by Pamela Aares
Natasha blinked. A more ridiculous script for ending a relationship couldn’t have been written. But to end a relationship, there had to have been one in the first place. She’d gotten carried away by her fantasies, lured and lulled by wishful thinking.
“Did you see her shoes?” Tammy went on. “I’ll bet one of them would cost an entire week’s pay. But I have to admit they are gorgeous. And they look great on a woman with legs like that. They make a great couple, don’t you think?” She reached into the back pocket of her jeans. “I meant to give these to you yesterday. They’re the yellow lupine seeds you ordered. Two packs.”
Natasha took the seed packets and thanked her friend and colleague. Surreal was the only word for the disjointed feelings jagging through her.
Tammy was right—Adrian and the gorgeous woman made a great couple. A perfectly matched couple. Well, except that the high-heeled knockout didn’t know a blazing thing about plants. But she was pretty sure the woman would never know what it felt like to be a mermaid out of water.
Natasha cursed destiny. Cursed hope.
Seventeen would never be her favorite number. Not ever again.
Chapter Eleven
ADRIAN THREW HIS GEAR BAG ONTO THE seat of his jeep. He had no idea where to find Natasha, and she wasn’t answering her phone. By the time he’d returned to the garden the previous afternoon, she’d left for the day. Early. He had a damned good idea why.
He’d read her employee file, but it had only listed a phone number and a post office box number. And though he wanted to find her, needed to find her, reading her file was as much snooping as he felt right doing. Even that much had required a twenty-minute mental argument with himself until the part of him that had to see her, had to explain about Blair—that wanted to tell Natasha that nothing about his feelings had changed just because she worked for him—had won out. His father was a world-class intelligence agent. Maybe snooping ran in the family after all.
He’d driven to the Rock Wren Café early that morning. Twice. Sat there for an hour the second time. There’d been plenty of customers in and out of the café, going about their lives and enjoying coffees and pastries on a brilliant Saturday. But no Natasha. He’d had the urge to question customers that appeared to be regulars—do you know a woman with dark hair and ivory skin and a smile that seems shy at first but then lights up from the inside? Have you seen her? Do you know her? Do you know where she lives?
He had it bad.
And until he talked with Natasha, the gnawing feeling in his gut wasn’t going to go away.
And now he had to get in gear and hurry over to Alex’s place. His cousin had volunteered him to chase baseballs for the boys that Alex and his teammate Scotty mentored. They’d also invited a few of the boys from one of the local schools. Adrian had reminded Alex that he knew nothing about baseball, but Alex had only grinned and said he’d be part of the fun. But the fist in Adrian’s gut didn’t leave much room for fun.
Coco ran up to the Jeep and slid into the seat beside him. “I’m coming with you.”
“You do remember I’m headed to a baseball game? A pickup game with young boys?”
Coco hadn’t given up on her plan to have Alex and other players from the team pose for her fundraising calendar. Zoe had tried to talk sense into her, to make her see that posing for a small-town calendar wasn’t something world-class athletes would do, especially since it required removing most, if not all, of their clothing. But Coco wouldn’t be deterred. And that morning she’d seemed especially keen on making sure Adrian attended the pickup game.
“I’m not going to get Alex and his friends to pose for you, Coco.”
“But the calendar is a brilliant idea. Why can’t anyone see that?”
“No.”
“You hold a hard line, brother of mine. If you had any conception of the lengths I’ve gone to behind the scenes to help you, you’d help me out.”
“What do you mean behind the scenes?” Coco’s impulsive help often led to disasters.
“That’d be telling, and then it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
“Coco, what have you done?”
She pulled out her cellphone and spent the rest of the drive typing messages and ignoring him.
He drove up the back lane to Trovare, avoiding the castle that served as home to his cousins and aunt. If Aunt Thea was home, he’d be cornered for hours. And he wasn’t in any mood for polite conversation.
When they reached the gravel parking area near the field Alex had mowed for the game, Coco jumped out of the Jeep. “Good luck.” She shot him a saucy grin. “I’m off to find Alana.”
When Coco used that tone, he knew she was up to mischief. But she abandoned him to the ball field and the boys.
Alana’s husband, Matt, played shortstop for the Giants. Likely Matt was also on Coco’s hit list, along with his sister Zoe’s fiancé, Cody. God help him in the face of Coco and Alana. One Tavonesi woman was tough to deter, but two? Matt was a goner. He’d likely end up being Mr. April whether he thought it was a good idea or not.
The field wasn’t manicured, but Alex had laid down chalk lines and put in the bases. Alex had explained that he’d had a grid of finely meshed wire laid under it to prevent the gophers from munching the grass and pocking the field with holes. How a little mammal as cute as a gopher could wreak such havoc—Adrian wouldn’t have believed they could have had he not dealt with them in his own vineyard and gardens. A pair of nesting barn owls had helped out immensely. The gophers were the owls’ favorite treat.
But a baseball field with holes in the turf could mean sprained ankles or worse. Same with the polo field at his place. The wire meshing and protective fencing had been costly, but not as costly as the pain and expense of a horse’s broken leg or an injured player.
Exclusion Alex had called the strategy he used to deal with the gophers. Keep the little beasts away from what you don’t want harmed and give over to them a portion of your land and let them live there, he’d said. Keep out negative influences you don’t want by giving them a land of their own. Maybe it would work as a life strategy. Adrian spent little time thinking about negative influences. He preferred to charge ahead and believe the best about people. His older brother Rafe had once accused him of being naïve. But looking on the rosy side of life seemed like an even better strategy than exclusion. Except right now nothing about life seemed very rosy.
How could one woman that he’d had three dates with turn his world on its ear? He had no answer. But his time with Natasha had scrambled his emotions and his brain. And forget about his libido. It was one hundred percent focused on the one woman eluding him.
Adrian grabbed the gear bag and headed for the ball field. Alex had given him a baseball glove as a birthday present. At the time Adrian had thought it was a joke. Since then he’d realized he’d be called into service anytime they needed an extra pair of legs in the outfield to chase the balls the boys succeeded in hitting.
An invitation to play at Trovare with the pros was one the boys treasured. One they worked for. Alex only let them participate if they kept up their grades in school. Clever, clever cousin. Adrian had no clue about children. He’d spent little time around them.
He slipped on the glove and flexed his fingers. But at that moment, as if in answer to his early morning prayers, he heard Natasha’s voice.
Great, now he was losing his sanity as well as his grip on life.
He looked in the direction of the voice and blinked. Natasha sat in the shade of an oak tree at the side of the playing field with her legs pulled up under her and her focus on the boys playing ball. She jumped up, clapping, when a boy on the right side of the field caught a ball.
“Way to go, Tyler!”
Adrian looked at the boy. The cap he wore partially shaded his face, but it didn’t take a genius to see that he looked like Natasha. Her son. Adrian kicked himself. He was a long way from genius. Maybe the boy was what she’d been hiding from him. Some men didn’t want to take
on other men’s children. He’d seen that drama in action.
He strode toward her, and his movement caught her eye. When she saw him, she froze in place.
“Hello, Natasha.”
She crossed her arms. “I suppose it’s my turn to ask what are you doing here?” Her eyes narrowed, and her lips pressed together in a thin line. “Maybe you’re a stalker?”
Was he? No, he had every right to be there. Alex was his cousin. He’d been invited. But he would’ve come, invited or not, if he’d known he’d find her there. So maybe he was a stalker.
He nodded toward the boy on the field. “Is that your son?”
“I asked what you’re doing here.” Her tone was steady, but he also heard fear carved under it.
Time for some serious truth telling if he was going to breach the wall she’d put up.
“Alex is my cousin. So is the man playing left field. Well, he’s a…” He sought for the English term. “Cousin-in-law… Family. They asked me to help out today.”
She tilted her head, watching him with the keenness a mama bear might use to assess an approaching hunter.
“And see those two women across the field? The one on the left is my cousin Alana and the shorter woman on the right is my sister Coco. And by the way, Blair is an old friend,” he blurted out in an attempt to defuse the scene from the previous afternoon.
She lifted her chin. The set of her jaw said she didn’t believe him.
“We dated a long time ago. My sisters like her. She’s practically one of the family.”
“You seem to have a very big family,” she said, dropping her arms to her sides and squinting in the direction he pointed. “If I’m not mistaken, your sister was the great benefactor of my son’s bake sale.”
Was that a hint of a smile he saw?
“Adrian,” Alex called out to him. “You going to hang around and talk to the pretty lady or are you going to earn your lunch?”
“Be right there.” He turned back to Natasha. “Can we talk? Go somewhere and just talk?”
She studied his face as if she were reading something he didn’t know was written there.
“No surprises?” she finally said.
“No surprises. I have to go out to a friend’s place on the coast tomorrow morning. His ranch. You could bring your son. My friend has a donkey rescue ranch.” An idea hit. “And a batting cage.”
“You’re bribing me. Stalking and bribery. Serious offenses.”
“You can meet me there,” he added. “You could drive out. I can give you directions.” He was truly scrambling now.
“There isn’t anything to talk about.”
He wouldn’t let her go. He couldn’t. Just because she worked for him didn’t mean they couldn’t have a relationship. But now was no time to make that case. He filtered through the many arguments he’d rehearsed in the night as he’d tossed and turned, unable to sleep, unable to get her out of his mind.
“I think there is,” he said as calmly as he could. “I think you know there is.” He gestured palm up into the space between them. “This energy between us, it’s not normal.”
“You can say that again.”
Blast his English! Just when he thought he had a great command of the language, his supposed fluency failed him.
“Not normal, as in it’s special,” he said, groping for words. “Unusual.”
She laughed. And the sound of her laughter sent hope washing through him.
“Yo! Casanova,” Alex called out. “We have a game to play.”
Natasha crossed her arms again. “I suppose your family knows you rather well,” she said.
Adrian felt the color climb into his face. He wasn’t a Casanova. And Alex couldn’t have known the ill turn he’d just caused.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to go out to this place with you tomorrow,” she said. “So, no. But thank you.”
“Yo! Adrian,” Matt called. “Move it!”
Natasha waved a hand toward the field. “You’d better go do what you came to do.” She turned to face him and spread her palms in the space between them as he had done moments before. “And if it makes any difference, I’m sorry. For more than I can say.”
He was dragging himself away from the woman he’d fallen for to play a game for which he had no skill. Evidently baseball wasn’t the only game he didn’t come up to the mark for. Relationships might not be a game, but he was pretty sure he’d just flubbed the rules.
When the game ended, Natasha steered Tyler directly back to her car. She’d said a quick thank you to their host, Alex, and his teammate Matt.
She’d managed to steal away before Adrian had a chance to waylay her. Telling him that she didn’t want to join him the next day was the hardest thing she’d had to say in a very long time. But it was the right decision. There was no way she was going to cave. No way she was going to continue along the path she and Adrian had stepped onto.
Casanova.
As if she needed any clearer warning. A friend. He’d called the long-legged beauty a friend. Did he think she was an idiot? That she didn’t have eyes?
Tyler snapped on his seat belt. “Mom! We got invited to go out to Ryan Rea’s ranch. Ryan Rea! He’s about the best center fielder in all of the Major Leagues. He has a batting cage. A real one.”
“We have to get ready to move into our new place, Tyler. We’re busy.”
“We aren’t moving until next week. I’d get to practice with the guys. Alex’s friend Adrian said he’d call you later today with directions.”
Alex’s friend. The guys. Tyler had been scooped up from right under her nose. Her son was off limits. Using him to get to her was underhanded.
“And Ryan has a baby donkey,” Tyler went on. Natasha’s heart softened and she felt her brain turn to mush at Tyler’s pleading tone. “And he has a big garden. And maybe we can go to the beach after. Adrian says there’s a good boogie-boarding spot close to Ryan’s ranch.” He smacked his hand into his glove. “A real batting cage! And you know, knowing these guys who play in the majors could help Brandon and me. We’d have an in. I mean when we get out of college. They could—”
“Whoa. There’s a lot of schoolwork to be done between here and college. And years of practice if you want to play professional baseball. Years.” The fact that Tyler was already planning his career in the majors unsettled her. One out of a million boys made it to baseball’s Major League. And while she didn’t want to throw water on the fire of his dream, she wanted him to be realistic.
“Mom, you said that if I paid attention to my dreams, I’d never go wrong.”
Had she? She needed to be more careful with what she said. Tyler’s memory stored information like an armored Brink’s truck. She must’ve said it before her foolish bet. Before her dreams had steered her wrong. She’d learned a thing or two since that night.
“We can go to Ryan’s, right? Can we take Brandon? I bet he’s never even met a real baseball player. And Scotty Donovan might be there. He’s a pitcher. A stokin’-great pitcher. Brandon’ll die. He’s still mad at his mom for not letting him come with us today.”
“We’ll see.”
Tyler twisted in his seat to face her. “That means no.” He tapped her on the arm. “It’s not a very long drive.”
It wasn’t the drive she was worried about, but she couldn’t tell Tyler that.
She could avoid Adrian at work—he couldn’t cross the employee-employer line there, couldn’t make advances, not if she held to her boundaries. But if she saw him socially? Then the rules changed. And it wouldn’t be long before he discovered the monumental gap between them. Before he realized that though she hadn’t lied, she sure had been keeping information from him. She’d known all along that their worlds wouldn’t mesh—he hadn’t. This was no fairy story, no Hollywood movie. Heirs to fortunes did not marry women like her. And she liked him too much to see him casually. She wished it weren’t true, but it was. Sure, in the blush of infatuation they might believe the
ir story could have a happy ending, but she wasn’t naïve. And she had been a fool. Her heart was all in and reality did not look pretty.
She’d known from the beginning that there’d be an end like this. Well, maybe not exactly like this, but an end. Maybe she’d better just throw her cards down and end it cleanly. Tell him that she lived in a homeless shelter. That she’d bet her and her child’s future on a vision from a dream. That she could barely read or do math. No, that she wouldn’t tell him. She needed her job. Loved her job. And she was good at what she did. No one at Casa del Sole needed to know about her disability.
She might as well face Adrian, square off and get the pain over with. And give him a piece of her mind for leveraging Tyler to get to her. That she couldn’t forgive.
But a part of her felt exuberant that he’d gone to such measures to try to spend more time with her.
“Mom—you’re doing the thing.”
Startled back from her thoughts, she dropped the strand of hair that she’d twisted around her finger.
“Okay, honey. If Mr. Tavonesi calls and formally invites you, you can tell Brandon he can come with us.”
Tyler whooped as if she’d just told him he was playing in the World Series.
“But remember, we still have to keep to our rules. No one gets our address. No one. Not even when we move into our new place.”
“Not even Brandon?”
Especially not Brandon. His mother was the biggest gossip in the school PTA. A rich mom with nothing else to do but hawk everybody’s business. Discovering Tyler and Natasha’s hard luck would be a fine kernel of gossip indeed.
“No one, honey.”
“Got it. Can I use your phone to call Brandon and tell him about the batting cage?”
She nodded. She’d been impulsive again.