The Heart Of The Game

by Pamela Aares

  “God! What time is it?”

  “Nearly three.”

  “Give you a hand?” Adrian said to the driver.

  “Nope. These are on my ticket until they’re on your doorstep.” He balanced two of the larger boxes that held the laser units. “Once I get them to your house, then the liability’s on you.”

  “I have to go,” Zoe said to Cody as Adrian and Vico walked off toward the house, following the driver and Placido. “I promised my sister I’d help her set up her studio.” Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “Coco’s starting a new project, one that involves ballplayers. You’d better be careful, or Alex will have you signed up to be one of her models.”

  “Alex is mighty persuasive,” Cody said. But not nearly as persuasive as the beauty standing in front of him.

  He resisted the urge to take her hand, pull her into the nearby rows of vines and show her the pleasure he’d love to bring her.

  A breeze stirred the leaves, sending them swirling at their feet. Zoe wrapped her shawl around her, looking like a butterfly caught in a cocoon. “The Weather Channel said it’s supposed to warm up after this cold front blows through. I’d like it very much if you’d come to the harvest party at Alana and Matt’s next week. We could ride after. I’d like to ride with you.” She put a hand on his arm, dropping the end of the shawl. “And I promise I won’t let Alex talk you into building any more fences.”

  She could’ve asked him to walk over hot coals or sit through another stiff luncheon or build ten miles of fences, and he would’ve said yes.

  “You’re on.”

  He saw the question flash in her eyes.

  “That means yes,” he said, feeling as awkward as an eighth grader accepting a girl’s invitation to the school dance.

  Chapter Eight

  Cody threw his truck into park and surveyed the campus map for UC Davis. Kat’s officemate told him which barn his sister was working in and he headed straight down. She’d wanted to come to his apartment, but that would’ve been close quarters. He hadn’t seen her since she’d left for Africa two—no, three—years ago. They’d emailed occasionally and he’d had a chuckle over a couple of her adventures, but life in the minors didn’t allow time or money to fly halfway around the world for a safari, even if he’d wanted to.

  He leaned on the top of a stall door. “You’re getting paid to shovel out stalls?”

  Kat jumped.

  “God, Cody, don’t sneak up on people like that. It’s a bad habit.”

  “I like to think of it as a sublime talent.”

  “You have other talents.”

  “That’s why I came, so you could catalog them. Other than hitting, throwing, catching and running, the list has dwindled miserably.”

  She laughed and then balanced her shovel against the wall. “Not from what the guys around here say. They said that during the playoffs, you read the game like a wizard.”

  “Not sure that’s a compliment.”

  “It is. You should hear them. But they were devastated when the Giants didn’t make it to the Series.”

  “They weren’t alone in that.” He couldn’t talk about the loss with many people, but he could talk about it with Kat. They understood each other’s passions. And the price they each paid to pursue them.

  “Yeah.”

  The gaze she leveled at him sometimes made him feel like he was looking in a mirror. She was one year younger, but they shared traits that could’ve made them twins. She wiped her hands against the pockets of her jeans. “I’m glad you came. I missed you.”

  “When’d you get back from chasing down zebras and wild African dogs?”

  “Two weeks ago.”

  He whistled. “So why the big hurry to see me this weekend?”

  “I want to talk to you about Dad.”

  “Nope. Not going there.”

  “Cody, things have changed.”

  “Nothing changes with alcoholics, especially crazy-ass alcoholics.”

  “He’s sober. Dylan said he’s been in AA for over a year. They went together. Dylan’s sober too.”

  Hearing about his brother shot daggers into his heart. As the youngest, Dylan had suffered more than he or Kat had. After Kat and Cody left home—hell, escaped—it’d taken his mom two years to get up the gumption to boot his dad out of the house. And Dylan had the double whammy of addiction. If Cody had ever believed life was fair, the news of Dylan hitting bottom last year and nearly landing in jail on a DUI had proved otherwise.

  “You’ve been to Elm Street?” He’d said the words before he could pull them back.

  The house where he’d spent his last miserable teen years wasn’t home, it was a place he’d wanted to run from. He’d found any excuse to stay the night at friends’ houses, had competed in rodeos, and had signed up for every baseball camp he could find, especially those that were far away. Eventually he’d had to choose between competing in rodeos and baseball; there simply weren’t enough hours in a week for both. The ball fields and stadiums, it didn’t matter where they were, they were his real home, his sanctuary, his life. Baseball had saved him.

  “Twice.”

  Kat ducked into the next stall and brought a horse out on a lead, talking to it in a soft voice as she settled him into the stall she’d just cleaned. She shared Cody’s love of animals. More than that, she had the mind and soul of a healer, something Cody admired more than he’d ever said.

  The horse stood perfectly still as Kat checked his teeth and gums and tongue.

  “This guy’s made a big comeback,” she said as she picked up a brush and ran it along his flanks. “He came in here septic, almost a hundred pounds underweight.” She nuzzled the horse’s flank. “But you’re good now, aren’t you, boy?” The horse turned his head and nudged his chin across the top of Kat’s head.

  She laughed and patted him. “I was going to call him Second Chance Charley, but it seemed too clichéd.”

  “So what do you call him?”

  “Dapper. Because that’s how I see him in his future.” She tapped out the brush on the sole of her boot. “How people can neglect animals is beyond me. But with this drought we’re having and hay prices skyrocketing, I’m afraid we’ll see too many more like Charley before the year is out.”

  “Thought you named him Dapper.”

  “Just seeing if you were really listening. You seemed off in a world of your own.”

  He had been. He was still running the information about their father’s supposed sobriety through his mind.

  “Cody, please. It would mean so much if you’d make a visit.”

  “I’m done with all that drama. I’ve moved on. You did too.”

  “Mom swears it’s better, that she has new hope.”

  “Her hope was one of the problems in the first place. We all paid for it. There’s a fine line between hope and denial. Too fine for me.”

  Kat stopped brushing Charley or Dapper or whatever the lucky horse’s name was.

  “Living in the villages in Africa changed me, seeing the way everyone supported one another and helped out, forgiving one another’s shortcomings.”

  “We’re not talking just shortcomings here, Kat.”

  He didn’t have to remind her about the horrors of life in the dark years before they’d both been old enough to leave home. To leave the arguments and fights behind. But Kat had always been more of an optimist than he was. And she hadn’t taken the brunt of their father’s wild, drunken nights. Those blows had fallen on him and on Dylan, blows that Cody had finally returned one night when he was fed up enough and strong enough to take on his six-foot-four drunken, enraged father. If his mother hadn’t intervened, Cody might’ve killed him. He’d lived with the awareness that he could have, might have, ever since that night.

  “You could try a short visit,” she went on. “Stay at a hotel, do it on your terms. You’re not playing now, are you?”

  “No,” he said, wishing he could say yes and not liking that he felt he needed an excuse
to avoid a trip that wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interest.

  She set the brush on a shelf at the front of the stall. “I’d go with you, but I have a post-doc assignment to wrap up here and it’s a killer deadline. But if I get my work published, there’s a teaching job for me here at Davis.”

  She planted her hands on her hips. When Kat did that, Cody knew she was going in for the kill. “Dylan wants you to ride in a fundraising rodeo in three weeks. It’s for the therapeutic riding program he’s started. Dad put the money up to back the show.”

  “Making you his ambassador is a low blow.”

  “It was my idea. The riding program, working with disadvantaged and troubled kids—it’s been Dylan’s salvation. You’d be a huge draw, maybe sell the place out. Baseball hero, former rodeo champ. I bet you don’t even know you’re a celebrity.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Truth.” She stuck out her pinkie.

  “I am not going to pinkie swear.” He laughed at the dramatically long face she mugged. “I gave it up for Lent last year.”

  “You don’t even know what Lent is.”

  He started to contradict her, but she was right. He didn’t know.

  “Okay, truce. I know when I’ve taken my best shot.” She looped the halter up and off Charley and hung it on a hook in the stall. “Want to see the rest of my new work digs?”

  He was grateful for any activity that would allow them to change the subject. He’d worked too hard and too long to free himself from family dramas to consider jumping back into those murky waters now.

  She showed him around the research complex and explained her latest project—a nasal vaccine to prevent viral infections in malnourished horses. After a quick tour of her office and answering a dozen questions about the playoffs from the guy who shared that office, Cody accepted her offer to make dinner.

  The kitchen in Kat’s tiny faculty apartment was smaller than his bathroom. He jockeyed to stay out of her way as she dragged produce from the fridge, but no matter where he stood, he felt like the Hulk hanging out with Tinker Bell.

  “Sit, Cody.” She pulled a stool out from under the counter that served as both workspace and table. “I don’t need any help. You were never much good in the kitchen.”

  “Offense taken. You know I make a mean protein smoothie.”

  She laughed. “Tell me what you’ve been up to since the season ended.”

  To his surprise he told her about Zoe. About playing in the match. About how he’d danced with her at the wedding and about working with her horse.

  “You haven’t mentioned a woman to me in years,” Kat said with a grin. “I want to meet this miracle worker.”

  “It’s not like that. It’s just that she’s... well, she’s different. Fascinating.”

  Kat looked up from the lettuce she’d been tearing and dropping into a wooden salad bowl. “How do I know there’s a ‘but’ coming?”

  “She’s also an Italian aristocrat, super rich, and not at all my style. Way out of my league. And she wants kids.”

  “Now I definitely want to meet her,” Kat said, laughing. “I didn’t know you had a style.”

  “Enough about me.” He’d said more than he’d intended. Hell, he’d said more than he’d known he had to say.

  She took a bottle of wine out of her tiny fridge and poured herself a glass. “Wine?” she asked, pointing the bottle at him.

  “Sure.”

  He picked up the glass she poured for him and rolled the golden liquid around. “Do you ever feel guilty? I mean that you and I can have a glass or two and then forget about alcohol yet Dad and Dylan can’t?”

  “Sometimes. Mostly I don’t think about it.”

  He took a sip. The wine was flat and had little taste. “How long has this been open?”

  “I don’t know... maybe a week. But I kept it in the fridge.” She tilted her glass at him. “You’re getting spoiled hanging out with your Italian wine-country girlfriend.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  But as they ate their meal and Kat answered his questions about her adventures in Africa, their lighthearted banter didn’t keep the images of Zoe out of his mind.

  After dinner, Kat walked him out to his truck.

  “At least promise me you’ll think about doing the rodeo. Even if you can’t forgive Dad, do it for Dylan. And you know what they say about reconciliation.”

  He raised a brow.

  “It frees up blocked energy. Just think what it could do for your slugging percentage.” She offered a sly smile. “And maybe you’d even start to trust enough to let yourself have a shot with this girlfriend.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  Kat eyed him. “You know what they say about the man who doth protest too much.”

  “Kat, enough.”

  “Okay, okay, just sayin’.” She crossed her arms. “But if you live long enough behind that wall you’ve built, the self you’re trying to hide from the world will disappear from your own view.”

  Uncomfortable now, he started to turn to get in his truck, but she put her hand on his arm, stopping him.

  “No, listen to me. The wall and the world outside will become all you know. Eventually you’ll even forget the wall is there. Trust me—it took hitting bottom in the wilds of Africa for me to figure that out.” She put her arm around his shoulder. “I love you, bro. Whether you let yourself be loved or not.”

  “Had to get it in, huh?”

  She kissed his cheek. “It’s my job. I’m your sister, remember?”

  Cody kicked himself the entire two-and-a-half-hour drive back to San Francisco. He shouldn’t have promised Kat he’d think about doing the rodeo; stepping back into all that was no way to move forward. But as he weighed the news about his father and Dylan, something new nagged at him. It wasn’t guilt. It was hope. One thing about Kat—she knew how to get to him.

  Still distracted when he got home, he tripped on a box of books in the hallway of his condo. He hadn’t unpacked from his hurried move in September. If he didn’t make the team in spring training, he’d just be on the move again, so unpacking seemed like a futile effort. At least he wasn’t alone in his poor housekeeping traits. Jake Ryder had moved to the city in August, and he hadn’t even unpacked his kitchen gear.

  Cody grabbed the remains of a protein drink from his fridge and sat down to check emails. He reread the one from Zoe with the specifics of the harvest picnic. Twice.

  But other than the date and time for the event—accompanied by directions to Matt and Alana’s ranch—and the suggestion to dress ranch casual and bring layers, there were no additional words, nothing to encourage the fantasies he’d enjoyed the nights he’d lain awake thinking about her. The heat that throbbed in his body stoked that fire all by itself.

  Chapter Nine

  The chime of cathedral bells woke Zoe. The ringtone reminded her of home, which is why she’d chosen it. Every morning back home the bells rang out, heralding a new day.

  She grabbed for her phone. Coco’s number flashed on the screen.

  “I should’ve set my phone on vibrate.”

  “And make me walk all the way over there?” Coco moaned.

  Coco used her phone like an intercom. She’d phone rather than walk up from her studio or even from an adjacent room. At least she wasn’t texting. Her text blizzards were worse.

  “It’s less than four hundred meters.”

  “I saw the guest list for Alana’s party. You’re so much better at persuasion than I am. I need you to extract promises from Alex and Matt while you’re over there today,” Coco said. “And Cody Bond too, if he comes. He’s hot. And Jake Ryder, although he’s shy like Cody, so it might take—”

  “Coco, it’s seven in the morning. And no, I won’t ask them. Even half-asleep I still think you need a more high-concept first project.”

  Saying no never came easily to Zoe. She wanted to help her sister set up the photography business she had her heart set
on, but Zoe wasn’t sure creating a calendar featuring Alex’s teammates was the best first step. People didn’t really use wall calendars anymore, at least not among Zoe’s crowd, they didn’t. And talking American sports superstars into posing half-naked was not a task she wanted to take on.

  “What could be more high-concept than hot men? And it’s to support Inspire—how could anybody refuse to support a shelter for at-risk women and children?”

  Coco didn’t whine—she had a velvet voice that could talk a canary into entering a roomful of cats.

  When Zoe didn’t answer, Coco purred, “I’m making huckleberry muffins.”

  A bribe indeed. Coco and Leonora had gathered the wild summer berries from the woods near the border of the property. Coco had carefully frozen them, hoarding them as if each was a precious jewel. Her muffins were like a sensual treasure hunt; each bite of warm, dark berries brought back the promise of long summer days.

  “Unfair tactics. I’m calling in the sorella police.”

  “One bite and you’ll turn back into my helpful sister. I’ll bring them up when they come out of the oven.”

  It wasn’t easy to say no to Coco. Sometimes that worried Zoe. She didn’t want her baby sister to be jolted by life, to be as unprepared as she had been for heartache and the disappointments that life could throw in one’s path. It was time for her baby sister to start taking initiative in her own life and not foist her responsibilities off on others. Not a conversation Zoe was looking forward to having with her.

  Zoe tossed off the bed covers. Rays of golden sunlight poured through the French doors leading to her balcony. She threw them open and admired the early morning sun spreading a gold glow over the vineyard and the hills beyond. She closed her eyes and savored the warmth on her face, and, like messengers that refused to be silenced, scenes from her dreams teased into her mind.

  She’d dreamed in English. She’d never spoken English in her dreams before. Or had she and she just didn’t remember? Dreams had a language all their own, meanings hard to pin down with words, to parse and make sense of. But she distinctly remembered speaking English.