by Pamela Aares
She tapped her finger on the steering wheel and hummed along with a country-western tune she found on the radio. She’d never listened much to country music, but meeting Cody had spurred her interest. The singer sang of cowboys and trucks and one-night stands. She’d never had a one-night stand. But would a fling with Cody be any different? They were adults, her brain argued. There was no harm in a few weeks of delight before she had to return home.
Her cheeks burned at the thought. She didn’t even know if he was interested. His kiss had felt genuine, but maybe he kissed lots of women the way he’d kissed her.
One thing she did know for sure—he’d sparked a light in her, a light that had been dimmed since the long days leading up to and following her mother’s death. She hadn’t noticed its lost luster, but now that she felt the glow returning, she hoped it would last.
The hills flattened out and the sky took on the light that she’d only ever seen near the sea. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see the ocean on the horizon, she could feel its presence. It was as though the bowl of the sky came alive with the energy of reflected sunlight and danced above her, calling to a place deep within her soul.
Her phone barked out an instruction to turn right. She eased up on the gas and slowed. But there was no place to turn. She slowed even more. Then at the top of the next rise she saw Ryan and Cara’s ranch spreading out to the north at the bottom of the hill. She took in a breath at seeing the vast hills and the slice of ocean just beyond them. The wide-open spaces of the Sonoma coast still stunned her with their beauty.
A turn down a short gravel drive led her through an arched wooden gate. She parked in an open space in the circular drive and dashed up the steps of the sprawling ranch house. Voices through the open door drew her forward.
“I love, love, love the offseason,” Alana was exclaiming when Zoe entered the kitchen. “Sophie and I finally get Matt to ourselves for a couple of months.”
When she saw Zoe, Alana jumped up from her stool at the granite kitchen island and closed her in a hug. “Zizi! We thought you’d never get here.” She called over her shoulder, “Jackie, we can now officially pop the champagne.”
“What’s the occasion?” Zoe asked.
“The guys have volunteered to cook Thanksgiving dinner,” Jackie said as she handed Zoe a glass of bubbly. “We’re all off the hook. Until Christmas, that is. We ladies drew the short straw on that holiday.”
Though Zoe loved big family holiday gatherings, celebrating without her mother still felt all wrong. And if she wasn’t able to iron out the problems with the gallery opening in Rome, she’d likely be leaving in a couple of weeks and not be in California for either occasion. But she didn’t want to put a damper on the festive mood of the women gathered in Ryan and Cara’s kitchen.
“That’s great news.” Zoe schooled her face with what she hoped looked like a genuine smile.
“Better than great,” Cara said. Zoe had only met Cara once before, but she was already fond of her. “Especially since Alex invited half the team. We’d be cooking for days to prepare.” She grinned. “Poor guys. Whoever loses the batting tourney today has to take the lead on the menu.”
“I vote for a spa day on the Wednesday before,” Chloe said. “At Auberge.”
“I’m in,” Alana said, handing Chloe a glass of champagne.
“I have rescue duty,” Jackie said with a frown. “Gage is headed to Canada the week before and doesn’t return until Wednesday night.”
“Not happening,” Cara protested.
“Yes, happening,” Jackie said, not looking very happy about it.
“Then we’ll all come down and help you. We can do the spa day the week after Thanksgiving,” Alana said. “You in, Zoe?”
“For the rescue?” She knew nothing about seals but had heard stories of the grueling work at the marine mammal center Jackie directed. And she sure shouldn’t be signing up to help for something she might not be around for.
Jackie laughed. “You can skip volunteering at the Center and still come for the spa day. I’ll have plenty of others to help out, so no worries.”
“Right now we should head down to the barn,” Chloe said, making her way to the kitchen door. “You coming, Cara?”
“I’ll see you all back up here. I have some foundation paperwork to finish up, and our nanny leaves in ten minutes. Then I have to feed Casey. But I have good money on Alex to win this batting tournament.” Cara turned to Zoe. “Have you been to a batting cage before?”
Somehow the image of bats in a cage didn’t fit the tourney Chloe had mentioned. She shook her head.
Alana took Zoe by the hand and edged her toward the back door. “You’re in for a treat. We get to watch the four best sluggers in the majors duke it out.”
“Duke?” Zoe repeated. Though her English was excellent, the women spoke quickly, all with different accents and using idioms she had to sort through in order to get the gist of their meaning.
“Duking means to battle it out.” Jackie laughed. “The guys have cooked up a competition to see who can hit the most hundred-mile-an-hour fastballs. Best out of thirty. And my money’s on Cody, but don’t tell Alex.”
Cody.
Though Zoe had looked forward to spending time with her cousins and their married friends, that morning as she’d dressed, she’d dressed with a man in mind. With Cody in mind. Three outfits later she’d felt ridiculously self-conscious and scheming. In the end she’d thrown on jeans and a bulky sweater and pulled her hair up into an elastic band. Scheming just wasn’t in her blood.
But as she trooped with Alana, Chloe and Jackie down to the barn, her pulse raced at the prospect of seeing him. She hoped the throbbing in her body wasn’t obvious.
Once inside the building, she realized it wasn’t a barn at all. It was every man’s dream of a recreation space. If that man happened to love billiards, darts and baseball.
The hum of a machine and a loud thwack made her jump.
“That’s Iron Mike,” Chloe said.
“Related to the Duke?” Zoe teased, beginning to catch on to the quirky banter.
“The pitching machine—it’s called Iron Mike,” Alana said.
When they reached the back of the cavernous building, she saw why. Cody stood inside a long netted cage facing a machine that was throwing balls at him so fast that her eyes couldn’t track them.
“Get out of your mind, Cody, and into your hands,” Alex said when Cody missed a rocketing ball. “You have great hands—use them.”
Cody nodded. His full focus was on the machine at the end of the cage.
“Easier said than done.” Scotty chuckled. He grabbed Chloe and planted a kiss on her lips.
“Hey, you guys are supposed to be working,” Chloe said with a laugh as she pulled from Scotty’s arms and nodded to where Cody stood inside the netted cage. “We just came down to show Zoe the inner workings of great minds.”
Great bodies was more like it, Zoe thought as she watched Cody take a stance and then connect with a fast-flying ball. The sense of danger and dread that she’d had when she’d watched him catching that day at the stadium flooded her again. Yet she looked around to find that none of the others shared her concern. Still, facing hundred-mile-an-hour projectiles seemed like serious business to her.
“Cody’s six hits behind Alex,” Scotty said. “Ryan finished up with fifteen. He and Matt are tied for second place.”
“Where’d they go?” Chloe asked.
“To check on the donkeys.”
“Oh, I want to see Liza. You two coming, Alana?” Jackie asked.
“Donkeys?” Zoe was only half listening. Her entire being was focused on Cody in the cage.
Chloe patted Zoe’s arm. “I forgot that this is all new to you.” She turned to Jackie. “I’ll stay with Zoe. She may need an interpreter. We’ll catch up with you two later.”
A ball careened off Cody’s bat and smacked him in the shin. He cursed but didn’t rub at it. Zoe felt the pain as if
the ball had hit her.
“Surely a hit like that hurts,” she said to Chloe.
“Catchers are a different breed from the rest of us,” Scotty said from his perch beside the cage. “They take smacks that’d put a normal guy in the hospital. But like the rest of us, they have freezers full of ice packs. He’ll need one after that.”
Zoe didn’t miss that Chloe had reached out and squeezed Scotty’s hand. Jackie had told her about Scotty’s near brush with death after a hard-hit ball had smashed into his head when he was pitching. The game these men played was deceptively dangerous. After what she’d learned in a few short weeks, Zoe would never look at the American sport in the same way.
Alex stepped into the cage and switched off the machine, and she let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“Twenty-one. You tied me,” Alex said, clapping Cody on the back. “Next time we’ll go for best out of fifty.”
“Wouldn’t have happened without your tips,” Cody said as he picked up the balls he’d missed and dropped them into a big bucket.
“Not so sure about that.” Alex stashed the bats in a container at the back of the cage and then busied himself with the Iron Mike machine at the other end of the cage.
Cody took off the helmet he wore and then stripped the gloves from his hands. He tucked them into the pocket of his jeans. In a flash of awareness, Zoe recognized the aspect of his movements that so fascinated her—the way he shifted his weight, the confident, almost stealth-like moves and the way he made arduous actions appear effortless, almost graceful. Years of practice, of excellence, of focus—of passion—led to movements like his. She’d seen the same moves on the polo fields and in tack rooms. She’d just never watched a player of a different sport closely enough to notice the similarities before. Never been so interested.
Interested? She was practically obsessed. Cody pervaded her thoughts, her dreams, maybe even her body.
He bounded out of the cage. “You came,” he said as he stopped next to her.
He didn’t touch her, but like a schoolgirl with a crush, her heart skipped a beat and she felt suddenly shy, as if he’d read her thoughts, maybe dipped into the fantasies she’d had about him.
“Zoe hasn’t met Liza yet,” Scotty said as he took Chloe by the hand. “We should introduce her to your girlfriend, Cody.” He shot a beaming smile to Zoe. “She’s a knockout.”
“I’ll be right along,” Cody said. “I promised to give Alex a hand with Mike.” He grinned at Zoe. “You’re in for a treat; Liza’s the best. You’ll love her. Everybody does.”
The air deflated from Zoe’s lungs as she turned and speechlessly walked out of the barn with Chloe and Scotty. Of course Cody had a girlfriend that everybody loved. A guy like Cody could have any woman he wanted.
Was she the blonde from the rodeo? Had she come back to California with him?
Had he gone to Montana to see her?
What had Zoe gotten her foolish heart into?
And who was she to think it should be any other way, him with a steady girlfriend and her spinning daydreams? It wasn’t like she could in good conscience start anything serious with him. She wasn’t staying, and his career was in a game as foreign to Italy as icebergs to a desert.
But as she walked with Chloe and Scotty toward an adjacent barn, she realized she had had hopes. Unfounded hopes. Hopes that had thrived and blossomed, heedless of the facts of her life and her plans. She pressed her fingers to her lips, remembering their kisses. She moved her hands to her elbows, thinking. What kind of guy with a steady girlfriend would kiss another woman like he had kissed her? Maybe she was waking up just in time.
“Zoe?” Chloe’s voice dragged her back from her depressing thoughts. “I asked if you like donkeys.”
Chloe helped Scotty drag open a sliding wooden door at the front of the well-built barn.
Zoe’s thoughts stuttered. “I love all animals.”
The scent of fresh hay rose, enveloping her as her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light inside. The barn was amazing. Heat lamps took the chill off the cool afternoon, and the paved floor sloped perfectly toward artfully crafted floor drains. The wooden stalls lining both sides outclassed even the fine woodwork of her family’s barn back home.
“Liza’s down with Jackie in the last stall,” Scotty said.
At the far end of the barn Jackie leaned against the door of the stall. She threw her head back and laughed. So... evidently not only was Liza beloved and beautiful, she also had a good sense of humor. Zoe tried to shove down the jealousy that stabbed a determined course through her belly.
She had no right to be jealous.
None.
But she was.
Cody came jogging up beside them. “Got the ghost out of the machine,” he said with a look of triumph. “WD-40 works every time.”
Zoe felt lost. Not only with the strange lingo and words that made no sense, but lost in the dissolution of the dream she hadn’t even known she’d knitted for herself.
“You two are going to hit it off,” Cody said with a bright smile. “Liza’s the best.”
The prospect of being introduced to Cody’s girlfriend had Zoe dragging her feet. She tried to smile, but the feeling of loss wove through her like a cold stream of icy water. Yet she hadn’t even had Cody, so how could she feel that she’d lost him?
Zoe mustered a smile. Inwardly, she felt like she was grimacing.
“Who won?” Jackie asked as they approached the stall.
Evidently Zoe’s attempt at projecting a carefree mask was working. No one seemed concerned about her trauma in meeting Liza. And why would they worry? After all, no one knew the depth of the feelings she’d developed for Cody. How could they, when she hadn’t even known herself until a few minutes ago? What a joke. To realize the truth about her feelings and then, before she could even appreciate what they meant to her, have them washed out from under her like sand from under a cliff.
“Alex and Cody tied for first place,” Chloe said. “Scotty took last place. But Ryan and Matt will have to take the lead on the menu for Thanksgiving dinner since Scotty knows next to nothing about cooking.”
“I’m very good with pasta,” Scotty protested.
“When is the last time you had pasta for Thanksgiving dinner?” Jackie teased. “Zoe, you must come to Trovare for Thanksgiving; we need you there. I need you there for another European perspective at the table. In fact, bring the whole family. We’ll outnumber the Americans.” She glanced at Cody. “And Cody’s coming, aren’t you?”
Zoe felt that she’d dropped into some kind of farce. Were they all trying to torture her? She couldn’t sit at a table with Cody, not now. Maybe never. Her feelings were too raw at the prospect of meeting Liza.
“Well, I think I have to—”
“Oh, just come,” Jackie said. “We won’t make you cook. You can help Cody with the dishes.”
“Where’s Matt?” Scotty asked.
“He went off with Alana to pick up Sophie from school. Half day today or something,” Jackie said.
Jackie motioned to Zoe. “Time for introductions. You’ll wish you never met her; she’ll steal your heart too.”
Zoe doubted that. She took a deep breath and plastered a smile on her face. She could handle this. She’d say hello to Liza and then flee. Her mind began to race with excuses.
A small donkey looked up at them as they entered the stall.
The lithe blond supermodel with the sense of humor that Zoe had pictured in her mind’s eye was nowhere in sight.
“Can you believe how much she’s filled out?” Jackie said. “I warned Ryan. If he keeps giving her treats, she’ll be the fattest donkey on the planet.”
Cody took Zoe’s hand and dragged her over to the shiny-coated donkey. “Zoe, meet Liza. I told you you’d love her.”
Zoe stood staring, too stunned to feel foolish, her heart too shocked to respond.
“Liza’s a donkey.” Zoe’s words were barely a whisper.
“The best,” Cody crooned. “She won’t bite you.” He grabbed Zoe’s hand and touched it to Liza’s back.
Zoe knelt down to the little donkey’s eye level, unsure whether her legs would’ve held her upright. Cody knelt with her.
“God!” Chloe said, bolting for the door. “I promised Cara I’d help with Casey. A toddler on the loose isn’t very helpful when trying to do paperwork.” She grasped Scotty’s hand, pulling him from the stall. “C’mon. We might need you for entertainment purposes.”
“I haven’t seen Casey in weeks,” Jackie said as she turned to follow them. “Do not give that little rascal any treats,” she ordered over her shoulder as she left.
Liza nudged Cody with her nose.
“Sorry, girl, you heard Jackie—no treats.” He turned to Zoe. “Unless you have apples hidden in places I can’t see.”
The bulky sweater Zoe wore hid plenty, but he’d studied her enough to know exactly what was under it. She shook her head. Her lips were trembling.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” she said.
She sure as hell didn’t look anything close to fine. Her hand trembled as she stroked Liza. He wrapped his hand around hers. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“I’m good with embarrassing.”
“Scotty said Liza was your girlfriend.”
Her blush had him stifling his laugh. He realized how things must’ve sounded. Had forgotten that she didn’t know about Ryan’s passion for the little donkeys. Or his. He’d grown fond of the little rascals during his visits to Ryan and Cara’s. But that Zoe cared enough to fret over the possibility of him having a girlfriend made him feel warm in ways it probably shouldn’t. No one had meant to tease her.
“I missed you,” he said as he stroked his thumb along her palm, hoping to change the subject.
She shivered. “I missed you too.”
He reached the fingertips of his other hand under her chin and tipped her face up. “I want more than anything to kiss you.”
Liza nudged him again, harder this time.
“Not you, girl.” He laughed softly but didn’t move his hand from where he cradled Zoe’s face. “She’s jealous. She’s had me to herself these past few weeks.” He stroked his thumb along the curve of Zoe’s jaw. “I really do want to kiss you.”