomorrow, maybe she could occupy him long enough that he didn’t have time to train on his rest day, and—
“Mr. Vidal! Mr. Vidal, please!”
“Sorry about this, sir.” A security guard held the woman back, but she pushed against his arm as she repeatedly called Rio’s name. Behind her stood a blond boy, around seven years old, eyes round with concern.
“Please,” the woman repeated, her gaze darting desperately from Eva to Rio and back again. “I promised my son he could meet Rio Vidal for his birthday, only I didn’t know the tickets were so expensive. We drove all the way down from Spartanburg, and I know I should’ve checked the prices, but we were using our neighbor’s Wi-Fi and he moved out and my phone was out of data, and then I had to leave straight after my shift to get here in time, and—”
“That’s enough, ma’am.” The security guard bundled her backward. “You need to leave now.”
“Espere,” Rio told the security guard, raising his palm as he turned to Eva. “What’s going on?”
“She drove a long way with her son to attend today’s event, but when she got here, they couldn’t afford the ticket.” She didn’t tell him that the woman’s accent was pure Appalachia, or that the kid’s shoes were obviously secondhand, or that the beat-up sedan at one end of the parking lot probably didn’t have airbags, probably needed new brakes, and was probably what they’d arrived in.
“Okay ma’am, time for you to go.” The security guard took her by the elbow and turned her around.
“No, it’s fine,” Rio protested, nodding to Eva. “Tell him it’s fine. I’ll sign something for the kid, I don’t mind.”
Eva communicated Rio’s decision to the security guard, who hesitated, then reluctantly let the woman go. He took a few steps backward but hovered around the arena entrance, keeping a watchful eye on the situation.
The woman was so grateful she was on the verge of tears. She grabbed her son by his bony shoulders and thrust him toward Rio, the words gushing from her mouth so quickly Eva could barely catch them all, so she knew Rio must have no clue.
“Oh my God, thank you so much, you have no idea how much this means to us. He watches you every week, he even pretends to be you when he plays soccer with his friends, on account of he’s not the tallest—no offense—but he tries super hard. When I heard you were doing this event for the kids, and it was on his birthday, well, we just had to come down.” She smiled nervously. “Anyway, our neighbors are Puerto Rican and they taught him a little Spanish to say to you. Go on, Jackson, show him what you learned.”
The little boy looked up at his idol and said, barely above a whisper, “Hola. ¿Cómo estás?”
Rio’s grin could’ve lit up a cloudy day as he knelt down to Jackson’s level and shook his hand. “Estoy bien, ¿y tu?”
Eva suppressed a smile at Rio’s rapid-fire accent, which turned the first word into “e’toy” and sped through the rest. No wonder Jackson’s stare was wide-eyed and unblinking.
“Did you bring something for Rio to sign?” she asked Jackson’s mom, who quickly rummaged through her purse to produce a red Skyline T-shirt. Eva cringed when she realized it was a knockoff, not official merchandise, but if Rio noticed—actually, of course he noticed—he said nothing.
He had a marker pen in his pocket from the event, which he used to sign the shirt, then he posed for several photos with a shell-shocked Jackson. He shook the boy’s hand again and inclined his head at the mother’s next round of thank-yous.
“Okay,” he told her in English. “Very good.”
Eva waited with Rio while Jackson and his mom walked back to their car, the boy visibly shaking as he climbed inside. They waved at the beat-up vehicle as it left the parking lot, then Eva thanked the security guard for his vigilance.
“Poor woman,” Rio remarked as they walked toward their own cars, now two of the only ones left in the lot. “Why didn’t she realize she didn’t have tickets before she came all this way?”
“It’s not that she couldn’t get them, it’s that when she arrived they were a lot more expensive than she expected.”
“How much were the tickets?”
“I’m not sure.”
He paused beside his driver-side door. “You must have some idea.”
“About a hundred dollars, I think.”
“For the parent and the kid?”
“Just for the kid.”
He gaped, then swore under his breath. “A hundred dollars to watch me lose at ping-pong. That’s insane.”
“Plenty of people want to pay it. Remember all those soccer balls last night?”
“These events should be open to any kid who’s interested in the game, not just the ones with rich parents. If match tickets had been that expensive when I was a kid…” He shook his head, his expression somewhere between horror and dismay. “My life would be very different.”
He looked back at the arena, his expression thoughtful. “I’m going to speak to some of the publicity guys, see if we can’t arrange something for kids who can’t afford these big events.” He smiled sheepishly. “By which I mean I’ll ask you to speak to them, of course.”
“Or we can squeeze in a couple extra hours of instruction this afternoon and you can ask them yourself.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
She hesitated, glancing up at the clear sky before posing her next question. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure she had cause to ask it, but she wanted the answer regardless. And anyway, how much more awkward could things get between them?
“Did you really not know how expensive the tickets were?”
“No, why?”
“And that kid, you just wanted to be nice to him, I guess.”
“What’s your point?”
She inhaled, counted to three, exhaled. “Did you do that to impress me?”
He stared at her, his forehead creased. She gritted her teeth, wondering if she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life.
Then he burst into one of
the broadest, brightest grins she’d ever seen.
“Are you saying you liked that? You were impressed?”
“No, no.” She held up her palms. “I’m asking if you did it for my benefit, or if you—”
“I can’t remember the last time I did anything that wasn’t from my heart. I don’t perform—it’s not in me to be anyone but myself. But for you…” He leaned toward her, his gaze sweeping her face, his lips quirked in a charming smile. “I’d sign ten thousand autographs if you asked.”
Goddammit, her traitorous heart was skipping beats again. What happened to all that self-aware resolve she’d gathered? Where was her clarity around long-term commitment and serious relationships and not falling for a Chilean soccer player whose grin lit up her world every time she saw it?
He shifted his weight. “You said something about a couple of extra hours of English lessons this afternoon?”
“I did, didn’t I?” she agreed glumly. She couldn’t renege on it now, plus there was the added component of restricting his time to over-train. She supposed she owed him, oblivious as he was to her inner turmoil. After all her mixed signals, the least she could do was save him from himself for a couple of hours.
“Need a lift?” He pressed the remote-start button on his keychain and the engine hummed to life beside them.
She rolled her eyes playfully. “That is ridiculous. And you’re ridiculous for buying such a ridiculous car.”
“Was that a yes or a no?” He jangled his keys.
“No. I’ll follow you.” And spend every minute of the drive to Buckhead trying to figure out what the hell is happening to me.
Chapter 10
“I am. You are.”
“I am, you are.” Rio rushed through the repetition, less than half-listening to Eva’s lesson. He raised the barbell one, two, three times, blowing out hard and racking it back onto the bench press with a clatter. He swiped the back of his hand across his eyes, breathing heavily.
“He is. They are.”
“He is.” His vision was starting to swim but he needed seven more repetitions to complete the set. He heaved the barbell off the rack and brought it down toward his chest. “They are.”
Crossing Hearts Page 11