The Glory Game

by Janet Dailey

  “I suppose it’s another case of if you have to ask how much, you can’t afford it,” Claudia responded with a smiling grimace. Drew laughed, and he wasn’t a man who laughed often.

  “What did I miss?” Phil Eberly led the returning, drinkladen entourage into the private box. He flashed a dazzling smile at Claudia, but she didn’t appear bowled over by his flattering attention or virile looks.

  “Nothing. Just small talk—polo talk.” She took her iced drink from his hand and turned away. Luz noticed his mouth tighten to suppress a ripple of irritation before he forced it into a stiff smile. She had the impression he was getting nowhere fast with Claudia, and Phil Eberly wasn’t accustomed to rejection. “I suppose I sound like a curious child always asking questions, but …” She paused as the other drinks were passed around and Drew received his glass.

  “Go ahead,” Drew prompted the question he guessed was coming.

  “I don’t understand this business about goals and how many a player has. The announcer has said that some have six or three, but the score isn’t that high.”

  “I’m sure the announcer was referring to a player’s rating. Our son, for instance, is rated as a two-goal player. It’s a handicap system, similar to golf, based on a player’s skills. Except in golf, the better the player, the lower his handicap, whereas in polo, the opposite is true. The better players are given higher ratings, with the top being a perfect ten.”

  “There’s only a handful of ten-god players in the entire world,” Luz added. “Until recently, there weren’t any U.S. players with a ten-goal rating. That elite group has been predominantly from Britain, Argentina, and Mexico, although India and Europe have been represented, too.”

  “Do women play polo?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, there are several women’s leagues in the United States, but you don’t often find mixed teams … unless it’s a family tournament.” Luz sipped at her drink, using the plastic straw. The wide straw brim of her hat briefly blocked the woman’s face from her view.

  “Have you ever played polo, Mrs. Thomas?”

  “Yes. In college.” As she lifted her head, she wondered at her failure to insist on being called Luz. Usually she felt the stodgy “Mrs. Thomas” had always belonged to Drew’s mother, not to her. She thought of herself as Luz Kincaid Thomas, distinct and separate, even though his mother had passed away ten years ago. ‘Then I married Drew, and the children came along. After that, I played only occasionally … in family tournaments with my father or with Rob and Trisha when they were younger. Now I mainly help Rob practice by hitting balls to him.”

  “It all sounds exciting,” Claudia conceded while reserving a measure of doubt. “But I think I’ll stick to tennis.”

  “I’ll go along with that,” Drew agreed warmly.

  For an instant, Luz saw her husband through Claudia’s eyes. Things she hadn’t noticed in years were suddenly clear—the wide, square jaw, the deep cleft in his chin, the slight hook in his long nose, the rich tanned skin, and the dark eyes that could make you believe you were the only person in the room when he looked at you … the way he was looking at Claudia now.

  Luz had never considered him to be handsome. That was a word she reserved for men like Phil Eberly, but she suddenly realized Phil’s looks were too smooth and superficial. He lacked the character lines that gave depth and interest to Drew’s face. Her husband was a very attractive man, and she felt a surge of pride that he belonged to her.

  Behind her, Mary summoned her twelve-year-old daughter. “Anne, come sit down. They’re getting ready to start the game.”

  As the blond adolescent hopped off her perch atop the iron rail surrounding the private box, Luz shifted in her chair to redirect her attention toward the polo field. The rest followed suit to watch the resumption of play.

  The strategy of the Blue Chips team was apparent to Luz the minute they gained possession of the ball and she saw the Number Four player join the attack, instead of cautiously lagging behind his teammates in case their opponents stole the ball. The role of the Number Four player was defensive. If he made an offensive play, then another rider temporarily assumed his defensive position. But not this time. Her son’s team was going all out, taking risks in a desperate attempt to even up the score.

  The pace was fast and furious, and the Black Oak team appeared rattled, committing three fouls during the chukkar, which gave the blue team two penalty shots from the forty-yard line and the third from the sixty.

  By the end of the fourth period, the Kincaid team had closed the gap until only two points separated them. Luz thought Rob and his teammates had a good chance.

  But the rally was broken in the fifth. Luz gave most of the credit for the Black Oak team’s resurgence to the blood bay horse the Argentine player rode. Its reflexes were lightning-quick, and its speed left the other horses far behind. More than once during that next-to-last period, Luz saw the gleaming bay come streaking out of nowhere and overtake a blue rider to spoil a goal shot or a pass.

  The final chukkar was anticlimactic. Black Oak had won the game in the fifth, but they wound up with a score of fourteen to nine. Luz could taste Rob’s bitter disappointment as he congratulated the winners, then rode off the field. He had wanted to win the Kincaid Trophy. She knew he’d blame himself for his own inadequacies in the game and not make any allowances for his youth. To him, a Kincaid should win the Kincaid Trophy. Losing it was like losing the family honor.

  “Poor Rob.” Her sister laid a consoling hand on Luz’s shoulder.

  “I know. He’ll be practicing his swing and hitting balls every spare minute for the next two weeks.” Luz knew the way he punished himself when he failed at whatever he set out to do.

  “Be sure to tell Rob for me that he played very well, Luz.” Audra Kincaid stood up, her action prompting the others to do the same. “He didn’t let us down at all. Now it’s my dubious privilege to present the trophy to the winners. Ross, would you escort me to the circle?” It was a command, not a request, as they all knew, and Mary’s husband moved forward to take her arm and guide her out of the box.

  Luz wasn’t interested in watching the presentation ceremony, so she turned her back on it to gather her purse, binoculars, and camera. She knew Chester Martin would be gloating over the victory. The polo rivalry between Martin and Jake Kincaid had bordered on a feud these last years before her father’s stroke. Now Martin had won.

  A hand touched her arm. “Excuse me, Mrs. Thomas.” The voice belonged to Claudia Baines. Luz swung around, adjusting the knotted sleeves of the teal-blue sweater tied around her neck. “I know your mother will be tied up for a while with the presentation and pictures. Please tell her how honored I was to have met her. Phil and I must be going. I wanted you to know how much I enjoyed this afternoon, and I’m sorry your son’s team didn’t win.”

  “Why don’t you and Phil have drinks with us at the club, then dinner later?” Drew suggested as he moved to Luz’s side.

  A playful mockery glittered in the look Claudia directed at Luz. “He asks, knowing that tomorrow morning he’s going to want to review the final draft of a complicated merger contract.” She smiled at him. “I’d like to join you, but I have a lot of work waiting for me. I promise I will attend your party next Saturday night, though. Thank you for the invitation, Mrs. Thomas.”

  “Not at all.” Luz had no recollection of Claudia Baines’s name on the invitation list, but she concealed her surprise.

  “Goodbye, then.”

  “Wait just a minute and I’ll walk you to your car,” Drew told the pair, then turned to Luz. “Will you be going to see Rob?”

  “Yes.” Luz nodded, frowning slightly. They usually went together after a game.

  “When you’re through, come back to the lounge. I’ll meet you there for drinks,” he said as he moved away from her.

  “Okay.” She returned his smile, but it faded when he turned away and walked with his guests toward the parking lot. She watched them leave, not
ing that Drew’s arm rested lightly on the brunette’s shoulders. It had been draped behind her chair through most of the game. Determinedly, Luz shrugged away the vague sense of unease.

  “I understand she’s been with the firm only a month.” Mary was standing next to her.

  “Yes.” Luz hastily picked up her things, thinking that sisters could sometimes be too close. “She’s new to the area, so Drew is introducing her around, trying to make her feel welcome.”

  “Men always make you wonder whether they’d go to so much trouble if she wasn’t pretty.”

  “Probably not.”

  “That Argentine’s bay horse was named Best-Playing Pony,” Mary said, and Luz appreciated the change of subject.

  “I’m not surprised.” She had missed the announcement. Her glance strayed to the cluster of people crowded around the presentation area. The ceremony itself was over, and all but one black-shirted rider were walking their sweat-glistening horses back to the picket lines. Chester Martin remained behind to have several photographs preserve the moment when Audra Kincaid had given him the large brass trophy cup. “Are you coming with me to the stables?” Luz asked her sister.

  “I’ll wait for them,” she said, indicating her mother and husband. “We’ll see you at the lounge.”

  After slipping her purse and the leather cases containing her camera and field glasses into her straw tote bag for easy carrying, Luz left the stands and skirted the presentation area crowded with its celebrants, photographers, and club officials. Groundsmen were busy replacing the divots to put the polo field back in playing condition, restoring the uniform thickness of grass as if a tense contest had never taken place there.

  CHAPTER II

  Since Rob had dismounted at the picket line at the end of the game, he hadn’t said one word. Trisha was getting tired of her brother’s grim silence. She sponged out the pony’s mouth while Rob unfastened the safety girth over the saddle.

  “Rob, will you stop acting like the whole world is on your shoulders?” She resisted the impulse to throw the wet sponge at him and dropped it in the water bucket instead. “It was only a game, for heaven’s sake!”

  His teal-blue polo shirt was plastered to his back by perspiration. It made ringlets of his long, sandy hair. He lifted the saddle and pad off the horse’s back and turned to glare at her. “Who the hell asked you?”

  “He speaks,” she murmured sarcastically and rested her hands on her hips, a stance that held a challenge. But Rob simply walked around her, carrying his saddle and pad, and depositing them on the ground beside the damp martingale, polo helmet, mallets, and whip.

  “Take the bandage off his tail.”

  “Do it yourself!” She hated it when he bossed her around in that tone she called his Kincaid voice. “You’re a royal bastard, you know that?”

  He crossed to the sorrel’s hindquarters and began removing the bandage that bound its tail to prevent it from interfering with a swinging mallet. His glance skimmed her from the twisted sweatband around her rust-brown hair down the front of her horse-stained T-shirt to the faded denim of her tight jeans and the scuffed, manure-dirty, but expensive leather boots.

  “You look like a Texas shitkicker,” he retorted contemptuously.

  “What do you expect me to wear around these horses of yours?” Trisha demanded angrily. “They’re always butting their heads up against me or slobbering all over me. I’m not about to let them ruin my good clothes! It isn’t my fault you gave Jimmy Ray the day off,” she said, referring to the regular groom.

  “Hey, I never asked you to help with the horses. That was your idea!” He jabbed a finger in her direction. “I can always find a groom!”

  “Sure you can. You’re a Kincaid. You can get anything you want!” She mocked his arrogance.

  “That isn’t what I meant at all,” Rob muttered under his breath. He balled up the unrolled bandage in his hand and hurled it at the rest of his equipment on the ground. “When Grandmother Kincaid sees you like that, she’ll have a fit.”

  “So? I won’t let her see me.” The solution was simple.

  “Yeah, but she’ll hear about it. You could wear something nicer, Trish. Other people around here know you. Don’t you care what they think when they see a—”

  “I know,” she interrupted. “A Kincaid. Everybody seems to have conveniently forgotten that I’m a Thomas, too. Why are you so hung-up on this?”

  “I don’t know.” He combed his fingers through his hair in a defeated gesture. “I guess it’s the game. I wanted to win that cup.”

  “All of us wanted you to,” Trisha reminded him.

  Anger and impatience returned to his expression as he dismissed her answer. “I can’t expect you to understand,” he muttered thickly.

  “Why?” She hated it when he adopted this intellectually superior attitude.

  “I’m a Kincaid!” His angry declaration indicated that was a sufficient explanation.

  “So what? You aren’t the only one on this earth—we have relations by the score!”

  He turned and leaned against the horse’s hot flanks, draping his arms over its sweaty back. “But I’m the one who was playing today.” His voice was low, almost muffled, and cutting in its self-condemnation.

  Her anger faded. Fights between them were frequent, sometimes initiated by a lot of goading on Trisha’s part usually when she was fed up with the damned noble ideas he’d get in his head. But she could rarely stay mad at him for long. She crossed to the horse and stood beside it, leaning a shoulder against the sorrel’s withers and folding her arms in front of her. At five inches over five feet she was nearly six inches shorter than her brother, but she was never conscious of it. The air she breathed was strong with the earthy smell of horse, an aroma she’d always liked.

  “Rob, there were three other players on your team today. Two of them had five- and six-goal handicaps. They made mistakes out there. You weren’t the only one.”

  “I should have played better.” He dug the toe of his boot into the grass as he made the critical assessment.

  “Rob, loosen up!” Trisha declared in exasperation.

  He turned his head to look at her. The expression on his raw-boned features was so earnest and intense it was almost frightening. “You don’t know what it’s like to play serious polo, do you? It’s just a game on horseback to you, isn’t it? It’s position, always position.”

  Trisha stopped him before he could go further in his lecture on polo tactics. “Don’t get serious on me. I can only take so much of your heavy thinking.”

  Rob pushed away from the sorrel pony and reached for the sweat scraper. “I have to practice more.”

  She mussed his hair, flattened by the helmet, as he swiped the scraper over the horse’s wet back, then dodged his upraised arm when it attempted to knock her hand aside. “All work and no play makes Rob a very dull boy.”

  “Now, that’s original, Trish,” he mocked. “I guess that platitude makes you the life of the party.” His mouth quirked in a rare smile that assured her he wasn’t angry.

  “I’m certainly not going to tell you!” She laughed. “You’d feel honor-bound to tell Luz.”

  Rob shook his head in mild amazement. “How’d I get such a hellion for a sister?”

  “Retribution, dear brother, for being so perfect.” She jabbed at his ribs in a playful poke. “You’re not perfect, you know. What you need is a hot shower and some good sex. They’re guaranteed to take your mind off whatever troubles you think you have.” Trisha laughed at his startled expression and slapped him on the rump as she walked away. “While you think about that, I’ll take Clover, Stony, and Hank back to the trailer, then come back for the others.”

  Rob watched her untie the three horses and back them away from the picket line. As brother and sister they didn’t really get along together very well. Even though Rob was a year and a half older than Trisha, she had never deferred to him as an older brother. Because Rob had been held back a year in grammar scho
ol, they were at the same grade level, and Trisha thought of herself as more mature than Rob. Vinegar and oil was the comparison Trisha used; you can shake them together, but they always separate.

  Feeling the fatigue and strain of exertion, he stretched the tight muscles in his shoulders with a flexing shrug, still knotted from the game’s tension. The hot shower part of Trisha’s advice sounded good. He reddened slightly under his tan, acknowledging to himself that the second part did as well. Still, it bothered him to hear her talk about sex—maybe because he knew how guys were with girls. And maybe because it was all right for him to make it with somebody else’s sister, but nobody’d better do it with his.

  He frowned, vaguely disturbed. About the only time he felt right about anything was on the polo field—with a horse under him and the juices pumping. He loved that tight, high feeling when all his senses were sharpened and his heart was somewhere in his throat. Maybe that was the problem. He got so up before the game, and high during it, that when he came crashing down it was a long way to the bottom. He stared trancelike at the scraper as he dragged it across the horse’s sweat-wet back. He was good at polo—not as good as he could be, but he had potential. And he was determined to realize it fully.

  That’s where the contradiction within him began. He was proud of being a Kincaid; all his life it had made him “somebody.” Yet he wanted to be more than somebody’s son or grandson. He’d grown up surrounded by the sons and daughters of rich and influential families and had gone to prep school with them. Their lineage gained them acceptance in society and the business world. Being someone’s son was sufficient qualification for becoming an executive in a family corporation, usually in a manufactured position with little, if any, responsibility—and everyone knew it.

  But on the polo field, it was different. No one cared about who he was, only about his ability to play the game. He received no special favors from his teammates, and certainly not from his opponents. The only way to reach the elite circle of high-goal riders was to excel at the game. The family name and money couldn’t buy his entrance into it. Polo was like any other sport—the top players had an identity of their own, regardless of family background. They were not just “somebody”; they were somebody “special.”