The Heart Of The Game

by Pamela Aares

  Less distinct but more shocking was her fuzzy memory of a scene with Cody. A blanket of white had surrounded them, covering everything, muting the light and infusing them with a bone-chilling coldness. But the heat of his body seared into her when his hands explored her and his lips ignited a pleasure she’d never imagined. She fought to bring the images into sharper focus.

  The harsh rapping of a woodpecker in an oak beside her balcony startled her. She peered into the branches, but thick clusters of green leaves obscured the busy bird from her sight.

  “You have no idea what you just interrupted,” she called out to the invisible bird. But the bird’s unwelcome interruption hadn’t shut down the spike of hot desire that memories of the dream had shot into her.

  In the bathroom she splashed water on her face. She ran the shower, sticking her fingertips into the flow to test the temperature. Images of another shower flashed before her, lightning quick, as if crystallizing around the new yearning blooming in her. And not just images of Cody. She was there, with him, naked in her shower. Zoe had felt the heat of his body when his arms wrapped around her, pressing her breasts against the hard-planed muscles of his chest. She’d dipped her head and run her lips along the ripples of his hard abs and down to the most amazing erection she’d ever tasted. He was spectacular.

  Heat raced through her. And then, as quickly as they’d risen, the images vanished.

  Her pulse raced as she pulled her hand out of the stream of the shower and leaned against the cool marble-tiled wall.

  Perhaps she could have a taste of Cody Bond. Maybe she’d better, or she just might drive herself crazy with all the pent-up energy he ignited. People had flings or... What did her American cousins call them—friends with benefits? Alana had been notorious before she’d met and married Matt. And just yesterday Coco had encouraged Zoe to get back into the dating scene, had argued that she’d become a party-pooping recluse since their mother died.

  Wait. Now she was taking advice from her wild baby sister?

  She was truly losing it.

  She stepped into the shower, determined to be done and out before Coco got there.

  Maybe Sabrina’s wedding had affected her more than she’d realized. Her cousins were marrying off, true, but she was only twenty-six. There was plenty of time to return to Rome, get her life back in order and find a great man who wanted a family as much as she did.

  But in the meantime there was Cody Bond and the hunger he stirred. Maybe Coco was right, that she could use a little joy and fun in her life. If her dream was any indication, Cody could be both. Maybe the very things that made him all wrong in the long term made him all right for the short term. They were adults. They could enjoy one another for a while and then go their separate ways. If the stories she’d heard about bachelor athletes were true, he’d be just as interested in a fling as she was.

  She caught herself humming as she rummaged through her bureau and pulled out her laciest panties. She slid the lace up her hips. Not exactly the most sensible choice for an afternoon that was to include a few hours of hard riding, but her favorite lingerie perfectly fit the fantasies racing in her mind.

  On her way to the breakfast room, Zoe noticed the door to the library was open. Evidently her father had returned.

  She’d wanted to measure her mother’s painting, but the room had been locked up while he was away. She’d gone ahead with final plans for the gallery with Parker’s architect friend in Rome. She planned to ship the small painting and showcase it at the gallery opening. She felt that she was going behind her father’s back—but that was his fault, wasn’t it? For being intractable and evasive. It wasn’t like she was doing anyone harm.

  She walked into the library and a piercing, high-pitched alarm sounded. Instinctively she covered her ears with her hands.

  “I thought I’d shut that off,” her father said as he came running in from the door leading off the library and into the small study adjoining it.

  Zoe pulled her hands from her ears. “You might be overdoing it, Papa. Everyone says there’s no crime around here.” She glanced at the Monet hanging behind his desk. “Maybe you should just send that off to a museum and stop worrying.”

  “It was your mother’s favorite.” He hurried to a panel and pressed a series of buttons to shut down the screaming alarm. Then he showed her the code and how to arm and disarm the system.

  She slipped a piece of paper from his printer and wrote the code on it, then shoved the paper into her pocket. “I’d be more upset if they took Mama’s painting,” she said with a nod to where her mother’s landscape hung next to the Monet. A bright blue sky draped along rolling golden hills dotted with oaks. It was a haunting landscape, one that both soothed and excited Zoe.

  Her father put an arm around her. “We fell in love with those hills. They’re not far from here.”

  The revelation shocked Zoe. “I thought we moved here to... to get you away from all those memories.” He’d never said as much, but Zoe had assumed that was why they’d made such a drastic move.

  He didn’t stiffen, but she felt a wall go up as he slid his arm from her shoulders and walked to the long table in the center of the room.

  “This is the house where I proposed to your mother.”

  She hadn’t known that. “But I thought we left Rome because the memories were too strong, too overwhelming, there.” She shook her head. “Aren’t they just as strong here, Papa?”

  She hadn’t questioned him. None of her siblings had. He’d been so solid through the ordeal of her mother’s death that no one pushed him afterward. He’d never complained, just held them all up, as if carrying them on his back across rough waters. They didn’t want to cause him more stress by asking unnecessary questions.

  “That’s true, at least in part.”

  She heard the waver in his voice. During all the long hours of her mother’s last horrible days, she’d never heard the tone she heard now.

  “I wanted to get back in touch with those early years, not dwell—”

  He stopped.

  Her mother’s dying had been painful and gruesome until she’d agreed to the morphine. And soon after that she was gone. Just gone. As though the sun had dropped below the horizon never to rise again. The thought of her father tumbling into an abyss of despondency and depression had frightened her, had made her go along with his plans and decisions.

  Now was no time to bring up her work on the gallery. It was selfish of her to think only of herself. She could try to accommodate his plans, if only long enough for him to come out of his despair. She’d tell him after the holidays. But would he rise out of the fog that seemed to engulf him? Would she? No one ever talked about how grief could suck the life out of a soul, leaving the grieving one feeling she had to haul up energy and step over a yawning gap just to get on with the day.

  “I wanted to remember your mother here, where she was healthy and strong and happy.”

  His voice had recovered the confident edge Zoe heard when he talked about business, and the cloudy look in his eyes gave way to the expression she was more accustomed to, the look that said he had life under control, at his command. The look of a man certain about his path. There would be no more glimpses into his soul. Not this morning, anyway.

  “And I wanted to grow reds,” he continued in the same level master-of-the universe tone. “Always have,” he went on. “These are perfect soils, and the climate here is better for reds. Not to mention, Europe is becoming too crowded for my tastes.”

  She’d be lying not to admit that hearing him confident made her feel safer, less worried. But sometimes she felt manipulated by his evasiveness and his tendency to switch into cool, rational speech when it suited him.

  “Where’ve you been?” she asked, curious about his abrupt departures.

  “Bordeaux, to visit some vintners. And then London to see Mark Wainwright. He’s thinking of starting a winery in Napa.”

  And that quickly she was on shaky ground again because
she knew he wasn’t telling the truth. Lucinda and Mark Wainwright were in Paris for the opening of the Rothko exhibit. She’d texted Lucinda just the day before to ask for her help with the gallery opening.

  She shivered, but maybe she was being paranoid. Maybe Mark had returned early or she’d read the text wrong.

  “How’s the viniculture class going?” her father asked before she could gather her thoughts. He clearly wanted to change the subject.

  “It’s fine.” He raised a brow, and she wished she could be more enthusiastic. But she wasn’t going to lie. “Did Adrian tell you that Vico Gualdieri is in the class with us?”

  His eyes narrowed. The hard set of his jaw belonged to a man she didn’t know. She’d seen the look rarely, but each time it was as foreign as the last.

  “Apparently we aren’t the only Romans interested in the secrets of the California vintners,” he said in a casual tone that didn’t match the calculating look in his eyes. He glanced at his watch. “I’m headed to town. Need anything?”

  She shook her head. What she needed were answers.

  After he left she stepped to his desk, feeling like a thief.

  A printout of an airline receipt sat on top of a pile of papers. She edged over, read it. Russia. He’d been in Russia. Why hadn’t he just said so?

  She stopped to have breakfast with Coco in the kitchen. Each bite of the delicious muffins reminded Zoe of her resolve to have a serious talk with her sister. But her emotions were running high after the encounter with their father, and she thought it best to cool off before stepping into that territory. Being both sister and mother to her younger siblings was an emotion-fraught road for which she had no map. Thankfully Leonora’s bright chatter as she rolled out pastry for an apple pie kept the conversation on lighter ground—until Coco once again pressed Zoe about talking Alex and his teammates into posing for the calendar. Leonora didn’t approve of Coco’s calendar project. Selling a product featuring half-naked men was scandalous in the elderly housekeeper’s mind. Zoe had to bite her lip to keep from laughing as Coco pleaded her case.

  After breakfast, Zoe loaded her two horses on the trailer and checked her riding gear. She tapped the name of the city her father had flown to into her phone. It was urban. Northern Russia. And there weren’t any wineries there. The thought of her father lying to her pierced the shaky foundation she’d been trying to drag together bit by bit.

  But how could she blame him? She was making plans of her own. It was hardly fair to interrogate him about his personal life when she had secrets she wasn’t sharing. Maybe it ran in her blood. Or maybe some dreams only blossomed at the cost of the truth.

  Chapter Ten

  Cody spied the flower-draped sign for the Tavonesi Olive Ranch and shifted his truck into first gear. He waited for a semi piled high with hay bales to pass by in the opposite direction before turning off the country road and down the paved drive. Birds flitted across the road in front of him as he crossed an old, single-lane stone bridge. Dusky green olive trees covered the hillsides of the valley ahead. The blades of a white windmill turned lazily on a distant knoll.

  He rounded a bend. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see the sprawling mansion that was flanked by well-built outbuildings, greenhouses and barns.

  The Tavonesi clan had bucks and taste.

  He gave his name at the gate and followed the directions of uniformed valets to a parking area.

  Music, talk and laughter filtered up the lavender-banked hillside from a festively decorated tent next to the house.

  From the look of the other guests exiting their cars, he was underdressed. He’d taken Zoe’s email literally and worn jeans, boots and a leather jacket. Evidently his idea of ranch casual was a far cry from that of the gussied-up fashionistas.

  Waiters stood at the entrance to the tent with trays of beverages. He took what was described as a harvest iced tea and leaned against a pillar to take in the scene. Well-dressed people chattering in Italian, French and strongly accented English clustered between towering urns spilling over with autumn-colored flowers. More waiters sauntered through the crowd of guests offering silver trays of bite-sized food.

  No one could’ve designed a setting to make him feel more out of place.

  That morning as he’d downloaded the directions onto his phone, he’d told himself that the party was a chance to get to know Alex better. That the event was an off-season opportunity to see some of the other members of his team who’d texted him to say they’d be there.

  But he knew better.

  He sipped the tea. It tasted of mint and lemon and something he couldn’t identify. Zoe’s sister Coco spied him and rushed over.

  “You came!” The ruffled lace shirt she wore, coupled with a very short skirt, made Coco look younger than twenty-one. “I told Zoe you would.” She grabbed his hand. “Come with me. She’s in the frantoio.”

  He had no idea what a frantoio was.

  Coco stopped in front of a broad wooden door and pulled two pairs of bright orange earplugs out of a crystal bowl on a shelf next to it.

  “Put these in. It’s loud in there.”

  He followed her though the door and into a glass-walled hallway that looked out to a vast room filled with machinery. Huge granite wheels the size of his truck turned in a round stainless steel enclosure in the center of the room. Workers emptied oblong baskets of olives onto conveyor belts that carried them to the top of the steel vat surrounding the granite grindstones.

  Zoe and her elderly neighbor stood on a set of metal stairs peering into the vat. At the sight of her, Cody’s heart ramped up its beat. She tossed her head back, laughing at something the old man said.

  No, he couldn’t fool himself and say he’d come for the team.

  Coco waved her arms and caught Zoe’s eye. Then she pointed exaggeratedly at Cody and grinned. In any other circumstance he would’ve felt like a fool. But as a smile spread across Zoe’s face, he didn’t care where he was or what other people were doing; he was focused on the woman who had hijacked his attention.

  Coco grabbed his hand and pulled him through the door at the end of the glassed-in hallway. Even with the earplugs, the sounds throbbed. The heady, grassy aroma of the pulverized olives permeated the room.

  Several guests eyed him, smiling and pointing as he walked down the ramp with Coco. Though he still wasn’t accustomed to being recognized, wasn’t in any way comfortable with the attention from strangers, public recognition was a price of playing in the major leagues. A price he was more than willing to pay.

  But as Zoe made her way down the steps and over to him and Coco, his focus wasn’t on the fancy guests or unwanted attention.

  His pulse kicked up a notch when Zoe leaned in close. “I’m so glad you came,” she said.

  Even through the biting aroma of the olives, he detected her scent. She smelled like spring, like banks of flowers near a streambed at the height of blooming, like—hell, he couldn’t wrestle the scent into words.

  She took his hand in hers. “Come and see.”

  The touch of her palm to his was all it took to send blood rushing to places that were better not displayed in public.

  In an attempt to distract himself from the surge of want, he waved the hand holding the glass of iced tea toward the massive, grinding-stone wheels. “Who could resist this?”

  Who could resist her?

  Zoe turned to her sister. “You’ll have to find your own date,” she said, laughing as she tugged him toward the metal stairs.

  “But I found this one,” Coco said. “I relieved him of his duty holding up the tent pillars.”

  “Taken,” Zoe said with a sly grin. “You’ll have to fish for your date among Alana’s other charming male specimens.”

  Coco laughed and headed out the open double doors at the back of the building, where the workers were unloading olives from small trucks.

  Date.

  The word landed. Stuck. And gave the day a whole new meaning.

  How
long had it been since he’d been on a date? Before the Championship Series. No, maybe a month before that. And that had been a disaster. That evening he’d sworn off both blind dates and supermodels.

  But he wasn’t sure he liked being compared to a fish or a specimen.

  Yet when they reached the top step and Zoe’s hip pressed against his thigh as they peered into the vat of pulverized olives, he really didn’t care about words anymore.

  “Alana’s grandmother brought these grindstones over from Italy,” Zoe said. Several guests crowded onto the steps, pushing Zoe closer against him. He tried to focus on her explanation of the workings of the frantoio, but what he really wanted to do was drag her off somewhere, anywhere, and resume the kiss that had been interrupted that day in the stables.

  “Those are the grindstones,” she said, pointing with her chin. When he didn’t answer, she peered up at his face. “Are you okay?”

  He snapped his attention back from his ramped-up fantasy.

  “Great. Fine. You were saying?”

  The smile that danced in her eyes didn’t help his focus any.

  “Let’s go find something to eat; you must be starving.”

  She didn’t know the half of it. Zoe made him hungry in a way he didn’t want to admit. As discreetly as possible, he rearranged his jeans and recited batting statistics to shut down the fire he didn’t want to cop to. So much for thinking that the haunting feelings he had for her would be easily containable.

  “Lead the way.”

  Sunlight blazed as they exited the frantoio. The bright autumn sunshine that glistened in the breeze-stirred olive groves lit the day with promise. Too bad there were hundreds of other people sharing the day, the place and Zoe.

  She snagged a slice of pizza from a table set up in front of an outdoor oven. “This is divine,” she said after taking a bite.

  A burly chef held out a wooden platter to Cody. “Goat cheese, roasted garlic and herbs from the garden,” the chef said with a touch of pride as Cody took a slice.

  “I love American food,” Zoe said, her mouth glistening with oil from the pizza. She ran the tip of her tongue along her lips.